The big news I’ll focus on this time is that this weekend I’m going on an outreach with 8 Batswana staff/volunteers from YFC to a remote village called Oliphants Drift. I hear it’s a 5 hour drive along a dirt road to reach the village, which happens to be on the famous Limpopo River! I am the driver for our team, and due to heavy rains lately, the road may be somewhat precarious or even water-covered at points. Please pray that the rains hold off the next few days so the road is passable and safe.
I am quite excited to go because since late August, I’ve felt like the Lord has been leading us to go there. Here’s how that story began…I was sitting in my bedroom in late August, looking at the map of Botswana on my wall. I noticed Oliphants Drift, a village I’d never noticed or heard of before, and for some reason was really drawn to it. I had a desire to go there sometime. Then later that same day or the next day, at the weekly prayer meeting, Maruping brought up as a prayer item the village of Oliphants Drift! He said that there is not a single Christian church there, and that a local church in Mochudi has a desire to help plant a church there. So we began praying for Oliphants Drift, and my desire to go there was strengthened.
The very next day, while a man was presenting during a collaborative meeting of NGOs who are fighting AIDS, I was thinking how Oliphants Drift and other outlying areas may not have as good access to the HIV drugs. As the same presenter continued, my eyes happened to glance down at the day planner of a woman sitting two seats away from me (her planner was in my field of vision as I looked at the presenter). My eyes glanced down at one point to see that her day planner was open to the day where she’d written in large letters across the page: Oliphants Drift! I nudged Twila next to me to point it out—I had already told her about how it had come up the day before and how I feel like perhaps I should go there sometime. We both smiled in amazement.
In the month or so after that, E.J., the YFC National Director, shared with us at a staff meeting that he really felt the Lord putting a burden on his heart that we need to go on an outreach somewhere—to share the gospel in other places in Botswana. He asked us to pray and make plans. I immediately thought of Oliphants Drift, and talked to Maruping about it. He agreed that we could go on an outreach there to precede the work of the church from Mochudi who would be trying to plant a church. So we set the date for mid-November for the outreach. However, accommodation fell through so we had to cancel the trip until after the new year.
But meanwhile, the same week in which we would have been on the outreach there, Franzi and I went on a little exploratory journey on the drive home from church, ending up driving past the turn-off toward Oliphants Drift, designated with a sign. That was when I first saw that the road leading there is dirt!
In March, we planned to go there with a visiting South African dance & drama team to do an abstinence rally, but then the team was unable to come up from South Africa, so that never materialized. Instead, we held the abstinence rally in Mochudi, and interestingly, right afterward, as I was about to drive Slim home from the rally, she told me that her family was all camping in Oliphants Drift right then! Slim had never mentioned Oliphants Drift to me, nor did she know we were hoping to minister there. It seemed that we weren’t supposed to forget about Oliphants Drift, but keep seeking the opportunity to go there. And finally, now is the time!
Once I heard of this outreach opportunity in Oliphants Drift, I knew I wanted to be a part of the team to go. They actually needed one of us foreigners to drive since none of the Batswana staff/volunteers have their driver’s license. So I will be driving, as well as helping with music and going house to house (or hut to hut) to share with people about Christ if they are interested, and inviting them to the new church that is forming. Apparently a body of Christian believers in Oliphants Drift has banded together since the new year and has been meeting in a school, though they have no pastor. So we hope to strengthen, encourage and support their fellowship, as well as invite others to join them, especially children and youth. Church leaders from Mochudi and Gaborone are also coming on the outreach to help the ongoing church to grow. We leave Mochudi tomorrow (Friday) around 11 am for the 5ish hour drive. Saturday we will visit people at their homes and hold an outreach for children. We will leave Oliphants Drift after the church service on Sunday.
I am excited to see what God has in store, and I covet your prayers—for protection, that the Holy Spirit would guide our words and ministry, that the people’s hearts would be open to receive the gospel and embrace Christ, and that the Body of Christ would be built up in that village.
I know I am already a missionary…but this feels like I’m really a missionary, if that makes sense! It reminds me of my first 2-month mission trip to Botswana in 2004 where we reached out in similar ways in 2 remote villages in northern Botswana. We helped plant a church in each of those villages, which, to my latest knowledge, are still meeting to this day. In fact, I found out while mentoring one of the students at Bethany College of Missions that she had actually gone back to one of the villages two years after I had been there, and her team had helped to build the actual church building for the church we’d planted 2 years earlier!
Thanks for your interest and prayers. It does make a difference!
Oliphants Drift-Bound!
~Em
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