Youth for Christ was invited to share with students at a junior secondary school in Manyana village about vision and goal-setting. A team of 4 of us went. I played guitar/sang, Thuso (whose stage name is Wehe) rapped and danced, Kelsey spoke on goal-setting, Bobo shared his testimony and encouraged them not to get into drugs and alcohol. I also shared a bit of my testimony of how despite bad things happening we can still fulfill our vision, dreams, and goals with God’s help. The students and staff really appreciated our visit.
It was also kinda fun that we stopped to get some Coke and juice at a local shop in Manyana called Bobo’s Services. We had to get a picture of Bobo with that sign, naturally ;).
Also, after the school assembly, we went in search of a tree. Yes, a tree. I had heard (and seen on the map of Botswana in my room) that there is a big tree in Manyana called Livingstone’s Tree that missionary David Livingstone used to sit under and have meetings in the shade.
Eventually we found it. It is really overgrown now, but it was cool to see another place where David Livingstone used to chill. We as young missionaries are following in his footsteps in spreading the hope of the gospel to Botswana and beyond.
In late February, we partnered with another Christian group called Misfits to address about 1000 students at Gaborone Secondary School and encourage abstinence. It’s not always easy to speak on that subject with 1000 teenagers, but they were surprisingly receptive when I spoke. I shared the same message at Gaborone International School to all the students there a couple weeks later during March, the Month of Youth Against AIDS. This was just the week after YFC led the teambuilding workshop for all the staff at that school.
This year, we were able to lead the Month of Youth Against AIDS programs on Yarona FM national radio for the 6th consecutive year. We were able to encourage abstinence in the fight against HIV/AIDS and give practical advice on how to abstain.
It was cool to have some newlyweds return to the show. They had been two of the guests who shared 3 years back about abstinence and waiting for their spouse. They are part of the Christian hip-hop group called X-Caliber and we played a track where the two of them sing a song entitled, “Waiting.” At that point though, they were not in a relationship. Last year they were also on the show. And now, they are married ☺. So the pictures below are from those earlier years and this year.
Also, in March we helped plan an all-night prayer for youth where we discussed issues related to HIV/AIDS, sexual purity, temptation, etc. It was organised by several different Christian organisations coming together in unity.
Sometimes it turned into a praise dance party :)
Ministering to Rollover Accident Survivors
The day before that all-night prayer, a team of 5 of us from YFC drove about an hour from Gaborone to a town called Molepolole to minister to the 110+ students who survived a tragic rollover truck accident that claimed 9 young lives in late November 2015. I started visiting the survivors in the hospital in Gaborone just a couple days after the accident. I can understand now why no one took pictures of me in the first week after my rollover accident…their faces were so swollen and bruised. I was able to hold it together while in the ward with about 8 girls who all had their heads wrapped with gauze, but as soon as I stepped out of the ward, I burst into tears. As they healed, I was able to talk and pray with them more. We gave them bibles and bible studies. One in particular, I kept in touch with via Facebook. She lost two of her best friends in the accident.
I’m thankful that my deep desire to speak to all the survivors came to fruition—our team was invited to share for an hour and a half. I shared about my own rollover accident and how God brought me through that time and helped me deal with the sudden loss of friends (and later my dad). I also sang some of my songs that relate to that, and it was evident that they were touched yet still traumatized.
One of the YFC volunteers and good friend of mine, Dudu (the older sister of Lame, whose wedding I was a bridesmaid in), shared a powerful testimony of how, after her mother died in a car crash in 2006, she went looking for comfort in the wrong places and felt so empty until she found Christ. She encouraged them to go to God for comfort, not substances or unhealthy relationships.
Fairhope ministered through rap/hip-hop, and Bobo shared a bit of his own story to encourage them not to give up even if they failed their studies (as many of them did). We also prayed for them.
At the end, when I said we had some Knowing God tracts available if they wanted to learn more about having a close relationship with God, they literally rushed up to the stage to get them.
We went to the girls dormitory and talked more with them there and prayed with them. Please pray with us that God will continue to heal them from this trauma.
Outreach to Malolwane Village
At the end of April, Bobo received a call from members of Christ Ambassadors organization, with whom we went on a 2-week mission trip in 2014 to Zambia and Malawi, inviting us to help in a 2-day outreach in Malolwane village. So a few of us went, going house to house sharing the gospel and inviting people to come see The Jesus Film in Setswana each night. We partnered with a local pastor and his church to follow-up the new believers. We also sang worship songs with guitar during intermissions. I didn’t really take pictures, except this one when we were showing The Jesus Film on a big screen outside in the village:
Mobilising Youth for Missions
Since May of last year (2015), Bobo and I sit on the Joining Hands Missionary Conference planning committee, so we had many meetings and lots of preparatory work over the months to help the three-day conference run effectively this year in late May. The annual conference brings missionaries, churches, and organizations together to join hands to reach Botswana and beyond for Christ. Since 2012, I’ve been part of the praise and worship team for the conference. Here is a picture of some of the committee during one of our many meetings:
This year the theme was “Mobilizing Youth for Missions,” as we are helping the youth of Botswana realize that they too can be missionaries themselves.
The opening night was a Jubilee Celebration where we commemorated the contribution of missionaries and the Church in the history and building of Botswana as we turn 50 years old as a nation. Honourable Member of Parliament Biggie Butale addressed and encouraged us, as well as other notable pastors. Bobo also spoke as well.
The conference is also a great time to have fellowship and networking with other missionaries so we can effectively join hands to minister together. Several YFC volunteers also attended to learn more about how they can be involved in missions.
The Sunday before the conference, Dudu and I were on Yarona FM national radio discussing missions and sharing about the conference, and Dudu shared details about the 10-month mission trip she took in 2014 to Taiwan, New Zealand, Fiji, and Kiribathi.
Dudu was also part of the committee that planned the Youth Missions Explosion as the final night of the Joining Hands Conference. It was a really fun event that featured a youth band, rappers, a youth choir, poets, testimonies, a guest speaker, and a panel discussion about missions in which Bobo interviewed Dudu, Albert Tamado (the leader of Scripture Union Botswana), and myself.
About 25 young people responded that they feel called to be involved in missions! Please pray for us to help them find where they fit in the missions picture. We are thankful for places like CAPRO Missions in Botswana that have weeklong and yearlong missionary training courses to help in this. I was invited to teach a two-hour course there in June on how to use the arts in missions.
It was a really great time to encourage young people to use their gifts and talents to glorify the Lord and draw people to Him.
By the way, just a few weeks after the Joining Hands conference, Dudu was elected as one of only two Africans to the Board of Directors of Council for World Mission, which incorporates London Missionary Society (which sent many missionaries worldwide, including David Livingstone to Botswana)!
In that picture, from the Council for World Mission, Dudu is pictured in the front right. Dudu just returned from the first CWM board meeting in Singapore!
It’s also exciting to note that late last year, Bobo was appointed by the Minister of Youth, Sport, and Culture to be one of the 11-member Botswana National Youth Council! Due to this, he had the opportunity to travel to Kenya earlier this year for a youth conference and was able to attend part of the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development).
Outreach in the Heart of Gaborone -- Seeing God at Work!
As part of The Unashamed Movement committee, I helped organize an evangelism event at the bus station and mall near the center of Gaborone. It was the very next day after the Youth Missions Explosion, so we encouraged young people to come and briefly trained them how to get into spiritual discussions and share their faith around the mall and bus station, and invite people to attend the open-air concert in the afternoon.
During the outreach, my teammate and I met a young lady named Lisa sitting in the mall. Though she told us she is a Christian, I felt I should take the time to share some of my testimony with her and encourage her that God has a plan for her life. Then she told us that she had been sitting there a bit earlier, literally crying because she was about to give up in life and give up on God. She is from Zambia and had been in Botswana almost a month but hadn’t been able to find a teaching job and had been in some pretty unsafe and undesirable living conditions. She was debating on giving up and going back to Zambia or giving up her faith and morals. Then we came up to her and unknowingly encouraged her that God has a plan for her life!
When I heard that Lisa was looking for a pre-primary teaching position, I recalled that a Kenyan woman I know named Rachel runs a couple Christian schools. I contacted Rachel and gave her Lisa’s number, and she invited Lisa for an interview the next morning. At the interview, Rachel offered her a job on the spot, and she started the next day! I also took Lisa to church and out to lunch afterward, where our conversation got very deep and I could see that she needed some inner healing from wounds of the past. At my suggestion, she attended the Fresh Start seminar with me the following week or so, and she was able to finally forgive. She was crying and saying that her heart finally feels free! Later when we went to a Christian concert together and the singer sang, “I have peace in my heart,” she tapped my shoulder and whispered, “Now I have peace in my heart.” It is truly beautiful to see how God orchestrated all of this, not only to provide for Lisa’s physical needs, but also her emotional and spiritual needs. In fact, when I first met Lisa, she had a flyer on her lap that read “God At Work.”
Bringing Hope to the Hospital Patients
We continue to minister weekly at Princess Marina hospital in Gaborone. We visit patients to encourage them and to pray for them if they would like prayer. One highlight is the transformation we’ve seen in a young man who broke his back in a car crash. The first time we met him, we learned he had only ever been to church once. The visiting hour was almost up, so we just left him with a Knowing God tract, suggesting he could read it, if he wanted, before we returned the following week to discuss it. When we returned, he told us that through reading it, he realized he wanted to give his life to God, so he had prayed to do so and was now praying daily! We gave him a YFC follow-up bible study, and within an hour, he texted to ask questions about the Bible. We got him a Bible, and he has completed over 10 bible studies in the course! This is what he wrote on the first bible study:
Another paralyzed young man we’ve visited since July 2015 recently had a successful surgery and is finally able to live at home! He sent me a text message after his operation, praising God and thanking us for our prayers.
Next, a 25-year-old young man who was paralyzed and blinded by a car accident told us last week when we were visiting him, “Your presence encourages me.” Long back we also gave him an audio bible that also has sermons on it so he can listen since he cannot read anymore.
Our regular hospital ministry was spiced up when a 17-member Dutch mission team brought along a lot of little toys, bracelets, and balloons that we gave out to the children in the Pediatric wards. The bracelets had 4 symbols, with which they could share the gospel message with the children and their parents. The regular Gaborone volunteers served as translators for the Dutch.
Partnering Together to Bring Greater Mobility to the Disabled
The Dutch team also helped assemble another of those hand-pedaled 3-wheeled carts for people who cannot use their leg(s). They are called P.E.T. (Personal Energy Transportation) devices and shipped from a ministry in the U.S. It was actually through the Joining Hands conference that I learned about the P.E.T. devices and knew to contact Jeff to acquire them to help three disabled men so far. One of them was actually a young man we met during hospital ministry in 2014 and visited for many months. We also picked him up to take him from the hospital to church for the last two weeks before he was finally discharged.
Last November, I drove up a couple hours to his village (Mahalapye), and we assembled a P.E.T. device for him there so he can have more mobility than with a regular wheelchair, especially in the sand of Botswana.
Hannes and his boys helped assemble the cart. Hannes and his family are South Africans who lived with me in the YFC staffhouse as YFC volunteers in 2015 and happened to be also in Mahalapye that weekend, so they came to help assemble the P.E.T. cart for Patrick.
So coming back to this year, I had seen that one of the men in our neighborhood, Simon, only has one leg, so I organized for him to get one of the carts and brought it to Mochudi, where we assembled it for him.
The Dutch Team also came and performed some dramas at the Inferno weekly prayer meeting, and baked huge cakes for all the blind children at the Mochudi Centre for the Blind. They also gave the blind children the bracelets and sang some songs for them.
Shining Christ’s Light in Dikwididi Village
Just two days before the Dutch team arrived, a Canadian team left after a two-week mission trip. One highlight of their visit was an outreach we did together in a small village called Dikwididi that still does not have a church. We first donned our long skirts (well, the females anyway!) and went to the kgotla (village court) to meet the chief and elders of Dikwididi.
The chief and village leaders let us use the Community Hall for our evangelistic meetings, which included praise and worship, the Jesus Film in Setswana, and preaching in Setswana. It was really great to lead the praise and worship and hear the people (about 85 each night) praising God so passionately, and even greater to see how many responded to give their lives to Christ after watching the Jesus Film and hearing the gospel explained clearly in Setswana. The next night was spent teaching them how to grow in their faith and truly follow Jesus.
Also, during the days we ran children’s ministry. It was fun to play tag and games, sing songs, make crafts, and share bible stories with the kids. They were just too cute!
Speaking and Leading Prayer at a Kgotla Meeting in Lobatse
That reminds me that in June, Bobo, Thuso, and I were invited to speak on prayer and lead prayer at a kgotla meeting in Lobatse, which used to be the seat of government for Botswana. We were invited by Pastor Thekiso whom Bobo and I had met in our meetings to organize more united prayer amongst youth in Gaborone. The three chiefs of Lobatse were present, along with many other public servants, pastors, and residents.
Bobo and I were both spoke for about 10-15 minutes, and all three of us led prayer.
I also sang the Setswana worship song I wrote, “O montle,” and the people expressed that they liked it. Also, in Botswana culture, it is proper for women to wear skirts and often a headscarf to kgotla meetings, so the chief even pointed me out as a good example, haha.
More to come…
There are still some more highlights of the year I will try to share later, including about ministry related to cattle post outreaches, schools, camps, prayer/worship, church, trips, etc. As a sneak peak, I’m now about to continue working on my sermon that I will preach in church this Sunday…and we are gearing up for the annual ROAR Camp 28 November-2 December in Gaborone and preparing for Youth Week Camp in South Africa 2-8 January. Prayers are appreciated. Blessings from Botswana!
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