2019 Highlights - Part Three

Dumela gape! (hello again!)
Sorry, I forgot to keep updating this, but at long last, here is the next "highlight reel" for 2019!

Prayer Camp at Mizpah
One of my favourite parts of the year is the annual prayer camp. Since 2015, we have been having the prayer camp at Mizpah Farm in Mahalapye, owned by Rich and Liz Monks.

As we’ve done there since 2015, we set up a rotation so that someone was slotted to pray at the watches of 12, 3, 6, etc. throughout the 24 hours, except for 9am and 9pm when we had corporate worship and prayer. In the mornings, we worshipped and prayed in the sandy riverbed, and in the evenings around the campfire to keep warm. We also fasted during the day until dinner each evening and had cooking teams that rotated to prepare the meal each night.

We led the church service there on Sunday with praise and worship, preaching, and teaching Sunday School. The first picture below is when the kids started joining us during our 9am corporate worship/prayer time in the riverbed on that Sunday.

I love how that boy in the last picture above prayed with his arms still around Minx the dog. We thank God that one older girl at church prayed to trust fully in Christ for her salvation after we clearly explained the gospel message to them. The prayer camp is always an awesome time personally and corporately in God’s presence, as well as a great time of fellowship and bonding.

Besides going for walks together, free time allows the opportunity to read, learn/practice guitar, or go for runs with the dogs on the trails along the river. I always look forward to my runs with Minx (and sometimes the other dogs who accompany us).

Part of what I shared at the prayer camp with the team was what I’d been learning as part of an online course I started in January, called Burn 24/7 Field Training. The program helps in building worship, prayer, and mission movements, so I was able to share a lot of new insights and confirmations in terms of our building up an interdenominational worship/prayer movement here. Altogether, we had an awesome time and were really encouraged by the ways the Lord spoke to us as we sought Him.

Youth Week Committee Retreat in Magaliesburg, South Africa!
Most of the team from Botswana who help organise the Botswana contingent for YFC's annual Youth Week camp took a road trip down to the campsite in Magaliesburg, South Africa for a weekend planning retreat. There is no way we could take 200+ campers to Youth Week without this team!! I'm grateful for each of them and their hard work!

We had a very powerful, meaningful and productive time together!

I also love that campsite for its beautiful sunsets over the Magaliesburg mountains.

While there in Magaliesburg, I submitted my final assignment for the Burn 24/7 Field Training course!

There was an online graduation ceremony, but I was unable to attend because I was in Zimbabwe!!

Next Level Worship Intensive School in Zimbabwe!
I was invited and sponsored to attend an intensive worship leader school in Matopos, Zimbabwe, run by Next Level Worship. It was an amazing experience with worshippers from 11 nations! In the first picture below is Dwayne Moore, the founder and president of Next Level Worship who had invited someone to attend from Youth for Christ Botswana (and George asked me if I would like to attend-Yes!!).

The scenery was very peaceful and beautiful at a campsite called Shalom.

I loved having the "Morning Glory" personal devotion time up on the mountain watching the sunrise!

A highlight for me was being part of a songwriting breakout session, where we were randomly grouped together and given the task of writing a song together in a few days. I’ve written several songs before, but never planned to write a song (they usually just come to me) or written with others, so this was a bit different for me. However, the Lord really gave us a beautiful song! Here is our songwriting team:

One of the ladies from Zimbabwe named Lavender (in the green shirt) got the melody and first verse, and then I got lyrics for another verse. Here is the link to the video of when we first performed it for the other songwriting groups just three days after we met: https://www.facebook.com/ember.liddiard/posts/10100477248184054

It was received very well and was chosen to be sung at the closing ceremony. We sing it now in worship back in Botswana, and a few people in the USA have asked permission to use it in their churches or university fellowship. For the closing ceremony, those of us from Botswana wore traditional attire:

Earlier that last day, we all went up the mountain for some photos together.

It was a really great experience growing in my worship leading skills (i.e. for keyboard, drums, and songwriting) as well as meeting others from across Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, etc.). On the way back we had to wait for a long time on the streets of Bulawayo for the bus, so I whipped out the guitar and we sang worship songs there on the sidewalk waiting for the bus.

Youth Week Loading!
The next day after the long bus ride back to Botswana, we had the annual Youth Week Loading event in partnership with Open Baptist Church in Gaborone.

This year, we invited the Youth Week speaker, Pastor Ivor Swartz from South Africa, to be the speaker after an amazing local band had led us in a powerful time of praise and worship.

Leadership Training
The next day, Pastor Ivor conducted a leadership training for YFC volunteers, particularly those who were training to be cabin leaders at Youth Week 2020. We really learned a lot from him in those two days. These plus several others began bi-weekly cabin leader trainings in September.

Hosting a World Race Team for a month!
YFC had the pleasure of hosting another World Race mission team from the USA. They really enjoyed the Youth Week Loading event and leadership training. They accompanied us to our regular ministries, and we gave them every opportunity we could to serve and lead. They would rotate between serving in Gaborone and in Mochudi (at the daycare and the schools). One day after school ministry with the four accompanying me for the week, I decided to do a spontaneous game drive through the Gaborone Game Reserve (total cost for all of us was about $5!). They hadn't yet really seen any African wildlife, so they were pretty stoked!

The team helped tutor teens at the Kgatelopele after-school program run by African Havens.

On that particular day, Owen from African Havens had shared the gospel clearly with the students and these ones had prayed to give their lives to Christ or rededicate their lives (we can't show their faces due to them being orphan/vulnerable).

We organised for most of the World Race team to come to Gaborone one afternoon to give out teddies that they had bought for children in the hospital and to pray for them.

Also, several of the World Race team joined a handful of YFC Gaborone volunteers to attend the Amplify Missions Conference at Crosspoint Church in Gaborone.