Greetings all!
Lots of interesting things to share! First off, to clarify last post, I found out that the school where I stopped by and “randomly” parked right where the student I’ve been counseling happened to be standing (especially exciting because I hadn’t been able to get in touch with her because she lost her phone)…and then where I later prayed to find her so I could take her to professional counseling and found her in 3 minutes after I started looking at the school and felt I should ask a few girls on a bench who told me she had just been with them 2 minutes earlier—yeah, I found out the school population is approximately 1700, not just 1000! So, that makes then seem even more like some “God will make a way” moments that I “happened” to find her both times!
A few days after I found the student at school and drove her to counseling, I met with her that Saturday to talk. I feel like we really deepened our friendship a lot. She seems very relaxed and open with me. She brought 6 journals of personal writings/poetry that she wanted to share with me. So we sat there under some trees at the school and went through some of them, using them as springboards for deep conversation. The others she let me take with me to read on my own. Perhaps the most encouraging point was that she shared with me how her roommates at the dormitory had all been really scared the night she’d had counseling, and she had led a prayer for to Jesus on their behalf! She smiled and said to me, “I led the prayer!?!” She told me that maybe her perceptions about God are changing…maybe there really is something to this Jesus… Coming from a girl who just the week earlier said she didn’t want to talk about God at all, this was a huge breakthrough and encouragement! Thanks for any and all prayers for her…keep them coming! “God will make a way!”
We also hung out more with her friend that I met the week before—playing basketball together at the school. They want to meet my other housemates sometime, so hopefully we can find a time to all meet. The student told me, “Tell them to come and meet your sister!” When I was leaving, she told me for the first time, “I love you.” It’s cool to see the trust building in our relationship.
The visit also had some good timing aspects to it— The student’s mother stopped by so I got to meet her face to face for the first time. And earlier, the student had told me that the school office, though they had given her release to go with me to counseling in Gaborone, had been reluctant and wondered if she couldn’t go on the weekends instead. This was interesting/confusing to hear because the school counselor had given me the full go-ahead in our many times of correspondence.
Then just after we were talking about this, we were walking by the parking lot to go the basketball court. Who should pull up in her car to park like 10 feet from us? – None else but the school counselor herself! Not sure why she parked there at the school on a Saturday afternoon…but it worked out! So I was able to ask her what was going on. She apologized that she hadn’t communicated with the main office sufficiently to let them know the details. They would still prefer though if she could go on weekends or after the class that ends at 3:10 pm. So I called the professional counselor in Gaborone and we’ve worked it out now with the school that I will drive her to counseling in Gaborone on Thursdays after she finishes that class (the counselor’s weekends are already booked).
Hospital scare
Last Sunday, so the day after we’d hung out, I found out that this same student had been hospitalized with severe pain. Her friend that I played basketball with the day before gave me the phone number of the dormitory matron who had taken her to the hospital so I could find out more info (the student still had no cell phone). So I called the matron and was able to speak with the student. At that point she didn’t know what the pain was from, but later they discovered it was swollen intestines. I asked if her mother knew yet that she was in the hospital (no) and if she wanted me to call her mom and give her the matron’s number so her mom could also call her too (yes). So I called her mom and let her know.
The student’s friend who I’ve hung out with a couple times texted me in the morning to tell me that she was back from the hospital in the dormitory, but crying because the pain was actually worse. Right after getting the text, I was driving to work thinking I would call her once I got to work, and who should I see walking along the road during school hours, but that very same friend who I was about to call! I pulled over and asked her what was going on. She was walking up to the general store to buy some medicine to help our friend. I told her to tell our pained friend that I had to go to work, but we at YFC would pray for her during our prayer meeting right away and then I’d call her. So after the daily prayer meeting, I called the hurting student, and she said she was about to go with her mom to the hospital again. I told her to hang in there and that we were praying for her.
I planned to visit her in the hospital in Mochudi that afternoon, but found out later that her mom had taken her to the hospital in Gaborone. I checked in with her mom the next couple nights to see how she was doing at home near Gaborone, and by Wednesday the doctors had cleared her to be back at school. Now she is doing much better, though she asked if I could bring her some salad because the doctors said vegetables and salad will help her feel better. So on Saturday, though our schedules didn’t work out to meet and talk for long, I was able to stop by for a special lettuce delivery and briefly catch up with her. We’ll catch up more this Thursday on the way to and from counseling. While it has its challenges, I really enjoy the opportunity to really “love on” this girl like a big sister.
YaRona FC – More deep discussions
The Saturday before last, the Botswana Harvard Partnership sent a representative to share with the youth at YaRona FC (formerly called Coffee Bar) about HIV, abstinence, and about the Mochudi Prevention Project they are launching for the next 5 years in Mochudi. It was the same doctor I heard speak at a community youth committee meeting about the plan I mentioned in an earlier post—Mochudi being the only village in the world where Harvard University is doing an HIV-prevention project like this.
One of the two boys I had shared the gospel with and talked with for over an hour the preceding week at YaRona FC came back that night. He told me he had decided to follow Christ. He told me he’s prayed each day and night since then. The other boy couldn’t make it but would come the following week. Sure enough, the next week (this past Saturday), both of them showed up. They had both, on their own, sought out the Scripture Union advisor-teacher at their school (who I know because we’ve worked at SU there), and had asked questions about God. The one was still not 100% sure if he wanted to trust in Christ and follow Him alone. So he was still learning more and asking questions. I told him that’s great that and was able to answer some more of his questions. He’s still thinking about it and “in the middle.” A huge stumbling block also for both of them was learning that those who follow the Lord are supposed to wait until marriage for sexual relations. They are having a hard time believing that’s even possible or worth it. I encouraged them that the Holy Spirit inside them can give them the strength to wait…the one guy who already accepted Christ was like, “I need that strength; I want that strength.” Prayers are appreciated for both these guys who are feeling unsure if they truly want to follow Christ.
Meanwhile, they had brought along a friend of theirs who was listening to our conversation. I started talking to him a bit later and asked if he goes to a church. He said no…he doesn’t know anything about God. He doesn’t know any of the prayers that other kids in school seem to know even if they aren’t Christians. So that naturally led to me asking, “Do you want to know more about God?” He nodded. So I was able to share with him for perhaps a half hour or 45 minutes until it was closing time. Like a flashback from two weeks earlier with his two friends, we basically reached the point where he’d heard the gospel presented, we’d looked at Scriptures in both English and Setswana, discussed things, and was where it was now up to him to think and decide for himself if he wants to accept Christ as his Lord and Savior…but then it was closing time.
We have little booklets that YFC produces that share the basic gospel message with Scriptures, and we were going through that as a basic guide to our discussion. One of the questions near the end is, “Is there any good reason why you do not want to invite Jesus Christ into your life right now?” and when he’d read that, he said, “No, there is no good reason.” And he had just been sitting there listening during the whole discussion with his friends about how following Christ involves repentance (turning from wrong habits such as pre-marital sex), so I knew that he was aware what trusting in Christ entails in that regard. So it sounds like he may genuinely choose to follow Christ and pray to invite Him to be his Lord and Savior. I gave him the little booklet which includes more details on how to start and grow in a personal relationship with God and told him to come back with any questions. So we can also pray for him as he is now also at the point of deciding how he will respond to Christ.
Other ministry opportunities opening up!
For some reason, the students in Standard 7 (the last year of primary school…12 & 13 year-olds) finish school for the year at least a month before all the other students. So now they are on vacation with not much to do. Thus, Youth for Christ Botswana puts on a program for them daily to keep them occupied in a safe, constructive way. We on staff take turns overseeing each day’s program. It’s a similar set-up to YaRona FC, where they can come and play games inside (pool, table tennis, table soccer) or basketball and football outside for most of the time and then the YFC staff member designated for that day shares a short message or presents a drama or video. It’s a great opportunity, especially when it’s been difficult to work in the schools due to the new school schedule.
It started last Monday and I was in charge of that day. It went well…I led some songs with guitar, we watched a funny short movie that portrays how people may incorrectly view Jesus or have misconceptions about Him, and then I gave them the same questionnaire I’ve been giving the students at Maru a Pula private school where there is a list of descriptors of Jesus and Christianity (some biblical, some not) and they were to check all that they believe are true. This helps us see where their misconceptions lie and what things we need to focus on to help them better understand the Jesus of the bible and the gospel message. Unlike most of the clubs we lead at schools, many of the kids coming to this program are not yet followers of Christ. Thus, we could see a lot of misconceptions in their answers. For example, many said these were true: “Going to church makes you a Christian”; “You get to go to heaven if you do more good things than bad things.” Now we’ve honed in on those things in the other days talks/dramas so that their misconceptions can be cleared up. I am scheduled to lead the last day of the holiday program and I plan to give them the same questionnaire to see if their views have changed to align more with the bible’s teaching through our program.
Speaking of Maru a Pula private school, I led the club there last Tuesday. A couple weeks back, I had also shown them the same hilarious Jesus video as the conversation starter for the discussion about how many people have misconceptions of Jesus and Christianity. Then they had completed the questionnaire and they’ve been giving the questionnaire to their peers, some of different faiths, so it has been interesting to see their responses and talk through things. Last week was the most students we’ve had lately, with several new students, and the discussion went really well. They were begging me to show the Jesus video again! Here’s the link if you want to be amused: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdiZBTifcU
Later that day around noon, we found out that one of the schools in Mochudi where we used to lead the Scripture Union club had somehow made space for us to have the club during school hours. We haven’t had the club this term due to the school schedule changes, but they were enabling us to have the club for the last hour of the school day (3:30-4:30)! “God will make a way!” I gave the message on eternal perspective and to quote my dad, how “we just don’t get eternity and how SO short our life is on this earth compared to eternity.” I shared how the choices we make on this short time on earth (most significantly how we respond to Christ) affect our eternity forever. I shared how it has helped me with my dad’s death to know that he is spending his eternity with the Lord because of his faith in Him.
Christmas in the States!
By the way, I’m working out a flight to come back to the States for Christmas to be with Mom and Ryan for this first Christmas without Dad. I had not planned on this trip back, but we all think it is probably best to be together this first year. It looks like I’ll be in the States from around December 6 until January 5. Minnesota friends, this will likely include a week visit in there too because a trip back to my jaw specialist in St. Paul is wise. My jaw is still an issue…I have been wearing the appliance full-time since May (much longer than the first time I wore it) without huge improvement. The specialist thinks one of the disks may be one of place in the jaw joint. It’s not a ton of pain, but I feel it more when singing and eating (two pretty much essential activities), and it would be nice not to have to wear the appliance all the time. Prayers for that are always welcome too. Thanks.
Well, take care and keep running the race that’s set before you!
Love, Em
P.S. – Speaking of running, so there I was, last Saturday morning going for a run out in the trails in the bush (countryside) by the river, where I rarely see anyone else besides cows, goats, and my 4-foot-long lizard friend…when I passed a family of people collecting firewood in the distance and heard, “Emily!!!” I waved, thinking, “Did random people in the middle of the bush just yell “Emily!” to me??!! Mochudi has over 40,000 inhabitants so it’s weird to think that the random people I see in the bush would know my name.
As I ran past them on the way back, I realized that they had indeed yelled my name…they were closer now and I recognized that they were the same group of kids who always run with me for a few minutes when I run past their house! So the littlest boys started running with me like usual, and the little girls tried valiantly to run whilst carrying firewood (and laughing at the spectacle) but they realized holding firewood was not the most conducive condition for effective running. We waved goodbye and said we’d see each other later!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
"God Will Make a Way!"
Dumelang!
How’s it? (that’s a common greeting here…instead of “how are you?”). I was hoping to share more about things I learned at the staff conference down near Cape Town, but I think for this post, I’ll just catch you all up on life here in Botswana...
Challenges back in Botswana
Well, when we got back to Botswana, not only was it a crazy heat wave, but the first part of that week it seemed like everything was getting canceled and not working out. I called the guidance/counseling teacher at the Senior Secondary School in Mochudi to see if there was any change in the school schedule so we could start the abstinence club. She told me that nothing had changed, so that the school day looks like it will stay from 7:30-4:30. There have been meetings and possible strikes by teacher unions but it seems like it’s staying like this for now. The guidance/counseling teacher told me that clubs are not possible after school because it is getting late and dark for the kids who have to walk home. She said we can just hope that things change. [Though I just learned today that it seems like other schools in the country are operating with the old normal schedule and other mission agencies are still able to have clubs there…so that it is perhaps just our district that is changed? And thus, it seems more likely it could go back to the old schedule].
Tuesday morning I found out on my way out the door to drive to Gaborone to lead a club at Maru a Pula private school that the club needed to be cancelled for that day because of a teacher conference. Then Wednesday, I had planned to visit another school in Gaborone to observe their Scripture Union club, which for some reason is still running despite the school schedule changes. But when I called to confirm that, the guidance teacher told me that the club was cancelled for that week for some reason I forget.
Meanwhile, I was trying to get a permission letter to the mother of the student who has recently been suicidal, giving permission for her to travel with me to and from Gaborone to get free professional counseling through Face the Nation. However, I didn’t know the mother’s name or contact info to send her the permission letter. The school didn’t have the info, and the student wasn’t answering her phone. When I tried to call her, it would go straight to a message from the service provider saying that the subscriber was unavailable. The student still was unaware that the school had approved her leaving class early to go with me to counseling. After a couple days of not getting through, I asked if the school counselor could find her during the school day and tell her that, and get her mother’s name and address so we could mail the permission letter. She found the student (who, as it turns out, had lost her cell phone) and texted me the info within a few minutes, so I mailed the permission letter that day to the mother. Finally, something that worked out!
“God Will Make a Way”
That night I found a decoration I’ve pasted on my wall or by my desk for several years that says, “God Will Make a Way.” I hadn’t posted it in my newer bedroom here (I moved in there in early August), but that night I posted it on my wall. The next day, I stopped by the school to drop off the letter officially informing the school about how I’ll be transporting the student to and from counseling in Gaborone (as requested by the school counselor who had already given permission). As I pulled up to park, the very same student happened to be just feet from where I parked—she recognized me before I parked. I looked up to see her bounding toward the car with a smile on her face! She told me where I should drop the letter off, and she said she’d be waiting to talk afterwards.
After I delivered the letter, I just hung out with her and one of her friends for over an hour in the school-yard. She asked how the Cape Town trip went, so I showed them my pictures that were on my camera. One of the old pictures on my camera is of the newspaper article after my accident, so they saw that, and her friend asked what happened. Thus, I was able to share some of the accident/recovery testimony with them. For the last half hour or so, it was just me and the student, and she was able to fill me in on how she’s doing. She then asked if I was going to come again that weekend to talk/hang-out with her? So we set up that I’d return the next morning. It was just encouraging after all the things not working out, to be able to meet up with her and have the opportunity to really befriend and build relationships with her and her hilarious, comedian-aspiring friend. “God will make a way!”
So last Saturday I met the student at school (like I had the Saturday before Cape Town). I brought ice cream to eat as we talked about all different things for an hour and 45 minutes! She seems much more upbeat— she joined a girls’ basketball team and has taken the initiative to start a writing club at the school during the lunch period! She still doesn’t want to talk about God and hasn’t read the Philip Yancey book I got for her, but she said the kids she’s leant it out to have really liked it! I keep praying that she will one day read it herself. When I was getting ready to go, she asked if I could come back the next Saturday…so again, we plan to meet again tomorrow, and she is going to let me read some of her writing/poetry.
The student also told me that her mother only checks the mail once a week, so I should call her to tell her to check it to send back the permission slip. She gave me her number, so I called her this week. The mother gave permission verbally on that first phone call, but the school still needed the permission slip. She asked if we could fax it, so we faxed it to her. But then both the school’s fax machine and ours at YFC weren’t receiving her fax back. So we worked it out for her to fax it to my church in Gaborone (that runs Face the Nation), and they scanned and emailed it to me so I could print it out and hand-deliver it to the school.
So by Wednesday morning, it was finally ready for me to deliver to the school, and the counselor in Gaborone was ready to see her in the afternoon. However, when I called the school counselor Wednesday morning, she couldn’t find the student to tell her (they apparently had switched classes and meeting places around that day due to exams). She had searched for her but couldn’t find her. She asked if we could just go the next day? The school counselor was at home on lunch break and wouldn’t be back to try to find the student until after we’d have to leave to make it to counseling in time, so she said we’ll just have to reschedule it.
I got off the phone with her, and was thinking how ridiculous it seemed that after all the effort (phone calls, faxes, emails, etc with the school, her mother, Face the Nation, the counselor) to make it possible for the student to go that day, we couldn’t go just because we couldn’t find her?! I know the school is over a thousand students, but I remembered how last week, I had driven up to the school and she happened to be right there. So I just prayed that God would help me find her again. I was like, “God, You can find her…this is not hard for You at all…I’m just going to drive in there and You’ll help me find her.”
So I got in my car, drove to the school (was allowed in the gate because I was dropping off the permission slip), and started looking. It was lunch time, but I didn’t see her in the cafeteria when I glanced around it. I had looked for about one or two minutes total when I saw these four students sitting on a bench up by the office and felt like I should ask them if by chance they knew who she is and where she is. It turns out, they said she had JUST been sitting there with them like 2 minutes earlier! One of them said, “I’ll go find her. Sit here; I’ll bring her.” A couple minutes later, there she was! I told her we could leave for counseling right then if she didn’t have any tests (nope), so once she got the permit from the office, off we went! “God will make a way!”
Perfect timing for visiting a Scripture Union Club!
Another reason it worked out better to take her on Wednesday was that I had planned it so that I would drop her off at about 3 pm for counseling and I’d drive less than a mile down the road to go to the Junior Secondary School I had tried to visit last week. This week they were having their Scripture Union club so I went to that from about 3:15-4:00pm, getting to meet the students and talk afterwards with the student leaders. They gave me an opportunity to speak (which I wasn’t expecting!), so I shared a bit about where I’m from and I told them about the follow-up bible study course we have already been doing with about 80 students there. I figured most of the SU club members were doing the follow-up, but hardly any were…so the ones already doing the studies are other students who were reached at outreaches YFC and Face the Nation did earlier this year. But now most all of the SU kids really want to start it as well. One of the officers of the club stood up and said how she has wanted to grow in her faith and know where bible verses are, and now she is so excited to find out about this. She thanked me so much for coming. It was cute.
After the club, I dropped off the follow-up bible studies for the 80 some students doing them to the guidance/counseling teacher, and she asked when I’ll be coming back. Next week? Sounds good. Especially good since we haven’t been able to have any Scripture Union clubs at any schools in Mochudi this whole term! “God will make a way!”
After talking with the guidance/counseling teacher, I hopped in the vehicle, drove a couple minutes down the road and picked up the student from counseling. Perfect timing…and I got her back in time for dinner at the school. She still is excited for me to come on Saturday to hang-out and read some of her writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I love speaking to large groups (I found out the student body I spoke to in late September was about 500), but I really love working one-on-one with youth.
Sharing at YaRona FC with everyone…then the one or two
At Yarona FC (formerly Coffee Bar), it was my turn to speak and I felt I should share the story of how God led me to be a “messenger of mercy” to extend mercy in court to the man who hit us to cause the accident. I hadn’t shared that part of my testimony with the YaRona youth yet, and I realized that it was exactly 2 years to the day since I had called the District Attorney to tell him I would speak in court. I ended the talk at YaRona by saying that the only way I was able to extend that mercy was because I had received the mercy from God through Christ and Christ-in-me empowered me to do it. I asked them to think about whether they have received that mercy, and that they would know if they have. I said they could talk to me or any of the YfC staff if they wanted to learn more.
So a few minutes after I finished, a teen guy I’d never seen before came up to me and said, “So…Christianity…??” I was like, “Oh! Do you want to learn more?” He nodded…so he and another guy who wanted to hear sat outside on the front steps with me, and I was able to share with them for over an hour, show them scriptures, answer questions, etc. They have not come from a churched background at all. We talked all the way up ‘til closing time. I used the analogy of marriage…the wedding is not the end but just the beginning of a journey of life together where you grow closer and love the person. It is similar with God…yes, you may pray a prayer to begin a relationship with Christ, but that is not the end; it is just the beginning of a journey of life together where you grow closer to God, experience His love, and love Him more. By closing time, both of them said they wanted to pray to accept Christ, repent and follow Him...to start that journey together with God. I told them they can pray to God to do that on their own anytime, or if they want me to lead them in a prayer next week I could (it was closing time so too late to do it then…and plus, I think the extra time to really think about it and decide with true conviction can’t hurt). I told them that they can do it just as well on their own though sometime before next YaRona FC. They said they will come this week, and they want to start going to church. They really want to start the follow-up bible study course too. All in all, it was another situation where I love speaking to the “masses,” but really love focusing on the one or two.
Odds and Ends
Speaking of the follow-up bible studies, we’ve also been providing them for prisoners at 4 different prisons, so this week I met with the Prison Fellowship volunteer we’ve been working with to drop off 150 more studies. We worked it out with her to visit the women’s prison in Gaborone last Sunday, but she had to cancel because one of the main wardens passed away. So I think we are on for this Sunday instead.
In other news, my colleague Maruping asked me to lead the interdenominational prayer meeting on Sunday at the YFC office. It was kinda cool…at one point we were praying for more men to rise up as intercessors and pray in these meetings because at that point there were just two (Maruping and another YFC volunteer). As we kept praying about other things (i.e. church unity, for our leaders), men kept trickling in and joining the prayer meeting, even though it was nearly over, so that by the time we’d finished that group time of prayer, the number of men had more than tripled! I welcomed them and told them they were an answer to prayer!
Aerobics! A new fitness center called Lifetime Wellness just opened a few kilometers from our house, and I stopped by to check it out one day. The owner said that all of us from the staff house should come to aerobics class one night for free to see what it’s like. So Monday night, all 7 of us (we got another German, Franci, last week) rolled up to the gym to sweat it out with probably 30+ local Batswana. It was an hour non-stop of aerobics and weights. Even for someone who was in collegiate Varsity athletics, it was a challenge for me (though I guess I did have some time off with breaking my neck and all…). Feel the burn yo! We were all sore…still sore when we went back for another time on Wednesday night. But not as bad after that night. The owner, a local woman who happened to study at Central Michigan University and squeeled when she saw my Michigan driver’s license and proceeded to hug my sweaty self, has given us a great discount. Our plan is to go twice a week. That will complement nicely my runs in the bush.
Tuesday I also led the club at Maru a Pula private school in Gabs. We had a good discussion, but we are still praying for more students to come. They took more questionnaires to give their peers asking their views on Jesus and Christianity. Pray that these are a springboard for spiritual conversations on campus.
Blessings from Botswana!
~Em
How’s it? (that’s a common greeting here…instead of “how are you?”). I was hoping to share more about things I learned at the staff conference down near Cape Town, but I think for this post, I’ll just catch you all up on life here in Botswana...
Challenges back in Botswana
Well, when we got back to Botswana, not only was it a crazy heat wave, but the first part of that week it seemed like everything was getting canceled and not working out. I called the guidance/counseling teacher at the Senior Secondary School in Mochudi to see if there was any change in the school schedule so we could start the abstinence club. She told me that nothing had changed, so that the school day looks like it will stay from 7:30-4:30. There have been meetings and possible strikes by teacher unions but it seems like it’s staying like this for now. The guidance/counseling teacher told me that clubs are not possible after school because it is getting late and dark for the kids who have to walk home. She said we can just hope that things change. [Though I just learned today that it seems like other schools in the country are operating with the old normal schedule and other mission agencies are still able to have clubs there…so that it is perhaps just our district that is changed? And thus, it seems more likely it could go back to the old schedule].
Tuesday morning I found out on my way out the door to drive to Gaborone to lead a club at Maru a Pula private school that the club needed to be cancelled for that day because of a teacher conference. Then Wednesday, I had planned to visit another school in Gaborone to observe their Scripture Union club, which for some reason is still running despite the school schedule changes. But when I called to confirm that, the guidance teacher told me that the club was cancelled for that week for some reason I forget.
Meanwhile, I was trying to get a permission letter to the mother of the student who has recently been suicidal, giving permission for her to travel with me to and from Gaborone to get free professional counseling through Face the Nation. However, I didn’t know the mother’s name or contact info to send her the permission letter. The school didn’t have the info, and the student wasn’t answering her phone. When I tried to call her, it would go straight to a message from the service provider saying that the subscriber was unavailable. The student still was unaware that the school had approved her leaving class early to go with me to counseling. After a couple days of not getting through, I asked if the school counselor could find her during the school day and tell her that, and get her mother’s name and address so we could mail the permission letter. She found the student (who, as it turns out, had lost her cell phone) and texted me the info within a few minutes, so I mailed the permission letter that day to the mother. Finally, something that worked out!
“God Will Make a Way”
That night I found a decoration I’ve pasted on my wall or by my desk for several years that says, “God Will Make a Way.” I hadn’t posted it in my newer bedroom here (I moved in there in early August), but that night I posted it on my wall. The next day, I stopped by the school to drop off the letter officially informing the school about how I’ll be transporting the student to and from counseling in Gaborone (as requested by the school counselor who had already given permission). As I pulled up to park, the very same student happened to be just feet from where I parked—she recognized me before I parked. I looked up to see her bounding toward the car with a smile on her face! She told me where I should drop the letter off, and she said she’d be waiting to talk afterwards.
After I delivered the letter, I just hung out with her and one of her friends for over an hour in the school-yard. She asked how the Cape Town trip went, so I showed them my pictures that were on my camera. One of the old pictures on my camera is of the newspaper article after my accident, so they saw that, and her friend asked what happened. Thus, I was able to share some of the accident/recovery testimony with them. For the last half hour or so, it was just me and the student, and she was able to fill me in on how she’s doing. She then asked if I was going to come again that weekend to talk/hang-out with her? So we set up that I’d return the next morning. It was just encouraging after all the things not working out, to be able to meet up with her and have the opportunity to really befriend and build relationships with her and her hilarious, comedian-aspiring friend. “God will make a way!”
So last Saturday I met the student at school (like I had the Saturday before Cape Town). I brought ice cream to eat as we talked about all different things for an hour and 45 minutes! She seems much more upbeat— she joined a girls’ basketball team and has taken the initiative to start a writing club at the school during the lunch period! She still doesn’t want to talk about God and hasn’t read the Philip Yancey book I got for her, but she said the kids she’s leant it out to have really liked it! I keep praying that she will one day read it herself. When I was getting ready to go, she asked if I could come back the next Saturday…so again, we plan to meet again tomorrow, and she is going to let me read some of her writing/poetry.
The student also told me that her mother only checks the mail once a week, so I should call her to tell her to check it to send back the permission slip. She gave me her number, so I called her this week. The mother gave permission verbally on that first phone call, but the school still needed the permission slip. She asked if we could fax it, so we faxed it to her. But then both the school’s fax machine and ours at YFC weren’t receiving her fax back. So we worked it out for her to fax it to my church in Gaborone (that runs Face the Nation), and they scanned and emailed it to me so I could print it out and hand-deliver it to the school.
So by Wednesday morning, it was finally ready for me to deliver to the school, and the counselor in Gaborone was ready to see her in the afternoon. However, when I called the school counselor Wednesday morning, she couldn’t find the student to tell her (they apparently had switched classes and meeting places around that day due to exams). She had searched for her but couldn’t find her. She asked if we could just go the next day? The school counselor was at home on lunch break and wouldn’t be back to try to find the student until after we’d have to leave to make it to counseling in time, so she said we’ll just have to reschedule it.
I got off the phone with her, and was thinking how ridiculous it seemed that after all the effort (phone calls, faxes, emails, etc with the school, her mother, Face the Nation, the counselor) to make it possible for the student to go that day, we couldn’t go just because we couldn’t find her?! I know the school is over a thousand students, but I remembered how last week, I had driven up to the school and she happened to be right there. So I just prayed that God would help me find her again. I was like, “God, You can find her…this is not hard for You at all…I’m just going to drive in there and You’ll help me find her.”
So I got in my car, drove to the school (was allowed in the gate because I was dropping off the permission slip), and started looking. It was lunch time, but I didn’t see her in the cafeteria when I glanced around it. I had looked for about one or two minutes total when I saw these four students sitting on a bench up by the office and felt like I should ask them if by chance they knew who she is and where she is. It turns out, they said she had JUST been sitting there with them like 2 minutes earlier! One of them said, “I’ll go find her. Sit here; I’ll bring her.” A couple minutes later, there she was! I told her we could leave for counseling right then if she didn’t have any tests (nope), so once she got the permit from the office, off we went! “God will make a way!”
Perfect timing for visiting a Scripture Union Club!
Another reason it worked out better to take her on Wednesday was that I had planned it so that I would drop her off at about 3 pm for counseling and I’d drive less than a mile down the road to go to the Junior Secondary School I had tried to visit last week. This week they were having their Scripture Union club so I went to that from about 3:15-4:00pm, getting to meet the students and talk afterwards with the student leaders. They gave me an opportunity to speak (which I wasn’t expecting!), so I shared a bit about where I’m from and I told them about the follow-up bible study course we have already been doing with about 80 students there. I figured most of the SU club members were doing the follow-up, but hardly any were…so the ones already doing the studies are other students who were reached at outreaches YFC and Face the Nation did earlier this year. But now most all of the SU kids really want to start it as well. One of the officers of the club stood up and said how she has wanted to grow in her faith and know where bible verses are, and now she is so excited to find out about this. She thanked me so much for coming. It was cute.
After the club, I dropped off the follow-up bible studies for the 80 some students doing them to the guidance/counseling teacher, and she asked when I’ll be coming back. Next week? Sounds good. Especially good since we haven’t been able to have any Scripture Union clubs at any schools in Mochudi this whole term! “God will make a way!”
After talking with the guidance/counseling teacher, I hopped in the vehicle, drove a couple minutes down the road and picked up the student from counseling. Perfect timing…and I got her back in time for dinner at the school. She still is excited for me to come on Saturday to hang-out and read some of her writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I love speaking to large groups (I found out the student body I spoke to in late September was about 500), but I really love working one-on-one with youth.
Sharing at YaRona FC with everyone…then the one or two
At Yarona FC (formerly Coffee Bar), it was my turn to speak and I felt I should share the story of how God led me to be a “messenger of mercy” to extend mercy in court to the man who hit us to cause the accident. I hadn’t shared that part of my testimony with the YaRona youth yet, and I realized that it was exactly 2 years to the day since I had called the District Attorney to tell him I would speak in court. I ended the talk at YaRona by saying that the only way I was able to extend that mercy was because I had received the mercy from God through Christ and Christ-in-me empowered me to do it. I asked them to think about whether they have received that mercy, and that they would know if they have. I said they could talk to me or any of the YfC staff if they wanted to learn more.
So a few minutes after I finished, a teen guy I’d never seen before came up to me and said, “So…Christianity…??” I was like, “Oh! Do you want to learn more?” He nodded…so he and another guy who wanted to hear sat outside on the front steps with me, and I was able to share with them for over an hour, show them scriptures, answer questions, etc. They have not come from a churched background at all. We talked all the way up ‘til closing time. I used the analogy of marriage…the wedding is not the end but just the beginning of a journey of life together where you grow closer and love the person. It is similar with God…yes, you may pray a prayer to begin a relationship with Christ, but that is not the end; it is just the beginning of a journey of life together where you grow closer to God, experience His love, and love Him more. By closing time, both of them said they wanted to pray to accept Christ, repent and follow Him...to start that journey together with God. I told them they can pray to God to do that on their own anytime, or if they want me to lead them in a prayer next week I could (it was closing time so too late to do it then…and plus, I think the extra time to really think about it and decide with true conviction can’t hurt). I told them that they can do it just as well on their own though sometime before next YaRona FC. They said they will come this week, and they want to start going to church. They really want to start the follow-up bible study course too. All in all, it was another situation where I love speaking to the “masses,” but really love focusing on the one or two.
Odds and Ends
Speaking of the follow-up bible studies, we’ve also been providing them for prisoners at 4 different prisons, so this week I met with the Prison Fellowship volunteer we’ve been working with to drop off 150 more studies. We worked it out with her to visit the women’s prison in Gaborone last Sunday, but she had to cancel because one of the main wardens passed away. So I think we are on for this Sunday instead.
In other news, my colleague Maruping asked me to lead the interdenominational prayer meeting on Sunday at the YFC office. It was kinda cool…at one point we were praying for more men to rise up as intercessors and pray in these meetings because at that point there were just two (Maruping and another YFC volunteer). As we kept praying about other things (i.e. church unity, for our leaders), men kept trickling in and joining the prayer meeting, even though it was nearly over, so that by the time we’d finished that group time of prayer, the number of men had more than tripled! I welcomed them and told them they were an answer to prayer!
Aerobics! A new fitness center called Lifetime Wellness just opened a few kilometers from our house, and I stopped by to check it out one day. The owner said that all of us from the staff house should come to aerobics class one night for free to see what it’s like. So Monday night, all 7 of us (we got another German, Franci, last week) rolled up to the gym to sweat it out with probably 30+ local Batswana. It was an hour non-stop of aerobics and weights. Even for someone who was in collegiate Varsity athletics, it was a challenge for me (though I guess I did have some time off with breaking my neck and all…). Feel the burn yo! We were all sore…still sore when we went back for another time on Wednesday night. But not as bad after that night. The owner, a local woman who happened to study at Central Michigan University and squeeled when she saw my Michigan driver’s license and proceeded to hug my sweaty self, has given us a great discount. Our plan is to go twice a week. That will complement nicely my runs in the bush.
Tuesday I also led the club at Maru a Pula private school in Gabs. We had a good discussion, but we are still praying for more students to come. They took more questionnaires to give their peers asking their views on Jesus and Christianity. Pray that these are a springboard for spiritual conversations on campus.
Blessings from Botswana!
~Em
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Beautiful Cape Town trip!!
Hi all!
Cape Town Adventure!
I’m back safely in Botswana after an amazing adventure in South Africa! At 5 am Saturday 25 September, we embarked on our journey of 1700 kilometers down to Cape Town. It was all of the YFC Botswana staff except Koekoes, the director’s wife, who stayed back to hold the fort. So eleven of us, including our new German volunteer Kathrin, packed into two vehicles and started the long journey. Thankfully, we had a trailer as well to tow most of our luggage.
Car Trouble…and sweet Redemption!
About 6 hours into the drive, the KIA car I was in started to have issues and was overheating. After waiting for an hour or two at a gas station while we tried to assess and fix it, we thought we’d fixed it. But as we drove just a few minutes through the town, the heat gauge went crazy high, so we had to pull over again and call in a mechanic. It was something with the alternator and belts…not sure…but all I know is it would take 5 hours of work to fix it with a part they didn’t have and couldn’t get that day (Saturday late afternoon of a holiday weekend). Hmmm…it was nearing sundown and there we were, 3 hours from Britstown where we had accommodations for free that night at a guesthouse owned by Christians who know E.J., our director. We spent a couple, few hours there stranded.
After many phone calls, and group prayer in a parking lot…things ended up working out quite beautifully. Another man from near Britstown who knows E.J. paid to put all of us up in a motel/resort called La D Dah! He also paid for us all to enjoy KFC take-out for dinner! Amen! Then this same guy left at 3:30 am the next morning to drive his bakkie (pick-up truck) all the way up the 3 hours to pick us up. So we left our broken down car with the mechanics to fix while we were gone, and then we drove in his truck and our other SUV back down to Britstown, where we dropped him off. He was donating his truck to us for the whole week to drive down to Cape Town and back! The people at the guesthouse prepared us really nice food for the day to take with us.
Such beauty!!
The rest of the journey down to Cape Town was thankfully uneventful and completely gorgeous! Perhaps because we haven’t seen rain in several months in Botswana and thus it is very dry, brown, and yellow (not so much green), as was a LONG stretch of northern South Africa, eventually driving through mountain passes and through lush valleys with vineyards, blooming flowers, rainbows was extremely beautiful. It would be beautiful no matter what, but I think to us the contrast was so great that we were just in awe. And then eventually, we ended up at the ocean in Cape Town as the sun was setting over the water.
We spent that night with kind host families from E.J. and Koekoes’ church (they are from Cape Town originally). We got to the church first the next morning to reconvene, and there was a piano in the church. Feeling the urge to tickle the ivories, I asked if I could play. With their blessing, I enjoyed playing a piano for only the second time in Africa (we have a keyboard at the office, but I’ve never played a real piano in Botswana…the other time was at Karin’s parents’ house in Johannesburg). I love playing a real piano so this was a beautiful start to what would be another amazing day.
Shortly after that, we drove to the seafront in Cape Town and got out to climb on the rocks. For some of the Batswana staff and one of the Canadians this was their first time ever being at the ocean.
Then we piled in the vehicles again and drove another hour or so up and along mountains hugging the coastline to go to Hermanus. Growing up on Lake Huron, I love water…and I also love mountains. Never before had I seen them together in such beauty. But there we were, driving through the mountains next to the ocean. The YFC Southern Africa staff conference was at a Christian retreat camp near Hermanus called Wortlegat. It was absolutely beautiful. I will post pictures on my facebook, but for those who don’t have that, you can check it out on their website: http://www.wortelgat.org.za/photo.php
It is on a large lagoon (lake) that feeds into the ocean, nestled by the huge mountains. Each morning, I had my ‘quiet time’ of prayer/journaling on a little rock peninsula going out into the lagoon…so I was looking at a large blue lake hugged by the towering moss-covered mountains on the other side. Yeah. Amazing. The times I spent there with the Lord will not be forgotten— truly the most meaningful part of the trip. I hope to share more about that in a later post. But first, I’ll just fill you in on what happened…
YFC Southern Africa Staff Conference
So there were about 200 YFC staff and family members from all over Southern Africa. Most of the YFC Botswana females all stayed in one cabin, but somehow I was assigned to stay in a different cabin with three South Africans. Interestingly enough, one of them, Thoko, happened to be one of my roommates at the last conference in South Africa back in August! Another one, Khosi, found out from a phone call that her friend’s mom was died unexpectedly in an accident that day. Khosi asked me if I knew what she could say to comfort her. Given my experience of the accident and losing a parent unexpectedly, I was able to share some things that I’ve found comforting and helpful.
We had all our meetings outside in a huge white big-top tent because there was no building large enough to seat us all. The YFC South Africa dance/drama team called Buyela lead worship. They stayed here in Botswana with us for 2 weeks back in March so it was great to see them all again. The daily structure included worship, a morning devotional teaching, personal reflection time, great meals, and great speakers. The director of YFC for all of Africa, Thomas Rasane, was there and shared with us one of the nights…the last time before his retirement. We had a goodbye celebration to honor his 30+ years of service in YFC.
In the afternoons, we had free time to enjoy the beauty of creation around us. The first afternoon, we drove back into Hermanus and walked along the cliff path along the coast. We went down into one of the coves and waded a bit in the ocean for the first time, and climbed on the rocks. Then as we walked further along the path, we could see whales in the ocean! We could see them blowing water out of their blowholes and flapping around! It was so cool. First time I’ve seen whales in my life. The second afternoon, we hiked all the way with staff guides to the retreat center’s private beach on the ocean. It took about 45 minutes to walk there, but it was worth it—huge sand-dunes along bright blue water. We ran down the sand dunes...hiked up again…ran down…etc. And we went swimming in the ocean! The group who had hiked out there the day before hadn’t entered the water to swim because it was cold. Oh, but we did!! It was awesome with huge waves…some of which crashed over our heads.
The last afternoon, we went kayaking on the big lagoon nestled against the mountains. Then we went on a ferry boat trip around the lagoon with almost all the YFC Botswana staff and others. For some of the Batswana staff, that was also their first time on a boat. Needless to say, it was a memorable, enjoyable trip for us.
The Long Journey Back to Botswana
The next day, Friday 1 October, we left on the two-day journey back to Botswana. It started as a slightly different route from before, through rolling green fields against the backdrop of mountains. Then we drove through canyons winding through rock “walls” of mountains on either side. Again, just beautiful and awe-inspiring. We spent the night in Britstown at the house of the man who had leant us his truck for the week. Other people brought us a home-cooked dinner and muffins for breakfast. Then Saturday, we returned the pick-up truck and reunited with our fixed KIA car (station wagon-ish…it seats 6) and drove back to Botswana. Along the way on our drive we saw many animals— flamingos, mongoose, zebras, monkeys, babboons, ostriches, springbok, gemsbok, impala, dassies (rock hyrax), fat sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, cats and dogs, and many assorted weird-looking birds. At the La-D-Dah motel on the drive down, there were also a random assortment of swans, geese, ducks, and rabbits. Rounding out our trip back to Botswana, I drove the KIA the last 5 or 6 hours to give the main drivers a break. We were blessed with a beautiful sunset in Botswana over the hills, making it back to Mochudi by evening.
Adjusting back to life and HEAT in Botswana
It is technically spring here in Botswana…but really it feels like summer, especially after being in the coolness of Cape Town and Hermanus. There we utilized 3 or 4 layers of shirts/coats to stay warm in the evenings (if you look on a map it is one of the most southerly points in Africa)…but E.J. said the high temperature our first day back in Botswana was 40 degrees Celsius. I don’t know what that means, except “wicked hot.” I just now converted it on the internet, so for all the non-Celsius-literate peeps like me, that means 104 degrees Fahrenheit!! Welcome back to the Kalahari! One perk of the springtime here in Botswana is the vibrant purple blossoms that are in full-bloom on trees all over. Never seen that before. Imagine huge maple or oak trees that are totally purple—no green leaves, just purple flowers. Quite stunning. Not quite sure how that happens without rain for several months, but it’s cool.
Unfortunately, the school schedules here in Botswana are still so long that extra-curricular activities like sports and clubs have been cancelled for the time being. Therefore the Real Life Revolution abstinence club we’ve been trying to launch and all the Scripture Union clubs are postponed until further notice. The school will not allow clubs after 4:30pm when the 9 hour school day ends. The school counselor told me yesterday to just hope and pray that things change. So…let’s hope and pray!
In the meantime, we will use this time to work on the radio program to encourage abstinence. And I will also help out with the Kids Club for elementary-aged kids here in Mochudi. Also, we are working out all the details with Face the Nation and the school for me to be able to drive the troubled student I mentioned in a previous post to get free professional counseling in Gaborone. Now we need the mother’s permission through a signed letter, but I haven’t been able to get ahold of the student to get her mother’s name and address (the mother lives about an hour away from the school where the student boards). So prayers are welcome that all of this can fall into place quickly.
Running Adventures
And finally, to end on a more positive note, the other day I went running in the evening. As I did, I heard “Emily!!” from my little friends I pass by quite often. Then I decided to take some new paths and roads (this temporary “lostness” is how you figure out how everything connects) and I was really not quite sure where I was. Then I heard, “Emily!!” and some of the same little kids, Rose and Lame (Lah-may) came out to greet me. I told them if they hadn’t just greeted me, I would’ve been unsure where I was (the dirt/sand roads and houses all look very similar with no road signs anywhere).
Then as I continued running, the other group of kids I often pass, who had seen me coming, yelled “Emily!!” and were in the road ready to run with me. So off we went, 5 barefoot kids and I, running along the dirt paths of Mochudi. They always giggle and apparently think it’s the funniest/coolest thing to run with me. It makes me smile too. We reached the point where, as usual, they got too tired, then stopped and yelled goodbye—“See you tomorrow!!”—and we parted ways. My last run before the Cape Town trip, I took a new route and the kids there had never seen me…with glee, they screamed “Lekgoa!!” (white person) and came running towards me, embracing me in a group hug…literally clinging and hanging off of me!! I decided if I ever need a boost to my self-esteem, I can just past there again, haha.
A minute or two afterwards, I thought I needed to take a certain path which would lead right to our house, but I wasn’t sure. I was looking down the path trying to decide if that was the path I was thinking of, when I heard the people at the house right there getting my attention and pointing that I should go down that way. Sure enough, it was the path that about 25 meters later comes out at our house. So yeah, strangers here in Mochudi will mob-hug you and/or help you get to your house! They know where we live better than we do sometimes! Not sure if that is comforting or slightly creepy, but I’ll go with comforting! Yeah, it’s just that a house full of white people is very rare…well, even just white people are quite rare in Mochudi…so if people in this neighborhood see us, it is a very reliable, accurate assumption on their part that we are from the YFC staff house.
Thanks for your interest. Have a great day!!
Kagiso (peace),
Em
P.S. Tomorrow is my parents’ wedding anniversary (they were married October 6, 1973)…so prayers are welcome for my mom, as it understandably might be a hard day for her. Thanks!
Cape Town Adventure!
I’m back safely in Botswana after an amazing adventure in South Africa! At 5 am Saturday 25 September, we embarked on our journey of 1700 kilometers down to Cape Town. It was all of the YFC Botswana staff except Koekoes, the director’s wife, who stayed back to hold the fort. So eleven of us, including our new German volunteer Kathrin, packed into two vehicles and started the long journey. Thankfully, we had a trailer as well to tow most of our luggage.
Car Trouble…and sweet Redemption!
About 6 hours into the drive, the KIA car I was in started to have issues and was overheating. After waiting for an hour or two at a gas station while we tried to assess and fix it, we thought we’d fixed it. But as we drove just a few minutes through the town, the heat gauge went crazy high, so we had to pull over again and call in a mechanic. It was something with the alternator and belts…not sure…but all I know is it would take 5 hours of work to fix it with a part they didn’t have and couldn’t get that day (Saturday late afternoon of a holiday weekend). Hmmm…it was nearing sundown and there we were, 3 hours from Britstown where we had accommodations for free that night at a guesthouse owned by Christians who know E.J., our director. We spent a couple, few hours there stranded.
After many phone calls, and group prayer in a parking lot…things ended up working out quite beautifully. Another man from near Britstown who knows E.J. paid to put all of us up in a motel/resort called La D Dah! He also paid for us all to enjoy KFC take-out for dinner! Amen! Then this same guy left at 3:30 am the next morning to drive his bakkie (pick-up truck) all the way up the 3 hours to pick us up. So we left our broken down car with the mechanics to fix while we were gone, and then we drove in his truck and our other SUV back down to Britstown, where we dropped him off. He was donating his truck to us for the whole week to drive down to Cape Town and back! The people at the guesthouse prepared us really nice food for the day to take with us.
Such beauty!!
The rest of the journey down to Cape Town was thankfully uneventful and completely gorgeous! Perhaps because we haven’t seen rain in several months in Botswana and thus it is very dry, brown, and yellow (not so much green), as was a LONG stretch of northern South Africa, eventually driving through mountain passes and through lush valleys with vineyards, blooming flowers, rainbows was extremely beautiful. It would be beautiful no matter what, but I think to us the contrast was so great that we were just in awe. And then eventually, we ended up at the ocean in Cape Town as the sun was setting over the water.
We spent that night with kind host families from E.J. and Koekoes’ church (they are from Cape Town originally). We got to the church first the next morning to reconvene, and there was a piano in the church. Feeling the urge to tickle the ivories, I asked if I could play. With their blessing, I enjoyed playing a piano for only the second time in Africa (we have a keyboard at the office, but I’ve never played a real piano in Botswana…the other time was at Karin’s parents’ house in Johannesburg). I love playing a real piano so this was a beautiful start to what would be another amazing day.
Shortly after that, we drove to the seafront in Cape Town and got out to climb on the rocks. For some of the Batswana staff and one of the Canadians this was their first time ever being at the ocean.
Then we piled in the vehicles again and drove another hour or so up and along mountains hugging the coastline to go to Hermanus. Growing up on Lake Huron, I love water…and I also love mountains. Never before had I seen them together in such beauty. But there we were, driving through the mountains next to the ocean. The YFC Southern Africa staff conference was at a Christian retreat camp near Hermanus called Wortlegat. It was absolutely beautiful. I will post pictures on my facebook, but for those who don’t have that, you can check it out on their website: http://www.wortelgat.org.za/photo.php
It is on a large lagoon (lake) that feeds into the ocean, nestled by the huge mountains. Each morning, I had my ‘quiet time’ of prayer/journaling on a little rock peninsula going out into the lagoon…so I was looking at a large blue lake hugged by the towering moss-covered mountains on the other side. Yeah. Amazing. The times I spent there with the Lord will not be forgotten— truly the most meaningful part of the trip. I hope to share more about that in a later post. But first, I’ll just fill you in on what happened…
YFC Southern Africa Staff Conference
So there were about 200 YFC staff and family members from all over Southern Africa. Most of the YFC Botswana females all stayed in one cabin, but somehow I was assigned to stay in a different cabin with three South Africans. Interestingly enough, one of them, Thoko, happened to be one of my roommates at the last conference in South Africa back in August! Another one, Khosi, found out from a phone call that her friend’s mom was died unexpectedly in an accident that day. Khosi asked me if I knew what she could say to comfort her. Given my experience of the accident and losing a parent unexpectedly, I was able to share some things that I’ve found comforting and helpful.
We had all our meetings outside in a huge white big-top tent because there was no building large enough to seat us all. The YFC South Africa dance/drama team called Buyela lead worship. They stayed here in Botswana with us for 2 weeks back in March so it was great to see them all again. The daily structure included worship, a morning devotional teaching, personal reflection time, great meals, and great speakers. The director of YFC for all of Africa, Thomas Rasane, was there and shared with us one of the nights…the last time before his retirement. We had a goodbye celebration to honor his 30+ years of service in YFC.
In the afternoons, we had free time to enjoy the beauty of creation around us. The first afternoon, we drove back into Hermanus and walked along the cliff path along the coast. We went down into one of the coves and waded a bit in the ocean for the first time, and climbed on the rocks. Then as we walked further along the path, we could see whales in the ocean! We could see them blowing water out of their blowholes and flapping around! It was so cool. First time I’ve seen whales in my life. The second afternoon, we hiked all the way with staff guides to the retreat center’s private beach on the ocean. It took about 45 minutes to walk there, but it was worth it—huge sand-dunes along bright blue water. We ran down the sand dunes...hiked up again…ran down…etc. And we went swimming in the ocean! The group who had hiked out there the day before hadn’t entered the water to swim because it was cold. Oh, but we did!! It was awesome with huge waves…some of which crashed over our heads.
The last afternoon, we went kayaking on the big lagoon nestled against the mountains. Then we went on a ferry boat trip around the lagoon with almost all the YFC Botswana staff and others. For some of the Batswana staff, that was also their first time on a boat. Needless to say, it was a memorable, enjoyable trip for us.
The Long Journey Back to Botswana
The next day, Friday 1 October, we left on the two-day journey back to Botswana. It started as a slightly different route from before, through rolling green fields against the backdrop of mountains. Then we drove through canyons winding through rock “walls” of mountains on either side. Again, just beautiful and awe-inspiring. We spent the night in Britstown at the house of the man who had leant us his truck for the week. Other people brought us a home-cooked dinner and muffins for breakfast. Then Saturday, we returned the pick-up truck and reunited with our fixed KIA car (station wagon-ish…it seats 6) and drove back to Botswana. Along the way on our drive we saw many animals— flamingos, mongoose, zebras, monkeys, babboons, ostriches, springbok, gemsbok, impala, dassies (rock hyrax), fat sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, cats and dogs, and many assorted weird-looking birds. At the La-D-Dah motel on the drive down, there were also a random assortment of swans, geese, ducks, and rabbits. Rounding out our trip back to Botswana, I drove the KIA the last 5 or 6 hours to give the main drivers a break. We were blessed with a beautiful sunset in Botswana over the hills, making it back to Mochudi by evening.
Adjusting back to life and HEAT in Botswana
It is technically spring here in Botswana…but really it feels like summer, especially after being in the coolness of Cape Town and Hermanus. There we utilized 3 or 4 layers of shirts/coats to stay warm in the evenings (if you look on a map it is one of the most southerly points in Africa)…but E.J. said the high temperature our first day back in Botswana was 40 degrees Celsius. I don’t know what that means, except “wicked hot.” I just now converted it on the internet, so for all the non-Celsius-literate peeps like me, that means 104 degrees Fahrenheit!! Welcome back to the Kalahari! One perk of the springtime here in Botswana is the vibrant purple blossoms that are in full-bloom on trees all over. Never seen that before. Imagine huge maple or oak trees that are totally purple—no green leaves, just purple flowers. Quite stunning. Not quite sure how that happens without rain for several months, but it’s cool.
Unfortunately, the school schedules here in Botswana are still so long that extra-curricular activities like sports and clubs have been cancelled for the time being. Therefore the Real Life Revolution abstinence club we’ve been trying to launch and all the Scripture Union clubs are postponed until further notice. The school will not allow clubs after 4:30pm when the 9 hour school day ends. The school counselor told me yesterday to just hope and pray that things change. So…let’s hope and pray!
In the meantime, we will use this time to work on the radio program to encourage abstinence. And I will also help out with the Kids Club for elementary-aged kids here in Mochudi. Also, we are working out all the details with Face the Nation and the school for me to be able to drive the troubled student I mentioned in a previous post to get free professional counseling in Gaborone. Now we need the mother’s permission through a signed letter, but I haven’t been able to get ahold of the student to get her mother’s name and address (the mother lives about an hour away from the school where the student boards). So prayers are welcome that all of this can fall into place quickly.
Running Adventures
And finally, to end on a more positive note, the other day I went running in the evening. As I did, I heard “Emily!!” from my little friends I pass by quite often. Then I decided to take some new paths and roads (this temporary “lostness” is how you figure out how everything connects) and I was really not quite sure where I was. Then I heard, “Emily!!” and some of the same little kids, Rose and Lame (Lah-may) came out to greet me. I told them if they hadn’t just greeted me, I would’ve been unsure where I was (the dirt/sand roads and houses all look very similar with no road signs anywhere).
Then as I continued running, the other group of kids I often pass, who had seen me coming, yelled “Emily!!” and were in the road ready to run with me. So off we went, 5 barefoot kids and I, running along the dirt paths of Mochudi. They always giggle and apparently think it’s the funniest/coolest thing to run with me. It makes me smile too. We reached the point where, as usual, they got too tired, then stopped and yelled goodbye—“See you tomorrow!!”—and we parted ways. My last run before the Cape Town trip, I took a new route and the kids there had never seen me…with glee, they screamed “Lekgoa!!” (white person) and came running towards me, embracing me in a group hug…literally clinging and hanging off of me!! I decided if I ever need a boost to my self-esteem, I can just past there again, haha.
A minute or two afterwards, I thought I needed to take a certain path which would lead right to our house, but I wasn’t sure. I was looking down the path trying to decide if that was the path I was thinking of, when I heard the people at the house right there getting my attention and pointing that I should go down that way. Sure enough, it was the path that about 25 meters later comes out at our house. So yeah, strangers here in Mochudi will mob-hug you and/or help you get to your house! They know where we live better than we do sometimes! Not sure if that is comforting or slightly creepy, but I’ll go with comforting! Yeah, it’s just that a house full of white people is very rare…well, even just white people are quite rare in Mochudi…so if people in this neighborhood see us, it is a very reliable, accurate assumption on their part that we are from the YFC staff house.
Thanks for your interest. Have a great day!!
Kagiso (peace),
Em
P.S. Tomorrow is my parents’ wedding anniversary (they were married October 6, 1973)…so prayers are welcome for my mom, as it understandably might be a hard day for her. Thanks!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Invited to Speak Again...and Off to Cape Town!!!
Hi all,
The talk to the whole student body at the private school in Gaborone went well. Thanks for any and all prayers. Afterwards the principal told me he could tell the students enjoyed it and were impacted. He invited me to come whenever I want and speak to the whole student body...and the principal is also a pastor and wants me to speak to his whole congregation on some Sunday! Praise God.
And a teenage guy came up to me afterwards and asked if a Christian has fallen into some sins whether they can still be accepted by God? He said he has fallen into some sins but wants to stop doing them and follow God's way again. He asked if, once he stops doing those sins, will God accept him back? I told him he doesn't need to fix everything and stop sinning in order to come to God. No, he can come as-is. He can just confess and agree with God that what he's been doing is wrong...and want to turn from those things (repent) and ask God to help him stop those bad habits. He doesn't need to "fix" himself all up first and try to be perfect before coming to God...but if his heart's desire is to change, he can come back right away. "You come to Him just as you are." I told him if he is a Christian, Jesus has provided the forgiveness through the cross, and the Holy Spirit lives inside of him and can help him to change and turn from those things. If/when he may slip up and fall back here and there, he can confess and repent and come to God again for a fresh start.
As I was speaking to him, his eyes were lighting up and a genuine smile was breaking across his face. Here is a kid who had evidently been thinking God won't accept him back until he quits sinning and gets everything perfect...who was grasping the God of grace. I could see the truth just impacting his heart.
I continued by asking him if he knows the story of the Prodigal Son? He nodded. I asked, "Did the son clean himself all up and fix everything and become perfect before he came back?" No...he came as he was. And was the Father mad and looking forward to when he could punish his son? No...he was waiting in hope that his son would come home...and when he saw him, he didn't get mad...No, he ran out to meet him, embraced him, kissed him, threw him a huge celebration, killed the best calf because he loved and rejoiced that his son had come back to him. I told him God isn't hoping to punish him...He is waiting to embrace him and help him walk with Him again. He was smiling as what I was saying was 'clicking' and resonating in his heart... It was like this verse was happening before my eyes: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). I just felt like those few moments set him free to now run back to his Father. He thanked me and headed off to class.
A couple other girls thanked me for coming and sharing the really moving story, and a boy in a wheelchair came up to me and opened his bible to a verse I had shared in my talk and read it aloud again excitedly. All in all, it was such a beautiful opportunity. I love sharing how awesome God is, and then watching Him work in other people's hearts. It's such a privilege. God is so good.
Fighting AIDS with…Harvard!
Yesterday, I attended another collaborative meeting with leaders from different sectors and organizations who are all interested in fighting AIDS. We heard a presentation detailing the Mochudi Prevention Project that has just started by the Botswana Harvard Partnership (BHP). The 5-year project’s goal is “To reduce the number of new HIV infections in Mochudi by promoting all proven prevention tools and investigating, in addition, the use of a new prevention strategy.” The same BHP representative met with Youth for Christ leadership earlier this month and will be presenting to all the staff in October, as our promotion of abstinence is one of those prevention tools. The new aspects are a community approach with home-based testing; and working with drugs to reduce the viral load (a higher viral load spreads HIV more easily). This is the first time in the whole world this has been done, and Mochudi could be a model for HIV prevention in Botswana and worldwide. It is quite exciting that Harvard for some reason has chosen our village of all places on earth to join in this fight.
Hungry for the Word of God
This is something I forgot to ever share, but will now. Schools resumed Tuesday, September 7 after about a month of holiday. Several students are working on the follow-up discipleship bible study course YFC does, so we collect their finished studies and give them the next few at the Scripture Union clubs. One of the girls in the Scripture Union club didn’t want to wait until school resumed to turn hers in (and apparently didn’t want to, or couldn’t afford to mail them in either), so she and her little sister walked an hour and a half each way to come to the YFC office during the school holiday to turn in her follow-up studies! Once I learned how long they had walked, we corrected them right then and gave her the next studies. But wow…walking 3 hours in the heat of the day just to get some bible studies to work on. That made me think, How hungry are the rest of us for the Word of God? How hungry are we to grow in our faith?
Inconveniences sometimes work out for the best!
Last week I was waiting in my car for what seemed like an eternity to get the change and receipt for my gasoline purchase. As I sat there in my car, a taxi swung around and I heard, “Emily!” It was Kagiso, the taxi driver I had met with in February and had talked with about God for several minutes. We hadn’t seen each other in all the months since, and yet he recognized me and remembered my name and our conversation. He said he should stop by the YFC office sometime and maybe I could tell him more about God, like last time? Yeah dude! See, sometimes inconvenient delays work out for the best!
Off to Cape Town!!!!
I need to go home and pack now…we are leaving at 5 am to drive for two whole days (1700 kilometers) to go to a Youth for Christ Southern Region [of Africa] staff conference for a week. Please pray for our safe travel. Really. The vehicles have been breaking down even this week…and were both taken in to be fixed. Please pray they work smoothly and that we drivers (I’m the back-up driver for one of the main drivers) stay alert through the 20 hours of driving. It’s a public holiday weekend in South Africa, so the roads will be busy as well. The retreat center is apparently beautiful…on the ocean!!
Blessings,
Em
The talk to the whole student body at the private school in Gaborone went well. Thanks for any and all prayers. Afterwards the principal told me he could tell the students enjoyed it and were impacted. He invited me to come whenever I want and speak to the whole student body...and the principal is also a pastor and wants me to speak to his whole congregation on some Sunday! Praise God.
And a teenage guy came up to me afterwards and asked if a Christian has fallen into some sins whether they can still be accepted by God? He said he has fallen into some sins but wants to stop doing them and follow God's way again. He asked if, once he stops doing those sins, will God accept him back? I told him he doesn't need to fix everything and stop sinning in order to come to God. No, he can come as-is. He can just confess and agree with God that what he's been doing is wrong...and want to turn from those things (repent) and ask God to help him stop those bad habits. He doesn't need to "fix" himself all up first and try to be perfect before coming to God...but if his heart's desire is to change, he can come back right away. "You come to Him just as you are." I told him if he is a Christian, Jesus has provided the forgiveness through the cross, and the Holy Spirit lives inside of him and can help him to change and turn from those things. If/when he may slip up and fall back here and there, he can confess and repent and come to God again for a fresh start.
As I was speaking to him, his eyes were lighting up and a genuine smile was breaking across his face. Here is a kid who had evidently been thinking God won't accept him back until he quits sinning and gets everything perfect...who was grasping the God of grace. I could see the truth just impacting his heart.
I continued by asking him if he knows the story of the Prodigal Son? He nodded. I asked, "Did the son clean himself all up and fix everything and become perfect before he came back?" No...he came as he was. And was the Father mad and looking forward to when he could punish his son? No...he was waiting in hope that his son would come home...and when he saw him, he didn't get mad...No, he ran out to meet him, embraced him, kissed him, threw him a huge celebration, killed the best calf because he loved and rejoiced that his son had come back to him. I told him God isn't hoping to punish him...He is waiting to embrace him and help him walk with Him again. He was smiling as what I was saying was 'clicking' and resonating in his heart... It was like this verse was happening before my eyes: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). I just felt like those few moments set him free to now run back to his Father. He thanked me and headed off to class.
A couple other girls thanked me for coming and sharing the really moving story, and a boy in a wheelchair came up to me and opened his bible to a verse I had shared in my talk and read it aloud again excitedly. All in all, it was such a beautiful opportunity. I love sharing how awesome God is, and then watching Him work in other people's hearts. It's such a privilege. God is so good.
Fighting AIDS with…Harvard!
Yesterday, I attended another collaborative meeting with leaders from different sectors and organizations who are all interested in fighting AIDS. We heard a presentation detailing the Mochudi Prevention Project that has just started by the Botswana Harvard Partnership (BHP). The 5-year project’s goal is “To reduce the number of new HIV infections in Mochudi by promoting all proven prevention tools and investigating, in addition, the use of a new prevention strategy.” The same BHP representative met with Youth for Christ leadership earlier this month and will be presenting to all the staff in October, as our promotion of abstinence is one of those prevention tools. The new aspects are a community approach with home-based testing; and working with drugs to reduce the viral load (a higher viral load spreads HIV more easily). This is the first time in the whole world this has been done, and Mochudi could be a model for HIV prevention in Botswana and worldwide. It is quite exciting that Harvard for some reason has chosen our village of all places on earth to join in this fight.
Hungry for the Word of God
This is something I forgot to ever share, but will now. Schools resumed Tuesday, September 7 after about a month of holiday. Several students are working on the follow-up discipleship bible study course YFC does, so we collect their finished studies and give them the next few at the Scripture Union clubs. One of the girls in the Scripture Union club didn’t want to wait until school resumed to turn hers in (and apparently didn’t want to, or couldn’t afford to mail them in either), so she and her little sister walked an hour and a half each way to come to the YFC office during the school holiday to turn in her follow-up studies! Once I learned how long they had walked, we corrected them right then and gave her the next studies. But wow…walking 3 hours in the heat of the day just to get some bible studies to work on. That made me think, How hungry are the rest of us for the Word of God? How hungry are we to grow in our faith?
Inconveniences sometimes work out for the best!
Last week I was waiting in my car for what seemed like an eternity to get the change and receipt for my gasoline purchase. As I sat there in my car, a taxi swung around and I heard, “Emily!” It was Kagiso, the taxi driver I had met with in February and had talked with about God for several minutes. We hadn’t seen each other in all the months since, and yet he recognized me and remembered my name and our conversation. He said he should stop by the YFC office sometime and maybe I could tell him more about God, like last time? Yeah dude! See, sometimes inconvenient delays work out for the best!
Off to Cape Town!!!!
I need to go home and pack now…we are leaving at 5 am to drive for two whole days (1700 kilometers) to go to a Youth for Christ Southern Region [of Africa] staff conference for a week. Please pray for our safe travel. Really. The vehicles have been breaking down even this week…and were both taken in to be fixed. Please pray they work smoothly and that we drivers (I’m the back-up driver for one of the main drivers) stay alert through the 20 hours of driving. It’s a public holiday weekend in South Africa, so the roads will be busy as well. The retreat center is apparently beautiful…on the ocean!!
Blessings,
Em
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Sharing Testimony to Whole Student Body!
Dumelang!
Sharing my Testimony with the Whole Student Body!
Tomorrow I will be sharing my testimony about the accident/recovery with the whole student body (ages 6-18 years!) at a private school in Gaborone. I have a full 30 minutes to share! The YFC Botswana director E.J. has been invited to share there in the past, and when he was recently invited, he felt I should share my testimony. Prayers are appreciated that it goes well and the students are impacted and drawn closer to the Lord.
Visiting those in the Hospital -- Being Christ’s Hands and Feet
[I wrote this awhile back and will now include it]: Friday, one of the national YFC workers, Modise, and I went to the local hospital in Mochudi, both with a burden to visit and pray for the sick. Wow…It was the first time I’ve seen in person people ravaged by AIDS. I know HIV positive people, but there is a definite difference when it progresses over into full-blown AIDS. If that wasn’t motivation for speaking these unpopular messages of abstinence and behavior change to youth and doing whatever God directs to help keep them from getting AIDS, I don’t know what is. I was thankful for the ability we had to go and pray for/with each patient. The night before I had written this prayer in my journal:
“Lord, may You just love through me. Help these patients feel Your love and care for them through us. Bring them hope in the face of despair…Shine through us, love through us, heal through us in Jesus’ name. Help me see with Your eyes, feel with Your heart, and love with Your love…Jesus You touched the lepers, reaching out to the outcasts of society. Lord touch today’s lepers (AIDS victims) through me. Let love flow through me so they will know that You are real, that You are love.”
I only now re-read that prayer for the first time since I wrote it…and I’m amazed at how beautifully the Lord answered it. When I was in one of the wards with several beds in an open room, praying over a man for healing and praying that God would help him know that He sees him there and He cares, I thought, Where are You, God? You do see him and you do care and your heart breaks for him. So where are You? How can people suffering here in these wards know that You really love and care for them? And I felt the Lord whisper in my heart there in the hospital ward, “I am here…I sent you. I’m in you; I’m loving them through you.” Wow...it just struck me afresh and in a deeper way that God has chosen to use frail, weak people like you and me to be His hands and feet in the world today. He uses vessels, 'jars of clay', like us to pour out His love.
My time in the hospital was one of those times where I just felt like God’s love was flowing through me as I took the time to learn their names, talk a bit if they could, and lay my hand on them to pray for healing and that they would know that God sees them there, He cares, and He loves them. The times I felt God loving though me most was when I would just feel like I was able to communicate loving care through my eyes as I looked into theirs…like He was giving me His eyes of compassion and loving them through me. I know that my own human love and compassion would be exhausted quickly in such an environment, but His love is enduring, His love is unwavering, His love can reach out through my yielded hands.
That reminded me of a quote I’d read that essentially says that God chooses to use our hands and feet in the world today to reach out to the broken and hurting. Philip Yancey wrote,
"It occurred to me as I read the Gospels that if all of us in his Body would spend our lives as he did—ministering to the sick, feeding the hungry, resisting the powers of evil, comforting those who mourn, and bringing the Good News of love and forgiveness—then perhaps the question 'Is God unfair?' would not be asked with such urgency today."
Obviously since I found that quote in my journal I have heard and thought about it before…even the prayer in my journal before I went to the hospital talks about letting God love through me, but I guess the reality of it never struck me so poignantly as it did through that experience. And as I’m typing this, this song came on my random shuffle: “Give me Your Eyes” by Brandon Heath—
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
So this is me typing currently on 21 September again. I typed up all of the above last week, and soon afterward, I picked up a book I bought but haven’t read yet, The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do by Deborah Dortzbach and W. Meredith Long. Here is an excerpt I read under the heading “The Hope of Christ”—
“So it is that Christians confront AIDS—in painful ministry. If people are to respond to the compassion and love of Christ, that compassion and love must become incarnate in the men, women and youth who compose his church. Christ’s eyes are the crying eyes of the women who came to bury a woman who died of AIDS because no one else would. Christ’s feet are those of the church volunteers who carry firewood to an impoverished widow in rural Malawi. Christ’s anger is the anger of a lawyer who prepares a case for orphans who have had their land taken from them. Christ is present in the millions of Christians who quietly and with little recognition carry the burden of AIDS in their communities and churches around the world…In an era of AIDS, Christ is found where he has always been found. He is with the poor, the marginalized, the sinful, the sick and the oppressed.”
I went back to the hospital last Wednesday with two other YFC colleagues, Modise and Maruping, and talked/prayed with some more patients. One was an elderly woman named Susan who was suffering a bad bout of food poisoning. She was already a Christian and she had been praying that someone would bring her a Bible. We gave her some little booklets with scriptures inside, and she was so grateful. She said we were an answer to her prayers. Another family had an old grandmother in the hospital joined that day by a granddaughter in the opposite hospital bed. The granddaughter had collapsed and was almost in a coma when the father found her that morning. The father and mother were there visiting as well, and when I asked the father how he was doing, he told me they aren’t doing the best spiritually. But he told me he knows that God spared his daughter for a reason and he is thankful to God. He asked if we might come and meet with his whole family at their house to share more about God. Yet another cool opportunity.
Also, just today as I was trying to find that quote in the book on AIDS, I came across this, which strangely fits perfectly with what I had shared last post about the marriage bed being moved out of place [that sex outside of marriage is a roadblock to the Vision 2016 goal of no new HIV infections by 2016]:
“Many people are moving marriage beds. Vows taken to love and support one another for life are frequently broken…The consequences of unfaithfulness are far reaching, bringing the potential for death not only to the one committing adultery but also to the spouse and their born and unborn children…What can we do when our marriage beds are moved? Broken covenants need reconciliation. Pastors need training in counseling couples wrestling with broken trust and relationships.”
Crazy how perfectly that fits huh? And earlier today before I read that, I saw a worker with a jacket that read “Safe Roads to 2016” and it reminded me of my dream with the bed in the middle of the road as a major roadblock on the road to Vision 2016. Interesting…
Ministry at the Sr. Secondary School in Mochudi
Well…due to the scheduling changes and uncertainty going on at the school, the school advised me not to make plans for the Real Life Revolution club (promoting abstinence) until after this week. So the club has been postponed until we return from Cape Town…so hopefully the first week in October. Also adding to the confusion was a fire that broke out this week at the boys’ dorm (thankfully no one was injured because it was during class hours), which required the school to send home all of the boy boarders for the time being.
Unofficial ministry has continued, however. I met with the student on Saturday whom I mentioned last post. We talked for about an hour. We have plans in place for her to receive professional counseling. Prayers for her are still very much appreciated.
Random Tidbits
And finally, for some random tidbits: A German volunteer, Kathrin flew in yesterday and is a new addition to our staff-house family. We now have two Canadians (Twila, 23, and Marge, 17), two Americans (Katie, 24, and me, 27), and two Europeans (Corine, 32 from Holland, and Kathrin, 19). The only one who was here when I came in February was Corine! The other 5 Europeans have since returned home for further studies. It’s kind of a revolving door of a house!
The other day I was walking along the road and a teenage boy I don’t recognize said, “Hello, woman of God!” and then repeated it. I just smiled and laughed to myself. He must know somehow I live in the “Makgoa [white person] house” and we are missionaries. Though, I’ve noticed more often now groups of guys will greet me by name and I don’t recognize them off-hand. And lastly, I saw a white-tailed deer-like animal and a monkey on a run in Mochudi last week…Also saw a monkey in the hospital ward climbing out the window!
Blessings,
Em
Sharing my Testimony with the Whole Student Body!
Tomorrow I will be sharing my testimony about the accident/recovery with the whole student body (ages 6-18 years!) at a private school in Gaborone. I have a full 30 minutes to share! The YFC Botswana director E.J. has been invited to share there in the past, and when he was recently invited, he felt I should share my testimony. Prayers are appreciated that it goes well and the students are impacted and drawn closer to the Lord.
Visiting those in the Hospital -- Being Christ’s Hands and Feet
[I wrote this awhile back and will now include it]: Friday, one of the national YFC workers, Modise, and I went to the local hospital in Mochudi, both with a burden to visit and pray for the sick. Wow…It was the first time I’ve seen in person people ravaged by AIDS. I know HIV positive people, but there is a definite difference when it progresses over into full-blown AIDS. If that wasn’t motivation for speaking these unpopular messages of abstinence and behavior change to youth and doing whatever God directs to help keep them from getting AIDS, I don’t know what is. I was thankful for the ability we had to go and pray for/with each patient. The night before I had written this prayer in my journal:
“Lord, may You just love through me. Help these patients feel Your love and care for them through us. Bring them hope in the face of despair…Shine through us, love through us, heal through us in Jesus’ name. Help me see with Your eyes, feel with Your heart, and love with Your love…Jesus You touched the lepers, reaching out to the outcasts of society. Lord touch today’s lepers (AIDS victims) through me. Let love flow through me so they will know that You are real, that You are love.”
I only now re-read that prayer for the first time since I wrote it…and I’m amazed at how beautifully the Lord answered it. When I was in one of the wards with several beds in an open room, praying over a man for healing and praying that God would help him know that He sees him there and He cares, I thought, Where are You, God? You do see him and you do care and your heart breaks for him. So where are You? How can people suffering here in these wards know that You really love and care for them? And I felt the Lord whisper in my heart there in the hospital ward, “I am here…I sent you. I’m in you; I’m loving them through you.” Wow...it just struck me afresh and in a deeper way that God has chosen to use frail, weak people like you and me to be His hands and feet in the world today. He uses vessels, 'jars of clay', like us to pour out His love.
My time in the hospital was one of those times where I just felt like God’s love was flowing through me as I took the time to learn their names, talk a bit if they could, and lay my hand on them to pray for healing and that they would know that God sees them there, He cares, and He loves them. The times I felt God loving though me most was when I would just feel like I was able to communicate loving care through my eyes as I looked into theirs…like He was giving me His eyes of compassion and loving them through me. I know that my own human love and compassion would be exhausted quickly in such an environment, but His love is enduring, His love is unwavering, His love can reach out through my yielded hands.
That reminded me of a quote I’d read that essentially says that God chooses to use our hands and feet in the world today to reach out to the broken and hurting. Philip Yancey wrote,
"It occurred to me as I read the Gospels that if all of us in his Body would spend our lives as he did—ministering to the sick, feeding the hungry, resisting the powers of evil, comforting those who mourn, and bringing the Good News of love and forgiveness—then perhaps the question 'Is God unfair?' would not be asked with such urgency today."
Obviously since I found that quote in my journal I have heard and thought about it before…even the prayer in my journal before I went to the hospital talks about letting God love through me, but I guess the reality of it never struck me so poignantly as it did through that experience. And as I’m typing this, this song came on my random shuffle: “Give me Your Eyes” by Brandon Heath—
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
So this is me typing currently on 21 September again. I typed up all of the above last week, and soon afterward, I picked up a book I bought but haven’t read yet, The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do by Deborah Dortzbach and W. Meredith Long. Here is an excerpt I read under the heading “The Hope of Christ”—
“So it is that Christians confront AIDS—in painful ministry. If people are to respond to the compassion and love of Christ, that compassion and love must become incarnate in the men, women and youth who compose his church. Christ’s eyes are the crying eyes of the women who came to bury a woman who died of AIDS because no one else would. Christ’s feet are those of the church volunteers who carry firewood to an impoverished widow in rural Malawi. Christ’s anger is the anger of a lawyer who prepares a case for orphans who have had their land taken from them. Christ is present in the millions of Christians who quietly and with little recognition carry the burden of AIDS in their communities and churches around the world…In an era of AIDS, Christ is found where he has always been found. He is with the poor, the marginalized, the sinful, the sick and the oppressed.”
I went back to the hospital last Wednesday with two other YFC colleagues, Modise and Maruping, and talked/prayed with some more patients. One was an elderly woman named Susan who was suffering a bad bout of food poisoning. She was already a Christian and she had been praying that someone would bring her a Bible. We gave her some little booklets with scriptures inside, and she was so grateful. She said we were an answer to her prayers. Another family had an old grandmother in the hospital joined that day by a granddaughter in the opposite hospital bed. The granddaughter had collapsed and was almost in a coma when the father found her that morning. The father and mother were there visiting as well, and when I asked the father how he was doing, he told me they aren’t doing the best spiritually. But he told me he knows that God spared his daughter for a reason and he is thankful to God. He asked if we might come and meet with his whole family at their house to share more about God. Yet another cool opportunity.
Also, just today as I was trying to find that quote in the book on AIDS, I came across this, which strangely fits perfectly with what I had shared last post about the marriage bed being moved out of place [that sex outside of marriage is a roadblock to the Vision 2016 goal of no new HIV infections by 2016]:
“Many people are moving marriage beds. Vows taken to love and support one another for life are frequently broken…The consequences of unfaithfulness are far reaching, bringing the potential for death not only to the one committing adultery but also to the spouse and their born and unborn children…What can we do when our marriage beds are moved? Broken covenants need reconciliation. Pastors need training in counseling couples wrestling with broken trust and relationships.”
Crazy how perfectly that fits huh? And earlier today before I read that, I saw a worker with a jacket that read “Safe Roads to 2016” and it reminded me of my dream with the bed in the middle of the road as a major roadblock on the road to Vision 2016. Interesting…
Ministry at the Sr. Secondary School in Mochudi
Well…due to the scheduling changes and uncertainty going on at the school, the school advised me not to make plans for the Real Life Revolution club (promoting abstinence) until after this week. So the club has been postponed until we return from Cape Town…so hopefully the first week in October. Also adding to the confusion was a fire that broke out this week at the boys’ dorm (thankfully no one was injured because it was during class hours), which required the school to send home all of the boy boarders for the time being.
Unofficial ministry has continued, however. I met with the student on Saturday whom I mentioned last post. We talked for about an hour. We have plans in place for her to receive professional counseling. Prayers for her are still very much appreciated.
Random Tidbits
And finally, for some random tidbits: A German volunteer, Kathrin flew in yesterday and is a new addition to our staff-house family. We now have two Canadians (Twila, 23, and Marge, 17), two Americans (Katie, 24, and me, 27), and two Europeans (Corine, 32 from Holland, and Kathrin, 19). The only one who was here when I came in February was Corine! The other 5 Europeans have since returned home for further studies. It’s kind of a revolving door of a house!
The other day I was walking along the road and a teenage boy I don’t recognize said, “Hello, woman of God!” and then repeated it. I just smiled and laughed to myself. He must know somehow I live in the “Makgoa [white person] house” and we are missionaries. Though, I’ve noticed more often now groups of guys will greet me by name and I don’t recognize them off-hand. And lastly, I saw a white-tailed deer-like animal and a monkey on a run in Mochudi last week…Also saw a monkey in the hospital ward climbing out the window!
Blessings,
Em
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Exciting and Challenging Times
Hello all!
Real Life Revolution!
Well, yesterday was the day we’d scheduled to start the abstinence club at the Senior Secondary School in Mochudi. However, that of all days is when the entire school system in Botswana switched to a new schedule that runs right through the club time! We just found this out yesterday that it affects all the schools, not just the one we were at Monday. Now students will be in classes until 4:30 pm (the club was going to run from 3:45-4:30). I’ve been unable to talk with the guidance/counseling teacher who coordinates the clubs because she’s locked up in meetings discussing these changes. So…we postponed the start of the club until, hopefully,next week.
This might be for the better because, though we put up posters at the school, the school-wide announcement about the club was not made on Monday as planned because the teacher who was to give the announcement was late. This way, we can have the announcement made Friday at General Assembly and then more students will know about the club for the first meeting. We’re not sure how clubs will work in this new schedule. It sounds like clubs might be kind of cut out of the curriculum perhaps. It used to be that classes were done at 3:30 and then the students were supposed to go to a club of their choosing. But now that classes extend to 4:30, they may not urge, encourage, or require students to attend a club. And honestly, if you’ve been in school from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm, would you want to stay at school longer if you didn’t have to? So just pray for a good solution to the situation we now face.
Back to the club itself, we decided to name it Real Life Revolution, because the youth will discuss real life issues that affect them and because choosing abstinence will help them have real, abundant life. The need is great – in the last 3-month term, there were 9 known pregnancies at that school! It is sobering to ponder how many teens are contracting HIV in such an environment. We are praying that this club will help decrease the rate of both HIV transmission and teen pregnancy. If you feel led, please pray for the youth to be drawn to come to the club and be impacted in their lifestyles. We will be reporting the progress/effectiveness of the club to Face the Nation (since it is a follow-up club to their AIDS-prevention program in the schools last term), who in turn will report it to the Ministry of Education of the Botswana government.
Another Divine Appointment??
Perhaps I’ll share more details about this later, but please pray for one of the students there with whom I met on Sunday. She is going through an extremely hard time. The student had called one of the Face the Nation volunteers Sunday just in tears…the volunteer (for whom I was a prayer partner) was far away in Gaborone, so she asked the student if it would be ok for me to come to talk with her. The student agreed, so the Face the Nation volunteer told me to call her. As it turns out, I had called this student for the first time the day before to set up a time to give her Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment with God, because we think it would be good for her situation and she had agreed to read it. I’d been having a hard time finding the book in Botswana, so Philip Yancey was willing to mail it from the US, but we’d just found a copy here. So I had already planned to meet the student Sunday evening for the first time to give her the book.
When I called her Sunday afternoon and she couldn’t even talk through the tears, I asked if I should just come right away instead of waiting the hour and a half until our scheduled meeting (yes). I was at the YFC office for our interdenominational prayer meeting, so that meant I was literally just a 2-minute drive from the school. So I hopped in my car and was able to meet her. She totally opened up to me (which surprised me for having just met her) and shared the heartbreaking story of the past couple years, and especially the last weeks and days.
Please pray that God speaks to her through that book and that she can come to see God as loving and good despite the bad things that have happened in her life. And I’m grateful for any prayers for wisdom in what I to say to her as we work through her serious issues. I called and checked in with her Sunday and Monday nights briefly, and we plan to meet again on Saturday to talk, though she knows she can call me before that if she wants /needs to do so. She has agreed to more professional counseling and now have options set up for her.
Yarona FC!
For awhile we at YFC have felt led to change and improve our Coffee Bar drop-in center on Saturday nights at the YFC office. We decided on a new name Yarona FC (Yarona means “us”/ “we together” in Setswana) and FC is “For Christ” so it’s still YFC. However, in this soccer (football) saturated culture, people will see FC and think “Football Club” like Barcelona FC or Liverpool FC, etc. So it’s meant to appeal to the youth and be a place that together with them is ours…where they can feel like it is their club, a place where they belong. We took each of their pictures and will create nametags so they feel more like they belong to the club. Three weeks ago, we had the launch of Yarona, introducing the new name and giving them each candy, chips, and pop as a special treat. We also unveiled the new ping-pong table and other games that the Canadian short-term team had donated. A bunch of us had a great game of basketball (netball) outside in the dark with the spotlight from the office on the court.
Last week it was my turn to share the message at Yarona FC. The Botswana government has declared September to be the Month of Prayer Against AIDS, so I was planning on speaking about AIDS and abstinence to the youth. That morning, as I was falling asleep in my daily 20 minute nap to heat my jaw with a heating pad, I was thinking about Vision 2016 for some reason. [Vision 2016 is the national vision of Botswana drafted in 1996 of what they want the country to look like in various sectors by 2016. Regarding AIDS it states, “By the year 2016, the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS will have stopped, so that there will be no new infections by the virus in that year.”] Then I fell asleep in this nap and had a dream where there was a big double/queen bed with a headboard (like for a married couple) in the middle of the road (the dirt road by the YFC office). In my dream I thought, A bed is definitely not supposed to be in the middle of the road. It’s in the wrong place…it should be in a bedroom. That’s a big, dangerous roadblock! I awoke from my dream, remembering it vividly and thinking, What is that supposed to mean?! (if anything).
And then I remembered how I’d just been thinking of Vision 2016, “toward an AIDS-free generation with no new infections by 2016”…and I realized that is the destination we are headed toward, the road we are traveling down, but people having sex outside of marriage is a major roadblock on that road. God designed sex to be within marriage, not outside...just like the bed should be in the bedroom, not outside in the road. If people are having sex before or outside of marriage, it is in the wrong place…like that marriage bed out in the middle of the road…and that is one of the main roadblocks hindering this country on this road to Vision 2016, an AIDS-free generation.
I felt like I was supposed to add that dream and insight into my talk at Yarona FC that night. Popular message to share, eh? Not so much. But I knew I had to share it and encourage them to keep sex within marriage. I asked if they are sick of hearing about AIDS? I think they were a bit surprised that I would say that, but seemingly they agreed. They know about AIDS. They know their ABC’s (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomize if you choose to have sex). But I told them it’s not enough to know that stuff or pray against AIDS if our behavior is still possibly spreading it (if we’re sleeping around). We all need to “be the change” and make choices to help HIV from spreading. I shared that it’s because we care about them and don’t want to see them dying of AIDS someday and orphaning their children that we share this with them and encourage them to change their behavior.
Change is possible…in their individual lives and for this nation! I told them that a relationship with Christ can really help them as the Holy Spirit comes to live inside them and empower them. I shared how Uganda saw their HIV rate plummet as so many people came to Christ and practiced abstinence and/or faithfulness in marriage. I also told them about the Real Life Revolution club that we’re starting to support and encourage them in this (in essence to create positive peer pressure to choose abstinence). I left them with this point to ponder: “I want you to think to yourself—Is my behavior part of the problem or part of the solution of AIDS? Is my behavior helping spread HIV or stop its spread?”
Cape Town, here we come!
An exciting announcement is that there is an upcoming staff conference for Southern Africa YFC (10 countries that the Botswana director E.J. oversees as Regional Director). There hasn’t been one since 2005 I think, and they are usually at the same YFC conference center where we just had the youth leader conference in northern South Africa. However, this year, that venue is unavailable and so the conference has been moved to near Cape Town. So, though it is much more expensive to travel there, we are trusting God to provide the funds for all of the YFC Botswana national and international staff/volunteers to go down there. Flying is way too expensive, and the trains are not running right now for some reason. So driving it is! It’s about a 20 hour drive each way. We are staying overnight half-way at either a church or a retirement home. This past Saturday, the YFC Botswana staff did a sponsored walk fundraiser where we all hiked to the top of Kgale Hill, the highest “mountain” in Gaborone. It was fun to hike again and to see the view of the dam and surrounding hills.
I’ll have to share later about my experience Friday at the hospital in Mochudi, visiting and praying for the sick. I’ll be heading back to the hospital tomorrow and/or Friday as well.
Thanks for your continued interest, encouragement, and prayers.
Love, Em
Real Life Revolution!
Well, yesterday was the day we’d scheduled to start the abstinence club at the Senior Secondary School in Mochudi. However, that of all days is when the entire school system in Botswana switched to a new schedule that runs right through the club time! We just found this out yesterday that it affects all the schools, not just the one we were at Monday. Now students will be in classes until 4:30 pm (the club was going to run from 3:45-4:30). I’ve been unable to talk with the guidance/counseling teacher who coordinates the clubs because she’s locked up in meetings discussing these changes. So…we postponed the start of the club until, hopefully,next week.
This might be for the better because, though we put up posters at the school, the school-wide announcement about the club was not made on Monday as planned because the teacher who was to give the announcement was late. This way, we can have the announcement made Friday at General Assembly and then more students will know about the club for the first meeting. We’re not sure how clubs will work in this new schedule. It sounds like clubs might be kind of cut out of the curriculum perhaps. It used to be that classes were done at 3:30 and then the students were supposed to go to a club of their choosing. But now that classes extend to 4:30, they may not urge, encourage, or require students to attend a club. And honestly, if you’ve been in school from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm, would you want to stay at school longer if you didn’t have to? So just pray for a good solution to the situation we now face.
Back to the club itself, we decided to name it Real Life Revolution, because the youth will discuss real life issues that affect them and because choosing abstinence will help them have real, abundant life. The need is great – in the last 3-month term, there were 9 known pregnancies at that school! It is sobering to ponder how many teens are contracting HIV in such an environment. We are praying that this club will help decrease the rate of both HIV transmission and teen pregnancy. If you feel led, please pray for the youth to be drawn to come to the club and be impacted in their lifestyles. We will be reporting the progress/effectiveness of the club to Face the Nation (since it is a follow-up club to their AIDS-prevention program in the schools last term), who in turn will report it to the Ministry of Education of the Botswana government.
Another Divine Appointment??
Perhaps I’ll share more details about this later, but please pray for one of the students there with whom I met on Sunday. She is going through an extremely hard time. The student had called one of the Face the Nation volunteers Sunday just in tears…the volunteer (for whom I was a prayer partner) was far away in Gaborone, so she asked the student if it would be ok for me to come to talk with her. The student agreed, so the Face the Nation volunteer told me to call her. As it turns out, I had called this student for the first time the day before to set up a time to give her Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment with God, because we think it would be good for her situation and she had agreed to read it. I’d been having a hard time finding the book in Botswana, so Philip Yancey was willing to mail it from the US, but we’d just found a copy here. So I had already planned to meet the student Sunday evening for the first time to give her the book.
When I called her Sunday afternoon and she couldn’t even talk through the tears, I asked if I should just come right away instead of waiting the hour and a half until our scheduled meeting (yes). I was at the YFC office for our interdenominational prayer meeting, so that meant I was literally just a 2-minute drive from the school. So I hopped in my car and was able to meet her. She totally opened up to me (which surprised me for having just met her) and shared the heartbreaking story of the past couple years, and especially the last weeks and days.
Please pray that God speaks to her through that book and that she can come to see God as loving and good despite the bad things that have happened in her life. And I’m grateful for any prayers for wisdom in what I to say to her as we work through her serious issues. I called and checked in with her Sunday and Monday nights briefly, and we plan to meet again on Saturday to talk, though she knows she can call me before that if she wants /needs to do so. She has agreed to more professional counseling and now have options set up for her.
Yarona FC!
For awhile we at YFC have felt led to change and improve our Coffee Bar drop-in center on Saturday nights at the YFC office. We decided on a new name Yarona FC (Yarona means “us”/ “we together” in Setswana) and FC is “For Christ” so it’s still YFC. However, in this soccer (football) saturated culture, people will see FC and think “Football Club” like Barcelona FC or Liverpool FC, etc. So it’s meant to appeal to the youth and be a place that together with them is ours…where they can feel like it is their club, a place where they belong. We took each of their pictures and will create nametags so they feel more like they belong to the club. Three weeks ago, we had the launch of Yarona, introducing the new name and giving them each candy, chips, and pop as a special treat. We also unveiled the new ping-pong table and other games that the Canadian short-term team had donated. A bunch of us had a great game of basketball (netball) outside in the dark with the spotlight from the office on the court.
Last week it was my turn to share the message at Yarona FC. The Botswana government has declared September to be the Month of Prayer Against AIDS, so I was planning on speaking about AIDS and abstinence to the youth. That morning, as I was falling asleep in my daily 20 minute nap to heat my jaw with a heating pad, I was thinking about Vision 2016 for some reason. [Vision 2016 is the national vision of Botswana drafted in 1996 of what they want the country to look like in various sectors by 2016. Regarding AIDS it states, “By the year 2016, the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS will have stopped, so that there will be no new infections by the virus in that year.”] Then I fell asleep in this nap and had a dream where there was a big double/queen bed with a headboard (like for a married couple) in the middle of the road (the dirt road by the YFC office). In my dream I thought, A bed is definitely not supposed to be in the middle of the road. It’s in the wrong place…it should be in a bedroom. That’s a big, dangerous roadblock! I awoke from my dream, remembering it vividly and thinking, What is that supposed to mean?! (if anything).
And then I remembered how I’d just been thinking of Vision 2016, “toward an AIDS-free generation with no new infections by 2016”…and I realized that is the destination we are headed toward, the road we are traveling down, but people having sex outside of marriage is a major roadblock on that road. God designed sex to be within marriage, not outside...just like the bed should be in the bedroom, not outside in the road. If people are having sex before or outside of marriage, it is in the wrong place…like that marriage bed out in the middle of the road…and that is one of the main roadblocks hindering this country on this road to Vision 2016, an AIDS-free generation.
I felt like I was supposed to add that dream and insight into my talk at Yarona FC that night. Popular message to share, eh? Not so much. But I knew I had to share it and encourage them to keep sex within marriage. I asked if they are sick of hearing about AIDS? I think they were a bit surprised that I would say that, but seemingly they agreed. They know about AIDS. They know their ABC’s (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomize if you choose to have sex). But I told them it’s not enough to know that stuff or pray against AIDS if our behavior is still possibly spreading it (if we’re sleeping around). We all need to “be the change” and make choices to help HIV from spreading. I shared that it’s because we care about them and don’t want to see them dying of AIDS someday and orphaning their children that we share this with them and encourage them to change their behavior.
Change is possible…in their individual lives and for this nation! I told them that a relationship with Christ can really help them as the Holy Spirit comes to live inside them and empower them. I shared how Uganda saw their HIV rate plummet as so many people came to Christ and practiced abstinence and/or faithfulness in marriage. I also told them about the Real Life Revolution club that we’re starting to support and encourage them in this (in essence to create positive peer pressure to choose abstinence). I left them with this point to ponder: “I want you to think to yourself—Is my behavior part of the problem or part of the solution of AIDS? Is my behavior helping spread HIV or stop its spread?”
Cape Town, here we come!
An exciting announcement is that there is an upcoming staff conference for Southern Africa YFC (10 countries that the Botswana director E.J. oversees as Regional Director). There hasn’t been one since 2005 I think, and they are usually at the same YFC conference center where we just had the youth leader conference in northern South Africa. However, this year, that venue is unavailable and so the conference has been moved to near Cape Town. So, though it is much more expensive to travel there, we are trusting God to provide the funds for all of the YFC Botswana national and international staff/volunteers to go down there. Flying is way too expensive, and the trains are not running right now for some reason. So driving it is! It’s about a 20 hour drive each way. We are staying overnight half-way at either a church or a retirement home. This past Saturday, the YFC Botswana staff did a sponsored walk fundraiser where we all hiked to the top of Kgale Hill, the highest “mountain” in Gaborone. It was fun to hike again and to see the view of the dam and surrounding hills.
I’ll have to share later about my experience Friday at the hospital in Mochudi, visiting and praying for the sick. I’ll be heading back to the hospital tomorrow and/or Friday as well.
Thanks for your continued interest, encouragement, and prayers.
Love, Em
Monday, September 6, 2010
Another Divine Appointment...and some adventures!
Dumelang!
Greetings all! Well, remember last time how I said I have no official ministry these couple weeks? Well, God apparently likes setting up “unofficial ministry” opportunities. Just five days after God opened up the door to share the gospel with the boys who overheard me worshipping atop the highest hill in Mochudi, the Lord set up another divine appointment in the capital city, Gaborone…
Another Divine Appointment!
I was waiting to get my Botswana Driver’s License for hours and decided to leave the busy waiting room and sit in the lobby area of the high rise office building. A few minutes later while I was reading a book, a businessman came up to me out of the blue and asked if I might possibly have something to say that could encourage him during a hard time. He went on to explain the problem he was facing, and asked if there was anything I could share with him to help him focus on God and realize that God can bring good out of difficult things. I thought, Um…yeah, it’s kind of the story of my life lately! I pulled out my mp3 player which has a photo album on it entitled “Triumph out of Tragedy,” with photos detailing my accident/recovery. Over the course of the next half hour, I was able to share all about the accident, recovery, extending mercy in court, etc and how God can bring beauty from the ashes. Later, I shared about losing my dad and how God’s grace has proven sufficient even after that.
I gave him a little booklet YFC makes that explains more about the gospel and has a form he can fill out to receive the discipleship bible study course. He said he wants to get focused on God, to buy a bible and read it, to pray, to go to a Christian church (he’d been going to a Baha’i Faith center off and on lately), to be a man of God. He wants to really know right from wrong, and do what is right. If that wasn’t a divine appointment, I don’t know what is!
It’s cool to realize that even that conversation was another way God was bringing beauty from the ashes of our accident. Jessica’s mom Cindy thanked me for sharing the story of talking with this businessman, saying, “I was telling Kjel just this afternoon that I still struggle with making any sense out of Jess not being here. It helps SO much to read that God is using what sometimes feels like too much pain in my own life to bring glory to Himself and to bring people into a closer walk with Him.”
Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…
Going back a bit, there’s still more from the youth leader conference in South Africa that I wanted to share. When I got back from the conference, I read an email from my aunt Roni (Dad’s sister) in England in response to my previous blog post. I had mentioned in that post how I had written a letter to one of the Canadian short-term volunteers encouraging her with Hebrews 12:1-2 [“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith”] and to have a marathon mentality in this race of faith…and amazingly, she had written me a letter that same night also quoting Hebrews 12:1-2 and telling me that my work here is a marathon! Well, turns out my aunt Roni had just been preparing a lesson for family church on Hebrews 11-12, but focusing on Hebrews 12:1-2!
When I read Roni’s email telling me that, I recalled how at the conference, they had shown us a short film based on Hebrews 12:1-2 and how the “great cloud of witnesses” cheering us on as we run our race is made up of those heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews 11, but also the great heroes of the faith in our own lives who have gone on to heaven ahead of us. They are cheering for us, “Come on! Don’t quit! It’s worth every effort you make! You can do this by the grace of God! Keep running!”
Then after we watched that short film as part of a silent reflective journey where we went to several rooms/stations to reflect on things, journal, read quotes, I went into a room where there was a paper about 30 feet long where they had drawn circles for faces where we could write in some of the “great cloud of witnesses” and share a bit about them. Many people were writing in loved ones who had died. Here is what I wrote, through tears that came as I wrote:
My Dad – he just joined the great cloud of witnesses in heaven 2 months ago. I know he’s proud and cheering loud, as God provides the grace for me to keep running the race He set before me. My dad supported my calling to missions in Botswana. The last time I saw him was when he “gave me away” on Valentine’s Day to leave home and follow the call of my Beloved to Botswana. He always supported my following God’s call, even if it meant saying goodbye…for now.
So yeah, that is something I had just realized that week—I don’t know if I’ll ever get married where Dad would’ve given me away to the bridegroom, but I’d realized that Dad seeing me off to Botswana was, in essence, his “giving me away” to my Beloved [Christ] and entrusting me to His care here. On Valentine’s Day, no less. When my former youth pastor had written on my facebook, “so the Father is flying out his girl on Valentine’s Day, huh? How perfectly poetic!”, Dad had written to me that her comment made him teary eyed as reality was dawning that I’d be leaving.
Obviously, Dad had known for years I would be leaving and he had “given me away” to the Lord in his heart. I can still remember vividly a very meaningful conversation with Dad when I was 19, after I had just told my parents how I felt called to be a long-term missionary in Botswana. He said, “I hope you weren’t afraid to tell us what you feel God is calling you to do. As we see it, you were a gift from God, and we’re just giving you back.” So in his heart, he had already entrusted me to Christ’s care, but the day that he actually finally had to say goodbye and see me off to Botswana was Valentine’s Day. So, in a way, Dad did “give me away” to my true Bridegroom on Valentine’s Day...and now we know it was truly saying goodbye until we meet again in the Kingdom of Heaven. But for being the last time I saw him, it is pretty poetic, isn’t it? And my Beloved is indeed caring for me here in Botswana. Always faithful. In good times and bad. In sickness and in health. Until death …brings us closer—for death will NOT part us. Nothing can. Amen.
My first day back at the internet after the conference in South Africa, I got the email from my aunt about Hebrews 12:1-2 and emailed her back to tell her how Hebrews 12:1-2 had come up at the conference too. Right after that email, I drove home and one of my housemates Katie (not knowing I had just been writing/thinking about Heb. 12:1-2) showed me the craft poster that the kids at the daycare holiday program made that day—they had made footprints with paint and painted Hebrews 12:1 on it! It’s cool to see the ways that God is encouraging us to keep running with perseverance the race that is set before us.
An Epic Journey…brass bands and baboons!
Speaking of running with perseverance, Saturday I set out on a long run. I ran to one of my favorite spots along the river, where I can sit on a low-lying branch and pray/reflect. Then I walked a bit further along the footpaths to another spot I like to sit, where I saw my four-foot lizard friend again. I have learned that it is a monitor lizard, meaning a mix between a massive iguana, snake, and crocodile. Seeing as how he has been there by that same spot in the river the three times I’ve been there, I think it’s safe to say it is the same lizard. This means I should give him a name. Any suggestions?
Then after exploring other trails, I made it back to the juncture where I could go back home. I had been gone over 45 minutes at this point and was about 15 minutes from home. But I heard the sounds of a marching band in the distance…and it beckoned me to discover more trails by ‘following the music’. So I set off on little footpaths in the direction of the brass sounds and drums. This part of the village is just nature/bush with little footpaths (no roads, no houses). I kept going, encountering goats and cows along the way. The music was getting louder. Then I made it to the river again…and found a safe place to cross on some huge pipes that had been piled up to form a bridge. I could hear I was very close at this point…Sure enough, I discovered the band playing outside at a church. I walked by, and they invited me to come in and sit next to the band to listen.
It was a band made up of all ages…of about 20 brass instruments (tubas, baritones, trumpets, trombone), a bass drum, a snare drum, and a healthy contingent of tambourine tappers. I was impressed to see that most of them did not have music in front of them…and those that did, only had solfege letters written [ie. S D RM …= So Dol Re Mi]. The director was instructing the tubas on their part and he sang it in solfege for them. In my music major opinion, that takes way more musical insight and aptitude to play by solfege…having to always think in the particular key what note is which solfege symbol…instead of just seeing notes in front of them. I guess I wasn’t expecting to encounter something like this in a village in Africa.
On my journey back home, I wasn’t able to retrace my steps because I forget all the twists and turns, but I knew the general direction to head through the bush section…and in so doing, I saw 3 baboons! Those were the first baboons I have seen in the wild here in Mochudi. I’ve seen some monkeys, but these were bigger. Sweetness! Soon afterwards, I recognized where I was, and headed home the way I usually take. This involved responding to the “Emily!” shouts from my little friends who I say hi to each time as I pass their house. I usually stop and high-five them, but they were at the neighbors’ yard and yelled and waved from there. Their names are Rose, Lame (pronounced Lah-may, not Lame!!), Tumisang, and Botho. Then as I kept running, a little while further down the road the kids, as usual, yelled “Emily!” and came running out to the road to meet me smiling and excited, and so we ran together for a few minutes as is their joyous custom (they giggle and laugh most of the time, which makes me smile too). Yesterday was just 3 kids, but some days it is six barefoot kids ranging from 5-10 years old.
One day whilst running with my barefoot “posse” of 6, we passed an older man smoking. He smiled, noting my excellent posse, and said, “Shapo, Mama” which means “It’s all good, Mama!”. That made me smile as well. Who knew when I came to Botswana I would become a mama? That’s what they call you if you are female, even without children. And that my name is now Lekgoa [white person]. Every time I go running, I hear from the yards little voices excitingly yelling, “Lekgoa!! Lekgoa!! How are you?” One time, another YFC volunteer was told by a little child, “Your name…is Lekgoa.” Awesome. One day I was walking in town along the sidewalk in Mochudi, when a young man in his 20s coming towards me started doing a jive dance and chanting “Lekgoa! Lekgoa!” If only I could re-enact his jive for you…it was amazing. Now that the kids are getting to know my name, more often I’m hearing “Emily!! Emily!!” instead of “Lekgoa! Lekgoa!” when I go running. Earlier this week while running with about 5 kids a few minutes from their house, another kid came running down an adjoining path towards us, yelling “Emily!” and joining the posse.
After the adventurous run, I spoke at our Coffee Bar drop-in center Saturday night about AIDS and abstinence. I will share more about that in a future post, including how we’ve given Coffee Bar a new name.
Blessings until next time!
~Em
Greetings all! Well, remember last time how I said I have no official ministry these couple weeks? Well, God apparently likes setting up “unofficial ministry” opportunities. Just five days after God opened up the door to share the gospel with the boys who overheard me worshipping atop the highest hill in Mochudi, the Lord set up another divine appointment in the capital city, Gaborone…
Another Divine Appointment!
I was waiting to get my Botswana Driver’s License for hours and decided to leave the busy waiting room and sit in the lobby area of the high rise office building. A few minutes later while I was reading a book, a businessman came up to me out of the blue and asked if I might possibly have something to say that could encourage him during a hard time. He went on to explain the problem he was facing, and asked if there was anything I could share with him to help him focus on God and realize that God can bring good out of difficult things. I thought, Um…yeah, it’s kind of the story of my life lately! I pulled out my mp3 player which has a photo album on it entitled “Triumph out of Tragedy,” with photos detailing my accident/recovery. Over the course of the next half hour, I was able to share all about the accident, recovery, extending mercy in court, etc and how God can bring beauty from the ashes. Later, I shared about losing my dad and how God’s grace has proven sufficient even after that.
I gave him a little booklet YFC makes that explains more about the gospel and has a form he can fill out to receive the discipleship bible study course. He said he wants to get focused on God, to buy a bible and read it, to pray, to go to a Christian church (he’d been going to a Baha’i Faith center off and on lately), to be a man of God. He wants to really know right from wrong, and do what is right. If that wasn’t a divine appointment, I don’t know what is!
It’s cool to realize that even that conversation was another way God was bringing beauty from the ashes of our accident. Jessica’s mom Cindy thanked me for sharing the story of talking with this businessman, saying, “I was telling Kjel just this afternoon that I still struggle with making any sense out of Jess not being here. It helps SO much to read that God is using what sometimes feels like too much pain in my own life to bring glory to Himself and to bring people into a closer walk with Him.”
Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…
Going back a bit, there’s still more from the youth leader conference in South Africa that I wanted to share. When I got back from the conference, I read an email from my aunt Roni (Dad’s sister) in England in response to my previous blog post. I had mentioned in that post how I had written a letter to one of the Canadian short-term volunteers encouraging her with Hebrews 12:1-2 [“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith”] and to have a marathon mentality in this race of faith…and amazingly, she had written me a letter that same night also quoting Hebrews 12:1-2 and telling me that my work here is a marathon! Well, turns out my aunt Roni had just been preparing a lesson for family church on Hebrews 11-12, but focusing on Hebrews 12:1-2!
When I read Roni’s email telling me that, I recalled how at the conference, they had shown us a short film based on Hebrews 12:1-2 and how the “great cloud of witnesses” cheering us on as we run our race is made up of those heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews 11, but also the great heroes of the faith in our own lives who have gone on to heaven ahead of us. They are cheering for us, “Come on! Don’t quit! It’s worth every effort you make! You can do this by the grace of God! Keep running!”
Then after we watched that short film as part of a silent reflective journey where we went to several rooms/stations to reflect on things, journal, read quotes, I went into a room where there was a paper about 30 feet long where they had drawn circles for faces where we could write in some of the “great cloud of witnesses” and share a bit about them. Many people were writing in loved ones who had died. Here is what I wrote, through tears that came as I wrote:
My Dad – he just joined the great cloud of witnesses in heaven 2 months ago. I know he’s proud and cheering loud, as God provides the grace for me to keep running the race He set before me. My dad supported my calling to missions in Botswana. The last time I saw him was when he “gave me away” on Valentine’s Day to leave home and follow the call of my Beloved to Botswana. He always supported my following God’s call, even if it meant saying goodbye…for now.
So yeah, that is something I had just realized that week—I don’t know if I’ll ever get married where Dad would’ve given me away to the bridegroom, but I’d realized that Dad seeing me off to Botswana was, in essence, his “giving me away” to my Beloved [Christ] and entrusting me to His care here. On Valentine’s Day, no less. When my former youth pastor had written on my facebook, “so the Father is flying out his girl on Valentine’s Day, huh? How perfectly poetic!”, Dad had written to me that her comment made him teary eyed as reality was dawning that I’d be leaving.
Obviously, Dad had known for years I would be leaving and he had “given me away” to the Lord in his heart. I can still remember vividly a very meaningful conversation with Dad when I was 19, after I had just told my parents how I felt called to be a long-term missionary in Botswana. He said, “I hope you weren’t afraid to tell us what you feel God is calling you to do. As we see it, you were a gift from God, and we’re just giving you back.” So in his heart, he had already entrusted me to Christ’s care, but the day that he actually finally had to say goodbye and see me off to Botswana was Valentine’s Day. So, in a way, Dad did “give me away” to my true Bridegroom on Valentine’s Day...and now we know it was truly saying goodbye until we meet again in the Kingdom of Heaven. But for being the last time I saw him, it is pretty poetic, isn’t it? And my Beloved is indeed caring for me here in Botswana. Always faithful. In good times and bad. In sickness and in health. Until death …brings us closer—for death will NOT part us. Nothing can. Amen.
My first day back at the internet after the conference in South Africa, I got the email from my aunt about Hebrews 12:1-2 and emailed her back to tell her how Hebrews 12:1-2 had come up at the conference too. Right after that email, I drove home and one of my housemates Katie (not knowing I had just been writing/thinking about Heb. 12:1-2) showed me the craft poster that the kids at the daycare holiday program made that day—they had made footprints with paint and painted Hebrews 12:1 on it! It’s cool to see the ways that God is encouraging us to keep running with perseverance the race that is set before us.
An Epic Journey…brass bands and baboons!
Speaking of running with perseverance, Saturday I set out on a long run. I ran to one of my favorite spots along the river, where I can sit on a low-lying branch and pray/reflect. Then I walked a bit further along the footpaths to another spot I like to sit, where I saw my four-foot lizard friend again. I have learned that it is a monitor lizard, meaning a mix between a massive iguana, snake, and crocodile. Seeing as how he has been there by that same spot in the river the three times I’ve been there, I think it’s safe to say it is the same lizard. This means I should give him a name. Any suggestions?
Then after exploring other trails, I made it back to the juncture where I could go back home. I had been gone over 45 minutes at this point and was about 15 minutes from home. But I heard the sounds of a marching band in the distance…and it beckoned me to discover more trails by ‘following the music’. So I set off on little footpaths in the direction of the brass sounds and drums. This part of the village is just nature/bush with little footpaths (no roads, no houses). I kept going, encountering goats and cows along the way. The music was getting louder. Then I made it to the river again…and found a safe place to cross on some huge pipes that had been piled up to form a bridge. I could hear I was very close at this point…Sure enough, I discovered the band playing outside at a church. I walked by, and they invited me to come in and sit next to the band to listen.
It was a band made up of all ages…of about 20 brass instruments (tubas, baritones, trumpets, trombone), a bass drum, a snare drum, and a healthy contingent of tambourine tappers. I was impressed to see that most of them did not have music in front of them…and those that did, only had solfege letters written [ie. S D RM …= So Dol Re Mi]. The director was instructing the tubas on their part and he sang it in solfege for them. In my music major opinion, that takes way more musical insight and aptitude to play by solfege…having to always think in the particular key what note is which solfege symbol…instead of just seeing notes in front of them. I guess I wasn’t expecting to encounter something like this in a village in Africa.
On my journey back home, I wasn’t able to retrace my steps because I forget all the twists and turns, but I knew the general direction to head through the bush section…and in so doing, I saw 3 baboons! Those were the first baboons I have seen in the wild here in Mochudi. I’ve seen some monkeys, but these were bigger. Sweetness! Soon afterwards, I recognized where I was, and headed home the way I usually take. This involved responding to the “Emily!” shouts from my little friends who I say hi to each time as I pass their house. I usually stop and high-five them, but they were at the neighbors’ yard and yelled and waved from there. Their names are Rose, Lame (pronounced Lah-may, not Lame!!), Tumisang, and Botho. Then as I kept running, a little while further down the road the kids, as usual, yelled “Emily!” and came running out to the road to meet me smiling and excited, and so we ran together for a few minutes as is their joyous custom (they giggle and laugh most of the time, which makes me smile too). Yesterday was just 3 kids, but some days it is six barefoot kids ranging from 5-10 years old.
One day whilst running with my barefoot “posse” of 6, we passed an older man smoking. He smiled, noting my excellent posse, and said, “Shapo, Mama” which means “It’s all good, Mama!”. That made me smile as well. Who knew when I came to Botswana I would become a mama? That’s what they call you if you are female, even without children. And that my name is now Lekgoa [white person]. Every time I go running, I hear from the yards little voices excitingly yelling, “Lekgoa!! Lekgoa!! How are you?” One time, another YFC volunteer was told by a little child, “Your name…is Lekgoa.” Awesome. One day I was walking in town along the sidewalk in Mochudi, when a young man in his 20s coming towards me started doing a jive dance and chanting “Lekgoa! Lekgoa!” If only I could re-enact his jive for you…it was amazing. Now that the kids are getting to know my name, more often I’m hearing “Emily!! Emily!!” instead of “Lekgoa! Lekgoa!” when I go running. Earlier this week while running with about 5 kids a few minutes from their house, another kid came running down an adjoining path towards us, yelling “Emily!” and joining the posse.
After the adventurous run, I spoke at our Coffee Bar drop-in center Saturday night about AIDS and abstinence. I will share more about that in a future post, including how we’ve given Coffee Bar a new name.
Blessings until next time!
~Em
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