Botswana! I was so excited to be in Africa. Before we left Cambodia I was rather neutral about coming to Africa. We had moved so much already and the excitement of a new place was far less then it was 4 months ago. Still, a new continent and culture was intriguing. When we landed in South Africa all of that changed. I couldn’t believe it. Walking out of the airport, getting on a bus, watching out the window as we rolled down the road; it was so beautiful. We stayed in South Africa for a few days and it was hard to believe how much God was romancing me by this place already (check out my “story of the entitled world racer” blog!). I was filled, rested and ready to go for the next month in Botswana. When we arrived at the bus station in Gabarone, Botswana we were met with confusion, a bit of anxiety, and stress. We grabbed a ride to our host with another team (stuffing 11 of us and all our stuff into a comically tiny van) and we were finally home. My team and I were staying with the Botswana chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ (BotsCru) in Gabarone city. Our job was evangelism on the university of Botswana campus, a beautiful campus I might add. We went everyday for the first three or four days, and then a strike happened. It started simple, students protesting about the government not giving them their financial allowances that they were promised. Half the students had received them while the others seemed to be getting stiffed, and they were mad about it. Soon the peaceful protest escalated (as most college student things do). One burned zebra statue and a robbed bookstore later and the campus was closed. As you can imagining this put quite a damper on our evangelism efforts. Closed campus = no students. So we waited and waited. *Spoiler alert* the campus never opened back up before we left. What a month to be here! We get here do 3 days of ministry and then nothing. Why did God bring us to this place then take away our ministry? What are we supposed to be doing here? Why are we here? These questions were so real for us. While we worked with the ministry and did some ministry around town by ourselves at the end of the month, I’m still asking some these questions. What good did we do? I felt purposeless.
I’m going to tell you I don’t have the answer, and sometimes we won’t. The fact that we didn’t tangibly see God working through us this month does not mean that we can’t or didn’t have a place in His plan and purpose. We spent or time mostly with each other, and doing small evangelism and prayer walks in the city. Some of my team had some cool opportunities to minister to people in our area and we spent lots of time restlessly resting. Looking back I know there were opportunities that I allowed to pass me by (hind sight is 20/20 after all). Hopefully I will learn from that in the future, but to say over all that we had no purpose or effect in the community would arrogant; who am I to say God didn’t use us or work in us in ways we couldn’t understand? We put God in a box when we determine his plan or our purpose in that plan by just what we can see. We were there. Furthermore, HE put us there, so he had to have plan and a reason for us to be there. That’s it. That’s all we need to know. So heres the question: are we ok with not knowing? Can we stick to our “Yes” when we don’t see where He is in that yes? They seem like simple questions until you’re faced with their reality. It’s so much easier to feel bummed and purposeless then to have faith in his bigger plan. Anyway theres some food for thought from Botswana..
Thanks for stopping by,
Lyndie.
