Hello friends!
We have been in Botswana for a little more than three weeks now, its about time I let all of you know what we are up to. We are staying with a large organization called Love Botswana. Within love Botswana, they have many different ministries.
Heres a list of all the things Love Botswana does:
- Main church (very large, for those of you who know what Westwood Church is, it is very similar to that)
- Creative arts program
- Evangelism and Discipleship
- Youth and High school Ministry
- Food and Clothing Distribution
- Hospital Ministry
- Rescue Center for Children/ Orphanage
- Bible College
- International School (Grades K-12)
- Prison Ministry
- Reach4Life school ministry
- Social Work Aides
- Studio 7
- Village Church Life Centre
And much more….
I have been able to see most of these ministries in action. Almost every day we are at the main church working. So far, my favorite ministry I have been able to do is prison ministry. The story with this is actually pretty comical. On thing pretty typical of the being on the world race and living in a different culture is that being on time and having accurate communication is not really a thing. With this in mind, my team gets picked for prison ministry without knowing what we are going to do there at all. So on the drive there, we ask the pastor who is driving us there what we are going to be doing. He tells us that he just wants us to give a short message only 10 minutes long. 10 minutes isn’t too bad at all, but we had nothing prepared. So on the 10 minute car ride there, we scrambled for something to talk on and decided that two of us were going to share a short message from the word and that would be that. (Me being one of the two people). If you didn’t already know this about me, Ive always wanted to do prison and addiction recovery ministry, so I jumped at the opportunity.
When we got the prison, security was nothing like it would be in the states. We just sat and waited in a small building with only benches lining the walls and a bathroom for 10ish minutes. The pastor went to talk to someone and then came and got us to go inside the prison. We were never asked our names, where we were from or what we were doing there. Nobody’s bags were searched or even questioned, we just got to bring anything we wanted in. I mean of course we weren’t bringing anything bad in, but I’m just saying that it would be real easy for someone to do if they wanted. Very interesting.
The pastor got us and we just walked right inside the gate. As the gate closed behind us, the pastor looks at me and casually says “actually you will be talking for one hour”. AHH!! Now we were really on the spot and had no idea what to expect. When we got into where we would be gathering, about 45 prisoners were already worshipping acapella while they were waiting on us. If you can imagine 45 African men singing praises to God in their native tongue acapella, it was intense. Immediately, any sense of fear and intimidation left. These 45 grown men, dressed in prison suits, gathered in a single room on plastic chairs, all chose to be there on their own accord. None of them were forced to come to church that morning, but they all honestly wanted to be there. It was incredibly encouraging. The fact that these men in the prison were choosing to pursue Christ in the midst of their captivity was sweet.
When it was time for us to speak, I was real excited. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to teach on, but the Lord brought to mind my own testimony and connected it to the story of Saul’s conversion to Paul in Acts chapter 9. (READ IT!) Saul was straight up going around persecuting and murdering Christain’s. While he was on his way to plot the murder of Christain’s, the Lord audibly spoke to him. The actual story is a lot more detailed but the purpose was the Lord calling Saul into a total 180 degree turn. The Lord took Saul and made him one of the greatest evangelists and workers for the Lord ever. To mark Saul’s conversion from murderer to Christ follower, he was given the name Paul. The gist of this story is highlighting how the Lord chooses nobodies and turns them into somebodies. Its a concept that I didn’t feel qualified to share with men much older and experienced than I,never the less prisoners, but I wasn’t speaking from my own wisdom, it is wisdom that the Lord has made plain to us in His word. Me and my other teammate ended up talking for about 25 minutes each. The prisoners were so engaged and receptive as they followed along in their bibles the whole time, highlighting and writing notes.
There have been so many times like this where I didn’t feel qualified to teach, but the Lord calls us higher than that. Inevitably it ends with me asking myself the question “am I more God-fearing or man-fearing?”. You cannot be both at the same time. I am constantly learning to make a decision to have reverence for the Lord in every situation. It’s about speaking what the Lord has to say, not worrying about what people are going to think about it. It’s not easy, but its worth it!!!!!
XOXOXOXOXOXO
