It’s our 5th month out of 11 on the World Race. This month we are in Botswana, Africa living in a small village about 30 minutes outside the country’s capital city, Gaborone.
Our ministry partners own and operate a small cafe in the village as well as an aquaponics farm.
In Touch Cafe:
My teammate, Kelsey, and I have started working in the cafe as baristas. (Y’all, I cannot express just how exciting this is for me!) I love love love coffee and I love when coffee shops are a haven for people to have community with one another. And that’s just what this cafe is! The cafe also doubles as a bookstore providing the people of the village with cheap copies of various Christian theological, lifestyle, and educational books. They also sell Bibles and journals, and paintings by local artists.
On Wednesday evenings the cafe hosts a community worship session. Friday evenings are community Bible study, and Saturday nights we show a movie- sometimes educational and sometimes fun. The cafe opens so many doors for us to meet and get to know those around the community, but that hasn’t stopped us from spending our afternoons walking around the village. We try to spread the word of our events and usually end up making new friends. (:
For His Glory Aquaponics Farming:
Oh. My. Goodness. This is the COOLEST farming technique I’ve ever heard of!! Because explaining is hard, I’m going to give you the dictionary definition and then try to explain with more detail. Aquaponics-a system of aquaculture in which the waste produced by farmed fish or other aquatic creatures supplies the nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which in turn purify the water.
This farm runs inside a large greenhouse tunnel. One end of the tunnel houses three kiddy pools full of fish, and the fish fill the water with nutrients for the plants. The fish water gets pumped out through a system of pipes throughout the rest of the greenhouse. There are trenches about a foot deep sectioned throughout the tunnel with styrofoam floating on top of the water. The styrofoam contains little holes that hold little baskets of plants. (This greenhouse grows basil, thyme, mint, cucumber, strawberries, lettuce, and tomatoes.) The trenches are filled with the fish water and the roots of the plants live and grow in the water. After a while the water is recycled outside into other parts of the farm for the other plants.
We spend our mornings working in the farm. Harvesting, pruning, making compost, planting, transplanting, cleaning/weeding, and generally taking care of all the plants. We joke because everything we do with the plants can be used as a metaphor for Jesus. On a serious note, though, EVERYTHING WE DO AT THE FARM IS A METAPHOR FOR JESUS.
Yesterday we were working with the compost. It’s a dirty job, but the beauty we found in it was so great! The waste/trash gets thrown out into this heap of nasty uselessness, but overtime it’s transformed into soil that we then use to plant life in and the nasty useless waste becomes a vital thing that grows something beautiful. GUYS! Think about our testimonies- our stories! Our stories tend to contain some gross stuff that we throw out because we think it’s useless information….BUT if we allow Him, Jesus redeems that grossness and with it we can encourage and build up other people. We can aid in growing beautiful things!
Anyways, I’m excited! And now you have a little insight to what this month is looking like for our team.
