Hey friends! I hope everyone had a great Christmas time with friends and family. I hope there was lots of pie, cookies and hot chocolate. On my part, my Christmas was obviously very different than any other Christmas I have celebrated. For Christmas, my team left our house in the city to camp in the bush of Africa for 7 days. We stayed in a village called Samochema.
On the 5 hour bus ride there, I watched out the window as we drove by house after house in the middle of nowhere. (I usually would have slept the whole time but I was told we might see elephants on the way so I fought the sleepiness – we didn’t even see any elephants but that’s a story for another time). Anyways, these “houses” were nothing more than a small plot of land that had at most 4 small structures. As we were driving by all of these “houses” I was in awe that people actually lived like this in the middle of nowhere in the heat of Africa. My initial thoughts were ‘how boring would life be here?’ and ‘I bet they are miserable’. But thanks to Gods humorous side, we pulled into our destination that looked exactly like every other house/hut I had watched pass by the way there. It consisted of a one room structure that serves as the bed room, partial kitchen, closet and storage. One structure used for the bathroom and the third cooking. This homestead also had a room for storage as well. I couldn’t imaging how a whole family (and extended family) could share such a small space and still live comfortably, but for this past week, I got a glimpse of what it’s really like to live in this part of Africa. We slept in our tents, showered with buckets, cooked over a fire and did life with the people here. I have never seen hospitality comparable to that of people there. They always went out of their way to make sure their visitors were comfortable and had all they needed. They walked to get us water multiple times a day and continuously set aside their wants and needs to assist ours. They were joyous and hard working.
You’re probably wondering, “why did they randomly go camping in the middle of Africa the week of Christmas?”. Praise be to the Lord because I’m about to tell you why!!!! Within the large church we serve at back in the city, there are multiple branch churches scattered around Botswana. Every year for Christmas, all of the branch churches gather together to have one large Christmas celebration. My team was sent to a village called Samochema in order to help serve alongside of the church hosting this celebration. Not only did we get to help with the service but we got to do a lot of cool things as well. I saw God move and show up in ways that I have never seen before.
Probably the coolest thing that happened was during evangelism. We devoted two of the days do this… (I got so sunburnt the first day that I cried). But as we were evangelizing, the 15 of us split into 3 groups, each with a translator. In my group alone, every single person we met had never heard of Jesus. Most of them knew who God was, but that was the end of their understanding. It seemed so crazy to us that someone had never heard of Jesus, because after all, he is the reason we are able to have a relationship with God and the reason we get to receive eternal life. It is so important to know who Jesus is. We need to know him to know forgiveness, grace, mercy and salvation. We need Him to be an example for us and we need Him in order to understand the fullness of God. Moral of the story is, WE NEED HIM. So we got the gift of being able to share the story of Jesus with these people – and I mean the WHOLE story. All the way from creation, to His birth, to his life, miracles and wonders, crucifixion, rising from the dead and finally the second coming… they got hear it alllll.
It sounds complicated when I write this, but it’s really an easy thing to explain. It’s the simple gospel. The simple message that we were sinners and separated from God, God loved us and wanted us to be reunited with him, He sent Jesus to die for our shortcomings, and offered us eternal life. It says in Romans 10:10 “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” This doesn’t mean that our life gets easy and perfect – but it means that we have a greater joy that far outweighs anything the world has to offer.
So after explaining this, we expected that they would need some time to process, ask questions and make a decision, but that’s not what happened. Every single person was more than happy to receive Christ. It was such an easy decision for them to make. It was like they were thinking “why wouldn’t I want this”? It was so surprising to us when person after person wanted to receive Christ into their life. In a matter of 3-4 hours, my group alone got to see 24 people accept Christ.
Why was it so easy for them to accept Christ but yet so hard for people in America to do so? In America, we have distorted who God is so much. We have fallen sooo far from the simple gospel. Denominations have divided us, even though we believe the same bible. Yes there is room for interpretation, but the story of Jesus and our salvation is universal. Most of all, we have placed worldly things higher than God. In Mark 10:25 it says ” It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Jesus talks about the rich being poor and the poor being rich. If you can understand this idea, it is easy to understand why it was so easy for the people we met to accept Christ. It was easy for them because they had little to no worldy things to hold on to. It was easy for them to see how important Christ is. Their house isn’t a source of pride, their cars don’t define them – they don’t even have cars – and their education and job title aren’t their source of confidence. In short, they were poor in a worldy sense BUT that left space for them to become rich in spirit. When they heard the message of Christ, none of their worldy possessions could compare to the glory of Gods eternal invitation. That made it easy to hear the simple gospel for what it really is. Simple. But in America, our houses, cars, clothes, education, jobs, money, looks, reputation, and popularity seem to hold far more importance than God. It makes it hard for us to leave behind our worldy life and enter into the type of life God calls us to live.
That was some heavy stuff – but its the truth. Obviously God has so much patience and grace for us, but he’s always calling us higher. I’ve found it freeing on the race to live with less. I’m by no means “poor” but not having to think about possessions has left room for me to become more rich in spirit. We saw this first hand in Samochema. Wealth, status and looks are fleeting but God is not(:
Here are a few more pictures and stories from our trip:
This is us playing “human tug of war”:
This is me hatching a baby crocodile with my hands:
The baby crocodile!!!:
The sunsets were amazing:
This is us roasting marshmallows Christmas night (I ate 9):
This is the kitchen we cooked in (Featuring my sunburnt face):
Here are our tents w/ a random dog:
The entirety of the families homestead:
Thank you everyone who is supporting me in this!!!
Love
Ashley
