Dumela! Hello from Botswana!
Ministry here has been crazy. There’s been a significant amount of moving around this month. And endless bus rides. We began this month driving from Cape Town to Johannesburg (the Capitol of Botswana) in 18 hours. Then Johannesburg to Gaborone (the Capitol of Botswana) in 7 hours. Then Gaborone to Maun in 10 hours. For a grand total of 35 hours.
We’re based here in Maun which is surrounded by the Okavango Delta working with an NGO (non-governmental organization / basically a non-profit) called Love Botswana. Feel free to look it up! Its founders are also the pastors of the Village Church. Our team (Team Intrepidus you can find all my teammate’s pictures on the left side of this blog) have picked different departments to work in. Joshua is teaching Math, English, and whatever else they throw at him. Kevin is working with street kids and meeting them where they’re at daily. Tressa, Alison, Avi, and Jack (Jackelyn our squad leader who’s with us this month) are working with W.A.R. (Women Against Rape). Defilement and Rape are one of the leading crimes here in Africa and especially in Botswana. W.A.R. takes and educated approach to diagnose the problem of “Rape Culture” and identify triggers behind it instead of trying to band-aid it after the fact.
Throughout the weeks I’ve personally been given the the opportunity for work with the audio and graphic design department at Village Church. Who would have thought that in the middle of Botswana I would get a chance to work on video announcement, re-wiring the church stage, use photoshop AND Final Cut Pro X for videos, as well as work on audio recordings for a radio station broadcast to ALL OF BOTSWANA!? Crazy right?
Every weekend my team has packed up our stuff and headed out to different outlying villages in the Bush to live with the various people groups and just love on them. The first weekend we went to a place called Sehitwa and the second weekend we went to Gumare. Armed with our tents and water filters and bug spray, we spent all weekend going door to door and just having conversations with the locals.
Yesterday I got to do prison ministry for the first time. You should have seen their faces when we first walked in. I’m sure they had a certain expectation of what we would look like and how we would act, thus is the norm anytime someone hears a “missionary” is coming. But between my team and the other team (Team Argonauts who you can find on this site too), over have of us have visible tattoos and two of the guys have full sleeves of tattoos on both arms. Needless to say, the inmates sat up when we walked in. Kevin opened with sharing from the book of Hosea, and started with the word “whore”. Clearly we were trying to get their attention. When was the last time you hear that word in church? As we finished up, all of their eyes were glued to the speakers and what they had to say. It was an incredible experience.
Love Botswana has extremely strict policies regarding photography in order to protect those who work closely with them. So this month I was forced to take off from Photography.
Internet is sparse here in the bush, but I wanted to send this quick update out to you all. Much Love,
William
