Botswana Week 2: The Honeymoon is Over

Every time Cru sends a team overseas, the team is taught to expect an end to the initial euphoria of the Honeymoon Stage. Our honeymoon came to an end this week. What’s really awesome, though, is the way the team is handling the new stage we have entered.

One major contribution to the end of the honeymoon has been health issues. Many people on the team have had sloshy stomachs. Even the kids have had tummy issues. Our team has bonded over this shared experience, and we celebrate small victories together. About half of the team has caught a bug that’s going around, too. It seems to just be a serious cold, with the basic throat and sinus symptoms. It slammed me hard last night; I had trouble swallowing and speaking and was forced to go to bed early. Most of us feel surprisingly great when we’re with the kids, but then the yucky feeling returns on the way home. Please pray for our health! We want to make the most of every moment here, and we’re fighting as hard as we can, but we need strength and healing.

Several students have expressed a feeling of homesickness. One girl has lost two loved ones since we arrived two weeks ago. One of the guys got word that his family was in a serious accident, and his sister-in-law was injured pretty seriously. We’re feeling the effects of spiritual warfare, which dulls the once-shiny glean of ministry in Africa.

Then there’s the time issue. Everything takes longer here. Washing clothes by hand in the bath tub takes sooo long! Our clothes are filthy, so we have to wash and rinse everything repeatedly to get it sort-of-kind-of clean. The water supply is limited, so we can’t wash clothes when someone is showering or washing dishes. Wringing out our clothes is tiring, and our drip-drying method usually takes at least a day. Some team members have hung their clothes in our outside kitchen area. We ran out of room, though, so my clothesline zigzags across my bedroom; I have to duck through clothes almost every day. Getting everyone into the vans takes a long time. Gathering everyone for meetings takes a long time. Preparing breakfast and hand washing dishes takes a long time. Grocery shopping takes a long time, and those of us who shop for the team breakfast food have to go 2-3 times a week. Inching through the crowd of excited kids in Old Naledi takes a long time. Sitting in rush hour traffic takes time. Waiting for water to shower takes time. Loading a webpage takes time. Going through the appropriate greetings before discussing business or even just asking a question takes time. I’ve seen frustration on the faces of team members when when s/he’d prefer efficiency and speed to our molasses-like team movements. I love that life is slower here, but it even wears on me from time to time. I (we, really) miss the efficiency of life in America. We miss the convenience of time-savers like washing machines and high-speed internet.

And the food. We eat well here, for sure. But lunch and dinner in the dining hall has become predictable. There’s always rice and pasta, a chicken dish, a beef or ox dish, and some sort of veggie (though the veggies are often things like pickled beets and various forms of cabbage). The only beverage available is super-sugary juice cocktail. We get excited when we get rolls or French fries. I, personally, get really excited for mixed vegetables. Some of the guys stopped at a pizza shop on the way home from dinner tonight. It’s not even good pizza, but they slammed it. A special treat last weekend was going to an American-style diner where the wait staff all wears letterman’s jackets. We had burgers, fries, and milkshakes, and it was awesome!

Just about every plan we’ve made has changed… at least once. We created a weekly schedule, knowing that it would change in-country. But it changes All. The. Time. This little Myers-Briggs “J” heart of mine needs structure and closure. It gets very little. We write the schedule on a white board because changes are made each day. The changes are confusing and usually big enough to create small earthquakes. The one consistent element of the schedule is that it's really, really full. Because I disciple five girls and drive one of the vans every time someone needs to go somewhere, I struggle to find time for things like laundry and sleep.

The honeymoon with the kids in Old Naledi came to an abrupt end on Monday, too, when we surpassed the 250 mark. The kids were rambunctious and disobedient. We repeatedly broke up fights. Little boys ran around slapping us for fun. The initial feelings of adoration that bred respect and obedience from the kids were long gone. We couldn’t hand out any food or gifts because anarchy had set in. It was rough. Some students looked shell-shocked as we fled that evening. We have since received more helpers who (1) speak Setswana and (2) have the magical skills needed to captivate and direct the children. We’re going to be really sad to say goodbye tomorrow, but I think everyone is ready to be done with VBS. We’re tired.

In the midst of all of these trials, I have seen the team rise above our current reality. We have entered into battle together and fought for one another. Our prayer lives are active, and we often stop what we’re doing to pray. We have shared the ugly parts of our hearts and carried each other’s burdens. I’ve seen students experience frustration, take it to the Lord, and move on. It’s refreshing and encouraging to see our team walking in the power of the Spirit.

And even in the middle of chaos, we have seen fruit in Old Naledi. Nametso, a hard girl who I’ve tried to befriend, smiled for the first time on Tuesday. She is a tough nut to crack. She’s the one who told me I smile too much and has often gotten mad when I didn’t do what she wanted me to do. I think she finally realized I was going to love her in spite of herself, and when she heard that I brought her a Bible, she transformed before my very eyes. She suddenly became playful, skipping around and holding my hand. A sparkle danced in her eleven-year-old eyes. She posed for pictures. She laughed! When I gave her a Bible at the end of the day, her eyes teared up. I explained how to read it and encouraged her to discuss it with friends. She hugged me over and over again. I’m crying now as I remember her joy. I gave Bibles to three other girls that day, too. Faridah, NuNu, and Amantle come from Christian homes and know the Lord themselves. They often quote Scripture to me, but they were still so excited to get Bibles. They giggled and hugged their precious Bibles to their chests. We brought cases of Bibles with us, and I own at least six Bibles myself. It’s so easy to forget what a blessing it is to possess God’s Word. I hope I never forget their excitement.

Another blessing from this week has been our time with the BotsCru staff and students. They join us for lunch and ministry every day, so we have gotten to know them pretty well. But we turned a corner on Monday night. Two of the American STINTers who served here for the past year flew home on Wednesday. We had the honor of hosting their farewell party at our lodge. Fifteen Batswana, two Zimbabweans, and one American missionary pilot joined our team of twenty-two for dinner and fun. We took time to toast Melissa and D2, which included a lot of tears. The love that has developed over the past year drew me in, and I found myself crying every time someone else cried. Then, suddenly, the room was filled with the beautifully sad chorus of a farewell song. As is the custom here, one of the students led with calls and the rest filled in with rich harmonies. During this sad song, we joined a slow circle dance, two by two. Then the tone grew increasingly joyful, with women ululating and cheering. We ended the party with Americans teaching the Africans dances like the Wobble and the Cupid Shuffle and the Americans learning how to dance like Africans. Several of the BotsCru students have seemed to open up more since that night. I am especially enjoying my time with Ontlametse, who I call O because I can’t quite get the clicking sounds in her name. She wants to be a missionary after she graduates. She has shared several stories of the ways God has surprised her in evangelism, and she has asked lots of questions about vocational ministry. I’m looking forward to our campus ministry time!

And a prayer team from the U.S. arrived last night. It's fun to welcome them into "our" culture and show them around. They will be praying with and for us for the next ten days, and we're excited to see what God does.

Please pray for us as we travel to Gakuto, a village outside Gaborone, to show the Jesus Film tomorrow night. We’ll return to that village on Saturday to go door to door with local church members to follow up with people who come to see the movie. And we’ll attend church there on Sunday.

We'll be going on our safari during the President's Day holiday next week before jumping into campus ministry during freshman orientation.

Thank you for praying for us!

Botswana Week 1. Dumela!

First, here are a few emails from our travels:

London Calling 
Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 2:36 PM

I currently have a few minutes of free wi-fi access in Heathrow airport in London that happen to overlap with a few non-chaotic moments, so I'm writing to update you.

Yesterday we had to sit on the tarmack for something like forty extra minutes as a storm moved through the area. Few of us slept on our 6 hour flight, as it was only early evening for our bodies. But after a quick nap, we landed in London at 7am local time. Excitement carried us through the first few hours as we got to know each other and explored the city. We bought all-day subway ("underground") tickets and covered a few of the basic tourist destinations - London Bridge and Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament building and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Picadilly Circus. By the time caught a train to return to the airport at 3:30pm, nearly everyone was drifting in and out of sleep. One student even fell asleep standing up on the train! The staff kids really struggled, but the students have all cared for them well. We have only had a few minor meltdowns, praise the Lord! We picked up the carry-on luggage we had checked for the day and had three hours to nap, eat, and get cleaned up. 

We will be boarding our flight to Johannesburg in about fifteen minutes, at 7:45pm local time. We are all verrrrry excited to settle in and sleep on the eleven hour flight. We'll arrive tomorrow morning and spend the day getting to Gaborone. Please continue to pray for our team, and please pray for good sleep tonight!

Nearly There! 

Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 7:37 AM

We landed here in South Africa at about 7:45 this morning. We had to pick up all of our luggage and haul it through the airport. Since the Botswana Air desk doesn't open until 2:30, we have been camped out on the lobby floor all morning. Most of us slept very well on the eleven hour flight, but a few people have gotten less than five hours of sleep since we left on Wednesday. Please keep praying for good rest! We'll board our last plane at 4:45pm. Our last flight is only an hour long, but it may take a while to get back to the lodge. We're celebrating the Fourth of July with some local pizza and a little party tonight. We'll email you again after dinner, assuming the wi-fi in our lodge is working. 

Just a reminder, we're six hours ahead of the east coast now.

Settling In

Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 4:13 PM

I am very excitedly, yet very sleepily, writing to let you know that we made it!

Since the last update, we finished our layover in Johannesburg (with many people sleeping on piles of luggage in the lobby) and made the short little one hour flight to Gaborone on a propeller plane. We landed as the sun set, and it was beautiful! We were then met with the news that eleven of our bags couldn't fit on our plane and would be loaded onto the next flight coming to Gaborone later tonight. After a very long delay and some confusion over which bags were missing, we met up with the Campus Crusade for Christ Botswana team. The Botswana team drove us to our lodge, provided pizza and soda to celebrate the Fourth, and volunteered to return to the airport when it opens in the morning to pick up all of our bags.

The lodge, by the way, is incredible! It rivals any small hotel or bed and breakfast in the United States. Most of us are sharing a full- or queen sized bed with one roommate, but each room has its own bathroom. The courtyard has an outdoor kitchen, a beautiful eating area, and a really nice pool. There is even a fruit tree outside my window! Plus, there is a night receptionist and a night guard who will be here every night until 8am. I already feel safe here, and I'm staying alone in the guest house beside the lodge.

If you haven't heard from your child yet, it is probably because s/he collapsed in exhaustion. Our orientation schedule this weekend will include time to call home. 

We do have wi-fi at our lodge, so I will be checking my email a few times a week. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. The students will have access to the computers the staff team brought, too.

Dumela!

It's one week in, and my time in Botswana has been exciting, full of adventure, and exhausting. I love every minute! I apologize for the rambling thoughts that follow. It is very late, and I am very tired. Here's what's happening.

It took me over fifty hours to get here, which is just crazy! After driving to D.C. and meeting for a quick briefing at the airport, we made our way through airport security. We slept for maybe 2 hours on the flight to London, then suddenly it was 7am and we were landing. We walked a lot that day, riding the underground (their subway) and checking out the tourist sites. My knees and ankles killed. It was a long day, and when we were finally in the air on our flight from London to South Africa, I slept. I slept hard! We landed there the next day and had to wait in the airport for six more hours. Most of my team slept on top of our luggage. We drew a lot of attention, and some people took pictures of us when we regrouped to pray.

When we finally landed in Botswana, half of our luggage was still in South Africa. The tiny little propeller plane we flew on was too small to carry it all! Even so, we landed at sunset, and it was beautiful. I couldn't believe it. Eleven years of prayers, and my answer finally came. I'm in Africa!

We got to explore our city, Gaborone, the first two days. We went to their national monuments, like the ones in D.C. and hiked a mountain. Well, I hiked as far as I could with my busted legs. One of the student guys stayed with me, and we hung out until everyone got back down to where we were. It was fun even though I only made it through the moderately steep first third. The rest of the team told me there was no way I could have made it through the boulder fields higher up the mountain. As I write today, my knees and ankles are back to normal. Thanks for praying!

We went to church in a really poor neighborhood on Sunday, and it was so awesome! We entered the small, concrete block church with broken windows as the congregation burst into worship. The contrast between the beauty of the people and the poverty around us was stark. The service was two hours long, with a lot of the familiar elements. But my favorite part was when someone would suddenly burst into song praising God, and everyone joined in. Most of the songs were call and response, and they were repetitive, so we could sing along. As we moved from the church into the dusty courtyard, we greeted everyone with the customary handshake and "Dumela" ("Hello"). I fought back tears all morning. It was just wonderful! My camera went missing, and no one can find it. I'm still praying it will turn up somewhere, but petty theft is a common occurrence. A few of the neighborhood kids jumped into the van when we were loading up, and I'm afraid one of them grabbed it while others were climbing through my window. I lost all of my pictures from the first 5 days, so I'm pretty bummed. 

I have to drive a big van on the wrong side of the road, which is really, really challenging. Once I almost turned into the wrong lane, and my students and I screamed. The entire first day I hit the wipers instead of the turn signal every single time. And I had to drive a traffic circle... on the wrong side... in a place where people make their own traffic rules. I shrieked my way through that, too. People just cross the street wherever. Cars try to squeeze past on the shoulder. People run red lights. Some of the traffic lights are just turned off to save energy, so no one knows who has the right of way. Driving well requires a lot of attention, and it is taxing. And yet, I totally love it. 

Our Project students are incredible. The men are really protective and serve us well, which is just not very common. When we arrived, we asked the fifteen-year-old daughter of my co-leaders to join my small group. Now I have five girls in my group. They are all so sweet, and I'm excited to see the Lord work. Our team laughs, sings, and breaks into dance often. They're my kind of people!

We're staying in a really, really nice lodge. It's a lot like a newly remodeled, sprawling home in the U.S. with eleven bedrooms with their own bathrooms. My room is a bungalo behind the main building. We have an awesome patio, outdoor kitchen, and fancy pool. Since it's winter here, we don't make much use of the outside area, but it sure is pretty! Our compound is walled in, like all homes here. We're really safe, with an extra high wall topped with electric fencing and a night watchman. The staff here, including our housekeepers and receptionists are so friendly. We're building great relationships with them. Though we have a decked out kitchen, we eat lunches and dinners in dining hall on campus at the University of Botswana. It saves us a ton of time! The food is good... for the most part. I may never like pap, and I will never like beets.

Every day, the eight BotsCru staff and interns join us for lunch and ministry. Three to five BotsCru students join us, too. I really enjoy them! Even though our cultural differences make communication more complicated, we have so much in common. 

The local Cru staff and students have been serving as interpreters for us in our VBS ministry at that church in the very, very poor neighborhood of Old Naledi. They are so good with the kids, and there's no way we could manage the chaos without them. And chaos is an understatement. The church did no advertising ahead of time. We literally just started at one entrance to the neighborhood and walked to the church on the first day. The children, with wide eyes, shouted "Lekgowa (Leh-kohh'-wuh)!" ("White person!") and ran after us. That first day, we had 90 kids. The second day, they were waiting for us at the church, and the crowd grew to 110. Today saw 200 kids. Some have shoes and coats. Others show up in shorts and barefoot. It's winter here, and many of them shiver their way through the lesson. They are so, so sweet. They hold our hands and pile onto our laps or into our arms and play with our hair. Only about half are old enough to have learned English at school, so most of the time I can only smile at them and hug them tight. One girl told me I smile too much. She's not the first to accuse me of such. Many of the kids have HIV+ and/or Hepatitis. Little sets them apart other than the yellowish hue of their eyes. We brought things like stuffed animals, combs, and hats to hand out, among other things. When the kids received their little animals yesterday, they hugged them as if they had never held anything so precious. We are physically exhausted and filthy at the end of each day, but our spirits are always so high. We all talk excitedly about the day on the way to dinner. One of the guys told me he wasn't really a kids-kind-of-guy when he arrived, but the kids bring so much joy into his life. Today five of the older girls (in the eleven and up group) indicated decisions for Christ! 

It's awesome to see how God is already moving within the first week. Thank you for all of your support. Please keep praying for us!