The 2015-2016 Botswana STINT team: Kirstin, Stephanie, and Sarah
What a Whirlwind!
This month has been crazy. First, my financial deadline for my year in Botswana was on August 7. The Lord brought in hundreds of dollars in monthly support and over ten thousand dollars in special gifts to cover one-time expenses... just in the nick of time! (It seems He always waits until the last minute.) Just before 5pm that day (the day before I was to leave my parents' house en route to Botswana), I got the go-ahead to buy our team's tickets and scrambled to connect with the Cru travel agent to order the tickets just before she left for the weekend. Phew!
That weekend was full of last minute details and really hard goodbyes. A trip I called my "Farewell Tour" led me to several towns and cities across Pennsylvania to say goodbye to family and dear friends. I said my last really hard goodbye to my best friend, Lisa, at the Philly airport and headed to Chicago for STINT briefing.
STINT briefing gathered hundreds of Americans serving overseas with Cru for a one-year commitment, coaches, and cultural ambassadors for a week of training and vision-casting. I was diagnosed with a double ear infection and a sinus infection sixty hours before we were to spend an entire day flying to Botswana, so I missed half of the conference and barely made it through the rest. Thank you for praying for me!
We made our way to Botswana without any major issues (though there are some fun travel stories on my blog). We jumped right into ministry as we battled jet lag and fought hard to remember the names of all of our new teammates and student leaders.
People here are much more open to the Gospel. The national director of Cru in Botswana, Taffy, told us one in four students who hear the Gospel will make a decision to follow Christ. Of those that make that decision, about 2/5 will stay engaged and go through follow-up. On our first full day on campus, FIVE girls prayed to receive Christ with me. FIVE! That's more women moving from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light than I saw in seven years in Pittsburgh, where most of our evangelism was actually tearing down walls in order to make room for the Gospel.
If that wasn't enough excitement, our first ten days were full of adventures, from hiking Kgale Hill (the highest peak in Gaborone) to driving on the left side of the road to initiating the laborious immigration/residency process to attending a wedding in a nearby village. You can read more on my blog: kirstinheyne.blogspot.com!
Praise and Prayer
* Please join us in praying for RAIN! This is the driest year of the past ten years of drought, and water outages are a constant part of life. Our friends on one end of town only have water for 12 hours each week! If this continues, all of the rivers and reservoirs in the southern part of the country will run dry by 2017.
* Pray for our immigration process. We have been working on it since before we left, and it may still be two weeks until we can submit our paperwork. Our prayer is that our applications will be accepted the first time, as it is expensive and we only have 90 day tourist visas.
* Praise God for the eight students who gave their lives to Christ during our first week in country! Six girls and two guys! Pray that we would be able to meet up with them to do basic follow-up.
