Category: In Community (BW)

Boxing Day – our first in Botswana. We hurry through breakfast and drive to the Princess Marina Hospital Parking Lot where we watch with interest as a van filled with cardboard boxes is being unloaded. "Quite appropriate for Boxing Day," I muse. Eventually three heavily laden gurneys are pushed to a reception area where we’re met by most of Flying Mission’s (FM) personnel – career missionaries, short-termers, pilots, mechanics, administrative staff and office staff – they’re all here.

Are you curious about the boxes? Continue reading “Boxing Day Blessings”

We had prayed so much for rain, and it finally came. Puddles appeared!! We hadn’t seen any for so many months! And last "rainy season" hadn’t really been a rainy season at all. As the months of fall and winter went by, the livestock finished off all the vegetation available; many then died. Now there was hope once again!!

However, some of the rain fell hard and in great amounts. Though many people now have cement block houses, Continue reading “Rain brings disaster–then blessing!!”

Cascades of brilliance in a dry, dusty landscape, Fragrance of jasmine and citrus blossom,

Continue reading “The earth declares the glory of God!!”

I live in the village of Kumakwane and one day I visited the family of Mr M because he was sick.  I knew that the family would benefit from an egg each, so I brought them and explained why to the father whilst the children were standing there.  

They were very happy and hopeful to have an egg each but the father turned to them and said, “Eggs are not good for you, they will make you sick.”  However it seems they were perfectly good for he who was sick! 

Continue reading “Eggspectations”

For being homeless, Chips has a pretty nice place. He camps on a vacant residential plot on the southeast side of Gaborone. This area was developed back when the plots were very large, and the brush hides him from view of the nice homes on either side. There is a water tap on the plot, but Chips doesn’t have any way of bathing. When you’re homeless, you pretty much have to wear everything you own, and you can’t very well wear a tub and a towel.

When James and Dingane got there, Chips was sitting on a log. He seemed very happy to see them. "Should I get a log for you?" asked Chips. "No, we’re okay," they said. They exchanged greetings and then James said, "We came to give you a bath." "I don’t have a tub," said Chips. "We brought everything you need," said James. "Dingane brought you his tub, and we brought a towel, warm water, soap . . ." That really made Chips happy. The three of them walked across the plot to where our car was parked outside the gate. James reached inside the car and Continue reading “Helping the Homeless”

Dust and noise; children shouting to each other as they leave their classrooms. School is out for the day!! Remember the freedom you felt in those days back when?!

But some of the girls-and one boy!-remain and gather around Victoria. She is ready to hand each of the kids their colorful bags containing needles, wool and works in progress. Some are making scarves, some slippers.

Are your eyebrows now “knitting” together, as you try to bring your mind around the idea of scarves and slippers in Africa? Continue reading “Happiness is learning to knit”