A Busy Holiday!

In my last post I talked about some of the outreach events that we were having during the school holiday. This is a picture of one of them: game day! Here we are playing "Crows and Cranes"...every game that we played didn't use any equipment. I'm so glad that i worked M-fuge 2 summers!
Happy Easter! For Easter, the Botswana Baptist Convention puts on conference called Easter Rally. We had heard from other missionaries that the rally that it was going to be a unique cultural experience...and that was an understatement! We did have a lot of fun though getting to listen to the national preachers and praise teams from churches all over Botswana. Many girls from our Palapye Baptist Church were able to come and so it was a good chance to get to hang out with them. We also got to eat a lot of traditional foods. Mmmm...goat! This is Shawna, me, Crystal, and Kelly Easter Sunday at the rally.
Sometimes in ministry you have to expect the unexpected...at Easter Rally we discovered that there was no teacher for the older youth group during their Bible study time. While they sang one song some of the nationals and us j-man planned out an entire Bible study on reconciliation (the theme of the weekend). And that's how we ended up being teachers for the weekend...

After Easter Rally we had our cluster's AMTM (a big conference with missionaries from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, and Angola). On our way to the conference we kept on seeing these beautiful famous trees, the baobab.
This conference was a a resort called Tshipise with heated pools and tv! Too bad we didn't have much time to enjoy those things. However, the meetings were really informative (I'm serious!) and it was cool to meet many of the other missionaries in our region for the first time. This is a picture of the resort. If you look closely, you can see the monkeys climbing all over our car...they just roamed around freely! In the background are the rondavul-like cottages in which we stayed.This is a picture of all of the journeymen in our region...we're more often known as the journeygirls for obvious reasons. (front row from left to right: Kelly, Lyndee, Reema, Crystal, back row from left to right: Stacie, Hayley, Me, Brandy, Carmel, Shawna)

After our retreat with the other missionaries, we were able to take a couple days and travel down to Johannesburg, South Africa for the first time. Being in the city has been a wonderful break, but it has definitely made me miss home. We hit up the mall and the movies and the open market where we got to try our hand at some bargaining. But the best part has been staying with these amazing missionaries, Tad and Phyllis Tadlock (and their adorable teacup poodle Teddy), who have completely opened their home up to us. The truly have the gift of hospitality! In addition to letting us stay at the last minute, the have cooked for us, directed us around the city, and...let us use their WIRELESS INTERNET! As we have been spoiled these past two days being able to talk online and get emails when they arrive, we have joked that we forgot what communicating with people was like. (It's going to be hard to go back to the once a week, 15 minutes of dial-up again...) Tad even tracked down for me the only movie I've wanted to see since coming to Botswana (Syriana) and we watched it last night. I think I'm going to have culture shock all over again heading home today!

Anyways, continue to pray:
Pray for an important team meeting that is going to take place in Gabs next week.
Pray for the new school term that begins May 2.
Pray especially that I would be able to find time to have a Bible study with some of the students that have shown interest in learning more about Jesus.
Pray for the church as we continue to transition as some of the Brazilian missionaries leave.
Pray for me as I'm getting over bronchitis.