I’m sorry I haven’t updated my blog in forever! Things have been kind of crazy in Botswana lately. After getting back from Prayer Retreat in January, we began to implement our new version of Operation HIV. At first, things seemed to be going fantastically—doors seemed to be opening wide for us to be involved in the schools again and for our church to partner with the government home-based care program. Lately, this has not been the case…we can only attribute this to spiritual warfare. The schools are being difficult in allowing us to actually begin the new abstinence clubs they said they wanted us to do! The government home-based care program now refuses to allow our church to volunteer! The plans that we had made to organize a free t-shirt incentive for the HIV testing day at our church fell through! (Praise God this problem has since been fixed!) I could go on and on about several other problems we’ve been encountering lately, but I won’t. Please be in prayer for Operation HIV. It is obvious that Satan doesn’t want this ministry to succeed. We are just so thankful for our amazing team of nationals who are still so excited about the program and are fervently praying for the ministry. Pray that we will not be discouraged by these obstacles but continue to persevere in the implementation of Operation HIV. Pray that God would continue to burden our hearts for the people of Palapye, especially those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

We have been able to have several successful training sessions lately. We talked about how to prayerwalk, different ways to share your faith, how to chronological Bible story, how to lead and plan a school assembly, and more! Here are some pictures from our training sessions:

We have also been up to Francistown to visit our missionary friends the Carruthers. At the beginning of January we were able to assist them with a volunteer team from Georgia . Along with the team, we visited people’s homes to assess their openness to having a seeker-type Bible study meet in their homes. We were able to have many great spiritual conversations with the Batswana we visited. Missionary Kelly Carruthers has been able to use this information to start several new bible studies in the last month! We visited the Carruthers again for the Super Bowl and their daughter Kayla’s 14th birthday. We didn’t have any candles so Kayla pretends using our fingers as the candles (a little trick I learned from the Upshaw family!)


We got a chance a couple weeks ago to escape some of our busy-ness and go to the nearby Rhino Sanctuary. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing the sun set while watching a herd of zebra play next to the watering hole.


Of course, we’ve had some time to hang out with the kids at the church!


Please continue to be in prayer for Operation HIV and the ministries at Palapye Baptist Church. Also please pray for the Baptist Mission of Botswana. Last weekend we met for almost two days to talk about how we can best reach the Tswana people of Botswana. We are meeting again in a couple of weeks.