Do you know your status?

We are trying to encourage all of the members of Operation HIV to get tested before the next testing day at the church, that way they can help out instead of standing in line all day. So Crystal and I went with some of our fellow team members to get tested at Tebelopele. Now I can say I know exactly how someone feels as they are getting testing and waiting for their results! Even though I knew that I should have nothing to worry about, I still found myself nervous as I entered into the Tebelopele building that day…

First you have to go through pre-counseling where a qualified counselor explains the process of getting tested and talks about HIV and what getting a positive or negative result means. She gives you a card with a number (that looks a like a tiny passport) to help with anonymity.

Next you go into a lab where they prick your finger and you bleed onto a card and this plastic piece.

Then you wait for 15 minutes for your results to show up.

Finally, a counselor calls you into a room to show you your stick and little plastic piece. If it has one line then you are HIV negative; if it has two lines, then you are HIV positive. You talk about your results with the counselor and discuss the next steps. If you like, you can get your tiny passport stamped with your results.

Here I hold up my passport! I’m HIV negative!


Here Cecilia, Crystal, Pere, and I all hold up our negative results!

Our next steps? Keep abstaining.

HIV Testing Day at Palapye Baptist Church!

Thank you so much for your prayers for our first HIV testing day at Palapye Baptist Church on March 18th. The day was eventful and, of course, nothing like we planned or hoped, but we are positive the Lord is going to do amazing things regardless!

We had roughly 100 people show up to get tested for HIV (not counting our own church members), however, Tebelopele, the organization doing the testing, only sent one counselor. Because of this, unfortunately only 20 people were able to get tested. It was a surprise and a disappointment to all of us, but I was so impressed how our church and team handled the situation. The members of Palapye Baptist that wanted to get tested gave up their spots to allow the visitors to test first. The team kept busy talking to visitors, handing out squash (a kind of drink like Kool-Aid) and chips, and signing people up to have Operation HIV visit them in their homes and share Bible stories there. We were able to explain to those wanting to get tested the problem and most agreed to come back for another day of testing that will hopefully take place sometime in April. Even though the day didn’t go exactly like we desired most people had very positive comments about the church and said they would like to come back and visit sometime.

Here are some pictures from the day!

The lady from Tebelopele gives instructions to the group waiting to be tested.

Gofaone, Crystal, Pere, and Tumisang discuss visiting people from the list of names we received.

This lady was very excited about her results!

Here’s our entire Operation HIV in our fancy Operation HIV t-shirts and badges!

THE SHIRT

After living in Africa for a while I began to notice that a particular shirt was awfully popular for African males. At first I thought it was perhaps just a shirt that Batswana men enjoy, but as I have traveled around southern Africa there have been shirt sightings in Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. One day in Francistown we counted 12 different men wearing the shirt. This has led us to conclude that this shirt is indeed the most popular African shirt.

Take a look at several different shirt sightings (in some of the pictures you may have to look very closely):






Anyone care to buy a shirt?


I couldn’t resist!

Women's Meeting

Our church has just begun a women’s group. We had our first big meeting a few Saturdays ago.

Here’s a picture of the women’s meeting about 20 minutes after it was supposed to have begun:

One thing to which we’ve had to adjust is that nothing starts on time!

Here Crystal tries to keep cool by standing in front of the fan while we wait. For those of you that are curious, yes, it still is ridiculously hot here!

Once the meeting began, it was really nice. The theme was praise and worship and we enjoyed a time of singing and fellowshipping together.

Here’s some of the youth girls:


Here is our friend Cecilia with Crystal. Lately Cecilia has been having trouble with her heart. She is currently on blood thinning medicines in an effort to help her heart pump the blood better. Please be in prayer for her as she visits the doctor again soon.

An exciting outing…

This is a picture of Kitso and Nomsa. These girls used to live in Palapye but have now moved near Mahalapye (about an hour or so away). We decided one Saturday to take a group of our friends to go visit these girls to see how they were doing. We were leaving Kitso’s house in the truck and suddenly heard the sound of crushing metal. When we pulled the truck up we realized that we had hit the water pipes and water was uncontrollably spraying from the pipes. It’s Africa, so everyone walking by tried to help and after much tugging on pipes and numerous people getting soaked, the water became a small trickle. The family was really nice about it even though they were going to have to wait until Monday to get it fixed! We were simultaneously embarrassed and amused…but like I said it’s Africa…crazy things like this seem to happen and no one really cares.

Here’s a picture of some of the group that went on our crazy outing.

Valentine’s Day Party

A week or so after Valentine’s Day we hosted a girls’ party at our house. We played games, made this lovely Valentine’s Day craft (the heart baskets some of the girls are holding), and watched a girly movie. One of the games we played was “White Elephant.” The girls hated it and told us that we could never play it again! Haha. Here’s a group picture from the night.

White Water Rafting Pictures!

Remember way back in November when I went white water rafting on the Zambezi River? Well here are some pictures from rafting (finally)!

Here’s our fearless rafting crew with our guide Dougee.

Here’s our view of Vic Falls from the raft.


We saw this dead crocodile before hitting any rapids…ominous sign?


Stacie, Crystal, Shawna and I swim in the Zambezi!