June 2009

We hope everyone is well and enjoying the summer time in the US, Germany, Thailand and Korea.

It is winter here with day temperatures in the 50‐60’s and night temperatures in the 30‐40’s. There is no heat in the offices, churches or houses. At night, we stay warm by piling on the blankets. Heda wears two sets of everything when going to bed. During the day, layering is in order. We continue to settle in and are very happy to report we have obtained our two year resident visas and our Botswana driver’s license. The tricky part of the latter was passing the eye test. You look through a viewer and are asked to identify a specific geometric pattern within a larger geometric pattern, stating if the pattern is in the upper, lower, left or right segment of the screen. The pattern becomes smaller with each consecutive screen. You had to identify 7 out of 10 patterns and locations correctly. They black out one eye and then the other. We passed, but just barely.

One night we woke up to hail pounding on our flat, metal roof. Wind and rain were whipping the open and closed windows. Rain was coming between the spaces around the doors. The entire yard was covered with one inch of hail. The next morning we saw that all the plants were shredded. People say they have not seen a storm like that in over ten years.

Ascension Day in Botswana is a National religious holiday, with most people attending church, which for us was in the morning. Some places had services outdoors. We understand that it is like that in most countries in Africa and also in Germany.

We are settling into our jobs at the church. Heda has visited patients in their homes and at the Kgothatso‐Encouragement house and spent time at an orphanage in a nearby village. The care given to the patients and the children at both facilities is excellent. You can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. We’re attaching a one page write up of each facility. Ron has been working on the budget and auditing church records. One of the newer projects funded by the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) involves the village of Manyana. It is a joint endeavor of ELCSA and ELCB (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Southern Africa and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Botswana). In the way of history, 30 years ago the ELCB was formed when a faction of Lutherans in Botswana split from ELCSA and formed the ELCB. Both churches profess the same Lutheran theology and have the same teachings and liturgy. The Manyana project will hopefully be helpful on the road to reconciliation between the two Lutheran entities. Philip Knutson, the ELCA representative for the Southern Africa region, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa, visited us for a couple of days in May. At this time we visited Manyana. The scope of the project is to live out our God‐given unity in Christ. A horticultural aspect of the project is to grow food to provide assistance to the needy in the community i.e. HIV/AIDS infected. The crops they were growing were wiped out by the same hail storm that hit Gaborone. They were already replanting when we visited just days after the hail storm. We will keep you informed of the progress of God’s work in our future blogs.

Our visit with Rev. Philip Knutson was most enjoyable. He was our first ELCA guest in Botswana. He has been involved in pastoral work in Africa for most of his ordained life and is a great resource for us, for which we are grateful.