Zambian/Botswana Trip 2025

Look at these beauties!  Baby didn't even cry at my shocking white face, but she was rather amazed. 

May 5th we left Cape Town, driving, for Zambia. The trailer had books and tracts as well as chalk equipment.   It took us 4 days of driving to get there.  We left ourselves one day to get organized and one day of rest before Paul started in preaching the first Sunday.   

Joseph Phiri, our pastor friend, scheduler, translator and all-around helpful guy had us at three churches that first Sunday.

Things went well, though I nearly crashed myself sliding on the polished cement floor in this church.  

Then, that night, our trip took a turn for the worse. Paul fell in the bathroom in the night.  He reached for a door frame, missed, and fell on the hard cold tiles.  I found the light and ran to find him with a puddle of blood under his head.  He said, "Forget the head.  It's my back."  

I cleaned and patched his head, and we went back to bed, but the agony had begun.  He was so sore!  And we had a school in just 7 hrs.  

He was able to speak and draw.  Pastor Joseph and I did all the lifting of chalk equipment and he made it through the two services, but the driving was torture.  Between potholes and speedbumps, his poor back was jostled a lot.  

Tuesday was a little better, but not much.  He was able to do everything scheduled but he was so uncomfortable.  He would wince at every bump, and I would wince at his wincing.  Driving was no fun, never mind the fact that it could take a whole hour to go 8 kilometers/about 5 miles.  Lusaka traffic is wild.

 On Wednesday our son Timothy flew in from America and I was so glad.  Thursday Paul stayed home to rest, and Timothy and I did the schools.  Friday and Sunday Timothy came, and they split the preaching.  Monday Timothy paired up with Pastor Joseph and his friend Mr. Meeti who would drive to their schools, and Paul and I were on our own.  He was improving each day, sleeping a little better each night.  

I have very few pictures of Timothy though Pastor Joseph might send us some.  

This school had an unusual assembly place, all marked out with bricks.  Each class could file into their row to stand.

This is the assembly, at dawn, with temperatures of 3 degrees Celsius, or 35 degrees Fahrenheit.  Brrr!!!! 

 

 

In Nata, Botswana, we had a huge school!  Most of the schools were having a holiday, I think, but this is a boarding school so we had 960 students in spite of the holiday. 

They sang a song so beautifully that I got all teary eyed.  I wish I had a good video.  

This school is something of a shock.  It is a drive through sandy roads and bush to find a huge, elegant facility, built to accommodate not just the students of Nata, but surrounding areas.  

At this school, a funny thing happened.  A little boy, I'd guess about 7 yrs. old, came to me and said, "Do you know what they're saying about you?  They're saying you're a grandmother."

"I am a grandmother!"  I told him, and he went back to his seat.  

Noth only did it make me laugh, it left me with questions.  

We raced down the highway in northern Botswana to try to get to Nata before dark, but we did see elephants and try to snatch their picture in the setting sun.  Or a little after?  

Interesting statues in front of a school.  

A challenging school because the kids were facing into this walkway.  So Paul would draw one of his quick silhouettes, then walk a little holding up the picture.  He also couldn't hold it too high or he'd crash into the ceiling, and he had to duck under beams.  And it was CHILLY!!!!  Somehow enthusiastic kids make up for a lot of the hardships, and these kids were friendly, eager and enthusiastic!  

 

Paul called this the leafy school as the trees were thick over the meeting place.  He had to do a lot of swiveling with the pictures, but not walk so far.  

The picture angle can give you an idea of one of my jobs.  I am the paper holder if it's windy so I snatch pictures from my place behind the board.  

I'll call this the hungry school.  I don't know how many were hungry, but I was!  We went without breakfast because it was so early, but intstead of being just two times speaking, they split the school by classes and we had five.  Notice Paul is the only one with his jacket off.  It was a little warmer because we were indoors.  They told us "the weather is unfriendly" so we had to be indoors which was better for the paper, and my stomach did survive.  

Also at this school, with one of the grades, the teacher was lecturing them about being good listeners and a boy very deliberately rolled up his stocking cap to uncover his ears.  It was so cute.  

The kids were memorably friendly at this one.  We love what we do!  So many agree with us to make decisions to follow Jesus!  

I got my jollies out of listening to the GPS read off some of these Setswana names like this one that is 13 letters long.  Mog O Rog O Wane, she said.  I don't think I could have done much better.  

We saw 3 giraffes!  With the fading light, this is the best picture I could get.  

A typical travel breakfast:  soft-boiled eggs made in the tea kettle along with tea made in the tea kettle too.  

Canned chicken sandwiches is another good traveling lunch.  

About once a day we buy something for a good, hot meal.  

Timothy was such a great help!  He was all grubby with chalk and the labors of the day, but happy in his successes.  He had some unusual trials on this trip with visa problems, but we prayed and the Lord intervened and it looks like those problems have cleared up.  Phew!  They }or their website?} were trying to charge him 22,000 kwachas with is nearly $1000.00.  

Suspense:  We ran out of tracts before our time in Lusaka ended so Paul called James in Cape Town and asked him to ship more to both Lusaka, Zambia, and Francistown, Botswana.  We expected them a whole week sooner than they arrived, and the suspense was terrible.  In each school, Paul would talk to the kids about leading others to the Lord and he would say, "I have something that can help you.  I have a paper that tells how people can ask the Lord to save them, and, if it comes, I'm going to leave enough for all of you."  

They came!  On our LAST school DAY in Francistown, they were delivered!  We loaded them straight into the car and set off for the nearest school.  It took close to 3 hours to retrace our steps through the nine schools we had been to that week, but we got to them all.  We'd have to track down the right person, often the guidance counselor, and find out how many students there were, and then we'd leave our precious cargo with them.  We had one more school that afternoon, and we were able to give those tracts straight to the students.  

After many of the schools and churches, we had to have a group picture so I'll end with one of the dozens of these I have in my phone.