Cultural day

First let me give you an update on the things to come.

I will shadow the baby house or orphanage tomorrow which i am excited about. Friday I will teach a bible study to 8th and 9th graders and then friday night is fire by night the youth service. I'm not too sure about the weekend other than this Sunday I will be in children's church with 250 kids.

Today for cultural day we met with Z, a social worker for LBOM, she gave us background on Botswana and then we headed out. We went to where the Khosi or chief of the local tribe is. The Khosi we were supposed to meet had a family member die and was not in the office, another khosi was doing a hearing and they were about to give public lashings. Yes they still do that in Bots. In fact if we had shown up in pants rather than skirts our leader (or Z since we were her guests) would have gotten public lashings.

After that we went to the Maun museum. It was a neat little museum.
Then we went with Z to look for a woman in one of her cases after driving around Maun and seeing many new areas of the villages we never found the woman and decided to go get lunch.
At lunch we ate traditional dishes! A caterpiller, papas (they look like potatoes but they aren't), and some other stuff i dont remember the name of right now haha.
After lunch we headed to the delta and had a guide take us in a mokoro (canoe looking thing) through the delta. We took pictures of water lillies and got terrified when he told us a hippo lived in that particular area. After swimming and some fun, it was time to come back for our photography lesson.

Our guide told us that he would take us out on a personal safari. Lions, elephants, giraffes, hippo, monkeys, zebras, are all common around here, but he said he can show us cheetahs!!! So we're trying to check out a chance to do that with him.
Cultural day was a blast. Today i felt like i was more on vacation than really a mission trip and normally that would bother me, but today it didn't. I think i needed the day to relax and just enjoy this culture, and enjoy the amazingness of God's creation.

So far my time here has been spectacular for me as an individual i feel like i'm learning so much more about my own walk with Christ. I'm starting to see God's working in me and not just through me or for me. I'm seeing what it means to simply be God's friend. To enjoy Him. It sounds foundational it sound simple, but while i'm here in another country, striving to serve the missionaries here, striving to be a witness, to evangelize, to disciple, I forget about simply enjoying God as my friend. How lucky are we that He calls us friend? How privelaged that He wants us. If I never step foot on a mission field, if I never evangelized, if I didn't do the things that I am assigned to do, it wouldn't mean He would love me less. His love for me is not conditional on me or my actions. He just loves me. He just enjoys me. I can just be with Him and enjoy fellowship. Check out Psalm 27:4.

Be Blessed,
J. Tate