Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faith Forward Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
And this is just a quick video to give some of my thoughts on Botswana
You know
I've been here for two three days now and this is my first time ever coming to the continent of Africa and a lot of
People are asking, you know, what things are like here
So I'm just gonna explain some of the things that I've picked up over the last few days
First of all, I just want to say I love it here. This this country is a great place
Everybody's been super nice super friendly everywhere that we go
I haven't run into a single person yet
That was that was rude to me or that you know was a pain in the neck in any way shape or form
I mean everybody's been great. Everybody's really friendly here
the people are really receptive to the gospel and
You know, I feel totally safe here. It doesn't seem to be a high crime type place whatsoever. In fact
Me and a couple of the guys that are with us
we actually went running last night and we were just you know, kind of running through the streets just just on a on a jog and
We ran by this bar and I mean there were like several hundred people
In the parking lot of this bar across the street from this bar at the bar
just all partying and we just we just jogged right by and
People were just smiling and waving to us and and totally cool about everything and
we we get a little further down the road just jogging down the road and
A guy just kind of pulled up to us in his car and just asked us. Hey you guys okay everything good
You know, he was gonna help us out if we needed help
Everybody's been real nice and helpful. And so we're having a super good time as far as what the landscape looks like
The plant life is pretty much the exact same plant life as Arizona
I was pretty surprised to just look at every plant and recognize it from Arizona because the same type of a desert climate here
so one of the first things that I noticed about the culture that's really different than America is that people here are
Super clean like they're they're like obsessed with with cleanliness. I was kind of blown away by that
They literally are taking two showers every single day
I mean they get up in the morning and they take a shower religiously and they take a shower at night
religiously and they clean the house top to bottom first thing every morning and so there's a really big emphasis on cleanliness
I mean, they're washing their cars meticulously and
It's a very clean people, you know, I mean I'm used to in the United States
You take a shower like every day every other day, but but they were kind of just horrified by that here that you know
Skipping any of your your twice daily showers
Another thing that's really different here. Is that nobody has unlimited cell phone minutes or unlimited cell phone data
So, you know, it's all about you know, purchasing air time
You have to keep buying air time and buying data for your phone
And so there's just a constant reloading of air time and talking about air time and you know
Swapping of SIM cards and everything. So it's just really a lot more complicated here with the phones. They spend a lot of time
it seems using their cell phones and so they have to you know, keep getting more air time and everything like that and then
Another thing is that they one cool thing. They had this hand washing custom. So like when you sit down to eat in the home
the lady of the house will come over with like a bucket of
water and
Or I'm sorry
She has like an empty bucket and then she has like a mug of warm water and you hold out your hands and she'll pour
The warm water on your hands while you wash your hands into a bucket
So I thought that was pretty cool and they do have really strong
Male female roles here, you know the first of all when you go around town
You see a lot of the ladies are dressed very nice
They're wearing, you know modest skirts and and everything like that and there's a strong emphasis
Like they don't they don't want you as a man to do any type of you know
What would be considered like womanly work?
They're very strong emphasis on on men doing their thing and women doing their thing. So that was pretty cool and then
Most people here apparently go to church because they were talking about how when we go to church on Sunday
There's gonna be traffic and I said, why would there be traffic on a Sunday?
They said well because everybody's going to church whereas in the United States
Sunday is a day with the least traffic because of the fact that you know, most people don't go to church
so that was pretty interesting and then
Let's
See here. What else there's these they're very people here seem to be really proud to be
From Botswana or living in Botswana right now this month is actually the 50 year anniversary of Botswana's independence. And so
Everybody is wearing these shirts
So, you know, I bought a couple of the shirts actually, but they're all wearing these Botswana 50 year anniversary shirts
I think literally 50% of the people in this country are wearing these shirts
I mean you it's like a it looks like a uniform almost but you walk through the stores you walk down the street and just
Everybody's wearing it. So, you know, I bought one so I could fit in right and then oh
Yeah the language so, you know, I knew that English was an official language here
But I knew that they also have their local sets wanna language
Here's how it basically works virtually everyone here knows English at some level the younger people know English really well
And then people that are a little older don't know it so well
But everybody has some knowledge of English the signs everywhere in English
English is on the radio. I mean everything is is English in that sense, but the people themselves don't speak English
I mean they understand English they can speak English, but they talk in sets wanna all day long
You walk through the store restaurants walk down the street
You don't hear people speak English
Everybody's speaking sets wanna and the people that were staying with are constantly speaking sets wanna to each other
So I'm trying to learn and pick up some of the sets wanna
Unfortunately, I spent like three three hours a day for two and a half months learning Afrikaans
But that's not really coming in very handy right now since I didn't go into South Africa
But the local language sets wanna is a lot harder than Afrikaans because it's it's not a European language
But that's what they speak
But then if you talk to them in English, they can definitely understand and communicate with you in English
No problem, but it doesn't seem to be their language of choice
So
some of the one of the things that I'm kind of having trouble adapting to is the fact that things move slowly here, you know,
And I'm kind of an impatient person. I'm a very
fast moving fast paced kind of person like, you know
I just want to go go go go go and I also want to like hurry up and do things really efficiently and
They don't seem to have a concept of that here. I mean, it's just
Everything is is slow, you know, everything just takes longer and there's a lot of waiting and waiting
and also
You know, I'm trying to do things efficiently like hey you go there. I'll go here
You know, we can get two or three things done at a time
Whereas it seems like they don't like, you know
They want us all to stay together and just wait and then we're waiting for this person waiting for that person
there's just a lot of
Waiting, which I'm not used to so that that's that's probably been
The hardest thing for me everything else. I've really loved about the culture and loved about being here
That's the thing that I'm kind of struggling with is just all the waiting
but anyway, the other thing is that
When you go to stores, there's just so many people working there, you know
Sometimes the United States you're kind of searching for staff. You're searching for somebody who works there to help you out here
there's just abundance of people working and and
Jobs that you would expect to take like one person they'll send three they'll send four
There's just groups of people all the time
So like for example, we had some chairs delivered to the church building and they're just these plastic chairs
I mean, they're not heavy or anything, you know in America if you had chairs delivered one guy would show up the driver
He would get out and unload the chairs. Of course, they show up with three guys to unload the chair
You know, it's just everything is like that
There's just always just groups of people instead of one security guard outside of there's three of them
You know three workers five workers everywhere you go. So that was a lot different and
Then as far as the food, I mean the foods been great, you know, I've really enjoyed the food
I've eaten a lot of the local homemade food and then we've also gone out to eat for some of the meals
They don't really go out to eat much the people that were with normally
But you know since since they have visitors and you know, it's a big event. We're they're doing it as a treat
You know, we'll go out and eat it some of the local restaurants, but they usually eat at home and the the homemade
Traditional food has been a lot better than the out to eat food, of course. So at home we've been eating nothing
But the most, you know authentic
Botswana staples and so I've really enjoyed that
I don't really know how to describe it to you, but it's all been super good food
I've really liked it and they like to drink a lot of coca-cola here
I noticed too which is funny because
Before I came here
Pretty much everything that I knew about Botswana came from this movie that I saw as a kid called the gods must be crazy
So when I was a kid, that was one of my parents favorite movies and we had it on VHS
So I've probably literally seen that movie like 30 times as a kid and you know, obviously
Movies don't necessarily accurately depict what things are really like but the movie all centers around a coke bottle
So it's kind of funny that I get here and everybody's drinking coke and everybody loves coca-cola
so that was kind of fitting for that and
then
Yeah, so we've just been
Staying up late
Every night, you know, I'm kind of trying to get to bed like hey, let's go to bed
but everybody's just staying up till midnight one in the morning and a whole bunch of us are packed into one house here and a
Bunch of people are packed into one house there
so you really got to try hard to get the sleep that you need because everybody's
Staying up late and real loud and having a good time and then you know, everybody's up early and everything like that
So but anyway, you know, I hope I hope that you enjoyed this video just you know
Besides the ministry updates or the soul-winning updates that I'm gonna be doing over the next few days
Especially later today once we can tally up a lot of the soul-winning after after church and Sunday soul-winning
Just wanted to make a quick video just you know
Just to let you get the feel for what it's like here the culture and everything I got and for those who live in Arizona
If you want to know what it looks like here outside in the neighborhoods and everything
It's pretty much identical to the small-town soul-winning neighbor
Small-town soul-winning marathons that we do in Arizona or like when we go on the Indian reservations in Arizona
it looks a lot like the Indian reservation and it also reminds me a lot of being in Mexico as far as the way the
Buildings are and the streets and the people and everything like that
So those are some things that I would I would compare it to so anyway keep keep updated with us
on this YouTube channel
also on the faithful word Baptist Church Botswana Facebook page where we're gonna be live-streaming the preaching god willing and
Also, check out the website at fwbc
Botswana calm god bless you. Have a great day king and we just we just jog right by and
people were just smiling and waving to us and and totally cool about everything and
We we get a little further down the road just jogging down the road and a guy just kind of pulled up to us in
His car and just asked us. Hey you guys okay?
Hey everybody pastor Stephen Anderson here from faith forward Baptist Church in Tampa, Arizona
And this is just a quick video to give some of my thoughts on Botswana
You know
I've been here for two three days now and this is my first time ever coming to the continent of Africa and a lot of
People are asking, you know, what things are like here
So I'm just gonna explain some of the things that I've picked up over the last few days
First of all, I just want to say I love it here. This this country is a great place
Everybody's been super nice super friendly everywhere that we go
I haven't run into a single person yet
That was that was rude to me or that you know was a pain in the neck in any way shape or form
I mean everybody's been great. Everybody's really friendly here
the people are really receptive to the gospel and
You know, I feel totally safe here. It doesn't seem to be a high crime type place whatsoever. In fact
Me and a couple of the guys that are with us
We actually went running last night and we were just you know, kind of running through the streets
just just on a on a jog and
We ran by this bar and I mean there were like several hundred people
In the parking lot of this bar across the street from this bar at the bar just all party