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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