Dumela Botswana

Nothing is more constant in our mission than change.  The young missionaries come and go with regularity, and we serve and love them deeply for the short time they are ours.  Our missionaries are absolutely precious to us.                                          It's been a long flight across the pond for these new arrivals. What's been super fun of late has been the arrival of new friends from America.  Jerry and Maureen Smith are absolutely delightful!  We couldn't be more grateful for them.  They hail from Payson Utah and will serve in Botswana for the rest of our mission.  Maureen is a highly experienced nurse practitioner and Jerry a retired educator/school administrator.  Maureen will assume the nurse responsibilities which were mine for a couple of months, and Jerry will take over coordination of all vehicles, bikes, and cars.  Both of these are huge jobs, and we are deeply grateful for their service.  And even more grateful for their friendship.  Together we climbe

"Sure we’ll take you on a game drive and a rhino-tracking adventure in Africa!” we happily told our new senior couple. Don’t expect too much, though, we told them, as the small game reserve of Mokolodi close to Gaborone has largely disappointed us the last couple of times with few spottings of wildlife. But not today! It turned out to be a fabulous safari experience. We started the day early with our guide McDonald and had the safari vehicle all to ourselves. Along the route tracking rhino by their scat, we encountered giraffe… ...the ubiquitous impala which abound in this small park as there are no predators here.. ...a large troop of baboons… ...our national animal the testy and highly irritable zebra… ...the beautifully horned and oversized kudu... ,,,wildebeest, which we haven’t seen in this park before…                                                 ...warthogs and hippos and a wonderful termite mound… ...and then McDonald found our rhinos! These are white rhinos.  McDonald