Update from Jesse

We need your prayers. It is hard to communicate with the school girls sometimes. I am not sure of how much heart to give away. It hurts to look into their eyes. Today we were at church for about four hours. Mr. Duane gave a dynamic speech concerning HIV and the church. We then had lunch at a friend of Dr. Thinus's house. The group ate in the backyard. It was fully decorated for us. I did not feel as if I was on a mission. We were fed roasted chicken, potato salad, potatoes salad and rice with Fanta or orange juice to drink. It was so delicious; lunch was so good today.

Following lunch we left for an outreach for the rest of the afternoon. We went to an traditional village outside of town. There were huts made of adobe brick and roofs made of straw. Hard to imagine probably, but it was probably the neatest thing I have seen here so far. Not many people experience a true African village. The children flocked to us right as we pulled up. We all jumped out of a big hippie van with the letters "Say yes to Jesus" on the windshield. Our team is so bizarre, yet so unbelievably brilliant. I am in love. We walk over to school while kids are swarming around us. Most of the kids are about 5 to 13 years old and have nothing on their feet as they play on the hard red dirt. Dan asks me while to entertain the smaller children so the older Zambian youth, involved in the local STS club we were visiting, would be less distracted. I agreed and Johnny and I went to round up our troops. First we played Duck, Duck Goose. This did not turn out too well. We moved on to Red Rover. This lasted a good twenty minutes. The 70 kids we were working with had too much fun. They really enjoyed trying to break the bonds of the other team's hands. As this began to get old, we then tried the game London Bridge is Falling Down. This game passed about 10 minutes of time. Not too successful. We needed a simple game that can manage all of the kids, fast! We were losing them. The real time breaker was a game Johnny thought of. We held hands with one other person and instead of the kids running underneath our bridge, they would walk across our forearms. This was such a fun activity. I loved watching the kids try to succeed at walking all of the way down the line. All in all, it was a beautiful day.

After that we came back to the house, made PB and bitter marmalade sandwiches and played card games. About seven of us spent the night refilling our coffee/tea cups between neverending rounds of playing cards. It was a nice way to end Johnny's stay with us. Keep him on your prayers as he travels back to Botswana. Tomorrow is Africa Freedom Day, so we get the day off. A handful of us will stay at the house and rest. And the others will travel to Chimfunzi, the Chimpanzee orphanage... oh the blogs to come! Pray that our day off would be a chance for the Lord to minister and energize us. Thank you for each and every prayer!

Jesse Barnes
Team Stop the Spread