We've Arrived!

30 January 2009

Praise God! We arrived back in Botswana nearly a week ago now, and the work wouldn’t wait! We’re living in temporary housing for a couple of weeks till we can change the flooring in our hallway and do a bit of painting and some other maintenance and updates that are easier to do when nobody’s living in the house.

It was kind of nice to leave the US late in the day: both our kids and both our grandkids were able to come to the airport with us at about 4:30 in the afternoon. Ian got absorbed in his Nintendo DS, but Iona was literally bouncing off the walls! We hugged and kissed a lot, but finally had to let them go so they could eat dinner and we could go through security to our gate.

One of the big projects last term was the registration of our school with the government of Botswana. We assumed that government registration was equivalent to what we call accreditation in the US, but we found out differently since we got here. When our colleague, Pat Mahar, picked us up from the airport last Saturday, he told Chuck there was a seminar on accreditation sponsored by the government and 2 people from Assembly Bible College were required to attend on Tuesday and Wednesday. So Chuck and Pastor Ntwaetsile attended, and they discovered that registration only makes us eligible to apply for accreditation; well, that and it gives us permission to keep the school open. Other schools have been shut down by the government, if their application for registration was not approved. ABC is the only theological school whose registration application was approved—the other 3 Bible Schools have been closed.

We thank the Lord for bringing us here (in 2005) in time to apply for registration and for helping with all the paperwork (reams and reams of paperwork!), so that Assembly Bible College is operating, still training pastors for local churches. God is good.

Love in Christ, Chuck and Janet