Beverly Hammett – Streams in the Desert

By Beverly Hammett

Dear Ladies,

Greetings from Botswana, the land of beautiful blue skies! As I sit at my computer writing this letter to you, the sliding glass door is open, the sun is shining, and the breeze is blowing gently. It is a balmy 26 Celsius outside today (that translates to 80 in Fahrenheit). When the sun goes down tonight, the temperature will dip down to 8 Celsius (46 F) so by morning time it will be down around 58 degrees inside the house. So each day, as soon as it gets warmer outside than inside, I open all the windows and doors and try to warm the house up as much as possible. Then when we get up in the mornings, we dress in layers. As the day warms up, you just take off the top layers.

My hubby and I are doing well. We have been dealing with some troublesome legal matters lately, but hopefully we will be done with those soon. There are still several trips to Gaborone in the near future that we will be making. We know Satan is trying to get us distracted from the work. But we are determined to keep on going. There is so much that needs to be done.

Sometimes people ask us what they can pray for. One of the biggest needs that you can pray about is protection on the roads. There are animals on the road, people walking everywhere, and crazy drivers!

Basically there are two kinds of drivers in Botswana—the incredibly slow drivers, and the crazy fast ones—and both are very dangerous. The slow drivers are the biggest majority. Some are very unpredictable because they don’t like to stop. They will roll right through stop signs and pull out right in front of you, but they don’t increase their speed. Then you have those that stop at everything—speed bumps, traffic lights (even when they are green) or crosswalks (when there are no people in them).

The taxi drivers are the worst in this category, because they are always looking for passengers to pick up. So they go very slow, and weave all over the road because they are looking around for who wants a ride. Then if they see someone to pick up, they suddenly pull off the side of the road.

Taxi drivers are also in the other category—the crazy fast ones. If they have passengers, they want to get them to their destination quickly so they can drop them and get more passengers. More passengers mean more money. So they drive very fast, passing cars and running lights. Also in this category of crazy fast drivers are a lot of the foreigners in town. They get very disgusted with the slow drivers, so they try to speed around them.

I have mentioned before the road between here and Gaborone, which is two lanes all the way. So you put these two kinds of drivers on the road and add in all the animals (goats, donkeys, chickens, cows) and the people walking, plus the buses and kombis that travel between here and there, plus the potholes, and the construction on the first 40 km—now you know why we need your prayers!

We are getting ready for another baptismal service soon. There will be some from Palapye, some from Makobo, and some from here in Francistown. Right now we are busy interviewing each person and getting their testimony recorded. All the people will travel to Francistown and we will have the baptismal service here. So they are all pretty excited about that. Many of them have prayed for each other, but have never met.

Thanks so much for your prayers and your support. We love and miss you all.

Beverly Hammett