Today David played Guesstures in his Discipleship class. It was pretty funny, but also very interesting. It is amazing to see how the kids act out the words on the cards. At first I thought is was going to be a disaster when I saw how the kids were acting out the words. It seemed like “physical gibberish” to me, but the kids were getting it!
It was interesting to see the Namibian culture come through so strong on such a simple game. To my eyes “cat” looked like a dying chicken, “eating” looked like rapid face punching, “monkey” looked like a chicken dance, but “pound” was one of my favorites. The kid acting out “pound” was acting like he was pounding maize with a wooden maize pounder Of course here pound does not mean weight but making dinner. I would have failed if I was trying to mime pound.
David and I did each take a turn. It was not pretty. I mimed “mail box” but the kids stared at me with confused faces. Afterwards I realized it is because they don’t have mail service here, only PO boxes. I bet most of our kids have never even seen a mail box, or received a letter. And I know that they have never sent a letter. It seemed to take the kids much longer to guess words we were miming, if at all.

I learned today how important it is to understand a culture to properly communicate a message. I was not able to communicate mailbox as it is not part of the kids lives. In the same way we are here to communicate the love of a heavenly Father to people who have mostly not even known they fathers, and most of them who have know fathers know them as violent drunks.

I think I am shown to that God’s plan is perfect. If we came blazing into Namibia ready to plant churches without knowing the basic culture of people who live here we would have failed! So even if some days we feel frustrated by not being in a place of planting churches yet, we are in a season of preparation right now. And it is probably some of the most important preparation we will ever have. Please pray for us this week, to learn all we need to in this time, and grow where we need to!