Saying Goodbye to Africa

It was tough to tell the little ones we were leaving, so we did it in the best way we knew how: we threw them a party! We brought in jumping castles and played at the park. We handed out goodie bags and told them how much we love them. They were sad and we got a lot of hugs. At points, we...

How we came to be in the USA

On July 10, 2010, Matt and I packed all we own into 5 bags and jumped on a plane. This plane deposited us in Houston, TX.

It came as a surprise to us. Our plan was to remain in Botswana until October, take a quick trip down to South America, and then a short furlough in the US. But, here we...

Summer 2010

Greetings from us and many, many children whose lives you have directly impacted in Maun, Botswana. We pray God returns to you 100 times the blessing you have been to us and them.

Praise the Lord! He is doing great things. We are so thankful to get to do what we love. Our lives recently have...

The Children's Pastor

God has been doing quite the awesome work in our hearts here in Africa. I don't think we would have learned the things we are learning here in another situation. Africa has this unique way of making things very bold and obvious. It seems to magnify issues in ways unseen by my eyes before.

One...

Walking 4 miles to church

The past two Sundays, as we were finishing packing everything up and saying goodbye to all the little church stragglers, a handful of kids hung around the car. Although they spoke not more than 10 words to us, we figured out that they needed a ride and lived on the 'Boro,' just down the road...

IT Guy

Matt in the office helping everyone with computer issues!

Translation Project

Meet Nompz: a young adult who has seen the power of God in her own life and is capturing her transition time to invest in God's Kingdom.

Nompz is our translation and video intern. She is half Motswana (from Botswana) and half Zulu (from South Africa). She grew up most of her life in South...

2009 Year in Review

Greetings from Africa!

2009 has been a great year for MCMINTL. It has been a year of growth and a year of vision. This year, God has shown us that His plans are so much bigger than ours!

CHILDRENS WORLD

One of our primary responsibilities is serving as childrens pastors at All Nations Village...

Rural Church Visits

It was a different Christmas this year; a Christmas to remember.

On Sunday, December 20, we began the week with a Christmas celebration with the kiddos at church. We spent the morning playing at the park and then brought all the kids back and distributed Samaritan's Purse gift boxes. It's...

1st Ever Balloon Ride

God is so great! We had an awesome Christmas surprise a couple weeks ago.

Matt and I were sitting at a local restaurant drinking coffee and writing curriculum with our newly hired translator and video teacher guru, Nompendulo. We're doing our thing with our Bibles and computers out,...

Maun Children's Christmas Party

A week ago today, we opened up the gates and invited 250 orphaned and vulnerable children from the Maun area into our tent for a grand Christmas celebration.







With nearly 500 guests in attendance, we enjoyed a skit put on by a team of youth from Baylor Medical Hospital in Gaberone, performance by...

Feelin Like a Proud Parent

All week I've been feeling like a proud parent, or "popping my buttons" as my daddy would say. I'm so proud of our youth leadership team!

Matt and I, along with a gal named Andrea who works with us, started a discipleship program for 11 youth leaders that we handpicked this term. God...

Fire by Night & Kids Sunday

Kelly and I just had one of the best weekends yet here in Botswana. It is an exciting time. We praise God for all He is doing.

On Friday, we held our weekly youth service, called Fire by Night, and this week was the best one we have had yet! We had the most kids (150) that we have ever had, and...

October Newsletter

To all of our co-laborers in Christ,

I have a hard time expressing the joy I have in my heart when I think of each of you. Your prayers, friendship, encouragement, and support bless Matt and I immensely and the greatest joy is seeing how those gifts pour forth into the lives of young people...

Prayer for Missionaries

Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you.
1 Thessalonians 3:1


I hear often from people that they want to pray for missionaries but don't really know what to pray or where to start. I own this wonderful devotional...

Conference/Camp Meeting

There's been a lot going on at The Village Church and things are starting back up at Okavango International School on Monday. Last week, the bulk of our time was spent at church at our annual conference.



Matt designed the posters and flyers for the meeting.



The theme was transformation. (The...

A Trip up North

This weekend we were asked to help in the transportation of a team from Maun, Botswana to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I don't know if I can communicate what a huge blessing it was.

First off, Victoria Falls is a well known, beautiful waterfall that flows just 7 hours (Yay! The newly graveled road...

Summer Update

Dear friends and co-laborers for Christ,

We praise God for a great summer! He has given us so much to be
thankful for.

In June, we were able to spend a few fun, productive, and renewing weeks in the US. We enjoyed special moments with family, the encouragement of friends, and the superb fun of...

Sunday Mornings

We've loved being children's church pastors lately. We've had plenty of help (thanks to the teams who have been passing in and out), fun games and crafts, and great lesson leaders. The kids have been excited we are back and the weather has been awesome. There are even 4 or 5 precious...

The London Layover

Matt and I had a great, fast paced, very productive trip to the US. It was topped off with Ark Kids Camp and then at the end, we enjoyed some beach days with his family.

On the way back to Africa, we split up our trip by laying over in London for 9 hours during the day on Sunday. Ok, London is...

May Update

Dumelang!

Although we haven't been able to achieve fluency in Setswana, the local language, we do know some of the basics :). Dumelang is the local greeting.

The past two months for us have been action packed! In April, we were able to participate in a kids camp for kids from all over the Maun...

Out & Around Town

Sprint through the US

In one week, we will begin the looooooooooooong journey back to the US and try to stay in our seats for the trip that begins at 10:00 am Sunday morning and doesn't end until 7:20 Monday night when we land in OKC.

We are thrilled to get to take a few days and treasure some time with our families....

Long Overdue House Renovations #3

Our house renovations have been a work in progress. However, in the past couple months, we've made significant progress in our bedroom. I didn't show one corner of the room because we still have our washing machine in there, but like I said, it'll get moved to the closet/utility room soon...

Random Weekend Road Trip

Last weekend Matt and I decided to take a random weekend road trip into our big backyard. We'd heard that you can see loads of elephants even just on the way to a town called Kasane, which is about 6 hours away from where we live... and I have been REALLY wanting to see some exotic African...

Update from Botswana

Blessings and happy greetings to all!

2009 has already been a great year! We praise the Lord for all He is doing. Thank you for your generous and cheerful giving; we are seeing the goodness of God directly. Thanks for letting Him bless us through you.

We have had a very good first term here in...

Childrens World Outreach

Saturday we hosted an outreach event for all the kids of All Nations Village Church, their friends, and the kids of the surrounding community. 250 people showed up!!

We had a great time playing together.































We even saw a 50% increase in the number of children at church this morning! That's over...

The birthday trip of a lifetime

For my birthday, Matt planned a little getaway to our neighboring country, Namibia. Have you heard of it? Yeah, Brad & Angelina put it on the map.



It is a country of only 2 million total inhabitants, colonized by the Germans and just recently given independence from South Africa. So, as you...

Nurture Women's Conference

This past weekend, we helped plan a women's conference hosted by All Nations Village Church. The theme was empowering women through the generations and it was touching to see the generations come together! There were panels, much dancing, beautiful Setswana singing, hugs exchanged, gifts...

House Renovations #2

this is our cozy little kitchen before



...and after! yay for color!



and this is our den area with the lovely French doors before



and before



...and after!!! I love this picture because it shows the warm, coffee house, cozy home atmosphere we're trying to create AND it has both the curtains we...

BUSY

Yes this is the first time that I, Matt, have written on the MCMINTL blog. And I do have my reasons; Kelly is far better at it, and the second reason is Kelly is far better at it. Despite this, you can look forward to hearing from me more often right here.

The past two months have been some of...

Our favorite

Oh my! It's been so busy lately! It's mid February and all of our responsibilities have kicked off and we are running to keep pace with all that's going on here.

In this blog, though, I don't want to address the multitude of activities that keep us going, but I want to focus on one thing in...

You might need to sit down for this

January 2009 Newsletter

Happy New Year!

At the start of a brand new year, we look back and realize just how much we have to be thankful for. God is at work and we are amazed! He keeps heaping blessing upon blessing upon us.

In just one year, so much has happened.



BOLIVIA
At the start of the year, Matt was operating in...

Christmas in South Africa

Matt and I had the opportunity to spend Christmas in Cape Town, South Africa! It was an awesome first Christmas together. South Africa was gorgeous. It really surprised me. I felt like I was in Southern Europe. It was very different than the Kalahari Desert we drove through in Botswana to...

Hospital Christmas Party / Samaritan's Purse

House Renovations #1

The bathroom!

I have to say, Matt and I make a pretty good team. He's the creativity and I'm the functionality. We're the Claytons :).


Before...





After!

I love my job!

I've had some good days lately. To my surprise, I've been doing a lot of counseling and small group Bible studies with the girls here. I LOVE IT! Most of the counseling boils down to me listening while the girl shares what is on her heart or the difficulty she's facing and me saying a few...

Bible School Banquet

Wednesday night Matt and I dressed up and headed out to support the Love Botswana Bible Institute students as they celebrated the culmination of their studies and all God has done.

Getting to Know the Villagers

Last week we got to visit the homes of some of the local children that Love Botswana supports. One of our current projects is creating portfolios for each of the children and families who are a part of the Sponsor a Child and Sponsor a Family programs we are launching. This picture shows Matt...

A Lesson in Humility & Generosity

Today we celebrated Christmas Okavango International School style. There were songs and dances performed by the precious first graders, awards presented to all students, a charismatic Christmas story by Pastor Matt, and enthusiastic reception of Samaritan's Purse boxes by all.

The school's...

Wisdom & Peace: They are ours

"But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." James 3:17

There are two things the Lord has been emphasizing to me over and over lately: ask for wisdom and it will be given to you and...

Quite the trip

GABS
On the 26th of September, Matt and I along with another lady we work for and her granddaughter set off on a trek across the Kalahari Desert en route to the capital city of Botswana, Gaberone. Our primary purposes in making the trip to Gabs were to finalize the purchase of our long awaited...

A trip through the desert

This weekend Matt and I got to attend the Form 4 (Equivalent of junior year) Life Skills trip to the Debswana diamond mine in Orapa. It began at 10 am on Thursday morning as we somehow fit 27 of us into a small bus. Allow me to explain: This bus has 6ish rows of seats including the row the...

Arrival in Africa!

Yay! Our website is up and running. Expect frequent blog updates and beautiful pictures.

For those of you I haven't seen in awhile, here's a quick update. Summer was a whirlwind of wedding planning, marriage preparation, supplying ourselves for Africa, preparing for a world move, visiting...