Thirty-three years of waiting culminated in the Jan. 15 to 17 meetings that organized the new Botswana Union, or region, of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

“We have been praying for this day since 1971, and at long last it is here,” said a delegate.

Speaking at the historic meeting, the newly elected president of the Adventist Church in Botswana, Pastor Paminus Machamire, congratulated “the people of Botswana for your rare determination which compelled you to wait and work tirelessly for the last 20 plus years to receive this status.”

Machamire, a Zimbabwean and former vice president at the Adventist Church’s Southern Africa-Indian Ocean regional headquarters, commended the people of Botswana for their vision.

“While you waited, you were not sidetracked and did not lose your vision. Instead you trusted in God and in the wisdom of the higher organization which gave guidance all along the way.”

“Coincidentally,” Machamire said, “we are being organized during the Year of World Evangelism, which must naturally make evangelism the core business of the Botswana Union.”

Speaking on Sabbath, or Saturday, Jan. 17, Pastor Pardon Mwansa, president of the Adventist Church in the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean region, spoke of the need for members to understand why Botswana was being organized as a specific church area.

“The purpose,” said Mwansa, “is to make it easy for all our people in Botswana to proclaim the good news.” Structures, Mwansa noted, were not created merely to be an end in and of themselves, but to help carry out God’s mission on earth. “The office we have created must therefore make it easy for believers [here] to carry out their commission easily, effectively and more efficiently.”

Maithoko Mpoka, a member of the Botswanan Parliament, addressed the service and congratulated the local Adventist Church for attaining its new status. The official, who represents the district of Moshupa, urged Adventist members to pray for ecclesiastical as well as civil authorities.

“This is a Christian obligation,” Mpoka said. “You are not to choose whom to pray for among those who are in leadership positions. All require your prayers, including myself.” He also urged the 5,000 people who gathered from all the Adventist churches in Gaborone at the South Botswana Field grounds to be the conscience of the nation: “It is not wrong for you as a Christian body to tell government that you do not agree with a particular legislation.”

Currently, Adventist Church membership in Botswana is 24,000 out of a national population of 1.5 million.