Botswana Consumer Fair

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had a booth at the Botswana Consumer Fair held in Gaborone, Botswana. The fair lasted from 23 July to 29 July. We helped man the booth on Sunday afternoon. We were a little surprised that attendance really started to drop off in the early afternoon and by three o'clock that day most of the exhibitors were either taking down their booths or had already done so.

We relieved Elder and Sister Kimball when we arrived at the booth. They had set up the booth and manned it for a number of shifts during the week. The young single adults and the young missionaries had done a lot of the manning of the booth during the week. While we were on booth duty Elder and Sister Roberts, public relations missionaries working in Johannesburg, shared booth duty with us. They went through the Mission Trailing Center at the same time we did.

The booth was very successful at increasing awareness of the church in Botswana. Hundreds of people requested that the missionaries bring them Books of Mormon or church DVDs. We enjoyed helping talk with people about the church though we would have liked to talk with more people.

We went to the fair a few days before our shift to see what was there. There were the usual booths selling jewelry and trinkets, government booths, large business booths, etc. We enjoyed looking through the many African craft booths. The photo above is of a booth selling traditional African clothing. Sister Rands purchased a wall hanging of a woman carrying a baby on her back and balancing a bundle of sticks for firewood on her head. She also bought a bracelet.