02 Oct 2024

The church has been implored to help Botswana retain its reputation of being an epicentre of peace by praying for the country as it heads towards the October 30 general elections.

The call was made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Lemogang Kwape on Sunday when addressing Gasita branch of Head Mountain of God Apostolic Church in Zion.

Dr Kwape, who was speaking at the church’s Thobo celebration, beseeched the church members to approach the elections with sober minds, their main desire and objective being to safeguard Botswana’s peace.

On the plea for them to be allocated land, Dr Kwape informed the congregation that churches were indeed deserving of land where they could put up decent places of worship.

The minister said the church played an important role of contributing to the general wellbeing of individual members of society and added that government was committed to ensuring that churches were allocated land.

Deacon Olefile Gabanakgosi had earlier raised concern that access to land was one of the church’s biggest challenges with many churches worshipping in homesteads.

Noting how undesirable such a situation was, he appealed to government to move swiftly to address it so that churches could perform their function of being the society’s spiritual pillar in places befitting of the responsibility they carried.

Overseer of Cluster 4 under which Gasita falls in, Head Mountain Church’ southern region, Acting Bishop Gabathae Maswabi said while the harvest celebration was held to primarily thank God for what he had blessed the believers with in the previous cropping season, it was also an important fundraising activity for the church.

He said the Gasita branch was raising funds for the construction of a church building, saying while they were yet to be allocated land, they wanted to wait in readiness to develop their land as soon as it was allocated to them.

Branches within Cluster 4 contributed varying amounts towards the  Thobo celebration while Dr Kwape donated P2 500. Ends