African Adventures

By Ashley Thaba

Where there's a will, there's a way.

~English Proverb

Twelve years ago, I moved to Botswana, Africa, as a missionary. One hundred people agreed to pray for me while I was there.

I was lonely on the other side of the world. I found great comfort in knowing that through writing prayer letters, I could share my adventures with my friends in America. At first, I felt I should only share the positive, life-changing things that were happening to me. I feared rejection or judgment if people viewed me as a complainer. However, one day I dared to share my honest struggles and hardships. Contrary to my suspicions, people related and truly encouraged me. From that point on, I found the prayer team acted like a therapist, allowing me to vent, to share joys, to ask questions, and to praise God with them.

Over the past twelve years, friends began forwarding my e-mails to others, and our group grew. It is now in the thousands, and recipients live on every continent. Interested readers replying from all over the planet have inspired me to reach deeper in trying to pen my thoughts and life lessons.

When I went into labor with a healthy baby boy and a doctor's mistake rendered him severely brain-damaged for life, it was only natural that I share the journey with my prayer team. Over the first year of his life, I shared my tears, my smiles, his milestones, doctors' reports, and how we overcame our bitterness toward the doctors and trusted God to bring something good out of an awful situation.

Throughout the year, various people wrote and said, "You should write a book about this." Initially, I shrugged it off. However, one day I received an e-mail from a publisher on my team saying he thought this story had the makings of a great book. As a stay-at-home mom of two small children, it was crazy to think I could find the time to write a book, so again I laughed at the idea. But the publisher suggested I sit down and start writing to see how it flowed.

Once I sat down and started typing, it was like a dam within me broke open. The story flooded out. Thanks to my detailed prayer letters, rereading them took me back to each step of the past year to relive it, enabling me to write with the same emotions I felt in those moments.

Finally, the book was complete. I sent it off to the publisher and anxiously watched my inbox. When I got his response, two points stuck out: He liked the book, and he wanted to know when I could go to America to promote it. I had already scheduled a month-long trip home in December for Christmas, so I thought this would be perfect timing. He responded that promoting a book took months and would require extensive travel. As a mother of two small children, a dedicated wife of a busy businessman, and a permanent resident of Botswana, I knew this wasn't possible. Despair and frustration filled me at the thought I had written this entire book for nothing.

Weeks went by as I questioned why God had so clearly enabled me to write this story if the only purpose was for it to sit in my saved documents. I looked into other publishing options, but they all had long waiting lists and the likelihood of them even reading my manuscript looked slim. Furthermore, most of the "fine print" stated that I would need to do most of the legwork promoting the book, and I wouldn't make much money. It didn't seem worth the sacrifices.

One day, a thought hit me: What if I could just pay a printing company to print the book for me and then promote it via the prayer team and sell it myself? After hours of research and enquiries with different companies, I realized I needed to put my book in a professional format to even submit it for printing. Having little patience for technical matters, I needed help. In its current form, it was too big to attach in an e-mail, so I needed someone local to help me format it. Could such a person be found in my small city in Botswana?

After fruitless searching, I finally stumbled by accident onto a printing house. There I met a graphic designer who agreed to format my book and properly position my pictures. His employer could then print the books for me. I was elated! The excitement quickly dissipated when I heard it would cost the same as our car to print 1,000 books!

Later, as my husband and I did the research and math, we realized that after selling 400 books, we would cover all our costs. But would 400 people be interested in buying the book to make the breakeven point? I thought we should ditch the project; it was too risky. But my husband believed in me and wanted me to go for my dream. We signed the contract and printed the first thousand books.

A local negligent medical case involving an innocent newborn quickly received loads of media attention and, within months, we had to print 500 more. As my upcoming December trip to America drew closer, I wrote my prayer team asking if anyone wanted to buy a book. Four hundred orders filled my inbox. Four hundred books would consume our entire airline baggage allowance, so it made more sense to just print copies in the States. Now my book was in a professional format so it was easy to submit, and soon I had ordered a thousand more copies for the States.

In a little over a year, we have sold about 2,500 copies in Botswana and the States. It has taken countless hours of e-mails telling friends about the book and posting the book cover on Facebook to spread the word. I keep copies on me at all times and take advantage of any opportunity to show people, whether in a line paying a power bill or at a play date with other moms. I have spoken on radio stations and at church gatherings. It has been a lot of hard work, but in the end we have made enough money to cover our initial investment and make a significant contribution toward our son's medical bills. I can finally say I am a published author!

http://www.chickensoup.com