Africa Archives - Families For Missions

Research Some African Animals

In addition to this fun activity, head to your local library to check out some books about wild animals. You might even find some fun books that would tell you more about the countries where these animals live. Here are some examples:

Journey Through South Africa tells a little bit about the Kruger National Park in South Africa and the Mlilwane Nature Reserve in Swaziland. It has a fun map with a journey planner page that older kids can use to follow along as you “travel” through the country.

You can learn more about Elephants with a National Geographic Kids book for early readers. They have a variety of books representing different animals.

If you have little ones that are working on learning their alphabet, the African Animal Alphabet from National Geographic Kids is fun.

There are so many books to choose from about wild animals. Look through the sections about animals and African travel at the library and pick some of your favorites! For a good read about a missionary to Africa check out David Livingstone: Africa’s Trailblazer.

Watch a fun video together

If you have kids that love watch TV (and who doesn’t?), try watching a video about animals together. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can watch episodes of Wild Kratts for free right now, including one about elephants.

There are also some great documentaries about African animals and their habitats available on Amazon Prime. Check out Growing Up in the Savannah or Strange Encounters in the Savannah.

Have fun making your animals and learning about them!

As you can imagine, there are not enough missionaries to care for and disciple all of the people that have newly trusted in Jesus as their Savior. Some of these new believers have a desire to continue to spread the good news about Jesus, and some even want to become pastors. But where do they get training to do this? Many are very poor and there are not enough seminaries or theological colleges close to them.

One kind of missionary that many people do not think of is a seminary teacher. There are some people that travel from the United States to another country to teach for a few weeks each year. Most of these missionaries go to another country and live in that culture and environment. They learn the language and cultural nuances by immersing themselves in the local culture. Instead of being a pastor of a local church, they spend their time teaching people how to become a pastor and how to study the Bible and explain it to others.

Some of the goals of a seminary teacher are:

Provide quality theological teaching
Equip local people to teach the Bible
Answer questions about difficult passages in the Bible
Train local pastors and teachers
Teach people to recognize false teaching
Provide scripturally founded local teachers for new believers in Jesus

One location that has seminary teachers is Harare Theological College in Zimbabwe, Africa. You can read more about it here.

There is also a seminary in Puebla, Mexico (where I grew up) called Seminario Biblico de Puebla. They have a boarding school and evening class options, and many local Mexican people have trained there.

Activities to do with your kids:

If you have young kids, let them set up a podium or desk and pretend to be a Bible professor.
Read more about Zimbabwe and being a Bible professor. Check your local library for great books on travelling to Zimbabwe.
- You can find a story about this in my book, Missionary Kid Stories.
- You can also learn more about Zimbabwe by reading Where Are You Going, Manyoni? by Catherine Stock
- Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe (Caldecott Honor).
- See beautiful photographs from National Geographic in African Critters by Robert Haas.