I love school! My name is Bonté, and I’m 12 years old. I’m in grade eight at the Adventist secondary school in Libreville, Gabon.

If you look at a map, you’ll see that my country is on the west coast of central Africa. You’ll find Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. When you drive through the main part of Libreville, you can sometimes see kids playing Frisbee on the beach.

My favorite classes are math, sports, and English. But the thing I like most about going to my school is that I get to learn about Jesus every day.

I’m thankful I live in Libreville because it’s the only place in Gabon where we have an Adventist secondary school. But I feel sad for the rest of the Adventist kids in my country. Most of them have to go to public school. Some of my church friends who’ve had to do this say it’s really hard.

“The worst part is that our exams are almost always on Sabbath,” they told me. “We try to explain to our teachers that Sabbath is God’s holy day, but they don’t want to listen. They say, ‘Why should we make an exception for you because of your strange belief?’ Some even accuse us of spending the day playing games. They don’t believe us when we say we go to church.”

This is one reason I’m glad the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering this quarter will help us build another secondary school in Gabon.

This new school will be built in the city of Franceville, and it will be big enough for hundreds of Adventist kids to attend.

For the first time, they’ll be able to start school with prayer and worship. They’ll have Bible class and teachers who love them. And no one will tell them they can’t go to church on Sabbath.

A Real Mission School

Many of the kids in my school in Libreville aren’t Adventists, and some of them aren’t Christians. Their parents send them to our school because they like it much more than public school. We’ve been able to share our faith with these students, and some of them have joined our church. Our teachers say we’re a real mission school because we help the community kids learn to love and serve Jesus.

This is the other reason I’m happy about our new school. It will be a real mission school, too, where hundreds of kids can learn about God.

My Big Decision

Sometimes we have what we call a seminary at my school in Libreville. These are special meetings led by our chaplain. During this time, we study our Bibles to understand what it teaches. At the end of our last meetings, the chaplain asked whether any of the students wanted to be baptized. I raised my hand.

“We Want to Be Baptized Too!”

After school that day, two of my friends who aren’t Christians asked me what you have to do to be baptized. I told them that you have to join a special class with the chaplain to learn more about the Bible. “He asks you a lot of questions,” I said, “and when he thinks you’re ready, he’ll plan a program at the church to baptize you.”

I had talked with these friends about Jesus before, so I knew they were interested in God. But I was still surprised and happy when they told me that they wanted to be baptized and join our church family.

Our school in Libreville is doing its best to reach kids for Jesus. But if we had another secondary school, we could reach even more. Please give to the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering this quarter to help us have our school.