HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR MISSION TRIP TO TANZANIA
What was it like? We were worried about your safety. Would you go back again? Was it hot? These are some of the comments and questions we have been asked in the days following our return from Africa. Even as I write this, it is almost hard to comprehend that indeed we were in Africa. Thank you (Asante) to all of you who prayed for our safe trip and return. A mechanical problem with the plane delayed our return, but we were well cared for my KLM Airlines for the extra two days we had to travel. Special thanks to Carol Weber for being the contact for our families back home to let them know what was happening, for delivering us to the airport and, along with Pastor Becker, greeting us as we arrived back home.
There are many experiences to share. We traveled by hired bus with a driver the time we were in Africa. After landing in Dar es Salaam it was an eight hour drive to Iringa Town. Our driver, Peter, was with us for the whole time ending with the eight hour drive back to the airport. He is a fine Christian man, born in Iringa, has a wife and small daughter and he became special to all of us. We were the third group he had escorted and he was our interpreter of Swahili, also. We were invited to his home for a special meal. In fact, we were invited into many homes as the Tanzanians look on visitors as being a blessing to their home when they visit. The people of our parish are joyful in their singing and dancing in their worship Most of them are farmers working the fields daily by hand to raise their crops of maize, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, sweet potatoes. We stayed in the main village two nights and in the pastor's home our rooms had bed-netting and electricity, run off a generator, added just for our comfort. We saw and felt God's presence in the smiles of the little children, the hugs of the Tanzanians, their gifts of chickens (live), their handiwork in the baskets they weave and presented to us, the beauty of the Tanzania countryside with the fields and mountains, the animals on our safari, about 40 zebras crossed the road single file in front of us, the elephants with their babies at their side, a pride of lions with many cubs, giraffes looking down on us as we drove past.
We visited eight of our preaching points, there are eleven in our Mgama Parish. At all of them we saw their churches made of bricks they make, thatched roofs, wooden benches or some made from clay, and decorated with material or flowers or branches. We heard of their hopes and dreams for their worship places. If a building of bricks is not completed with a roof before the rainy season comes, the bricks cannot withstand the weather and the walls will collapse. Our gift of $10,000 received earlier from the St. Paul Foundation is being applied to the drilling of two or three wells. We saw the present water sites; flowing streams or rivers, or standing water holes. Our hope is that when all the preliminary work has been completed, the drilling will take place without delay.
Everyone will be invited to attend a presentation as soon as we edit our pictures and organize our story of the mission that is being done in Tanzania. Since there has been a change in how parishes write a strategic plan, we did not come back with a list of their long-range goals. The Bega Kwa Bega (Shoulder to Shoulder) program has been in Tanzania through the St. Paul Synod since 1987. In 2007, more than $1.2 million came from the Synod churches to the Iringa Diocese. There are over 65 churches in our Synod alone working together in Africa. On behalf of the other trip members who are busily editing their pictures or unpacking their suitcases: Jean and Roger Schwartz, their granddaughter, Michaela, Bonnie Dahl, Ardyce Struss, and Adele Urhammer, I praise God for our Christian faith and the fellowship we share here and with our fellow Christians in Tanzania.
Written by Jan Stevens
