Our Partnership with Mgama Parish in Tanzania, Africa
In the fall of 2005, the council of St. Paul Lutheran Church voted to begin a partnership with a parish in Tanzania, Africa through the Bega Kwa Bega (shoulder to shoulder) program of the St. Paul Area Synod. We thus became one of over 60 congregation in the Synod who have a connection to Christians in the Iringa Diocese. Our parish being Mgama. Its members are mostly herdsmen and farmers, averaging about $200 a year in income. A partnership has certain responsibilities: we are to include them in our prayers, give a yearly monetary support of $1000 for building supplies, scholarships for students to attend schools for which they must pass government tests, visits from our congregation to make a personal connection, other needs as they might request and they will pray for us.
In February of 2008, 7 members traveled to Tanzania to be the first visitors from our church to visit the Mgama Parish. We were warmly greeted with song and dance as our vehicle drove into the village. Young and old, male and female greeted us with smiles, handshakes and joyful dancing. We spent the next several days traveling to the various preaching points of the parish. A preaching point would be compared to a small settlement in the countryside of as few as thirty people or maybe 100 or more. We found our Christian friends to be very happy in their faith and content in spite of their meager circumstances, they value people, not things. We were warmly welcomed into their homes for meals and fellowship.
Since starting this partnership, we have been able to send money for the drilling of two wells to provide safe water for two areas where no safe water was available. Nine bicycles were given to as many preaching points. We are now in the process of fund raising for a motorbike for the pastor of our parish. Rev. Mgeyekwa now travels the rocky narrow trails by bicycle to serve his parish. Our yearly support of scholarships has now grown to 25 students for whom we are partially funding their education.
Ask anyone who has been to Tanzania and they will tell you it is an experience of faith and growth that will always stay with you in spite of time. God is truly working in a special way in this partnership for all involved.
