Child's Play

I had just finished teaching at the Bible School and was waiting for my ride to come and take me home. Tim is out of town in Morogoro; he is meeting with the other Bible School principals and the national leadership as they endeavor to work on the school budgets for the next year.
As I sat in the shade near the front gate waiting, I glanced across the compound and saw the son of one of our resident Bible School teachers.
He is about 4 years old and he didn't see me watching him as he played. He had taken different size rocks and was playing his version of "good guys and bad guys". The rocks were his "action figures"; I was intrigued as I watched him playing under a bush for shade.
He looked just like any little boy in America playing outside by himself; except instead of expensive toys he was using rocks for his "action figures".
He was making all the typical play noises and using different voices for his characters. I am constantly amazed at the ingenuity and creativity of the people here in Tanzania; even the children know how to use the simple things around them to create something useful.
Almost every day there is a group of local boys who play their version of kick ball on the road in front of our gate. Their ball consists of plastic bags packed tightly into a ball shape and held together by string wrapped around the ball like a net.
The toys that these children fashion out of what we would consider useless items and trash bring just as much pleasure to them as the expensive toys our American children play with. The Tanzanian children have little time for play but when they do have the opportunity they take full advantage of it.
Be blessed today!

Busy in Mwanza

Wow, it's hard to believe that it's been two weeks since my last post. Time has gone so quickly; we spend a few hours each day, Monday through Friday, at the Bible School and Sundays we are at one of our churches ministering. Many churches now have an early English service and another service following that in Swahili. If you add Sunday school in with that and then the time it takes them to prepare a meal for us over a charcoal fire; it makes for a long day. However, we enjoy the opportunity to visit our TAG churches and to encourage the people as well as the pastor and his family.
We visited the church at Mkuyuni this past Sunday; our good friend, Charles Mkumbo is the pastor of this church. When we left Tanzania in 2001, they were meeting in a tiny little building not much bigger than an average living room in America. We took a picture of all the people standing outside that little building on our last visit there in 2001; we found that picture stored with our belongings when we arrived back in Mwanza.
Now they are in a new building that is much larger than the old building; again, they have outgrown this building and are needing to expand. God has blessed the efforts of this pastor and his family and they have even started a branch church a little distance from them. The branch church is growing rapidly and is no longer supported by it's mother church at Mkuyuni.
During the service this past Sunday we had eight people come forward for salvation; we rejoiced along with the people over these new converts; they will be discipled and will become a part of this growing body of believers.
Before we left, Pastor Mkumbo took us by the house of a young woman named Happy. I had prayed for Happy before we left in 2001; she was barren and her Muslim husband was going to take another wife or return her to her family if she did not have a child. It is very important in this culture to have children; women who are barren are looked down upon and carry a heavy burden of shame.
Pastor Mkumbo came out of the house holding the hands of two beautiful children; a girl and a boy. They were Happy's children; God heard our prayers and saw her tears; He blessed her with these two precious children.
Sunday was a good day!

Broken Nets

There is a story in the New Testament in which Jesus comes upon Peter, James and John coming in after a long night of fishing; the boat was empty because they had caught no fish. Jesus told them to cast their net out one more time on the other side of the boat. As the obeyed, the net they were using began to tear because it was so full of fish!
We have been praying about the needs at the Mwanza Bible college; especially about the food situation. On Friday the faculty met to discuss the situation of how to provide meat for the students; they are supposed to have red meat twice a week and fish once a week; Tanzanians are not accustomed to having meat more often than that. Our food manager mentioned that they were supposed to have fish in a few days and the price of fish has gone up recently.
Sunday, God provided "manna" for the Bible college in the form of fish!!! Not just a few fish, but about 1,500 pounds of fish! You might say our nets were so full they were breaking. We filled the freezer at the college and still had over two thirds of the fish remaining. We called our friend, Seni, and in a short time we had taken the remaining fish to a local business that had walk-in freezers and for a small fee they allowed us to put all the rest of the fish in their freezers.
God met our needs like He does so often; abundantly more than we could ask or think! We have enough fish for our seventy students to eat three times a week for the full 10 weeks of this term!!! God is good!

Principal

Dear Friends,
This week we began our duties as interim principals of the Mwanza Bible College. Tim is actually in Arusha this week for leadership meetings so I am acting principal this week, am teaching a class, and am helping out in the registrar's office. So, it's been a busy week! Tim and I have no training to be the head of a Bible College; we finished building and opened this college during our first term and have done some teaching there, but this is a new challenge.
We have about 70 students enrolled so far; more may come next week. Every day there are decisions to be made that are normal for here but are never dealt with in America. For instance, this week one of our dilemmas was whether to buy one big cow or several goats to provide meat for the Bible College this term. Unfortunately, the Bible School truck is broken so we don't have transportation to bring the goats from the market outside of town back to the Bible School. So, we have been forced to buy meat for this week from the local meat market where costs are much higher. The students usually have meat three times a week which is normal for Tanzania.
We had to decide whether the money was available to buy chalk and erasers for each of the classrooms. We had to decide whether to allow students entry or not because most do not come with their full fees; we opt to allow them entry and pursue the remainder of the school fees during the term trusting along with them that God will provide. We dealt with boundary disputes with our neighbors this week and had to walk to town to have copies made because our copier is broken. Our printer is almost out of ink so we are trying to use the printer as little as possible until we have the funds to buy a new cartridge.
The students have been told in some of the classes that there are no student text books available because either there aren't any in English or we don't have the funds to purchase enough for everyone to have one so they must share.
There is never a boring day at the Mwanza Bible College; we are thankful for a dedicated staff and faculty that are willing to take one day at a time and trust God to provide for our needs. We take so many things for granted in America; here, nothing is taken for granted including water and electricity.
Have a blessed day!

Kisorya

In December, we were privileged to travel into the Mara Region to hold a seminar on Leadership for the pastors in that region. The Mara Region is about the size of the state of Rhode Island; there are only 15 TAG churches in that region. Only seven of them have their own plots and buildings; the TAG national office has declared this region a mission's district and has placed it under the national Mission's Department. We had twelve pastors who attended the two day seminar; they were so thrilled that we were willing to come and be with them. They were eager to learn and eager to have someone to voice their concerns and ideas to.

We had a wonderful time with these men and women; they are in difficult areas and are isolated from other TAG churches. There is an A/G church in Kisorya; they run about 50 adults. The inset is a picture of the church building and a picture of the pastor and his family.

Pray for the pastors and churches in the Mara Region; pray for the hundreds of thousands of people who have not heard that Jesus loves them.

Blessings.