Tanzania Team update

Great to see the team back yesterday - I asked Tom if he could give me something to post here on the blog - here it is.

The short term mission team spilled out into the CBC car park around midday yesterday (Monday 18^th Aug) having been en-route since boarding the bus in Iringa in Tanzania about 9 in the morning on Saturday. Richard and Debbie are still in Tanzania for a late honeymoon. We had also said goodbye to Katy and to Mairi, our excellent team leader and fluent Swahili speaker, at the airport. So we are all accounted for and full of joy and thankfulness to God for an amazing 19 days.

There were so many positives and a few (but very real) negatives:

The travelling was a bit tedious in places but you could mostly look out of the window and observe a ‘different world’, sleep or talk. It is not everywhere you can look out of a cross country bus and see elephant and giraffe!

The welcome we got in the little Anglican congregation in the Village of Uhambingeto was warm and heartfelt. We had gone to encourage them by kick-starting the building of their new church building (which we did) but have come back with a sense of loss from having to leave them. They live in great simplicity because they can not generate enough income to live in any other way. But their love for Jesus and their firm faith in a gracious God are deeply humbling. They love to worship in song and all that is required is a few voices and some clapping to sound amazing. Give them a guitar (which we did) a drum and some plastic tambourines and they are a delight. And they pray. We prayed with them every day on the building site, they prayed for our sick (see below) and joined with us in prayer whenever we were together in the evenings. A faithful few turned up every day at the building site to supply the constant need for mortar, bricks and water.

The weekday pattern was like this:

Three excellent cooked meals a day, always with fresh fruit, menu different to here but not so different as to be difficult.

Mornings on the building site (with Debbie and another volunteer for the day teaching at the preschool). We found the site with one course of bricks on a newly laid foundation and the corners about waist high. The three builders employed by EI were great guys and amazingly patient instructors: 7 working days later three walls were chest high, two corners were full height (to the ring-beam) and the 4^th wall was a few courses above the base of the windows. By the end, we were building from the scaffolding (same function as ours but otherwise rather different!).

Afternoons, most days a few went back to the building site while the others spent 2 hours with preschool children telling a bible story, doing a craft activity, singing songs and playing games. After a low turnout the first day, we prayed that the Lord would send along as many as we could handle. So on the second day, the word having got around, we had 200 or so children, which was, well, memorable. But the combined gifts of the team came into play and order was restored after only one spectacular moment of utter chaos. So our prayer was answered. It turned out that a lot of children had bunked off school to check us out; it got sorted out the next day. From then on, 40 to 50 turned up and went away joyfully clutching their Noah’s Ark, lost sheep or wearing a crown.

Evenings, we did a bible study together in groups or had fellowship (singing and prayer) with Christians from the village. When the moon was not ‘up’ we looked at the amazing night sky before going to bed.

The middle Saturday there was a wedding and we were invited. It should be said that the Emmanuel International (EI) Reps in Tanzania, Andrew and Miriam, did an outstanding job managing our transport, food, accommodation, contacts and providing hygiene procedures as well as answering endless questions and translating back and forth from Swahili to English. But the wedding was a problem: a great experience not to be missed, an invitation not easily turned down but the catering (and associated hygiene) went out of their control. The outcome was that first Debbie and Katy, later Richard, became ill. After a few days Andrew insisted on taking Debbie (with Richard) into town to get tested and she was found to be genuinely ill and spent a night on a drip in hospital and taking some strong medication. That test showed that Katy might be infected with the same nasty bug (though she had not been so unwell) so she was taken to town for tests (which proved negative). All through this Richard had not been 100% and eventually, as the rest of us were travelling home, he was tested and found to have the same as Debbie. All being well the medication should do the job. Keep praying.

The day after the wedding (Sunday) there was a baptism (christening) in the morning and in the afternoon the Bishop came to confirm around 10 people, to visit us and inspect the progress of the building. So in the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ line of things we scored 2 out of 3 and sang as a choir at each.

Other activities were climbing the local mountain and spending a night and a morning at the end winding down at a national park where the landscapes, trees, animals large and small are so spectacularly different to ours that it is breathtaking. Oh and did I mention the dark clear night sky where the sky is filled with stars and the Milky Way is as clear as can be? Awesome.

Any questions? Ask one of us. It would be great to lay on an event where we can report in more depth. There are loads of photographs, some interesting (if rough) video and some great stories to tell.

Thanks, CBC, for your generous support and prayers.

Bwana asifiwe sana! (The Lord is greatly to be praised!)