Day 138: Iringa Town, Tanzania
I love meeting people who don’t see things as they are, but see what can be. Pastor ChaCha is one of those people. He took us to this empty field to pray over this land he has purchased for the Shalom Zoe Foundation. The vision is to build an orphanage, school, and Bible school on the property.
If you are interested in learning more about the Shalom Zoe Foundation, check out the video my teammate, Stephanie put together, at the end of this blog.
Day 139: Iringa Town, Tanzania
The children performed a couple of beautiful dances at church. They meet during the week to study the Bible, memorize scripture, and dance to praise songs.
Day 140: Iringa Town, Tanzania
Unfortunately I don’t have a picture for today, but use your imagination with me. Imagine a sketchy, third world hospital room with mosquito nets around the beds and bars around the windows. Now picture three American girls lying in those beds with ivs connected to them. On the floor of that hospital room imagine that there are two mattress pads and sleeping bags with two other American girls who are nursing the three malaria patients to health. That might give you an idea of the last 24 hours of my life. Three of my teammates were hit with malaria so Stephanie and I spent the night on the floor of the hospital room running between them and the nurses. While it was a bad situation, we made it into a girls night and had fun despite the circumstances.
Day 141: Iringa Town, Tanzania
With most of our team and several members of the other team being sick, we decided to have a sweet night of worship just to thank Jesus for how wonderful He is and to pray for healing over our pack.
Day 142: Iringa Town, Tanzania
This is beautiful Neema. She is a Maasai woman living in a village outside of Iringa Town who comes into town to bead people’s hair and sell her jewelry. We talked about Jesus and she let us pray for her. As we prayed, tears streamed down her weathered cheeks.
Day 143: Iringa Town, Tanzania
Shay, who is a third grade teacher in Oklahoma City, and myself got a chance to speak to pre-service teachers who will be graduating in May. We were able to share with them how teaching is more than just a job, it is a calling, as well as give them ways to share Jesus in their classrooms. That night re-ignited both of our passions for teaching as well as revealed plans that God has for our lives in the teaching world. Here we were asked to encourage others and God spoke directly to us in the midst. God is so incredible!
Day 144: Iringa Town, Tanzania
This is Joyce, Neema’s sister. We met her in town today. She was so excited to meet the “rafickis” (friends) who took a picture of her sister the other day. She gave us bracelets as “jifts” (that’s African-English for gifts). We sat for a long time holding hands because she was overjoyed just to have visitors.
If you would like to partner with Pastor ChaCha and the Shalom Zoe foundation, you can email him at [email protected].
