The Kingdom is Expanding One heartbeat of love at a time We have been working with Neema Craft Shop this month. Neema, meaning ‘grace’ in Swahili, seeks out and provides employment (and medical benefits) to the physically disabled in Iringa, Tanzania. The stories of the workers are filled with tragedy, hope & inspiration. Neema uses recycled goods (everything from glass bottles turned into beads to elephant dung turned into journals) to hand make their beautiful crafts. Door to door evangelism is something we’ve done twice this month. Driving into Tanzania I asked God what he had planned for this month and he said to me, ‘the stories you will hear will shake you, but you will see how much I love my people in Tanzania.’ Sure enough he proved faithful to that. During door to door we heard incredible testimonies from people. 1 man who was Muslim and had a terrible knee injury until God appeared to him in a dream and healed him and told him that Jesus was the true Messiah. We met a woman who wanted nothing to do with us at first and ended up inviting us into her home and telling us about the children who are born to parents unable to provide and the children end up thrown into dumpsters and latrines as soon as they are born. We’ve had opportunities to preach at a variety of different church services: youth, woman, young adult… I say “ish” because if something is set to start at 4 it really starts at 4:30, 4:45 but we are still expected to be there at 4. oh Africa time For 5 days we were in different villages. Some lived with the Masai tribe, some lived in really hard conditions and some lived like kings for those days. Kathleen & I lived in a house with no running water, chickens inside the house, “bathroom” was outside the house, and no one spoke English. Church was a 1 room brick building with some of the most beautiful views I have ever seen.
We’ve had opportunities to visit orphanages and love on the children there. Sometimes these visits still crack me up. One time the orphanage didn’t know we were coming but our Pastor sent us anyway and sure enough, the orphanage welcomes us with open arms.
me preaching at church 🙂
Church. Oh Church in Africa….. a typical Sunday for us is English church service 8 am – 10:30 am ish, Swahili church service from 10:30 a.m. ish until 12:30 p.m. ish, lunch at the church around 1:30 p.m. ish, preaching at the market 2 p.m. ish until 4 p.m. ish, church service 4 p.m. ish until 6 p.m. ish
church in the village
village paths
children in the village 🙂
Teams United, Agape and Shekinah have been living & doing ministry together. It’s been a ton of fun having all 14 of us in 1 house and given the tight living spaces, we’ve done really well.
Sometimes I forget how not normal our stories are until I talk to non Race people. i.e. with no running water for a few days, we’ve taken to putting the buckets outside the house every night to collect rain water (PTL it’s rainy season) and that water is what we bucket shower with, or if you’re like Janell & I you just wait until it’s raining really hard and just go shower outside.
