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Published: November 20th 2006
Holding Babies
My favorite thing to see.... My little girl growing up and serving others in every way she can! All week long Brent and one of our visiting campaigners Fred Cabler have been holding a week long Seminar in Usa River, with great sucess! It's been wonderful to hear fred preach and revivie the church there. It was a much needed boost for this steadily growing congregation. Usa river is one of our older small churches out in between Arusha and Moshi. Established back in the 70's with Andrew and Claudine Connally here working in this area. Fariji Paul and his wife Gladness have been serving as the minister there for several years. This area is always bustling with children as you come to visit you get the car chasing herds hollaring "Wazungu, wazungu" because they don't see visitors as often as the ones in Arusha and Moshi.
Emily and I decided when we heard that they were going to be out there all week, that we wanted to hold a children's class as well when Fred was going to be teaching at the church Friday-Sunday. We began to dig out our lessons and plan our stories and crafts.. with great excitment.. thinking oh we'll probably have about 20 kids maybe a few more....And we have Anita Hochdorf
127 kids in class
Our Saturday afternoon Bible class during the Usa River Seminar who is here as well with her Husband Sean, from California, and she wanted to come help with the kids classes too. After Brent's first day there, he came home and he said that they began inviting children in the neighborhoods as they were out on house to house studies throughout the begining of the God blessed us beyond what we could have imagined! Friday and Saturday we had childrens class from 2-4 out in the church yard while Fred was preaching to the Adults inside the building. We were so excited to see that on Friday we had 48 children and 26 adults, which was wonderful! Then today, Saturday, we had an amazing 127 children and 57 Adults. It was a great day!
The only problem was that, I had only prepared 100 crafts to take with me on the off chance that we might reach 75 kids or so...Saturday with the older kids being out of school! boy was I underestimating.. they just kept on coming and coming through the gate....With only 3 teachers there, Emily and Garrett both jumped up and pitched in, holding babies, helping lead songs, fixing knots and passing out colors... I sure
was proud to see them both jump right in there and help out! Brent saw that we were out numbered and came outside to help as well... but still with just 4 adults the children were very well behaved. We divided them into 2 groups after the story to do crafts for the younger ones and Bible work with the older ones.. the over 7yr olds in the older group worked on scripture memory verses, in a large circle out beside the church building, while the little ones did the craft that I had brought with me making braclets.... luckily I had made at least 120 stars on craft sticks to use with our song, so not too many had to do without their stars for our singing time.. They learned "this little light of mine" from the sound of it all almost for the first time.. but they got the hang of it pretty quickly!
1st verse of the Song in Swahili:
"Wangu wangu wa Kristo, wacha wangaze....Wangu Wangu wa Kristo wacha wangaze.... wangaze wangaze wangaze!" (This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine... this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine... let it
shine let is shine let it shine!)
Its so wonderful to see the smiles and excitment of the kids as they are working to memorize God's word! One of my favorite sights for the day was just as I was talking to them all and teaching the kids about helping others and letting your light sine, I look up to see 3 older girls staying back with the younger kids to sit and hold the litle bitty ones that were there... all down the bench and on the end was emily... right in the midst. It made the day even better than it already was to begin with!
We had a great time and all 127 kids will more than likely be there for class in the morning again, so I have to go do some planning and searching through all my die-cast cut outs that the girls back at Northport helped me to prepare before hand for occassions such as this! What a blessing they are to have on hand! I can't say thank you enough, and how this could not be done without your support from there! But, I'm affraid that They are going to go
quick! Then we'll be back to cutting things out by hand again. We have so many Seminars and where there are adults there are always children too!
To close the afternoon with an exciting finish, Brent was called out of the seminar to study with two men that walked up and after the study they wanted to be baptized, so we started loading up the van to go down to the river and then another woman wanted to study as well, so I took the van and the men down to the river, Fariji Paul Baptized the two men there, and Brent stayed behind to have another study. Then by the time we got back to the church buuilding, they had finished their study and the woman wanted to be baptized as well... so we loaded up again to go back down to the river for the third baptism for the day! to God be the glory!! It was an amazing day! The van was used as a shuttle bus to and from the River! No better way to get use out of our very own dalla dalla...
We came home tired and worn out in the best
way possible! Brent always prays for God to wear us out in His service... and today, I felt like God answered that prayer! We were tired and blessed for having just been here to see God's plan in action!
We love you and miss you all...
from our house to yours with Love!
Julie Richardson
PS Please keep Brent's brother Matt Richardson in your prayers as he is in the hospital in Oklahoma with kidney failure.. and will be having a biopsy done this monday, and awaiting results.
Sunday With a good night's rest we loaded up the family and drove back out to Usa river, we waited at the edge of the road for Cy & Stephanie to drop off Fred as they were driving through Usa on their way to Moshi for Sean Hochdorf and his wife Anita to go out to worship and preach there. It's amazing how we all spread out and are doing works in so many areas at the same time now. I know Anthony and Shasta have been working out at Monduli this week, Gary Fallis was preaching at Arusha, Fred Cabler at Usa River, and Sean was
Fred Preaching at Usa River
With Charles translating... (in his ICYC T-shirt set over from Alabama) going to preach at Moshi... so stretched out across Northern Tanzania, we all had a great Lord's day!
Arriving at Usa we unloaded and the children were already there waiting, of course being in Africa, we had thought that class was to begin at 9 and we were there waiting until 10 for all the adults to arrive... But since the kids were there we just began class as soon as we got there... Singing and building up the group. Emily was at the gate, inviting kids in to join us as we all sang songs in swahili... before I knew it we had 88 kids total there all huddled around out sitting on the ground under the tree. However there was no translator to be found... One of the bible school students was there to translate for the adult class, but none for the childrens class... Gladness, fariji's wife, and the normal teacher for the class both came out to help me with the children, (and neither spoke any English, other than greetings of course) but we made due... We sang songs, as many as I could think of in Swahili and learned a few new ones in
Julie teaching at Usa river
Our friday afternoon Class during the seminar English as well, and then I drew out pictures of the story as I read the story from the Swahili Bible... from Matthew 14 about Jesus walking on water.... The kids listened intently and loved the pictures. Then we got out the memory verse craft that Emily & I had prepared ahead of time in Swahili and we let the older kids try to memorize and recite the verse again like we had done on Saturday. They loved it.. and with the little ones busy coloring it all worked out great!
What a mighty God we serve, who can take me in my limited Swahili, a few teachers who speak no English what-so-ever, and simply the BIBLE and make a class of 88 children laugh, learn and enjoy a 2 hour Bible class out in the sun, and sitting on the ground learning God's word and make it all work out wonderfully! AMEN!
After class many of the children ran off, some stayed behind for worship, but in a church yard with gates all around, there was no way to keep them all in without loosing a few... For worship we had 83 present there at Usa.
Simba faces
Our craft for Daniel and the lions den story One more soul was added to the church and we all rejoiced. Afterwards he showed me the back page of his bible, which had Jeff Wilder's name written down and asked me if I would email jeff to tell him that he had been baptized! You see the effects of our visiting campaigners everywhere, even after they have already gone home! Thank you Jeff!
After worship the ladies had prepared lunch there at the buidling for everyone, but it wasn't quite ready yet, so Fred continued on with another lesson and Brent helped fill in the time as well, until we got the ok, it's all ready from the ladies... we ate half a banana, a slice of cucumber, a slice of papaya, and half a buttered roll on each plate for the fellowship meal... But all were filled, and fed with the word of God! It was a great day! A great weekend, and for the Lord's church in Usa River a great Week over all..... God was truly glorified!
Just wish you could have all joined us!
Love Julie
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Mildred Whitlock
non-member comment
Greetings
Thanks again for your taking time to share in your activities with us and I simply love reading about all your tireless efforts. May God bless you all! We love and miss you guys as well! Together in Christ,