Blogs from Centre, Tanzania, Africa - page 7

The recent rains have caused bugs to swarm. The Swahili word for bug is "mdudu." And all sorts of interesting wadudu (plural), some poisonous, have been in and around our house lately; flying, jumping, and crawling creatures. We leave a nightlight on at the back door, and in the morning there are piles of wings that have been shed by the ones attracted to the light. Yesterday Joy and I spent some time cleaning around the rear steps, because we had an infestation, yea a breading-ground, of "Nairobi" flies. These tiny little critters have a segmented body of alternating black and red. If one gets on you, be sure to flick it off - don't smash it upon yourself. According to Wikipedia: "The beetles neither sting nor bite, but their haemolymph contai... read more

Greetings from Tanzania! It has been a while since our last blog so we’ll try to bring you up to date by touching on some highlights of what’s been happening here in our lives at MTC and the surrounding villages. It is definitely a busy place, but the work and our experiences have been very gratifying. A Man Called Peter On Saturday, Oct 8th, Rob visited a local Compassion program with Peter Fumbi, his friend and student, and also our gardener. Peter studies at Msalato (MTC) during the week and volunteers his time on Saturday mornings at a local Compassion program. Peter is a very dedicated young man with a passion for helping disadvantaged youth in Dodoma. Compassion is a worldwide program started in South Korea with its head office now in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Through ... read more

We made the 8 hour drive to the working capital of Dar Es Salaam and said our goodbyes to Joy and Lindsey at the international airport. Their journey from Iringa until they arrived at Joy’s parents’ home in Stockton, California would take about 50 hours. Wow! You talk about an exhausting ordeal. We are happy they have been enjoying the time with family and Christian friends. Since Carey, Charles and I were in Dar for the airport deposit, we got some errands done; especially since Iringa has much fewer items available. We were able to purchase a new modem which we had hoped would improve our internet connection (no improvement on this yet). Wednesday evening we worshiped with the congregation that used to be Charles’ church home. They asked me to teach the Bible class. My ... read more

Our Lord gave us a monumental charge - to go into all the world with the saving gospel. He died that men might live. This commission in His own words reads: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:" (Matthew 28:19). The "second part" of this charge is: "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20). Once a soul has been freed from the bondage of sin, continued teaching is vital to further strengthen this initial foundation of faith. The attrition rate among new converts is often traceable to inadequate initial teaching and the lack of "counting the cost." ... read more

Last week we were busy walking the pathways in Iringa and Ipogolo passing out fliers. We were advertizing the restart of our Saturday classes. We took a recess in order to make our special journey to Malawi. That proved to be a good two weeks of teaching Personal Evangelism. Our advertizing last week included distributing over 2,000 invitations and also having it advertized for about three days on the radio. Our morning session is conducted in a class room at the School for the Deaf. The afternoon class is conducted at the church building. We are thankful that we got off to a good start. We had a number of Christians attending at both sessions and 5 non-Christians in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. Interestingly, one of our visitors said he had found a ... read more