Tanzania Team Travels

On Sunday, October 7, we finally were able to worship with our companion congregation -- the Kijota church for which we pray each Sunday.  What an amazing experience.  This post will be full of photos, so be warned! First, here's the church building itself. We arrived quite early, so that we could meet with the staff, have a little breakfast, and organize our participation in the service. That allowed me time to take a few photos before the pews filled up.  Here is the altar area. One of the great parts about this service was Pastor Glenn preaching. This meant, among other things, we could understand the sermon!  He even had a prop!  (That's a very real rock, acquired more than a week prior in Ngorongoro.) Pastor Shila served as his translator, and definitely enjoyed the experience, though we are quite certain he did not know how Glenn was going to make a sermon out of a rock.  (We won't spoil it by telling yo...

One of the early goals Sherry had when planning this trip was to set up a day when the two women from Mount Olive would join with women from our companion congregation in Kijota to do a sewing service project.   For many months, the sewing day was put on the itinerary for Friday October 5, but the details were unknown.   Sherry tried to arrange things via e-mail, but due to many circumstances – not least of which is that the leaders of the congregation do not have e-mail! – the project itself was not known before we arrived, and the number of participants and the kind of equipment they would have to work with was unknown as well.  In our first meeting once we arrived in Sengida, the district staff told Sherry that the women of Kijota would be there for the sewing day (still, unknown numbers and equipment) and that they were counting on Sherry to bring the project, including any fabric and other materials.   Sherry and Karen immediately started planning, ...