Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I got back in Singida around noon on Thursday local time and meant to get right on a blog entry that afternoon.  But have you ever stared at a blank  page with so much to say at one moment and no clue how to condense it all down to one writing or where to start.  That has been me these last two days.  After being restricted to town by the doctor for two weeks after just getting back to the village from the same injury, I was running out of stuff to talk about but now I still look at this page with unease to come up with some way of getting it all out.  So here is what I am going to do.  A list of all the things that have made this past week (maybe week and half) good and I will limit discussion on the major topics in hopes I will cover them in the coming blogs.  So here goes: Getting back on the road again and not having to get wrapped all the time from the rib injury.  Seeing the crochet work done by those I was teaching to do it. ( www.theyarnsover.blogspot.com will have the en

When I get a chance to fix myself something to eat, I prefer a good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I don't have a place to cook here (in my room) so it has to be simple and now that I have a wonderful Tupperware Bread keeper from Mrs. Carpenter and lots of Sugar free jelly from Barbara, Mrs. Peterson and my parents I see no reason not to indulge my old college life of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.   The peanut butter here is very different though.  I suspect it is like peanut butter before the super processed items available in the US today.  See a jar of peanut butter here comes with about a 1/2 inch layer of oil at the top.  That oil is important because the rest of it is just crushed or ground peanuts.  Without the oil it is a dry clump that you can't spread on the bread. It is so important that I actually keep sunflower oil in my room now for when I get to the last 1/3 of the jar and the oil is gone and the left over peanut butter is impossible to use.  I

When bringing teams over to Tanzania, they always want to take pictures of the baobab tree (I have sometimes called it the balboa tree because that is how many locals pronounce it).  Various species can grow to be 98 feet tall and 112 feet in diameter and they have been carbon dated at 1275 years old.  They are so distinctive that it is a reference point for things like bus stops (my bus stop is at one of these trees before you start up the mountain).  They are known as great water sources and food for elephants, Bee Hives and monkeys love to live inside of the hollow center. What I have always loved most about these trees is the folklore surrounding them.  My favorite story is about how it used to be the most beautiful tree in all the world.  But it lorded it's beauty over all the other plants and tree. It even lorded it beauty over the animals and did not allow them shelter or water or to eat it's leaves.  This angered God because He had made this tree beautiful so tha

Hello all.  This is Barnabas and dad is attaching my second newsletter to this blog-hopefully!  You can download each page by right clicking and choose save image.  Last Newsletter made it to California and New York where businesses and churches printed it out to give to kids.  Let's see how many places can become involved this time.  

I was not going to do anything for this day, just let it pass as any other.  Then it struck me this is Arobaini na Saba we are talking about and as a math and science nerd, I just cannot ignore that. What is significant about Arobaini na Saba: It is a Prime Number which plays a central role in number theory.   According to the society dedicated to Arobaini na Saba there is a mathematical proof that it occurs more frequently than other numbers. TV shows have used the significant nature of Arobaini na Saba:  It played a role in Star Trek:  The Next Generation, Voyager and in the Rimabldi prophecies of Alias , there is even a Castle episode with it in the name. There are a lot of websites dedicated to Arobaini na Saba Arobaini na Saba AD is when Paul is believed to have started his Christian Ministry. So while I have often forgotten it is my birthday over the years and probably would have this year except Mom wanted to send me some new pants that hopefully will fit after

My first short term mission trip to the Yulansoni valley was in 2001.  A lot of things are still the same in the Singida and Yulansoni area, but a lot are different. I thought I would spend a blog exploring some of those items and some of the things that surprised me that are the same. The first item to discuss are the three items most treated at our hospital.  In 2001 and 2006 the items were dysentery, malaria, worms.  Today after the event of new roads and a lot more exposure to the rest of the world the items are dysentery , malaria and sexually transmitted diseases.  I also understand pregnancies out of marriage and teenage pregnancies have increased in the Singida and rural areas in the last 4 years. Women's clothing has vastly changed.  It was rare even as late as 2010 to see women wearing pants in town or a tight skirt or a skirt above their knees.  In fact normally they would wrap one of the printed clothes to cover themselves if they had pants on.  Today, tight blue j

Sorry for the play on the TV show name but it seemed appropriate for today's discussion.  As I have talked about some in past blogs, one of the things I get to do a lot of is walk.  I normally walk 5 miles (total-3 at the site and 2 in town to the bus station) one way each time I go to the site.  I normally get to walk 2-4 hours around town depending on where all I have to go and that is a trip I make every day when the Doctor does not have me on restrictions.  All this walking has had some really great benefits.  I have lost a significant amount of weight-how much I have no clue as I have not looked for or seen any scales to weigh myself with.  I can tell you my current blue jeans have about a 3 inch gap in the front from jeans to stomach. One of the things I was not expecting to happen as quickly as it did, was that all this walking has worn out my shoe treads.  Both shoes have some pretty heavy damage but my hikers were showing the worst of it.  As you can see by some of the f

My favorite Sunset photo of week. It is unfortunate but I have to say my second visit to the hospital in a month is not a record.  I wish it was but let's be honest I led a life that leads to hospital visits.  Never thought I would be doing it in the mission field though.  My apologies up front if this one rambles or has a lot of errors, they gave me some good pain meds last night to make me sleep. For those that don't do Facebook, I had some really good news Tuesday-my rib went back into place.  I wrapped it up and was feeling good for the first time in two weeks.  Normally you don't do anything to risk popping one back out for a week after you get it back in.  Unfortunately, a meeting with contractors who had done some repair work on the site last year had been set up by the USA board.  Since I was going to have to explain the problems with the work they had done, I was headed out again.  Wednesday afternoon, after spending a day looking for materials for the contrac