Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 1:3 “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” Malachi 3:10  “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.” 2 Corinthians 2:8-9 I have felt the need to mention during some of my previous blogs and facebook postings that as I describe some of the experiences here in Tanzania that these are not complaints but an attempt to share some of what life is like here.  This week as I got up and traveled pre-dawn to

This was another full week on site.  I had planned to head out early Monday morning but they sent an order for medicines in by text so I had to wait until the pharmacy opened Monday morning to go buy those items.  After getting the items and stopping to buy some bread for meals I was on the Noah bus (named because most of them are Toyota Noah minivans).  Once again we had to wait until we had a full load so it was about 40 minutes before it took off.  At the drop off in Katusha they tried to charge me for my backpack this time since I had other bags.  Argument lasted about 10 minutes with me not paying them anything before getting on the Piki Piki (motorcycle) headed out to the village.  So after the medicine delay, waiting on the bus to fill up and 3 hours of actual travel time it was around noon when I arrived. I had planned to jump right on painting the inside of the main cistern tank.  However, it had rained again.  So the first thing I had to do was get the ladder in there and s

A couple of weeks ago I talked about some of the fatalistic attitude you will find here in Tanzania and honestly in much of the majority world.  Want to make sure we are using terms the same here:  Fatalism is the belief that what will happen has already been decided and cannot be changed from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatalism.   Basically accepting one's life situation as unchangeable.  Majority World is a term coined to try to better describe the world in different terms from the first and third world philosophy but applies to those places in the world that are underdeveloped and often live in poorer conditions or in other words the majority of the world we live in.  Today I  want to discuss a different view of the fatalistic attitude to a positive one.  The best way to do this in terms of how they work.  Every morning as I get ready for my day, I see a group of women walking out to the fields with their hoes and every evening they come back with a sack of onio

This has been a full week and many things I think are worth sharing both from the standpoint of what it takes to do things here or slightly humorous. So basically this will more than likely be a long blog. As I mentioned a couple of blogs ago, I will be moving out to the site to live in the small building we have on site.  First the building needs some work and I will have to build my furniture like a bed, chairs and table.  So after getting back from Arusha and some and lots of good work there including tracking down some safety equipment and a folding 20 foot ladder, I had to get busy and start buying items not only for my house but also for the projects going on this month as money had arrived on Mpesa for me to use in getting those items purchased. The site projects I had to buy for included the Ward building's bath house and latrine which included a full variety of materials but started with inspecting the doors I had paid to have made before I left for Nairobi.  Next up i