Time to get back to work

A couple of odds and ends before I get into the meat of today's topic.  I have installed a bike rope pulley system to store my parents large A frame ladder.
I have started working on their garage floor and have cleaned the siding on the outside of the house

Now the  big news:  I have accepted a chance to be a missionary engineer with Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. out of NC.  Specifically, I will be working on their project KATIE (Keeping All Tots In Education) not to be confused with Kisses from  Katie.  This project is in Kiruani, Tanzania which is roughly 1 hour below Moshi.  It is in a Maasai Tribal area, in fact it was the local Maasai tribe the donated 22 Acres for the Tumaini Maasai School Campus.  They are currently building a Primary (Elementary and Middle school) at the site.  They have  classrooms, an office and a house for the headmaster of the school as well as a kitchen, bathrooms and a bored well water system.

I will be going for two short term trips to start with.  The first will be from October until right before Christmas.  The second will early next year until my current travel visa expires.  The reason for these short trips is because we need to get the existing school certified by the government.  Without that certification there is no reason to invest more capital money into buildings.  Due to the fact that I received my stipend through the end of the year, I am not asking for any donations at this time for my support. 

The first question many of you will have is about the work permit that caused the problem at the other site.  In short, I will not be doing any of the physical labor for this project but instead visiting on behalf of the USA organization.

Second question will be if this is another posting through the General Board of Global Missions Volunteer Missionary program.  It is not at this time.  Those postings require that both the volunteer and the project be approved through their program and be assigned to each other.  While Blessed to Bless U Ministries is the brain child of a United Methodist minister, it has not submitted paperwork to be approved for a volunteer missionary.  For the time being we will not go that route as the main benefit was to process credit card donations.

Some big differences at this site:  
  • My main purpose is to help the USA keep tabs on their construction.
  • I will be living in the headmaster's house at first which is over 1000 square feet as opposed to the previous house which was very tiny.  In addition they have running water in the house so their is a toilet that flushes in the house, not a ten minute walk away.  Same for the shower though it will be cold water again.
  • There is no electricity on the site right now, but there is a power line about 1 mile away so it is possible we could get electricity one day.
  • The plan for this site is for the USA to fund capital projects and Tanzanians to fund operating costs.
  • I will be living in more of a village type setting and will have to use Kiswahili more so I will have to work harder at that aspect over the previous site which was more of a compound separated from the villages and I only used my Kiswahili when I walked.
  • I will not have a lot of interesting build projects for myself so I will be struggling with blog topics (just warning you).
  • The coordinates for the site are -3.623120, 37.310443 plug it into your Google Map program and see Terrain to get the following

The website to learn more about Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. (a 501c3 non-profit) and Project KATIE is www.b2buministries.org  

 While I am not asking for donations for my personal support at this time, some folks have asked about how they can make donations in the future.  

 By check:  Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc., PO Box 2016 Fremont, NC 27830 and put "Kiruani Missionary" on the memo line.  

 Credit Card is through pay pal and the information is at http://b2buministries.org/support/ and under special instructions write in "Kiruani Missionary".

 I want to thank everyone who has been praying for me personally and for a God's will to become clear in everything that happened.  I am excited about this new ministry and the chance to return to Tanzania.

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