Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

Last week, I talked about the Christmas gifts as a single blog because I felt it deserved it's on spotlight.  Today I want to finish up our school year and the final testing. When I went around talking during my trip home in June, I told folks we had a goal of increasing the academic performance through our school.  Typically a passing grade for a government school would be 21% and even at that level only a handful pass.  Our goals were 100% passing with a passing grade of 60%.  With the exception of the child I have mentioned with a learning disability and one of the kids who joined our school in the last month, all of our kids passed with a grade over 60.  The school average was 85.76. Our reading and writing scores maintained their previous increases that showed up after starting the "Reading with Barnabas" program.  We had several kids continue to show great progress in their grades.  In fact two of the students that joined us in the second ter...

Merry Christmas a little early.  Yes, it is that time of year though I am pretty certain you folks in the States are much more aware of that than I am.  My hotel in Arusha has a 1-foot high tree with presents under it.  That is the only decoration I have seen and it is interesting since the owners, who live at the hotel, are Muslim. At this time when everyone is busy trying to buy presents, trying all the various flavors of the Christmas season and of course for us Clemson fans, getting ready for the playoffs.  I always like to take a blog and remind people about alternative gift giving.  There are pro groups at this like Heifer International and Samaritan's Purse.  But even small groups like to remind you that you can give a gift to them in honor of someone.   In that vein, I have made up some JPG images of a one-sheet card you fold into a quarter fold card.  The idea is simple.  If you want to give a gift in honor of someone t...

Christmas is coming!  What a wonderful time of year where we all act our best and try to be a bit nicer.  It is also a great time of year to think about your favorite charities as part of your gift giving.  The idea of alternative gift giving is not new.  Families have been practicing for as long as I have been around and most likely before.  I think Heifer International was one of the first to formalize the idea into a cataloge.   Some churches even do special alternative Christmas gift events so you can find the charity you want to support.   It is a wonderful idea to give money to help others as a way to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  Like we actually get the overall idea of what his time on earth was about.  I want to encourage everyone to consider doing at least one alternative Christmas gift this year.  Even if that donation is not to the ministry I work with.  There are a lot of them. Here are some good ...