Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

This is the second blog concerning the recent mission team from Mauldin United Methodist Church to the school I am currently working with in Tanzania.   This was a first time a team had visited the school since it became a real school.   There is a difference in visiting a preschool and a full fledge school with actual classes going on.   This was also a first for the staff at the school.   The weeks leading up to the team had some rocky moments as the headmaster did not want to give up class time at first.   This is one of those moments where his desire to make the teacher’s like worked in my favor as the teachers all were willing to give up a week of teaching. But once they got on site everyone was happy to let the VBS program take over the school for the week.   With an actual school we had multiple classrooms so we could split the kids up into groups, easily enough by their class designations with just the two standar...

What a whirlwind this trip back to the site has been after the June break at school.   Since arriving back, it has been very much a non-stop work week that somehow became a month without much of a chance to catch my breath.   I was only back for a couple of weeks to do final preparation for the team coming over before they arrived. While they were here for almost a week and half, it seemed to fly by all too quick.   And since they have left, I have been working at going through all the wonderful items they brought over for the kids, teachers, school, me and the community at large.   Because they were listed as a mission group on their plane ticket contract, they got to bring over three bags each.   I have spent over a week and half in the room going through and sorting items and I am not done yet.   The teachers and students look wistfully into the room as they pass by hoping they are going to get the bounty they see before them.   Unfortunatel...

So, this last Sunday was Men’s day at Kiruani TAG.   It seems the men were jealous the women got their own day, so they wanted one too (don’t know that just assuming).   The head teacher, Fredy, at the school was delivering the sermon and I had to do all the typing and printing for the men participating.   Some differences between the Women’s day and the Men’s day.   The men decorated the church with streamers and balloons which were hung so low every time they danced in, they had to lift them over their heads.   In addition, they were flittering about, and my camera kept picking them up as the thing to focus on (smart phone camera not real camera).   The beginning was a little more (not much) disarrayed than the Women’s.   It had also been raining a lot this month, so the solar power system did not have any electricity and they had to delay for 15 minutes while they got a generator and wired it up. This was so they could use the microphones and...