Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

This was another good week of work.  School is out so I have a lot of projects I need to complete before the kids come tear everything up again.  I guess I got job security that way. I will start off with my Saturday afternoon project after spending a very long morning responding to emails.  Things are really picking up here.  We have a group coming over in September of this year and already two groups starting the process to build teams for 2017.  The Full Dimension Ministry wish list is going well with lots of items already funded.  So I wanted to relax for a little while and I have had a picture of a bracelet on my computer for awhile now and had not figured out how they made it.  Fortunately I brought everything I needed to make the attempt.  I am using a bead made of cow bone as the button.  This caused two significant deviations from the picture I was seeing.  First the hole is so small I could only get the very thin yarn to ...

I am going to start out by letting you know this is not a story about the troubles of having vehicle trouble on the way to Arusha, this is a story about the blessings that can come through such an adventure.  I am going to take a break from Tiny House Tanzania episodes to tell you this story. So this weekend I am headed to Arusha, which is one of the bigger cities and a jumping off location for many of the safari adventures and Kilimanjaro hikes.  This means the city has some heavy influence from outside sources for food.  I look forward to trips to Arusha since I have found a good hamburger joint, good pizza place, good pasta and decent Mexican.  It took me many trips to find those but I have them now along with a break from my diabetic diet to enjoy a milkshake.  So as I leave the valley to Singida so I can clean the truck and pick up some friends who want a ride I realize I have no real power going up the hill out of the valley.  There is no safe pla...

  Primary school kids at eyeglass distribution point-wanted picture with Twiggy the Twiga who you can barely see at the flagpole. The first time I was asked to do eyeglasses was on a medical mission trip to Panama in 2002.  I was mainly along for crowd control and hauling luggage and the fact I loved the thought of being in the jungle again.  I was prepared to help in many ways from cleaning things, carrying things, using my stern face that still seemed to instill obedience in those I could not talk to.  I was not prepared to do eyeglasses.  This was my second mission trip and first medical trip.  We had just spent our first night in the mountain jungles where trucks had trouble climbing the steep inclines to the point we often got out and pushed them up the mountain.  We were getting things set up to start to see patients when the leading doctor asked if I would take the suitcase full of eyeglasses and distribute them.  I have never bee...

Ok this week I want to talk about string theory in theoretical physics…Just kidding of course I am going to talk about the truck. Let’s start at the beginning of this particular set of events.  Tuesday, March 9 I get a text from William about he has found a vehicle can I come to Arusha.  So the next morning I went into Singida through the normal transportation method of finding a piki piki to Katusha where I got a Noah minivan into Singida.  The piki piki ride was fun as I had no idea how many days I was going to be gone so I packed a larger bag for the trip in addition to my normal backpack.  Spent that night in Singida after buying a bus ticket for the next day.  I always find it interesting that all the seating charts look the same when they sell you a ticket but when you get on the bus it rarely looks the way it does on the seating chart.  The seat I paid for was on the left hand side about 2 rows behind the door so I can get a breeze.  The...

This last month has been busy, exciting, sometimes overwhelming and once again a beautiful reminder of the blessings I have in my life not only from the perspective of what is available to me in the states but also the love of those who support and believe in me. Let me start with some of the reverse culture shock then I will talk more about the wonderful things that happened during my trip home. I have been well prepared for the life I led in Tanzania because I believe myself to be very adaptable.  One of the best things to come out of my military training is the ability to accept conditions as what they are and deal with them.  With that said there were some definite changes in how I saw life when I came home to visit for the holidays and renew my visa.  First-at no time have I ever set in my parents house and asked for a blanket to cover me unless I was deathly sick but time and again after living in Tanzania temperatures I asked for a blanket when not active and I...

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...