Hi all. We had a couple of busy days so neither of us were able to post an update. So let me bring you up to date. Right now Cathy and I are back in Nairobi at the airport, waiting for our flights home, first to Dubai and then on to JFK in New York. It’s been a wonderful trip and rather short this time around. Even so, we accomplished much and otherwise enjoyed our time with good friends in East Africa.
On Sunday, we attended two church services, one at 6:30 AM at the cathedral in Kasulu and the second one at a relatively new church (established in 2018) in a near by village. The first service at the cathedral was about 3 hours long, which is not unusual for church in this part of the world. I think having Cathy, Joe and I speak and sing at the service added a few minutes to the morning as well. It was a real privilege to sing there again. As usual, we sang two songs during the service, both of which we had the congregation join in with us on the choruses. The first chorus was:
Kuimba kwa Mwokozi, Kuimba na kuamini,,.. Which translates to “Sing to the Savior, Sing and Believe..” It’s taken from the song “Sing a song to the Savior”. The translation is altered so that we can fit the Kiswahili syllables into the melody.
The second chorus was: “Moyo wangu utaimba Yesu”. Which means “My heart sings Jesus”. It’s taken from the song Forever Reign. The line is “My heart will sing no other name, Jesus”. As you can see translating to Swahili has it’s challenges as there are more syllables to the Swahili words, so the metering is different.
It was a special time for us at the second church as I was able to give witness to the healing I have received from my aortic surgeries, and Cathy was able to tell her side of the story of what the Lord did in her life while I was going through the surgeries at Yale New Haven Hospital. It has been a tough road the past few years for us physically, with Cathy’s cancer treatments and recovery, and my major surgeries to go through. But we have never lost hope or really been afraid during these times. I can say that we have always believed that God had a purpose for these times and that we could come through them with the same vigor and strength to “live lift abundantly” as we have before. As I shared with the church that morning from Roman 8:28 “And we know that in all things, God works for good for those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”. That is just what we believe.
On Sunday afternoon, we traveled to Bishop Makaya’s home village of Mkondoro. We took the northern route, which was kind of a mistake because along the way, the rains had caused sections of the road to turn to mud. We got stuck twice and lost about 3 hours of travel time getting un-stuck. But, we finally did make it to the village. The reason for our visit was that the Bishop’s mom had just past away, so we went to give our condolences. He appreciated it very much. It’s been a difficult week for him, as he loved his mother very much. You all know how that is I’m sure.
So on Monday, we started our trip home with Joe. We flew back from Kigoma to Dar and spent the night there. We left in the morning after having our final breakfast in Tanzania with Joe and caught our flight to Nairobi. Joe is in the meantime probably on his way to the airport in Dar to catch his flight from there to Dubai. We are hoping to catch up with each other in Dubai, as we all have the same flight home to JFK.
When we get home, I’ll try to collect some of the photos from our phones to make a last post with a bunch of the pictures for you to see. Thanks for traveling along with us the past two weeks. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have. The Lord be with you!
Bill
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