Bill Schrull
Meet Joe Bernardo. As you know, he has been on this trip with us in Tanzania since last Friday when we met up in Dar Es Salaam. Since then he has been here, active in sharing his life in Christ with the folks at DWT and LTC. I forgot to get some pictures of him when he was speaking with at classroom of LTC students earlier in the week. Here in the photo, he is sharing from the scriptures and from his heart about the joy in worship he has been experiencing here in Tanzania. At this time, we were visiting Galilee Church, which is in the Kasulu area. It’s a new church since about 2018. They first met under a tree behind what they have now, which is a modest pole and beam constructed building with a metal roof and wood and map siding. The church choir sang several songs for us and we did the same in kind. Afterward we had dinner with them and then shortly after we traveled back to the compound, with a stop up on the high road that overlooks Kasulu as you can see.
Today was my last time at LTC’s computer room. I had downloaded a large group of files through the Internet for my friend Festus over the past two days (which is why I had not posted anything yesterday). I also retrieve a large group of files from Bon’s computer, which has a problem that needs to be fixed. He can at least work with his files now until he gets it to someone who can work on it. I offered to bring in back to the USA to have it fixed, but he needs to get it back sooner, so he will work with someone local who has experience with this type of laptop computer.
After exchanging the downloaded files, I said goodbye for now to Reginald. We hope to be working on a new project this next year, which is to build and configure a new computer training room, which we hope to get a grant soon to do that work. If the grant comes through, then we’ll coordinate on how the room will be configured to best outfit it for the future. Assuming all works out, it should be exciting to have this new resource for the college and Kasulu community.
Tomorrow, we will be pretty busy with church services and also visiting with Bishop Makaya’s family. His mother past away this week so we are going to pay are respects tomorrow afternoon. Even though her passing was not unexpected, it’s always a difficult time for families to go through, regardless of one’s culture or traditions. Afterwards, it will be back to the compound for us so we can get packing for our trip home. Wow, the time sure does go fast. I wish we had more time here, but perhaps in the future, we’ll be able to settle in for a bit longer.
All the best to you all!
Bill
Today has been a typical day back in Kasulu. It started with morning chapel, where Joe was the guest speaker / leader for the morning devotion. After chapel and breakfast, we headed into town so I could work with Reginald Peter on the computer systems and Cathy and Joe would go to a store to purchase a katenge (it’s a piece of printed cloth) for Cathy. Reginald (picture to the left) heads up the college computer systems. He was.away last year for training on computer systems and is just getting used to the thin client network setup we have at the college. I think they will be in good hands with him back on staff at the college.
We spent much of the morning just going over the current network configuration and reviewing the layout sheets I provided for them a couple of years ago. They have added a new printer / copier that is very similar to the ones we have at my company back in the USA. That made it easy to configure it to work with there network and has made it available to any of the computers that connect to the network.
Now we are resting back at the compound. I’m downloading some rather large files for my friend Festus for his music system. I think they will take all night to download, so hopefully the Halotel network will stay online all night so I can complete the download.
It’s been a very good trip so far. I give the Lord thanks for keeping us in his care and making even the travel delays a blessing for us. I really wish we had more time this time around, but things at home will be expecting us hit the ground running next week. I will admit to looking forward to a time in the not so distant future when we can have an extended stay here in Kasulu. I’d love to run a “boot camp” training class for computer networking at the college for instance. I’m sure we will be able to manage something like that in the future. For now, we have to stick with short 2 to 3 week trips so they fit with our home and work schedules.
Bill