Bill Schrull
Hello friends. So sorry that I have not posted since 5-19. Just got so into what we were doing that by the time the end of day came all I wanted to do was hit the sack. Yes, we did make it to Kenya on last Thursday. From there Friday and Saturday were just vacation time for us. We stayed in a really nice guest apartment in a building the David and Jenifer Kodia own in Kisumu. The building was recently constructed. It has 4 floors and a roof area to use for gatherings and such. During the mornings I was able to take some beautiful photos of the sunrise from outside our room.
After those two days, were went back to work. Our first undertaking was to go to a confirmation service at a rural parish. I forget the name of the parish, but the actual service was in a church called St. Paul’s. Go figure. I was the guest preacher for the service and of course, Cathy and I sang some songs as well. With one of the songs we sang, we got the entire congregation singing with us. I was impressed by the singing in general. The church was not dependent on a big sound with loud speakers. Instead, the choirs and congregation sang without accompaniment. It was a beautiful sound.
After the service and some lunch with the church, we went back to Kisumu go relax and eventually tune in to “St. Paul’s Live – Brookfield, CT”. We watched the Sunday 10:30 AM service at our home church online with the Kodia family. Once again, Fr. Joe did a shout out to us at announcement time and the congregation waved to us. Things sure are different here in East Africa than it was 17 years ago when I first got started with visiting this part of the world. Back then, we just had enough cell coverage to make a short, expensive phone call home to check in with loved ones. Now we can do just about any type of communications with any type of social media we want at a reasonable cost and high bandwidth. Seriously, this globe we are on is getting smaller and smaller with digital technology.
On Monday, I went to Bishop Okullu College in Asembo to help get the computer network up and running again. Sometime during the past year or so, the main Windows Server got corrupted due to power outages which are frequent in this area of Kenya. To remedy that problem, a small group of us at St. Paul’s in Brookfield contributed extra funds to our annual mission budget dispersement to the college and gave a total of $2500 to pay for a solar power system for the computer lab. With the solar system in place, I could now work on the computers, get them running properly again, and hopefully keep them running for a long time with good, steady power. And work I did. With the help of Robert Onyango, a recently hired computer administrator for the college, we got all the Windows servers and workstation running well again. I was very impressed with Robert’s knowledge of computer technology and his ability to learn new things quickly. I know it would have been difficult to complete this work in two days without his help.
It’s now Tuesday evening. Cathy and I are staying at the Kodia’s Asembo home, not far from the college. I’m actually getting a bit bothered by some tenacious mosquitos, so I’m going to quit writing now and head to the bedroom and get behind the netting. Tomorrow we travel back to Kisumu from here and will spend one more night with the Kodia’s before making our flights back to Dar es Salaam and then eventually toward home.
We are on our way h
ere in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania waiting for our flight to board for Nairobi, Kenya and then on to Kisumu. Our time in Tanzania was most enjoyable. Our friends here are wonderful hosts and keep us fed ready to do our work at the college and in the churches.
We traveled to Kigoma on Tuesday, May 17 and checked into a hotel that was arranged for us. We usually try to go to the Costal View hotel in Kigoma because it is relatively inexpensive by western hotel standards and has some of the best views of Lake Tanganyika from any point in Kigoma. Unfortunately they were completely booked (which does not surprise me). So we stayed at a the Mwitongo Garden hotel. It was very nice and similarly priced.
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fter checkin we went to visit with Margaret Mpango, her daughter Rose and her sister Elizabeth. Margaret (AKA Mama Rose), is the wife of the late Bishop Gerard Mpango. Bishop Mpango was the first bishop we partnered with in DWT. I passed away unexpectedly back in January. We shared stories with them about Gerard and many of the things we did together. I even admitted to Margaret that while she was away from Kasulu at one time, Gerard and I shared some beer together one evening. He was really not supposed to drink beer because of some health concerns, but we broke the rule that evening and enjoyed our fellowship as to “bad” boys. I miss Gerard, especially his laugh. You could hear it across a crowded room with it’s high pitch woop. I remember a time when he was visiting with us in Connecticut. I brought him to a field nearby to show him how I fly radio controlled airplanes. Sure enough, every time I tried to land my P-51 Mustang, it would roll over on it’s nose and Gerard would laugh uncontrollably.
Later in the early evening, we went to visit with the now retired Bishop Sadock Makaya. We had a good time with him and some guests from the local church. We talked about all kinds of things including some of the world political situations and how the USA and other countries are responding. We also talked about being saved by faith through grace (from Ephesians 2) and “faith without works is dead” from James. The two ideas really are tied together. Of course, I forgot to bring my guitar. Sadock really wanted to sing together, so we did that following day. Before we went to the airport for our afternoon flight to Dar es Salaam, we visit with Sadock again and had a good time singing worship songs together. After that, we were off to the airport and made our flight to Dar.
Right now we are in Kisumu in Kenya. I’ll skip the journey info between Dar and Kisumu. I can say that all went well and right on schedule. I will write later today about our initial time here in Kisumu.