Sorry for not getting something out on Saturday, but Internet through the cell towers here was mostly non-functional. Today however is a different story. And today we spent a good amount of our time attending two worship services. The first service was at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kasulu at the early morning service, (AKA the 6:30 AM service). It was a well attended service I have to say. I estimate that the place was 80% full. That made for some lively response to the song that we sang with the congregation about half way through the service. We sang “Halleluia, Your love makes me sing”. We had the congregation learn the english words to the chorus since the translation would just never work with the natural meter and rhythm of the song. That’s something I’ve found challenging here in Tanzania. They want us to sing worship songs from the USA and we really want them to sing with us. But translation of songs to Swahili offers a big challenge because for every syllable in english, there are usually 2 to three syllables in swahili. So for translated songs, we usually stick to choruses and leave the rest of the song in english. For instance, the song “Forever Reign” has a bridge with the words “My heart will sing no other name, Jesus, Jesus”. In swahili we translate it to “Moyo wangu utaimba, Jesu, Jesus” which literally means “My heart sings, Jesus, Jesus”.
At the service, I was asked to give the sermon. I say “give” instead of preach because it was more of a witness of some important things that happened in my life when I was in my teens that brought me to the knowledge and understanding the Jesus was really who he said he is; my Lord and my savior. With that, Cathy also shared about her faith in the Lord during her time going through cancer treatments and surgery. It really was a privilege to speak at the service and it’s our hope that the words that we shared meant a great deal to those who were listening.
After the service, we had some breakfast and then scooted off to Musagara, which is a village off in the direction of Burundi. It took about 45 minutes to get there. Musagara Church is overseen by a good freind named Canon Herman Kapama. I’ve known Herman for many years. I first met him when he was Dean of the Cathedral. He was transfered to Musagara serveral years ago, but we have kept up with each other via Facebook and E-mail. So it was a special day for us as Herman, Daudi and I were all made Canon’s in the Diocese at the same time. We call ourselves the Canon brothers!
During the service at Musagara, we pretty much did the same things we did at the Cathedral. We sang, we gave our witnesses and we worshipped the Lord together with the congregation. The service lasted a little over 3 hours. That’s not unusual for a Sunday morning in Tanzania, especially when they have visitors from another country to introduce, etc..
After having lunch at the Kapama’s home, we left for Kasulu and took used the rest of our time here to do just that, rest. It felt good to take a knap for a couple of hours after all of the early morning activity, travel and of course worship.
Tomorrow we will meet with Bishop Sadock Makaya. He just arrived home from being away this past week. I’ll hopefully get some more time down at the college on the computers. And we plan to have dinner tomorrow night with Bishop Makaya, which I look forward to, as he has not gotten to know Bob Cutting yet. It should be a good time of fellowship together. I have missed my friend Sadock. It’s been over 2 years since we last saw him.
That’s in for today. I hope you all have a rest of your day back in the states. We appreciate your continues prayers as we walk through yet another wonderful experience of God’s presence in Tanzania,
Usiku mwema,
Bill
Hi all. I think I’ll keep this post short tonight and then hopefully get some more time to write tomorrow when I have more time.
Today I spent a good part of the day at Lake Tanganyika College. In the morning I worked on cleaning up one of the Nettop PC’s we had supplied a few years back. It needed a full clean off of Microsoft Office, which was not working properly and would not uninstall either. Once that was done, I attented to reinstall it, but found that the system would not respond correctly to the install procedure. So after a while of messing with that, I decided that a clean install of the operating system would probably be the best thing to do. That’s where some of the fun begins, because I needed to setup and install disk or USB drive to attempt and new install. Getting the operating system (Windows 10 in this case) proved to be a little difficult. Something about the install running from a CD/DVD drive was not working well with the computer. After a few attempts with that, I figured that going with and install on a USB Drive would be the next logical attempt. So I took a break for lunch. Lo and behold the first rain of the raining season began. 
And I mean rain, heavy rain. I was fortunate to be under cover at the LTC Cantina when the storm hit, but by the time it was over, the electric power went out. I gave it about and hour to return, but no dice. With that, I drove back to the compound and gave it a rest until after dinner. We had an 5 PM engagement coming up at Murusi Church with dinner following, which I’ll write about tomorrow.
Right now, I’m here at our home waiting patiently for the USB Drive installer setup to complete and writing to you. Let’s see, it’s 9:35 PM our time right now. The installer download shows 89% complete. It took over and hour to get to that point, so hopefully it will complete before 10PM.
Tomorrow we have some time to relax in the morning. Bob Cutting has been having a great time here with us. So far he has spent most of his time observing things with some time to time speaking and engagement with the churches we have visited. We’ll do some more of that tomorrow and then on Sunday we’ll get to the cathedral for an early morning (6:30AM) service and then rush off to Musagara for another worship service there.
That’s it for the moment. Look for more postings tomorrow.
Bill