But God! That’s where I left off yesterday. I’m referring to Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved.” I’m referring to this because when I got home from the Nov 2005 trip, I had no idea on how to approach the task of getting funds to provide a computer network and Internet for KBC. I really had to rely completely on God to show me the way. Much like this passage speaks of, I was in a word “helpless” in my situation, but God in his great love had a plan already in place for me to simply walk in by faith. About three weeks after returning to the USA, I was attending an Executive Committee meeting for the Faith Alive ministry. During our weekend together, the president of Faith Alive ask me how the Tanzania trip went. I told him about the blessings and about the statement I had made to Jackton concerning the computer systems for KBC. Tom just smiled at me and told me that he was on the Board of Directors for a small Christian charitable trust and that he though that they would very interesting in funding the project. Say what? “Really” I said. Tom gave me instructions on how to apply for a grant. The short of it is, six months later I had a full grant covering the entire project.
Getting the computers to Kasulu was perhaps the next big challenge. I had the funds and I had been given the name of a very honest and reliable computer vendor in Dar Es Salaam who supplied us with most of the equipment we needed. But there was one specific item that I needed to get that was not available in Tanzania at the time. That was the Thin Client computers I spoke of in an earlier post. After talking it over with our vendor, it seemed best that I ship them over from the USA to his location so they would be kept safe until my arrival. The problem was the cost. I had not figured in the cost of shipping them over to the Tanzania in my budget. And at the time, I was uncertain as to how easy it would be to try to transport them during my flight over from the USA. Then two things happened that were an answer to prayer. The first was a suggestion from my vendor. He said that if he arranged for a DHL pickup in the USA and had him pay for the shipment, the cost would be much less than if I initiated the shipment directly from the USA. That was amazing to me, that he would front the cost of the shipping and wait until I came to Tanzania to make the payment. I can’t think of many businesses in the USA that would do that for you. What a generous offer for sure. Then the second answer to prayer came from my US supplier for the thin clients. To reduce the cost and stay in budget, I asked my supplier if I could purchase the 10 units we needed at cost. I explained what I was doing, hoping that they would understand the charitable nature of the project. Just one day later I got a message from them stating that they had a meeting and decided to donate all 10 units to the project. Wow! I could hardly contain the joy of that news. That put us well within our budget again, and as it turned out for good reason as when I finally did get to Kasulu with all of the equipment, it turned out that we needed to purchase a gasoline generator to power up the network because the main diesel unit was down for repairs. And you guessed it, the amount we needed for the generator was covered by the savings from the reduced shipping and thin client costs. Finally, several months later, we were able to install an solar power system to provide electricity for the entire operation from a renewable source.
Seriously, God is good. That was the amazing start to this adventure which continues today and will do so for a very long time I’m sure. And all of this came about because of saying “I’ll go, send me.” to our rector. I think a lot of the amazing things that the Lord as done in my life have come about in this manner. Just saying yes to God a step at a time. It’s not that I have done this perfectly or without a bit of kicking and screaming from time to time. But I am grateful for the chance to serve the Lord with the talents and abilities he has given me. Right now I’m very happy to be where I am in Kasulu. What was new and unfamiliar to me 6 years ago is now like home.
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Today we finished out our work at the Bible College. Everything is in good shape and I have put in place the connections I need to remotely support them from the USA. With the increased Internet speed, we are now able to make computer to computer Skype phone calls and I am able to run remote control sessions to their computers as well. That will be very helpful in case some type of service is needed from me.
The other thing I want to report on today is the new classrooms for KBC. St. Paul’s gave $4000 this past year to help fund two new classrooms for KBC. They are in the building process. This Fall, the foundation was laid and then the walls and openings were next. The building is constructed mainly of bricks which are main locally from the heavy red clay/dirt that is indigenous to the Kasulu region. They will be putting a top layer of bricks above the window and door sills soon and then the roof rafters and corrugated metal panels will be next. I’ll get some more pictures attached to this post a little bit later as I’m starting to fall asleep now.
Needless to say it was a very satisfying day. I’m looking forward to worship tomorrow at Murusi Parish. I’ll do my best to get some news of that out to you by tomorrow afternoon along with some pictures.
Good night again from Kasulu.
Bill
Sorry my friends that I did not get a post off yesterday. Cathy and I had a very busy day down at the Bible College and then were out to dinner at one of our friends home’s, Ephriam Ntikabuze. Ephriam is another of the first people I met back during my initial visit in 2005. He is currently the Diocesan Youth Director. Once we got home last night, we were so exhausted that we just went to bed right away. So let me catch you up on what’s been going on.
Wednesday was more or less a work day for us at the Bible College. After scanning the main server, I found that it had been damaged enough by computer virus / malware that it needed a complete reinstallation of the Windows operating system. That’s not unusual really. I’ve been working systems like this for a long time and have found that either through malware or just too many installs and uninstalls of one thing or another that it’s best to start over. The malware got into the system because it’s been hard keep the protection software up to date from such a long distance over a relatively slow Internet connection. This was work that I had not anticipated so I was glad that the installation went quickly. Everything is running very well on the server now. For those of you who are “techie” types, the reason for a server computer is because I 
have employed a thin client architecture for the KBC Network. Back in 2006 when I was spec’ing out the systems for them, I realized that managing electric power consumption was going to be our biggest challenge. KBC had an old diesel generator that did not work well and consumed a lot of costly fuel to run. Battery stored solar power was our best option but we needed then to work on lowering the normal power consumption that typical PC’s require to run. We wanted to have at least 10 workstations, but that would have required a lot of solar panels and many costly batteries for storage. So I went with thin client computing. Thin clients allowed me to a multi user system whereby the thin client computers would simply open up individual user sessions of Windows with each working independently from the same single server computer. The thin clients computers themselves are basically low power consumption terminals. Using those along with flat panel monitors made it possible for us to run the systems with 8 solar panels and 4 deep cycle batteries. In fact, during the long sunny days during the dry seasons, we can run the entire operation from the solar panels while charging the batteries at the same time. Was that techie enough for you? I’ll stop here. The point is there are ways to bring computer technology to places like Kasulu that are efficient and affordable. We were able to accomplish that.
Moving on to today; we again spent the majority of our time at KBC working with the computers doing post installation setups and user session preparation. With those completed, we got the good news that our new DSL connection was ready to be connected. We completed that and are now able to connect to the Internet through faster land based provisioning, leaving behind our faithful but expensive satellite connection. Things sure have come a long way in the last 6 years. I’ll be running some tests tomorrow and making some adjustments to the network to optimize the new connection.
After working on the computers most of the day, we took a break at about 6:15 PM to meet with KCC (Kasulu Cathedral Choir). They were just finishing their practice time. We will be singing a song with them on Sunday at Murusi Parish. This will be yet another long and awesome worship service we will attend along with Bishop Makaya. Cathy and I will be singing and leading the song “He Reigns” from the Newsboy. Great song and it’s got a chorus that was easy to teach to KCC. We hope to have the congregation join in as well. There is a counter melody in the chorus “Glory, glory, glory, glory, halleluia, halleluia”, which is easily translated into “Utukufu, utukufu, halleluia, halleluia”. That’s the right number of syllables and the correct word meaning (Utukufu means glory) to make it work. It was great to be able to work together with them again. They promised to work out a dance step to the song as well. In Tanzania, you don’t sing unless you dance too. I love it!!!!
Lastly today, we visited our dear friend Fred Kalibwami and his daughter Katherine. Fred recently retired from the diocese as administrator and bible college principal. He had a very difficult year for some personal reasons that I am not a liberty to post on the Internet, but I will say that he has been on my mind, in my prayers and close to my heart throughout this past year. It was so good be with him, have a meal together and chat and pray together before we came home for the evening.
And so here we are again, at the end of a long and spectacular east African day. I thank God for his presence with us and the energy and resources He has given us to do what we are doing. This is a special place and a special people for me. I know many of you reading this who are in mission feel similarly about the people you know and worked with in countries all over the world. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it; how God has taken each of us out of our comfort zone and given us an opportunity to serve Him by serving others in places we otherwise would not have considered going to. Honestly could it be any better than this? I seriously doubt that it could be. We have often sung the song “Open the eyes of my heart” at St. Paul’s. It’s a prayer song really. We sing “Open the eyes of my heart Lord. I want to see you”. I have taken this to mean that we are asking the Lord to open our eyes to see “what he is up to” so that we can join in, follow and be in sync with what that is. Being involved with DWT is very much that for Cathy and I; being in sync with what the Lord has given us eyes to see and has given to us to do. In fact, what caused us to be here in the first place is one of those coincidences that can only be attributed to the Lord’s leading in our lives. Tomorrow I’ll share with you how that came about.
Blessings to you all.
Bill