During this mornings worship at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kasulu, Tanzania, I was installed as a lay canon. I have to say, I’m deeply humbled and feel very blessed to have this privelege, not only as a lay person, but a foreigner as well. The relationship I have with the Diocese, especially with those at Kasulu Bible College is very special for me. I can’t describe adequately how I feel about our friends here. It’s just a deep love that goes beyond description. Of course, I don’t need, nor do I seek to have titles or special recognition. But this step means so much because in many ways Kasulu has become a second home. I love the people. I love the land. I love the climate! But most of all I love the church and the faithfulness of it’s leaders and people. They struggle so much from day to day with things that Cathy and I so often take for granted in our lives. It is truly that struggle that makes them strong in their faith I believe. I’m simply priveleged to witness it each time I come here.
After the ceremony, Daudi drove Cathy, myself and our good friend Ephriam to a new church on the outskirts of Kasulu, called Eden Church. This is a new church plant that started about 4 months ago by Daudi and others from the Bible College. Today there were about 70 people there. As you can see from the picture this is a “make shift” building with wooden posts to hold up the roof and wood slats erected for sides. The floor is dirt and the roof is tin. Most of the people coming there can’t make it easily to the Cathedral or Murusi Church, which is the next closest one. So Eden church started to meet the needs of the people in this eastern area of Kasulu. Kasulu is growing as more and more people take advantage of the availability of electricity and a growing market of goods from the outside. It was reported to us that they even have ice cream in Kasulu now!
Cathy and I sang two songs at Eden Church. Of course, as many of you know, I don’t really like singing songs for people as much as I like singing with them, so we did “Halleluyah, Your love is amazing” and tough them the english chorus “Halleluyah, Your love make me sing”. They REALLY go into that. The second song we did was “Holy God”. In this case we had them sing the chorus in swahili, which translates “Mtakatifu, Mtakatifu, Mtakatifu Mungu” which means “Holy, Holy, Holy God”. Again, it was wonderful to hear them all chime in on the chorus. In this culture, people just sing all the time. They have wonderful voices and wow, do they know how to use them. The second video is the Eden Church Choir singing acapella. They have a beautiful sound I think.
So now Cathy and I are back in our room at the compound, enjoying a relaxing late afternoon. It’s was a very early day. The first service at the Cathedral was at 6:30 AM. Can you believe I could function or even sing at the hour? But I was too excited to be tired. It’s been a great day that I will remember for a long time.
This evening we will have dinner with Daudi and Olivia at their home. Olivia is a good cook so I know it will be great evening together. So for now, I’ll sign off for the evening and say “The Lord bless you and keep you!” Thanks for stopping by.
Bill
This morning I went to KBC again to work on the new HP Printer. We discovered that HP did not supply printer drivers for Windows 2008 server, which is the operating system we are running for the thin client network. Undaunted by this problem, I started researching the issue on the Internet. It turns out that HP does make what is call a “Universal Printer Driver” for Server 2008. I downloaded it at record speed on the new Internet service and installed it as an LPR connection (Line Printer Remote for you Unix/Linux folks) and bingo, it worked perfectly from the server. That was a load off my mind as there is no way I could bring the printer back to the vendor in Dar for exchange or credit at this point.
So, we are all set with the new printer, our Internet connection is vastly improved and much cheaper, and the new thin client computers are installed and working great. I just have some adjustments to do on the thin client configurations and then spend some time on the server doing some yearly maintenance and we will be finished with the computer work for the KBC network. There are some other things I will be doing with computers while I’m here. 
Serveral people have laptop computers of various sorts. They have all be asking me if I can look their computers over, clean up things a bit and make sure they don’t have any malware or viruses. That should not be difficult to do in most cases, so I know I’ll be involved with that activity next week.
“What about the Evangelism Boat?” you ask. Good question. I had hoped we would get a chance to go out on the boat during our trip this year. However, one thing I was not aware of is that during the raining season, they don’t go out on the lake water because the thunder storms and ensuing wind and waves are very dangerous. They are just coming out of the raining season now, but the winds are still high as the season is changing. Also with the plans we have for the rest of our trip, we probably won’t have time to get to Kigoma before we are about to leave. However, I am hoping I can have them plan a trip to Kigoma next week to pick up some network equipment that I know is available there. If that happens, I’ll see if we can swing by to see the boat. Their plans are to start making trips to the remote villages in July, so I’ve asked Bishop Makaya to be sure to send us photos at that time. He and I talked about it and we will definitely plan to go out together to partner in evangelism during our next trip to Tanzania. My hope is that there are some from St. Paul’s Church who would join us in that activity. Anyone interested??? We’ll keep you safe, I promise. It will be the experience of a life time!
This after noon we took some time off to stay in the compound. We practiced a couple of songs to have ready for tomorrows worship services. During the first service (6:30 AM) I will be installed as a lay canon in the cathedral. Cathy will be taking some pictures I’m sure, so weil have something to share with you afterwards. I’ll write more about this and other thoughts about our trip so far at a later time. It’s late now and we have a very early morning.
Bill