 Preparing for worship |
Today we spent much of our time at a confirmation service at a church that I can’t remember the name of at the moment. Guess I’ll fill that in later after I talk with Daudi, the diocesan secretary to refresh my memory. But the important thing was, we were there. I think this was a very interesting experience for Bob. Tanzania’s are very animated in their worship expressions and this time was no exception. First of all, everybody sings. I mean everybody. There is no sitting in the back row of the church mouthing the words or perhaps not even engaging in worship. And then there is the dancing. There is lots of dancing. I’ve noticed that it’s starts at an early age too. You see young one’s often swaying to the music and moving about as they see the older children and adults doing the same. It really is a lot of fun and a joy to join in with the congregation. In fact I even started a round of dancing after I had a chance to give a greeting to them. I got started and within an instance the floor was filled with people cheering and dancing before the Lord with all their hearts. I imagine this is somewhat like it was when David danced before the Lord in 2 Samuel 6:14.
 Confirmands |
Along with that, Bob got a chance to address the congregation and encourage the confirmands. Cathy and I had two chances to lead songs with the church. The first was “Halleluia, Your love makes me sing”. No problem with the word Halleluia. Just had to teach them the english words “your love makes me sing”. Later before the confirmations, we sang the song “Forever Reign”. The words to the bridge are normally “My heart will sing no other name, Jesus, Jesus”. We translated it to “My heart sings Jesus”, which in swahili is “Moyo wangu utaimba, Jesu, Jesu”. We did that so that the swahili syllables would line up with the melody. We taught the congregation bridge and then had them join in when it came up in the song. These were sweet times of worship together.
When we got home, we were pretty tired so after some refreshments we took a time of rest and got up at about 5 PM. I find that with the efforts and energy spent in worship, along with the heat of the day and bouncing ride back and forth over unpaved roads, I get wiped out. A couple of hours resting or as we say “chilling out” helps restore my energy.
 |
This evening we had dinner at Andrea Jung’s house. I’ve mentioned about her in past blog posts. Andrea is a missionary from Germany who works with the children’s ministries throughout the diocese. She is someone I admire greatly for her heart of love and service to the Lord.
It’s 10:30 PM now. I think I’ll hit the sack and see what blessings tomorrow brings. I’m schedule to go to the bible college to work on the computer systems and help update the server and thin client computers. Should be a good day. I’m looking forward to it.
Canon Bill
So here we are again getting breakfast early in Dar Es Salaam. I’ve probably taken a picture of this view out of our hotel at least a dozen times or more. But it never ceases to grab a hold of me and remind me of just how fortunate we are to be able come here almost every year since 2005. I love the sun rise each time as the city comes alive with activity. The sidewalk starts to fill with people going to work. Then at 6 AM a flood of sound from the Lutheran church fills the air with the joyful notes of early morning worshippers. It’s really during this first morning that I begin to shed my thoughts of all that keeps me looking to far forward and driven to perform. Instead I’m simply drawn to the beauty of the day as it begins and relish the moment I’m in. I mean for sure in the back of my mind are things like getting to the airport for our flight over to Kigoma. But even that seems to be put on pause for a savoring of the moment.
The Lord as been so good to us. Even with the delay we’ve had in our travels to Tanzania because of heath issues, it never crossed our minds that the cancer word would be more than a slight inconvenience for us. In that I’m totally amazed at Cathy’s strength in character and faith in our Lord to bring her through the difficult months of chemo, surgery and radiation. All the time she had days like this in mind and the assurance that she would be back here in Tanzania giving the best of her life in Christ to others.
And so the safari (journey) begins. Our flight to Kigoma was pretty straight forward. No big drama there. When we arrived we were greeted by Bishop Makaya and his wife Editha at the terminal. They were on their way to fly back to Dar for some business, but he wanted to be sure that he greeted us, especially as it’s been two years since our last visit.
We then collected our bags and headed over to Katubuka Parish, which is a nearby Anglican church. We were greeted by several church members and had lunch with them. Then it was off to Kasulu for us. After a couple of hours of travel, we arrived at the Diocese compound where we received a warm welcome from the DWT staff. These greetings are not just hellos and hand shakes. I’m taking about singing, waving tree branches and marching along together to bring us to our home. Tanzania hospitality is second to none in my opinion.
After some time to have tea, unpack and refresh ourselves, at 7 PM we had an official greeting meal over at the Diocese chapel. We had a chance to greet everyone and even sing a song together that I led with Cathy. After dinner we went back to our house and now are just relaxing and getting ready for a good night’s rest.
Tomorrow after chapel and breakfast we’ve got some shopping to do along with getting our Tanzania cell phone numbers setup. We’ll be delivering a lot of the equipment we brought to the DWT office as well as to the bible college. I’m hoping to get some time going through some setup of the new equipment at the college if time allows. If not, we’ll have plenty of time on other days to work on that.
We give our thanks to you who have been posting to us on Facebook as well as praying for our journey. I hope to write a lot more about our time here as the days go by.
Bill