The day started early at 5 AM. We had a few more things to pack and by 6:30, we were off to the airport with Daudi and Mama Neema (Editha, the Bishop’s wife). It was nice to have here come along with us and say goodbye at the airport. We all agreed that it’s not really goodbye, but see you again soon. I’m looking forward to returning to this region. With the guest house construction moving along, we should be staying in a new place on our next trip and helping to outfit it with furnishings and supplies for ourselves and others who will stay there in the future.
Our flight arrived in Dar on time and with mid afternoon traffic we eventually go to our hotel and checked in at 3 PM. After a late lunch I walked over to the computer store, Ideal Computers, where we purchased our equipment to report to them that everything worked out perfectly. I also asked for advice on purchasing deep cycle storage batteries for the solar power system at Kasulu Bible College. Unfortunitely last year two of the batteries were stolen during some contruction at KBC. At this point they really need a full set of four to put the solar system back in to operation. The folks at Ideal did not have a source, but they were able to point me in the direction of some battery dealers that were just a few blocks from their store. I took a walk over and found a store that has the exact batteries we are looking for! Praise God, what a great find. I talked with the store manager and got his business contact info so that I can coordinate a purchase from that for KBC when we are able to raise the funds needed for the batteries.
So with that, our business in Dar is complete. Right now Cathy and I are relaxing in our room. We’ll clean up and hang out for a while and just enjoy a quite evening. Tomorrow we can take it slow in the morning. We won’t leave for the airport until 12:30 to 1 PM.
Bill
Today is one of those bittersweet days. We enjoyed a marvelous worship service which included lots of music, Canon Helen’s Sermon, Deacon ordinations, Communion and ……. more music. The service lasted from 9 AM to 1:30 PM. Yup! Another 4 1/2 hour service. You sort of grow used to it really. There is always something going on during the worship, and there is plenty to participate in, even if our swahili language skills are limited. It was a joy to be here, but there is the sadness looming that we will be leaving early tomorrow morning to catch our flight back to Dar Es Salaam. We’ll have an afternoon, an overnight and most of the following morning there before we head out to the Airport for our trip back to the USA.
Each time I come here, I find myself wanting to stay longer. 2 week in Kasulu does not seem to do it for me. Even when I don’t have as much to do, I find myself craving the community and fellowship of our friends here. Of course, sometimes it can be overwhelming, such as the multitude of celebrations. And we’ve been thanked so much, that it’s hard to find new words to express our gratitude in return. I look forward to a time when we can “blend in” a bit more. For sure we will always be seen as special visitors, but I’m hoping we can transition from being guests to being just the folks who live here from time to time from America and call Kasulu their second home. It’s an achievable goal I think.
So what did we use to do all this blogging you ask (or maybe you didn’t ask)? We found the perfect tool in an iPad app called BlogPad Pro. For years I have used Live Writer from Microsoft on a PC. It’s a great program that offers features that most blogging programs do not have. That includes Mac’s, which is my main computer. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of features in most Mac based blogging programs. Then this spring I found BlogPad Pro for my iPad. Turns out it does everything that Live Writer does and is very easy to use. I recommend it highly to anyone looking for such a tool for this purpose. As you can see, photo’s are a cinch to include. It will automatically reduce them to whatever size you want. And with the battery life of an iPad and a cellular data plan that covers East Africa, I can blog from just about anywhere.
So now we are back in our room, packing things up and doing a little last minute computer work. It turns out that Helen has a new laptop computer that they are giving to a pastor named Jonas. It’s a bare bones Windows 8 system. So I’ve been loading it with software for Jonas to use like LibreOffice (which works with MS Office files and such), Adobe Acrobat Reader, VLC Video Player, AntiVirus software and so on. I just about got it all done accept for Adobe Reader, which is downloading now.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve gone through two weeks here in Kasulu. I’m going to miss this place and our friends. Even so, I’m looking forward to getting home and talking about our experience here with our friend back at St. Paul’s Church. We have a lot to discuss for sure. There is a particular challenge that I want to bring before our leadership. But I’m not going to say what it is now. I’ll leave that to everyone’s curiosity.
So for now, I’ll say goodnight. I hope you all have a great Monday morning. We’ll report in again when we get to Dar Es Salaam. I’m going to include a video of a traditional choir who performed at Murusi Church today. Should be fun to watch, once I get to some bandwidth to upload the entire video.
Canon Bill