Welcomed Back to Mwanza

19 September 2009. We arrived back in Mwanza on Thursday to a very warm welcome. It is good to be back.

We are quickly settling into the same, comfortable house, and are expecting to resume basically the same kind of work we did before. But already we have discovered some changes. The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (“CRWRC”) development staff has moved back to the states, and for the time being we are in possession of and responsible for the CRWRC car. It’s parked right outside our front door. Someday we’ll have to screw up our courage and take it out for a drive – they drive on the “wrong” side of the road here! Also new is that the two dogs next door, Bubba and Lucky, just puppies when we left in May, are now old enough to run guard duty in the compound at night. And we are experiencing a little bit of the dry season for the first time. Things are quite brown and some (but not all) of the trees have dropped all their leaves.

Even though it’s still the dry season, it rained very hard last night. In the middle of the storm we were awakened by a sound we had never before heard on the compound. WEE-OOOH! WEE-OOOH! WEE-OOOH! It sounded like a car alarm. Could it be our CRWRC car? In just a few seconds it stopped. Was someone trying to break into the vehicle right outside our door? We got up to investigate, but in the dark silence we could see nothing amiss. So back to bed we went. Just as we were drifting back to sleep, again we were startled – WEE-OOH! WEE-OOH! WEE-OOH! Up again to investigate, more certain that it was our car, and someone was messing with it. Fearful of what we might see, we peered again out the screened windows, our flashlights sending out diffuse beams into the rainy night. In the dim light I thought I glimpsed a dark figure moving in the shadows behind the car. Could it be? There it was again! It was Lucky, one of the guard dogs. And just then Margaret caught sight of Bubba, the other guard dog. As Margaret watched, the dogs crouched down low and slinked under the vehicle, setting off the alarm yet again. Lucky and Bubba had found a fine place to get out of the rain, but it was keeping the whole neighborhood awake. Every time Margaret would reset the alarm, the guard dogs would trigger it again. Finally Margaret decided that the only way to keep the alarm quiet was to disable the sound – but that seemed OK, at least for the night. With the guard dogs lying in ambush under the car, nobody else was going to come close.

Taking a Break

A working draft of Gordon's translation work is completed, and Margaret has finished her work at the clinic for the season. We are packing our bags and saying to all our new friends "tutaonana" -- not good-bye, but "we shall meet again."

In just a couple days we will be leaving Mwanza and returning to North America for about 4 months. We will be reconnecting with our family and visiting with our friends and supporters while there. Then sometime in September we will return, God willing, to Mwanza for another longer term.

It has been a real blessing to have spent our last six months in Tanzania. We have learned much about another culture. It is sometimes amazing to see how God works in the hearts and lives of people who live a life quite different from what we are accustomed to. If our paths cross in the next few months, be sure to ask about our experiences. We would love to share something of what we have experienced in Tanzania.

April Newsletter

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The Miracle of Rain of Stones

The long rains have begun. Last Tuesday it was a deluge. We have not seen it rain any harder than that. Just when the rain was heaviest we heard “ping! ping! ping!” – the sound of hail hurtling against our steel roof. With a look out the window we could see it beginning to accumulate on the grass. It was a little larger than pea-sized. Only 40 minutes after the rain started, it was over and the sun was back in full force. In no time all the hail was gone and it was just as hot as before.

Soon after it stopped the neighborhood kids came by the house. I asked if they had seen the hail. Yes, they had, and they were quite excited about it. Most exciting of all – they ate some. It was “nzuri” (good) and “baridi!” (cold!)

Later we talked about the hail in our Swahili lesson. “Mvua ya mawe” – rain of stones – is its Swahili name. Such a thing happens here maybe once a year our teacher said.

Our favorite and very enthusiastic taxi driver had seen it too. “God did a miracle today,” he declared. “He made ice fall from the sky.”

Chapel

March 4, 2009. For months we have been attending chapel services before the beginning of work each day. The health clinic holds chapel at the facility where Peggy works, and the national office where Gordon works holds its own chapel in a nearby building. Most days I (Gordon) feel great about the chapel if I can find the Bible passage and read along in my English/Swahili New Testament. All the better if I know the tune of the hymn and can sing along in my Swahili song book – even if I can’t understand most of the words of the hymn. But the messages and the prayers in Swahili go by too fast for me to catch any more than a few words here and there.

Yesterday’s chapel followed the typical pattern until the end, when I was surprised by a request that I lead the chapel this morning! My friend Mr. Byemero encouraged me to go ahead and do it, even if I only knew two Swahili words. So I accepted the request and later made my preparations.

I spoke from 2 Cor. 5:15-6:1 about reconciliation (upatanisho) – the restoration of people back into a good and right relationship with God like that which existed before it was destroyed by sin. Through Christ’s death believers are made right with God. For this reason, believers no longer consider anyone in the same worldly way they did before.

First, Christ has reconciled each believer to God and has made each believer a new creation. God no longer counts our sins against us. Therefore, we must view ourselves as believers in the same way that God views us. We will make mistakes. But because we know God does not count them against us, we should not either. Instead, as co-workers with Christ we must seek to reconcile and restore whatever has been broken by our sin.

Second, believers now also view unbelievers in a different way. Because God loves them so much that Christ died for them while they are still sinners, so must we love those who don't believe. We have been appointed by Christ as his ambassadors (mabalozi) to carry the message of reconciliation with God. Some ambassadors are sent by their king to take a declaration of war, but not the ambassadors of Christ. We go with a message of peace and reconciliation.

Finally, we should not receive God’s grace in vain. In other words, we should not let God’s grace be wasted. Instead, we should do what we can each day to promote reconciliation and restoration of the world through the work of God’s grace.

My two Swahili words? Mabalozi wa upatanisho. Ambassadors of reconciliation. Big words.

Serengeti!

Serengeti! What mission to Tanzania would be complete without a safari to the Serengeti? The name means endless plain in the Maasai language. And the endless plain is home to countless animals. We excitedly watched a herd of 36 elephants walk around our car. A lone cheetah, spotted in the morning mist on the distant horizon, slowly strolled closer and closer until it crossed the road in front of us and lay down to rest in the shade of a tree not 30 meters from our car. We looked eye-to-eye with a male lion and his entire family group – and understood why it is called his pride.

We didn’t see all the animals of the Serengeti, but we saw enough to make us marvel at the variety of God’s creation. The zebra has his stripes, the giraffe her astonishing neck, and the hippos soak in the pool all day long. Each animal equipped in some special way for life in this marvelous place.

Of course, the birds hold a very special interest for us. Our guide, a most friendly Tanzanian named Ben, was able to show us not only lions, cheetahs, leopards, serval, African wild cat, and a myriad of hoofed animals, but also well more than a hundred bird species. Most of them so new to us that we struggled to find them in the bird book. Often so many appeared at once that we had to look first, and hope we could identify them in the book later. African ground hornbills, lilac-breasted rollers, white-crowned shrikes, fawn-colored lark, cinnamon-breasted bunting, and on and on. Secretary birds that somehow do not remind me of the office. Starlings so striking they are named “superb” – astonishingly beautiful to our American eyes so used to seeing only the boringly drab Eurasian starling. What fun it was!

Two days in the Serengeti makes me want to rush right back. Next time, maybe the wildebeest migration will be in the northwest part of the park where we can reach it easily from Mwanza. Or maybe the cheetah will show off his speed. Or maybe the leopard will change his spots. Or maybe not. Whatever we see the next time, it is sure to be very, very special.

Peggy's Day At The Makongoro Clinic

I volunteer daily at the Africa Inland Church of Tanzania’s Makongoro Health Clinic in Mwanza. It consists of an out-patient clinic, an in-patient hospital with 29 beds, a mother/baby clinic, and an HIV counseling and testing clinic. My supervisor is Matron Jovina Machia.



Our day starts out with a 20 minute staff devotional time. Along with all the health clinic staff, we sing praise songs, read from the Bible and hear a 10 minute sermon, all in Kiswahili. After devotions are finished we attend the morning meeting with the doctors, the heads from the lab and finance departments, and the 2 matrons (head nurses). We hear the night report, and discuss any concerns that have come up, again, all in Kiswahili. Then Monica and I dispense any medications that are needed that shift for both the out-patient clinic and the in-patient hospital.

When the meds are finished, Monica (the other Christian Reformed World Relief Committee nurse volunteer from Canada) and I usually go to work in the hopsital wards. Soon one of the doctors comes by to do rounds. We go as a group from bed to bed while the doctor speaks with each patient about how they are doing. Still, all in Kiswahili. Then the doctor makes the orders for that day, but now in English! All the patient charting is in English, and the written orders are, too. So the Tanzanian nurses love to have us do the writing in the Rounds Book, because it has to be in English!

For the rest of the shift, we work alongside Tanzanian nurses. We often dispense medications, usually intravenous quinine for the treatment of malaria. And we admit new patients, again usually with a diagnosis of malaria.

In the hospital there are three large rooms or wards, one a children’s ward, the second the women’s ward, and the third a men’s ward. There is also one “private” room with 2 beds and a private toilet. The rest of the patients share common bathrooms (one for the men, one for the women and one shower).

The hospital is on the same compound that we live on, so it is only a 2 minute walk to work. Except that on the way we must greet every person we meet. Near or far, we must ask “Harbari za asubuhi?” (“News of your morning?”), and “news of your home,” and “your family,” and “your work,” and “Mama (or Baba) hajambo?” (“Mama has no problems?”). And then we walk on until the next person we see and go through the greetings again. It is a very fun ritual, but it slows down our walk a lot. Fortunately, even our boss understands that being late sometimes cannot be helped!