All is well...

In spite of computer failure, we are doing well (and after a little research, it seems like the toshiba hard drive may deserve the blame, instead of the continent of Africa, as previously suggested).

Last weekend was fun, as we went out to some villages... Kevin taught a little in Swahili (little is the key word). More remarkably, a church insisted that Charity offer a prayer. Making her sit in the front of the church is bad enough, but forcing Charity to speak before a crowd... impressive.

Kevin is returning to take a couple church leaders to a distant village, where people have brought a letter asking for help in starting a church in their village. I will try to add a little to my teaching for this next weekend. Or at least work on my bad driving.

On that note, I have been driving infraction free for a couple weeks. Not Charity, though, who has been admonished by police to cease driving without a competent driver. Ironic, as she is the only competent driver in our family here.

Gotta run... on our way to a missionary fellowship tonight with 20 or so of our closest friends serving in various ministries around Mwanza. They hear our present stories, and laugh, because they have been through it all themselves. One day we will do the same.

things fall apart...

or break, at least. Last causality: our beloved powerbook g4. Things started going bad when we took it with us on a cross country trip in December. Now, it refuses to start up... fatal hard drive error.

We have lost all of our emails, and our pictures for the last year, until we disassemble the computer and pull out the hard drive.

We were already behind on e-mails... sorry if you are awaiting a reply... the only email addresses we have are those that have sent us an e-mail in the past week. so forgive us, please, until we get our technology in order.

Otherwise, all is well here in TZ, but our blog will likely be silence, except for some quick messages from teammates computers or internet cafes.

March Madness

The week started with one of our teammates being illegally evicted from their rental house by the city council (the house was a city government house until a few years ago, when it was sold to a Tanzanian citizen). About 30 city guards, plus the fire department with jaws of life to cut through locks and bars, and a lorry truck, arrived early in the morning, with no warning, to clear all the contents out of the house. Lovely.

Since our affected coworkers were in route to nairobi, and out of cell phone range, the rest of us had our work cut out for us, as we tried to keep the guards occupied with "safe" jobs while we ransacked the place looking for valuables and safeguarding fragile items. We also tore out anything valuable we could, like the kitchen cabinets.


The week ended with a couple teammates jumping into a frenzied mob beating and preparing to stone a 12 year old boy (who had stolen around $5) to death. Literally. Common treatment for a defenseless thief. Thankfully, the prayers of the nearby wives were effective, and the crowd set aside their stones, and returned home with their mallots.





(photo of a cast aside stone)


This is not a normal week here, but there is no normal week here.


On a more positive note, the first friday of the month is a highlight for us here. The larger missionary community, working in diverse ways including orphanages, bible translation work, rural development, theological training, etc. gathers for fellowship, worship, and prayer.

If you haven't noticed, there are a lot of broken things here. It is refreshing to be part of something that represents what is being restored.