Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Jonathan and I have been on the airplane for a couple of hours now. I suppose that all my thoughts should already be looking to what is ahead of us in America -- Jonathan's heart check-up, the places I will be speaking, the meetings I'll be having ...

But after sending our last message on the phone to Susan and Josh who have stayed back home at Madisi, after saying our good-byes to Godfrey who drove us to Dar to catch the flight, after getting to answer the last of the SMS messages that came into our phone before the plane took off, now I can just sit here peacefully on this plane. I know I should discipline myself and point all of my thoughts to what is ahead of us, but right now all I can think of, all I find I want to think of, is back there in Tanzania.

I enjoy letting my mind wander.

I think of the message we got that the regional educational officer wanted our bank account number because they've made a decision to send money from the government coffers to help the students at our school in Kising'a. How unbelievably incredible. We're a private school after all! But he said that it's plain for everyone to see that we're obviously unlike other private schools because our tuition rates are so low (they admittedly really are!) and so they recognize that what we're doing is pure charity for the poor. They're planning to send us $10 for each student to help the students with their school fees. I'm shocked. It's not just the symbolism of that decision which touches me right now. The truth is that for our students $10 is really a lot of money. It will mean something big to every one of them.

I think of the message that came from the village of Mpepo of the man who has for the last three months been coming to school every day and making bricks. He has set for himself alone the goal of making 60,000 bricks before the rains start. He has been coming day after day. 60,000 bricks is the goal that a whole village might make, that a school of students might make, but this is the legacy that this one solitary man wants to leave, all by himself. And so he comes every day, day after day, and he makes bricks. The message is that he has reached 32,000 and thinks he will make it because there's still maybe another two months before the rains start. Even 32,000 bricks is an unfathomable gift to the children of his village, and I know that I have no right to ask God to hold back the rains a little this year, but I find myself in my heart wanting to ask Him to hold them back so that the old man can reach his goal. I want to meet this incredible man one day. I want to shake his hand. I've been told of what he has said are his reasons for doing this but I want to hear his words in my own ears.

I think of the message from James, whose mother died earlier this week in the village of Solola. All 160 students from our school at Nankanga walked the 6 km to Solola to bury her, and to show James, who had once worked to help build their school and who is now overseeing all the school building projects we have across the country, that they honored and respected him. James just said how happy he was to be a part of this "family".

I think of the message from Emmanueli to tell me his joy at the great price he got on bricks. Now you have to understand that we simply never buy bricks. The price of cement I know. The price of metal roofing I know. But bricks? Nah. We build our schools with bricks that parents and students and people in the village make. But something extraordinary happened that made me want to know what the price of bricks really would be if someone wanted to buy bricks. In Sawala, the number of students surpassed any reasonable expectations. We had planned for 80 new kids the end of September. 242 new kids have shown up already and they are still coming. And so our headmistress and the students made bricks -- 12,000 of them. And so for once I wanted to know the price of bricks and if we could find someone who would sell them to me! Turns out they cost 50 shillings each (a little less than 5 cents) or maybe 45 shillings if we could talk them down, and so Susan and I talked about it and I figured for $550 we'd buy 12,000 bricks and I'd tell the students that since I couldn't come make bricks with them, I'd give 12,000 bricks too.

And so Emmanueli went to see the folks who sell the bricks in the village of Ibatu. He told them what the bricks were for. And they agreed to sell them to us not for 50 shillings, not even for 45 shillings, but instead for 30 shillings. And so my $550 is going to buy not 12,000 bricks but because of Emmanuel's cleverness it will buy us 20,000 bricks. Thinking about that made me think back to a conversation that Godfrey and Emmanueli had a couple of weeks ago. We had been asked to share with someone what was our strategy for fund-raising, and it had suddenly occurred to me as I tried to answer that we didn't have one. We really didn't have one. We didn't even have something that we could pass off as a strategy. I remember Godfrey and Emmanueli and I talking about it. God has sent more money in these past four years that we would have dared to have thought to ask him for. And we talked about how maybe it's not a bad thing to have a fund-raising strategy, and maybe one day we should think about coming up with one, that maybe it's not a bad idea to spend a lot of time praying to God to send more money, and maybe one day we should think about doing that, but that for now we should just keep on keeping on concentrating on asking God to keep on giving us as a team the cleverness and the wisdom to stretch every dollar that people give. That has been the key from day one in 2005 when we started. Praying for the guys that God would give them cleverness and wisdom to stretch every dollar. The $550 we gave was supposed to buy 12,000 bricks. Instead Emmanueli talked. And that same money bought an additional 8000 bricks. Now if God wanted us to have 20,000 bricks he could have nudged me to give $1000 but I really like it that He laid it on my heart to give $550 and He laid it on Emmanueli's heart to convince those guys to give us a special price. Either way, Sawala will have 20,000 bricks! But I like the way that God is doing it here, taking a little money here and a little money there, and partnering it with cleverness and wisdom and hard work, and producing out of that wonderful results. I see it over and over again, how God uses Godfrey to stretch money to buy more cement that it should, to get more metal roofing that it should, to get more desks than it should. I sit on this plane right now and all I can think of is how blessed we are to have such a wonderful team of people in Tanzania. This whole thing is our calling together and I love that.

And I think of all of the messages from the principals at our school to tell me the latest enrollment figures. I had to add them up. Didn't get that math degree from Rice for nothing after all. 1172 new students since September 22nd. And if there were any doubts at all as to whether or not our special scholarship program for girls was actually working, the proof was in the numbers. 595 of them are girls. We've done something, we really have. 595 girls! The guy sitting next to me would not understand but I really have this urge to yell to everyone on this plane that we've enrolled 595 more girls in our schools in these villages.

And then there are all of the messages that have come in on the phone to wish us a safe journey and good health for Jonathan. I'm glad that they call him "our little brother". That means as much to me as their prayers and their good wishes. I am again reminded that none of us have any rights to demand of God that check-ups have good results; for Jonathan's heart to be in good shape is nothing short of a gracious favor. But I'm a dad, and I'm his dad, so I hope for a gracious favor that I know that I have no rights to. How blessed that we are to even have a hospital to take him to! I live my life with fathers who have no such option for their sons and their daughters and so now I find myself thinking of what a gracious favor I've been granted to be so privileged.

My mind has wandered a bit at thinking of how truly blessed Susan and I are, and now my battery on my laptop has begun to beep to tell me that it has given all it's going to give, so it's time to say goodbye and to end this little chat with myself and with you all. Soon I get to watch mind-numbing movies on the airplane. I feel now like I'd rather just close my eyes and let my brain see the images of Tanzania. They can entertain me more than any movie will.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

The gifts are propped up against the wall in the corner of our dining room -- a reminder to me of what happened last Monday. We've already talked about giving them a proper home, up in the office of Village Schools Tanzania. Because even though the gifts were given to me, they were really given to all of us here and so they ought to be in a place where they speak to us all.

Thousands of people had gathered in front of the new classrooms in the village of Kimala on the plateau of a huge hill known as Ihongole. We were all gathered to officially open the school, to listen to speeches, to eat good food, to rejoice over what had been done.

The first gift was a sickle. This is what we used to slash our way the 4 km up to the plateau on this hill, to prepare the way for the school. We give you a gift of a sickle not as a sign of the work that we have done, but as a sign of the work that you have done to prepare the way for this school. You came all the way to our village with the goal of saving the lives of our children. And in doing so you prepared the way for the birth of this school.

The second gift was a spear. This is what we have used to fight our enemies. You read in the books of history of how our king Mkwawa fought for years against the Germans. But some enemies are not soldiers. The real enemies are fear and discouragement and complaining and getting tired. We give you a gift of a spear not as a sign of the enemies we have fought against, but as a sign of the enemies that you will fight against because we know that building the school is only the beginning and there will be many disappointments and many obstacles ahead of you. But you have shown that you are not afraid to pick up a spear, and we are confident that you will not run in fear. And so by agreeing to take this spear and to prepare yourself to fight, we know that together we will fight for the future of our children.

The third gift was three baskets. This is what we store our possessions in. We give you these baskets not because we have stored treasures for you in these baskets, but as a symbol of these classrooms where we are storing our greatest of treasures: our children. You have shown that you also treasure our children and therefore we count you as a member of our village and we know that you also will always treasure our children. And so we give you these baskets so that you will always remember that it is at this school that you have treasures that are stored in these classrooms.

The fourth gift was wheat. This is what we grow here, a sign of our wealth, of our harvest. This wheat is not the harvest that matters, because if you eat this wheat there is another day that you will be hungry. But we believe that the harvest of this school is the education of our children and that will last, and that will never end. The harvest without end. That is the promise of this school and so we give you this wheat so that you will remember that if we do not get tired that we will reap a great harvest this year and next year and every year.

And thus was born last Monday our thirteenth school here in Tanzania. Ihongole Secondary School. I cannot ever forget their gifts.

But I cannot also ever forget looking down the tremendously steep hill to seeing the place where the people of Kimala made bricks by the tens of thousands and seeing the torturous path that they climbed to carry those bricks on their heads so that the school for their children might be built. No vehicle could make it to the building site -- the cement we sent only made it to within 4 kiliometers -- the 50kg sacks all had to be carried on people's heads up the hill. Every piece of metal roofing, every window frame, every door, every desk, had to be carried on people's heads.

I cannot also forget the 112 students who had come that day to study. They are, as the old man said, the treasures of their village. For any one of those kids to not to get to school would be a crime of immense proportions -- for all of them together to have no place to go to school would be a crime of unfathomable dimensions. As I spoke to them and their parents and the elders I let my voice drop and told them in almost a whisper that I had a dream, a dream that one day every child in every village would get to go to school, and that no one would ever again not get to go to school. In the crowd of thousands, you could have heard a pin drop. And then slowly people rose up until there was a thunderous roar of applause. It will take them months, years in truth, to finish building their school. But as of Monday, the children of the village of Kimala are in the classroom learning. No cement floors yet, nothing is painted, but truly seeing them in the classroom was a beautiful sight if there ever was one.

I firmly believe that in every village where we are building a school that people want education for their children. But no one has sacrificed as these people have sacrificed. I imagine that when people visit our office they'll wonder why we'll have there in the office an ancient spear and a heavily used sickle, a couple of woven baskets and some dried wheat. I'll want to tell them that they were gifts. Gifts from the elders of the village of Kimala. Gifts with meaning. Gifts that matter.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

The old woman knelt by the side of the road, her hands clasped together as in a petition. On closer look, I saw that it was Amalia, an elderly widow with HIV, beckoning us to stop. Always so sweet, her life so tragic, Amalia was someone I truly cared about. “Please do come. It is my first-born daughter.”

I knew that we were transporting regularly another one of her children to Lugoda Hospital and I knew that we had already helped to bury her last-born child, but I didn’t expect to see this mom (Amalia’s daughter) in such terrible shape. I didn’t know how bad it was, otherwise, she would have been sent back to Kibao to be admitted again where my Catholic sister friends would know what to do. Anasia was dying. Body swollen to the point of bursting and it did just that, splitting to let the bodily fluid drip into the dirt where it formed into mud puddles. People wonder how this disease can be transmitted so easily. As I watch the barefoot caregivers walk through the puddles, along with children and chickens and whatever else is there, I found myself shuddering at where to begin. Anasia was about to be Amalia’s eighth adult child to die of the AIDS virus. Anasia died as they were taking her to Huruma Bus the following morning to take her to Kibao. My hope for Amalia is to get her last two kids to testing and treatment soon. I sometimes wonder what to do next. AIDS is killing so many people. I learned today that not only are we in the most affected region in the country, we are actually in the most affected district of this region. I am thankful that there is no other area as bad as this, because I can’t imagine something worse than this.

But there is hope.

And it is in hope in the midst of all of this death that I choose to dwell.

I think back to Saturday. It was another Christmas day in my life. The lovely colored wraps, blowing in the wind, as more than 200 of my friends walked up to our school for a seminar being put on by the Lugoda Hospital staff here at our school. No longer do these friends of mine look feeble and without hope. They are healthy strong parents and grandparents who have returned to living. They looked great! The seminar was wonderful, hard questions were asked, hard answers were given. The seminar wasn’t about preparing for death, it was about people getting back to living, putting their lives together again, organizing themselves in small cooperatives to help each other get back on their feet. All this for people who literally, only a couple of months ago, were all very much staring death in the face.

Hope – there is so much of it.

Part of the hope is that the Lugoda Hospital has sent 5 helpers to work together with us. They are a tremendous help as they help bear the load of the new sick folks, relieving our team of students to spread out further. That gives me hope.

This past week, I was invited to a seminar put on the Tanzania Network of Women of Living with HIV/AIDS. I was the only person there without the virus, but given I have been counted as their Mom, I got invited anyway! The purpose was to organize a group of 20 women with AIDS into a financial cooperative. Actually this “little” meeting ended up with 55 ladies who now have a group name (Peace), a president, treasurer and secretary and a bank account, plus a little seed money. I can hardly wait to see what they end up doing as I am out of ideas! Baskets, pine seedlings, honey, pigs – those have been our money-making specialties so far. New ideas. Their ideas. That gives me hope as well.

Hope is here, but we need to get out there and talk and visit and bring that hope. And that’s why this past week while school was on vacation, we used each day to visit a different “far-away” village. I have a car now and so I and my students can get places we could never have walked to! We were in Lulanda yesterday. Most of our friends there were at a church meeting in an even farther away village, which is a sure sign that that they are doing well. But we did have Catherine who laid there on her bed, recovering from her last trip to Lugoda Hospital. The bus takes her, but she has a five hour walk to get from her village to catch the bus. But she was smiling and is on the road to recovery. She is going to make it!

Olina wasn’t so fortunate, though. What had happened I wondered? She had previously told us that she was now going to a different clinic to get her ARV’s and we believed her. Turns out this new clinic is about a 12 hour walk away and they only have ARV pick up twice a month. Maybe she went, maybe she didn’t. Maybe the ARV’s weren’t there, or she got there too late, or maybe it was just too far to go a second time for someone who is sick. We arrived thinking we would see a healthy Olina, but rather she was in the throes of death. We prayed with the people beside Olina’s mat, and then walked outside. Olina wasn’t going to make it. The crowd was waiting for some word from me. It would have been easy to say nothing, or some meaningless platitude, but with so many people dying I had to tell them the truth – that this was a death that didn’t need to happen, that she had started treatment but that you have to follow the rules, you have to take the pills twice a day, you can’t stop no matter what. Olina’s youngest is only five years old. I had to tell them to encourage everyone in the village to go get tested and to get the medicines so that little kids who are five years old don’t have to watch their mothers die anymore.

Unlike the villages near us that we can walk to every day, there are these other villages where people are so far away that they have to walk for hours just to get to our bus to take them to the hospital. Their isolation intensifies the fear. They need hope and they need people to visit them. Even getting to Lulanda was an adventure – an incredibly beautiful adventure – but still an adventure. A 1,000 foot drop off the side if I slip off. But the mountains are steep and beautiful. No, the bus will never make it there. I barely did! However, once even a few of my friends get better, the hope becomes contagious! On the way home from Lulanda, we stopped and visited so many people in Iyegea where those with AIDS had gathered other people who wanted to go for testing. There is a crowd scheduled to go on Monday for testing. Some will be pushed on bikes to Ikaning’ombe where they can catch our bus. But one day I know it, they will be on their own two feet. Wherever we visit, other people join my friends and we talk about AIDS. I do love them.

I like to go with a teacher or a couple of students. An outing with me though is usually a mixed visit. At one house, we find an emaciated man lying on logs with fear in his eyes. At another we see a little boy with AIDS greeting me like I am his very own grandmother. At the next house, a heart-wrenching visit trying to feed a dying baby. All intertwined with the small joys on the roads greeting parents of our students, and spending a few moments chatting with our friends who are now back to living. I now have 9 wakalas (helpers) working after school and on weekends in efforts to get people to testing and treatment early. It is working as well as it can when there are so many people involved. I am thankful for this opportunity. Truly, God receives the glory, as everyone attributes the change in our dying community to God Himself. I feel as though we are living a miracle. Seeing my beautiful and healthy friends on Saturday encourages us all to push forward, speak without fear and show these people His love. As more and more outsiders in positions of authority have come to visit, there is more and more support for helping our friends here. We have been thanked for this incredible intervention into the lives of many. So I pass on their thanks to those who have prayed, helped us with everything – transport, cows, seed money, food, hospitalizations, and other helps – please know these dear people are alive today because of your help. The government guys want statistics so we starting adding up that there are probably 1600 more kids who would be orphans today if we weren’t able to get their parents to the hospital. God bless all of you who have helped make it possible to help them. Thank you.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Sometimes I feel simply overwhelmed. It's not that things aren't going well or that there's any big major crisis out there. It's just the sheer volume of the chorus of things coming at us from all sides. Godfrey and I were into our second day of working over reports and figuring out budgets, enough in and of itself to make my head spin. I've got problems swirling the whole time in the back of my mind competing for my thoughts -- school inspectors who sometimes seem to have no heart, people who ought to find it within themselves to forgive but can't, our need for a key person to help Janerose with the finances, how to get the tax exemptions we are entitled to get but that seem to have never-ending complications. And in the midst of it all his phone and my phone keep a seemingly incessant stream of dings with incoming messages from all around the country. Part of it is like election central with the vote counting coming in from each village with the number of new boys and new girls signing up for school, part of it is urgent reports of the needs for more desks, most of it good, some of it bad, but overall it was just adding to the burdens I was feeling.

And then Godfrey smiled. The really good news from Anyisile that his wife had started as a new student at Memya Secondary School, our school in Mpwapwa. Mama Enock, a mother of two little children, a wonderfully supportive wife who held everything together and supported her husband as he labored these last two years and played a decisive role in building the schools at Idiwili, Nankanga, and Mpwapwa -- and most recently opening doors for the new schools we are working to open in the villages of Kambo, Kalepula and now Ntumbwe.

It was Godfrey's wife Veronica who had talked for ten minutes on the phone the night before to encourage Mama Enock to take the plunge, to bear an even heavier burden with the kids, to give it a shot.

As of today, we have 802 new students who have enrolled in our schools in the last two and a half weeks. I'm thankful for every single one of them, but I'm particularly thankful for this dear lady. It was less than a month ago that Godfrey and I were in the village of Mpwapwa, arriving in the village at nearly midnight, tired from a long trip, hungry as anything, and she had food prepared for us. Such a wonderful smile, such a good spirit, she and her husband simply good Christian people. It was at Nankanga, the previous day, that we had announced a new policy that any student enrolled in one of our schools who would bring his wife to study that we would find a way pay her school fees 100%, and it was that night as we were sharing the new policy that evidently the seeds were planted. Anyisile isn't a student, so his wife wouldn't benefit from the policy, but they talked about all of the reasons why it was a good policy, and then Veronica lobbied hard on the phone, and they made the decision to take a huge step and for her to go to school.

And it's at times like this that policies need to be tweaked.

Veronica encouraged with words; time for us to encourage with deeds. Mama Enock is one lady who can really benefit from a scholarship. Godfrey and I took a little time out from the budgets to talk it through, and then we used our fingers to type out messages of congratulations and to let them know that they should consider the school tuition to have been paid in full.

And somehow my spirit seems just a little bit less overwhelmed now. Their circumstances might all be different, but tonight we will go to bed knowing more than 800 new students have signed up at our schools since September 22nd -- all people like Mama Enock, who for one reason or another, never got to go to school, and who would never get to go to school.

It was nice to talk to Godfrey about what his wife had done. Here in Tanzania we mostly only send text messages on our phones because quite frankly talking on the phone is just too expensive. But text messages on a phone wouldn't have been sufficient in this instance. But it was well worth the money Veronica chose to use to make the once in a blue moon phone call halfway across the country to talk with Mama Enock and convince her to take that big step. Veronica can be in town for a couple of hours and she finds someone to help. Day after day she's out in the village after school with my wife, helping those who are widows, helping the orphans. Godfrey and I laughed about her pastor's joke a couple of months ago telling the congregation not to show up on Sunday morning in the church if they couldn't think in their heart of at least one good deed that they had done during the week for someone poor and in need. What he said in jest was surely no joke. For a lady in the small village of Mpwapwa today who is studying -- finally after all this years -- it is indeed no joke.

Monday, October 6, 2008

It was just a few minutes before ten that Shabani must have made the announcement up at school that Madisi had come in 4th on the district examinations. That was when we heard the massive roar come down the hill from the school. Madisi had once again beat out all of the government schools in our district, dispelling any fears that we might have had that maybe what had happened last year was just a fluke. Only the two big catholic seminaries and the school run by the big multinational corporation Unilever had done better.

Of course as I poured over the list, my eyes went first to see how our son Joshua had done! How wonderfully happy I am. He came running down to the house on break with the hugest of smiles -- he had passed and he had done wonderfully -- and Godfrey gave him a goat and we will all have a big celebration. I do celebrate my son's success. But I celebrate more than just his good grades, I celebrate that Josh has joined with vigor Madisi and he has made it his school. I celebrate that that he plays on the soccer team. I celebrate that he was with his friends in the sun all day a couple of weeks ago digging the trenches at the dam for our mini hydro-electric generator. I celebrate that he studies until late at night with them, that he wears his uniform and his tie with pride and that he heads out the door at 6:45 every morning so as to not be late. And I'm glad he came running down from school to tell me as if somehow I wouldn't have known!

I certainly relish all that Joshua has in common with his friends at school, but I am also very aware of what separates him from them. More than a third of our students at Madisi are orphans -- they don't have mom and dad with them anymore to rejoice with them on their success. There won't be anyone to give them a goat or to order the killing of the fatted calf. I know in my heart that Joshua has known his whole life that he was going to get to go to school. Whatever doubts he might have about anything else in life, Joshua has never doubted that he'd get to go to school. All of his classmates though are those who are known here in Tanzania as "the unchosen ones" -- those who took the primary school exams, who waited three months for the results, who felt the stinging disappointment of knowing that their names didn't come out on the list and that they would never get to go to school again. And had it not been for the creation of Madisi Secondary School indeed they never would have gone to school again.

I rejoice that Joshua passed, but in my heart there was never any doubt that he would pass. He's had a wonderful foundation on which to build, and other than having to struggle with Swahili and some things on the test that he's never seen, it was in all honesty a slam dunk that he would pass. But for the rest of these kids, they lived every day with doubt. They were, after all, the kids who were told that they weren't good enough ever to go to secondary school! And now they weren't just competing against a test -- they were competing against the chosen ones, the kids who were in boarding schools being fed three meals a day, they were up against the elite, the cream of the cream -- and so they had every reason to doubt. By all that is reasonable in the world, Madisi should have come in last. And that is why, just like last year, the topic of conversation everywhere is going to be about everyone's different theories for how it is possible that the kids on the bottom managed somehow to make it to the top.

I remember last year when our kids did so well that we kept wanting to pinch ourselves to see if we weren't perhaps dreaming it all up. And if we're honest with ourselves, I think a lot of us have been wondering if what happened last year would prove to have been a fluke. Well, with this being the second year in a row that Madisi has beat out every government school in the district, we can now say with a high degree of certainty, that this is no fluke.

And so we will continue to build more and more schools. Until every last kid in the village of Tanzania at the very least gets to go to school. I celebrate our students. I celebrate my son Joshua. And I celebrate every single one of you who have joined with us in giving of your treasure or your time to play a part in making this all possible. Today there is great rejoicing for a great and wonderful victory for those who had once had no hope at all.

To those of you who have sacrificed to help build these schools, remember that Jesus said that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Thursday, October 2, 2008

It’ll be a long time before I forget what happened when I ran over rather excitedly last night to the place we call “Bibi’s house” That was where the 13 student body presidents from our schools here in Tanzania were all camping out. While Godfrey and I have been running a planning retreat for our 13 principals and the 19 building supervisors we have working in villages throughout Tanzania, Sarah has been running a similar workshop for these student leaders, and they’ve been having fun getting to know each other and sharing about what’s been happening in their schools. I ran over to take the news to them that we had just gotten a message from Nankanga that enrollment in the new Intensive English course had risen to 86. And Pascal, the guy from Nankanga was jumping, pounding his fist in the air in victory, and suddenly everyone was crowded around him lifting him up and cheering, you would have thought that they were a soccer team and Pascal had just kicked the winning goal. His face was absolutely shining. All of the efforts that he and his fellow students working with their new principal Basili had paid off, all of the travels to villages in that area to meet in primary schools, to talk with village leaders, to hold town meetings, to meet with individual parents, all that they had done had actually born fruit, and Pascal looked at me and repeated the words that I had spoken to the 51 students at his school the last time I visited them: “Every student who comes is a victory.”

I still remember the first time we met with the students in Nankanga when the school was just getting started. I can’t remember exactly how many students there were – I think 15 – but I do very vividly remember that there was only one girl. One. Only one. I remember listening to Janerose, an almost angry Janerose, speaking with great passion to the people of the village about how girls also had to have the right to come to school.

And so I got to congratulate Pascal on his 86 victories.

86. And 37 of them are girls.

There’s a young missionary teacher from America who has just arrived in the village of Nankanga, to make his life in that village, and to be a part of what Basil and Pascal and those students are doing. He just wrote a letter to his friends and family and those who have joined together to send him out here to teach, and someone back in America forwarded it here to me. Mr. Josef, as Joey Deyoung from Michigan is now known, is, in a very different way, yet another victory. He apologizes for writing such a long letter – and sometimes I think I should do that when I write – but as I read through his letter I treasure getting to see this world through his eyes and I think it’s worth taking the time to read, and even re-read his letter …

Habari za asubuhi (good morning!) from the VST Secondary School in
Nankanga, Tanzania.

There is much to share and to tell, but first things first. Thank you all so much for your prayers the last two weeks, and for thinking of my safety and well-being in a new country, in a new culture, and in a new position as a teacher. We seven wazungu (foreigners) from the United States recently completed a 10 day orientation with a wonderful woman by the name of Sarah Bickel, and are now living and working at our own individual schools scattered all over the southwest portion of Tanzania. Those first two weeks were spent in training at Madisi secondary school, and living in the nearby village of Igoda with one of its many fine students. There I found good company with my host student Isack and a number of other Biblical characters like Philemon, Noah, Amos even Festus; as well as some more unfamiliar ones like of Asuile, Galeshon, and a little boy Miki. I cannot begin to describe the hospitality and excitement that was so evident when I came to stay with Isack, the patience my dozens of Swahili "teachers" exhibited when I asked them for the 17th time how to say water (maji), or the genuine sadness my new friends expressed to me when they found out I was not going to be staying to teach at Madisi. And all I felt I had done was made them take care of a helpless American for 10 days! Tanzanians welcome the alien and the stranger, they feed the hungry, and they visit the sick just as Jesus commanded. If you are new to the village, they say "karibu(welcome)" and invite you into their home. If you are hungry, they will say "pole(sorry)" and prepare ugali or rice with vegetables. If you are sick, it is best to be prepared to have visitors all day long.

I should also tell you about a few others I have met so far. Steve and Susan Vinton are the wonderful people who live next door to Madisi
with their two sons Joshua and Jona. Steve is the director of Village
Schools International and on the executive committee of VST and Susan is a teacher at Madisi. But to be honest, these are not the people who have made it possible for 12 schools to be built in the last three years and now another 7 scheduled to be either partway or completely constructed by December. God has used the leadership of the director Mr. Godfrey, the secretary Mr. Emanueli, the treasurer JaneRose and the dozens of other Tanzanians at all of the schools to make it possible for over 3000 children to receive the kind of education they deserve, but could not get otherwise.

Here at Nankanga Secondary School, we currently have two classrooms
completely finished and two more that are very close to being finished. Currently there are 60 students enrolled in Form 1, but on September 22nd, we added 35 more and by the 24th we had 65 new students begin attending the Pre-form English classes that I will help teach for the next three months. Praise God that over half of them are female too! VST has made it part of its mission to see an equal representation of boys and girls in the classroom so that regardless of sex, all young people can receive a quality education. Also, there are 5 other teachers here who instruct students in subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, Kiswahili, English, geography, history, and civics. I am living with Basil, who is the headmaster and the history teacher here, and Ernest who is the physics and chemistry teacher. For now, we are actually living in one of the finished classrooms, but we will be moving into the teacher's house
which is scheduled to be finished……………well when it is finished!

I am so pleased to be here teaching alongside these other men of God.
I cannot express how or why over an email, but through the students, teachers, and other missionaries here, God has given me a confidence
and an assurance that the skills and talents I have developed over the
years will be used in their greatest capacity. But more importantly, the thousands of places where I fall short, His Holy Spirit will do far more than I can know.

I will end with this: a story that defines what I think VST and VSI are all about and why I believe you should fall in love with the work going on here like I already have. On the last day of our journey to Nankanga, Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Vinton, and Mr. Anyisile needed to stop at a few schools that are currently being built. In one village, the building supervisor had done such a good job motivating and working with the people there that in 45 days, they had built half of two buildings, laid the foundation for another, and had made thousands of bricks for the project. They hope to be finished by December and to open in January when school starts again. In the other village we traveled to, named Kalipula, the plan was to have a meeting with the entire village to sign a few papers and get things started. Well to our surprise, as we were driving into the village, we noticed that there were already thousands of bricks laying out in the sun to dry. When we arrived, we parked on the far end of the village and began to walk towards the primary school for the meeting. The walk turned into more of a parade as children ran after us and the older villagers stood and watched as we walked by. By the time we were ready to enter the school there were already 100 people following us in. Soon 100 became 150, then 175, then 200 not including the children peeking in
from the windows and shoving each other in the doorway for a clear
sightline into the classroom. Over the course of the meeting, with the possibility of a secondary school in their village becoming more and more real in their minds, many in attendance found it difficult to hold back their enthusiasm. They too want to have their school ready by January! And they have only made a couple thousand bricks!! But that is the way VST works – we go where we are invited, and we let the people in the village decide how quickly to build, where to build, and when to open. Even after the papers had been signed and the hands had been shaken, the smiles remained. During the meeting, we also discovered that an important member of the community had died that morning. For those gathered to mourn their recent loss, the arrival of the VST leaders did more than just bring a smile to their face. In the midst grief and despair, they still could not keep from talking about it. Truly there is something different about what God is doing here. And as we walked back through the village to the car, myself and Mr. Vinton on each end of the line, and Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Anyisile, and the village leader in the middle – all Tanzanians – I realized how vividly that moment encapsulated the way VSI and VST approach their work here in Africa. Our job as outsiders is to do just what we did that day: to walk alongside, but on the outskirts. The Americans or other foreign teachers who work here are not the backbone, nor will they ever will be. The reason we Americans are here is to educate, to disciple, and to empower. We are not here to solve problems or to save anyone from "the clutches of poverty" because we are simply incapable of doing so. We are here to walk alongside our neighbors in Tanzania, to live with them, to share in their joys and their sorrows, and to exchange knowledge.

I thought I would come here to show the love of Christ to many people in Tanzania, but I was not quick enough. They showed me first. So I am happy to report that God was at work long before I ever got to Nankanga, that He will work in my time here, and I rejoice that long after I am gone He will continue to work.

Once again, thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and continued support. I am only one of the many who is benefiting from the Spirit of fellowship and generosity that is at work in the hearts of so many of you back in the States.

My apologies if you thought this would be a short email, but I really cannot help myself. Not when God has worked the miracle of email in a
place that does not even have electricity! I hope to write again, but there is much to be done, so only God knows when that will be. That's all for now.

With love,
joey de young