Simply unthinkable

I certainly never thought I would be spending the night tonight in our "retirement house". In fact, I didn't even plan to be here in Kising'a at all! According to the schedule, right now Emmanueli and I were supposed to be in the little village of Taweta hundreds of miles away in the Morogoro region and tomorrow we were supposed to participate in the grand opening of our latest new school. But three nights ago when Emmanueli and I were in the village of Bukimau, Godfrey called to say the mechanics had given up and neither Hewa nor Yatima were going to be drivable any time soon.

Flies on the wall

How I wish all of you could have been "flies on the wall" at our leadership conference this morning.

I didn't quote the words from Isaiah ...

I don't sit in cafes very much. First of all, we don't have a lot of them here in Tanzania -- our mgahawas are more places to eat and go -- the food is cheap, a buck or two a plate, and you're not really paying for the atmosphere, and so you normally come in order to keep hunger at bay and you leave pretty much as quickly as you can, and Godfrey & Emmanueli and I do a lot of that when we're traveling.

Treasures

Sixty thousand shillings -- it's not much more than thirty five dollars these days -- and yet, in many respects in this place and at this time, it is truly an unbelievable amount of money. It is without a doubt a tremendous amount of money for the pastor of a small congregation of believers in the little village of Taweta. A incredible amount of money for that pastor to bring to Anyisile, and together with the elders of the church, to say that we have taken up an offering and want to bring this money, as our offering unto God, for the building of the school for the children of this village.

Turning words into metal roofing

I can see myself one day much more of "an old man" than I am now, walking a bit slower than I do now, with Grace walking on my left and Little G on my right. Those two little kids will be grown up then, they'll have gone to kindergarten and primary school and secondary school, they'll be at the age when they'll be thinking about what they want to do with their lives, and I'm planning out how I'm going to call the two of them to go on a walk with me.

Back to sending me messages again

It has been nearly 72 hours without any word from Godfrey and Emmanueli. It was three days ago that I got their last rushed text message to let me know that they were beginning to descend the mountains, Yatima (our car) in the lead, Tunda (one of our dump trucks) following slowly behind. We all knew we would probably be without any contact for a long time. But then the hours dragged into a full day, then into two full days.

April Highlights from Tanzania

April 1-2: Village Schools Canada was among the mission agencies invited to participate in MissionFest, a 2-day gathering in Toronto of Christians interested in missions. Andrew Hutchinson, after serving with VSI for a year in the little village of Kising'a, returned home to Canada and founded VSC, opening the door for people in Canada to make donations for the work in Tanzania and for churches in Canada to be able to send out missionary teachers to serve in Tanzania.

March Highlights from Tanzania

March came and went with lightning speed it seemed, and yet so many good things got crammed into those 31 days.  We invite you to rejoice with us as you read through some of these highlights!

March 1:     Work began today on the foundations for our kindergarten building at Madisi.  Our goal will be to give the little kids in our village a "head start" before they start primary school -- as well as to give our Madisi students opportunities to serve in another meaningful way in their community. 

March 3:     We met

February Highlights from Tanzania

We want those of you who are interested in this work to share in a bit of the joy that we have in getting to be here! Thanks for being a part of this work with us ....

Fruit

Since we launched our very first school in 2005, we have somehow always managed to have enough, or almost enough, sometimes just barely enough teachers for our schools. This has been another one of those suprising and pretty much "unexplainable" facts of life these past six years given the rather acute shortage of teachers in this country.