Dear Cherished Interested,

Surprising stewardship..

I felt strong enough to climb the stairs to the roof. The dark of night fading as day brightens. I step quietly, a gift of feet too large to be shod by local flip flops. Barefoot up into the cool of almost morning. Up into the all surrounding birdsong praising the miracle of yet another new day.



The moon high over Meru, located just west of north from the vantage afforded from this surprising rooftop. Just east of north the sky is clear enough to see mighty Kilimanjaro low and broad on the horizon. Thanks to the brightening sky I now know, not just a guess but know, where east lies. Elevation drops away into a distant haziness to the east, the way to the coast, Dar-es-salaam, Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean.

Brightening moments eventually bring first morning voices of people up from the surrounding village painted across the hillsides beneath lush Dr. Seuss trees and small Banana groves everywhere.

Time to head down from the roof.

I don’t want to be spotted atop the largest building in sight. I don’t want to be seen in that way. The village cows, who can be heard lowing late in the day as full udders and empty bellies have them calling for their shepherds, are still quiet, morning milking and feeding likely completed in shuffling darkness, tubs of milk covered with cloth waiting. Waiting for fat to rise. Waiting for chickens to be fed, eggs gathered, fires awakened.

Chickens?, not so quiet, but noisy and endemic as they can be they are nearly voiceless in comparison to the indigenous Hadada Ibis. A large bird with long narrow downward curving bill, green flash across each wing and truly loud call, especially when in flight. Almost like a more aesthetically pleasing miniature pterodactyl but with a call fitting a dinosaur.

As I sit starting to write the first whiffs of renewing cook fires are swept on the breeze into the room as the owners of those first morning voices prepare for the day.

Hilda chose this place before we left the U.S. on Airbnb because it has internet and laundry service available. We had no idea that we would be housed in the largest building in sight. Nor did we know that we would be housed in the home of a family.

Upon consideration it is obvious that this locally massive edifice, erected up in the hills away from the big road and its tourist centric commercial development, up in the midst of a village, must be locally sourced, locally owned, locally occupied, locally supplied.

Locally minded, this bubble of affluence was intentionally planted here by two people who are from here, one born here the other born high on that bigger mountain sitting low and broad on the horizon just east of north from here.

Their younger grandchildren play here, we get to hear their voices well after dark. They come to us now with their impeccable English to challenge our difficult Swahili with their eager flowing Swahili. They are fluent in Ki-Meru, Ki-Chagga, Ki-Swahili, and English. They are elementary school students. They are blessed and fortunate and know it. They already know they are expected to be tomorrow’s leaders. They have fire in them and can’t wait.

It took many years of risk to build this place. It opened to the global public just before covid-19 killed tourism, killed what economy there is here. When fear swept around the planet in response to that new pathology did this family discharge their staff and shut down? No. They chose to compound the many years and deep risks and keep their staff on site and paid.

On site, paid, and with health benefits, you see the best and brightest here in Tanzania don’t become teachers or even doctors, nearly none can obtain the training. They become tour guides. The best and brightest here get to train to care for, serve and clean up after the worlds’ wealthiest who come to visit.

Each member of staff serving us here who interacts in any way with visitors has all the same capacities for leadership as do the grandchildren who live here. They are alive, awake, multi-linguistically astute, in love with life and people enough to learn the ways of that bubble of affluence. Ways that nearly all never had growing up, nearly all never will have when they step form this bubble back to the reality of most of the worlds people.

There is literally just one step, one gate from walking on paving block to steps in the dust.

Grandmother, the boss, came to her intended retirement home last week. The one born high on the mountain just east of north from here came to inspect and expect, to determine and demand, to teach and tolerate and reward while pouring more water, more risk on the seed planted in a village in the hills out of sight of and above the big road. This seed, this place, intended to pull some of what stops at the big roads edge out into the reality of most of the worlds’ people, at least the people of this village, this hill.

Grandfather, a man born right here on this hill, needs to stay several countries south to care for his many patients. That is how he carries the water for his beloved to pour over this seed that is home for their grandchildren and hope for a better tomorrow on this hill of cook fires and few watches and fewer phones and nearly no transport other than feet.

Grandmother arrived just in time for us too. She fearlessly chose to get to know us, sharing her personal blend of tea and local fruit, and while I have been up in our room either near the bed or in it, sharing her favorite traditional foods, not on the menu, while eating with Hilda.

Friends, my lifetime of experience among America’s wealthy has been less than mutually fruitful. Often with me being forced to leave behind financial security to make plain that I can be owned only by the one who died for me, only God and never only just one or two of His misguided children.

My silent prayer has been to see the active community minded affluence I grew up around as opposed to what seems to have become a self-serving or distracted affluence.

Selling the cow intended for the family freezer so the oil tank at church could be filled and the church not freeze. Selling the family’s first new car and taking instead a used one from the lot so the same oil tank could be filled once more. These are examples of two different family’s sacrifice for community I got to glimpse that nearly no one knew about while growing up when and where I did. Risk takers, willing to sacrifice today in hope for a tomorrow that might not be about them, or not only about them.

We don’t know where we will be from one moment to the next right now. The Holy Spirit has borne me up so I can attend and participate in some beautiful things with precious people given to us and us to them.

It is like in John 4, at the well and the returning disciples with food for Jesus who tells them He has had things to eat, things to sustain, that they were not aware of. Jesus had that precious lonely woman, parched for water, parched for living water, parched for Messiah, parched for Jesus and who can’t wait to share those things with her community.

Well The Spirit let me hit the wall and thanks to Grandmother, Hilda has been well taken care of. Thanks to Hilda and a Tanzanian pharmacist who stayed up late to text continually with Hilda helping her to determine how to get and keep me stable, I am well taken care of too.

Yes, we’re paying to stay in Grandmother’s lodge, her home, but that is not what’s going on here. She quietly told Hilda while I was not around that she has made arrangement that when the lodge is full on December 3rd including the room we are in, that we are to have her personal apartment to stay in if we are still here.

We haven’t paid that pharmacist one cent, one shilling.. Not yet..

As absurd as it may seem to me, someone who has lost everything but his children and spouse to business ventures at home, I think this Grandmother see’s us as kindred. People like her and her husband willing to risk everything in hope of making tomorrow better all while striving to raise up leaders for that same tomorrow.

Our children are leaders. Each one of them has a back bone and grit allowing us to sell up and step out into this crazy we are on. I have been a determining and demanding father striving to teach and tolerate and pour water on our growing children and now, currently somehow by example from afar, our grandchildren.

Need to be Hilda’s caboose and get her up the hill where she can teach elementary school teachers how to do some hands on laboratory science.. without a laboratory.. perhaps a kitchen.

We are thankful for everything God is showing us.

We are thankful for strength.

We are thankful for weakness.

We are thankful for family wherever we go.

We are thankful for not knowing what the next step will fall upon.

We are thankful for our children and grandchildren safe at home in the States.

We are thankful for our children and grandchildren safe at home in Tanzania.

We are thankful for the opportunities whatever they are.

We are thankful for you.

We are thankful for the Holy Spirit resident in each of you.

We are thankful for prayer pulling us into whatever is next.

We are thankful for your prayer.

Thank you, Thank You, Thank You.. Prayers, your prayer, makes all the difference..

Vern W

May Life be as Music to your Heart - May Music be as Heart to your Life 

- May Heart be as Life to your Music -