Dear Cherished Interested,

My hearing for working machinery and music is good.

Both mother and daughter have the exact same sweet, kind, clear and soft voice. Their movements and cast of their eyes make them at least closely related. Were it not for mothers head being shaven in the married Maasai way, and the daughter wearing a western style dress her long hair up and draped in mourning with a scarf, sisters would have been a good safe assumption. But no, mother was mother very young and so she could have a 21 year old daughter and still herself be in her thirties.

A few posts back Pastor Lazarus collected us and took us to his Maasai Parish down on the dry flood plain. Pastor Lazarus included us in spite of having had two very recent brushes with white European men seeking to traffic young impoverished women from this area.

At that time, we met a Maasai daughter from that parish of families subsisting on no more than one meal a day. She had been removed by Pastor Lazarus from one of the two recent attempted trafficking situations he had faced. She got to know Hilda and I on the way from the parish back to and up mount Meru to Pastor Lazarus’s home.

Pastor Lazarus had included us that day in spite of our being white. He had also included us in spite of having spent the night taking and staying with his father in the hospital. We did not know until we were in the car with him and on the way. He had to stop and speak with his sister who was walking along the road to the hospital to be with their father.

Pastor Lazarus is older than our children though still slightly younger than us. He is nearly the youngest among his siblings. Their father was born in 1913. Yesterday, the 29th, we attended the funeral of that 108 year old Meru man.

There, among the hundreds in attendance, that Maasai daughter came and found us taking our hands and insisting to take us from among the many standing to seats. Insisting to sit with us in a wonderful, out of the way place, away from where the honored and presiding sat.

Thankfully we were late arriving having walked from the children’s village half an hour or so to the church we had been informed the service would be at only to discover it had been moved to the family home about 20 minutes back and just down the hill from the children’s village.

After the three hour service and internment there at the family home, it was time to feed the throngs. We were hoping to perhaps slide out as folks started to move to one of the food stations.

We had been spotted. Before anyone around us could be released to go eat, we were summoned, collected wordlessly. With Hilda being led by her hand once again by that precious Maasai daughter, we were taken to the presiding and honored guest station for feeding. There we were given seats in front and next to Bishop Kitoi’s spotless white landcruiser.

Our Maasai keeper at this large Meru family home left us there for only a little time as she went and collected her mother to sit at my right as she sat on Hilda’s left. This is how we came to hear and study the voices of these two young women.

I know that mothers and daughters can and do sound alike. Cousins too can have nearly identical voices, inflections, lilts but most often there is something that separates two individuals, especially a parent from a child. I have been able to listen to a vocal performer and then go home and write music for that specific voice and have it be right.

One had to listen for the difference brought about by station, mother versus daughter, but that was very subtle. When that authority piece was removed these two sweet kind clear soft voices are to date the closest voices I have yet to hear. That made the two styles of dress, Maasai Traditional verses African-western somewhat jarring with the same eyes looking to each other from both sides of us. I’m still adjusting/learning.

I had been honored by this Maasai daughter’s father while visiting their Boma by being the one given the stick. His very own dark beautifully cleanly shaped and polished walking stick to use as we took a walking tour of their home.

He made the trip up the mountain to be with his pastor in their family grieving of lost patriarch. I had caught a flash of his chosen Maasai wrap color during service among those hundreds and found his head tilted and eyes waiting to meet mine with a calm open knowing smile full of acceptance.

When seated between this proud father’s daughter and one of his wives, her mother, all I did was take the index finger of each hand to indicate his daughter on the left and his wife on the right. Then bringing those fingers together side by side and shaking my head in amazement I tried to show that I had noticed the near perfect cloning hidden beneath the different clothing. His sturdy chest rose even further with tremendous pride.

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Between Christmas and New Year many of the children at the village receive opportunity to return to some part of their extended families for a time together. This is one of the many ways that this group of folks strives to find ways to bring families back together for the sake of each child. As a result this week has had only a few children at the village with the Mamas. Most of the Staff is gone for a well-deserved, hard-earned, time with their own families.

Unfortunately not all family reunifications work. Not all work right away. Two young girls returned to the children’s village this same week so many were able to be gone.

Hilda was asked to evaluate and work with these two girls as their grades indicate that the time spent in attempted reunification has severely affected their academic performance.

So, Tuesday through Friday, today, we have been up at the children’s village each morning to work with these precious ones. I have been Hilda’s co-teacher allowing each child to have one on one effort. This type of effort is unheard of within the school environment here and ever more so even at home in the states.

I really felt we made a couple good breakthroughs especially today.

With nearly no staff available that means nearly no drivers so we have been walking quite a bit. There has been insistence that we get collected and driven up the hill each morning. However we have been able to insist that we walk wherever we need to after that. So, counting the trek up the hill from Kilala church Sunday, we have walked about fourteen miles together this week.

Not bad for a fake knee on uneven and steep ground. Hilda of course is a dynamo only starting to slow down some today.

This walking as opposed to being driven around brings us into more contact with people. We are pleased to report that with local Pastors including us, letting us drive their vehicles around, us attending events and being seen there, that we have become known.

That means that we are not asked for money very often. That sets us apart from the typical tourist. We are not often drawn into long conversations with limited vocabulary because we have been seen figured out, included, and accepted.

The humor that is seen on the faces of those who witness us carefully disengaging from the rare inebriated individual is in fact a sign of that acceptance as well.

The walk up from Kilala church on Sunday was 3 miles up from almost the big road. We were facilitated on this trek by the weather turning to rain and keeping us cool. Also assisting was one local who walked with us from about the half way point to make certain we did not lose our way here where roads are trails and there is no signage.

It was during this walk up the hill that I noticed the change.

Instead of folks looking at us and trying to figure us out, the words from many properties we passed were in Swahili or Meru directed to the local who walked with us. They were making certain that he was guiding us correctly and was not going to take advantage.

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Hilda’s house is to be ready soon. In theory, this coming Monday, the 3rd of January ’22.

There are friends of friends now on the look-out for a mechanically sound motor vehicle around the nearby communities that is large enough for me to get into and out of.

Appearance does not matter to me. In fact I would prefer something that was ugly and abused on the outside as it would be uninteresting to those who might want to break a window to look for something. Lead not into temptation is something one has to strive after here for others.. just like at home.

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What to Pray for:

That our many friends and family in the states having hard winter weather stay safe -

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us –

Thankfulness for the rain we have had –

For more rain –

For a Meru family moving on without a man they’ve had for 108 years –

For Makumira Secondary School seeking to partner with a school outside Tanzania –

For the many victims of human trafficking –

For the renewing of hearts and minds so human trafficking is no more –

God wants to free people from whatever traps them, even traffickers are trapped –

For our Children and grandchildren missing us –

We miss them too –

Visa’s –

Our strength, our weakness, vulnerability and challenging our own uncomfortable –

Gratitude for the many friends and family getting stuck onto our lives here –

Gratitude for the many improvements from 16 years ago that I am witness to here –

Thankfulness for answer to prayer, continual answer to prayer –

Each Prayer –

Each and every one of you who do that hard work of keeping us in Gods hands –

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 -

Dear Cherished Interested,

Palms down and fingers open..

That is how I try to describe what I strive to be like with regards becoming a Pastor acceptable for use by the church machine. I do not have control over any of the process. I still do not know what the process is or will be.

It should take several years of study and training to get to where any diploma from here would find acceptance in Europe. Several Tanzanians have taken their Bachelors from here to Europe and entered Doctoral Programs there without a Masters level Degree, so strong and full the Bachelor degree program here in Tanzania seems to be.

No one has attended a theology program here from the U.S. No citizen of the U.S. has taken that training and challenged their home church machine to lift its eyes and seek value in that training. The church machine in the U.S. has another failure to admit to..

The report of Jesus’s words to those he sent out as recorded for us in Luke 10:2 ;

He said to them, “The harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers. Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest. (Common English Bible)

As we in the U.S. make training programs ever more costly. As those programs fold and disappear over time becoming fewer and hence less inclusive. There are fewer workers being empowered for the work that is already on their hearts and minds. Work that is already quickening their feet, their sight, their hearing otherwise they would not seek it.

Ministry should never be a good business opportunity. Business is structured to be about competition. Ministry is a life opportunity. Ministry is a life opportunity in relationship through cooperation and even submission. Submission to the person of creation.

Much talk over the years at home has to do with who has power and who has what privilege. The who’s in question in these discussions are created human people callously grouped into presumptive boxes by other created human people twisting around hurts, injustices and fear of each other that are a result of sin. Missing the mark is sin.

Who is the mark maker? Who is the only person qualified to perceive all the missed marks by having in their person and their work what those marks are? Who then is the only person worthy of submission to?

In that light, I strive to keep my palms down and fingers open. To not hold on to what I think I understand or feel driven to seek. That authority which creates gravity to pull things from open downturned hands can most assuredly push into those same hands whatever is chosen by that authority.

For me that authority chose to shed its all-encompassing vastness in all ways and things to take up residence through love in the loving secret place that authority created in a young woman over two thousand years ago. That authority chose to be knitted together and grow in that created to be sacred place. Choosing to be made of the same things as that young woman and in fact growing out of that young woman’s willing sacrifices of substance, time, life, and cultural acceptance by her peers.

Then that authority chose to live among us. Chose to live as a created biological miracle like each of us. Chose to live a life of sacrifice in reflection of all of His parents’ choices. This He did for your sake, my sake, and the sake of that stranger way over there.

Surely those strangers created and loved as we are know how to.. plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.

Mchungaji is the Swahili word for Pastor. Mchungaji is an ordained position.

Here in Lutheran Tanzania many already refer to me as Mchungaji and Hilda as Mama Mchungaji. That is because the workers are few and those who show talent, those who choose to strive after a life of sacrifice in reflection of the only worthy authority, are ordained and put to work. Training given as need or opportunity comes.

There are PHD Mchungaji. There are Masters degreed Mchungaji. There are Bachelor degreed Mchungaji. There are certificated Mchungaji. There are Mchungaji who are simply ordained and sent out as workers. This is both new and familiar to Hilda and I.

We raised our children and indeed even ourselves in deep ways in that local Lutheran Church in Everson WA, choosing to serve both there and through that tradition, that machine. Before that, we had both been ordained lay people from a different North American Christian tradition, machine. People of Christ ordained into harvest work.

What has been additionally opened to my heart however is that the harvest ever more includes those within those Christian Traditions, machines, some of whom we call Lutheran. Loved and cherished precious people in those machines are ever more part of our harvest work as those living with the consequences of sin assail from the outside and those living with the consequences of sin assail from within those machines.

That authority that chose to be born of Mary stands ready to reconcile not only each of us from death and the grave to eternity with God, but also those who feel assailed on the inside of our church machines with those who feel unjustly, even casually driven out, ignored and excluded.

Cherished attending and praying friends we are amazed at that work where we are. Two nights ago we were surprised guests of two breath-taking and unexpected conversations.

First we were taken to meet and talk with a retired Tanzanian General and ambassador who in his long lifetime of service worked alongside and for the first President of this nation which found freedom in many of our lifetimes. A first president who was a teacher before becoming president of a young new nation with long-lived diverse and both familiar and strange traditions. A little like us in our U.S.

I was finally able to ask someone who was there and responsible about how this brand new nation Tanzania with their first teacher president had saved the rest of the world from a madman dictator back in the 70’s called Idi Amin Dada, and the consequences.

Yes, it felt much like talking with Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton might have felt. Even at ninety-one he is full of passion, energy, excitement, story and patient wisdom that Alexander Hamilton perhaps did not live long enough for. She, the Tanzanian general’s amazing spouse, is perfectly suited match lacking nothing linguistically, intellectually or in passion to her partner in long life.

Then at our head shaking return to the lodge after a, short feeling, long evening of inclusive deep conversation, we found another young American daughter waiting with a young Tanzanian friend.

This was to be our second encounter with them. He was raised by the help of Compassion International. His challenging passionate outlook for his nation was bleak and seemingly hopeless at our first meeting. He listened, questioned, listened, questioned, challenged and they left. We thought nothing more of it.

Although late we sat with them on the entry porch and partook of yet another, a second, conversation that went challengingly deep. Eventually we were figured out enough to be trusted. His name is Erick. He has passion for God, his nation and her people too. He has come to see hope in what Hilda and I are connected with up on the hill at The Children’s Village and also connected with down near the big road at the School in Usa River.

Enough hope he wants to be part of it and how, and who, and he is choosing to try.. over disillusion and bleakness. Two young friends’ with minds just as capable as the General and spouse.

Yeah.. like that evening was just a result of a loveless randomly self-created universe full of miraculously intricate mechanisms leading to life just beginning to be understood by science..

Life is important. Life like we know it is important. Jesus is Mary’s precious baby boy, grown within her lovingly created womb because life is important. Our common precious pathway of growing into life with Jesus is important. Death is important only in as much as like the womb it is a lovingly created place for us to be taken into life eternal. The child of Christmas shares it all with us so His making the mark can be ours too.

Merry Christmas..

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What to pray for:

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us -

Thankfulness for the Rain –

More Rain –

Our Children and Grandchildren at home missing us –

We miss them too -

Erick, a Tanzanian, and his American Friend Abigail leaving for home soon –

Erik, my friend and brother, a North American Mchungaji braving what may with us –

A very much alive Tanzanian General and Spouse –

Our health, weakness, clear headedness, confusion, and emptiness so we aren’t in the way of the next surprising moment -

Two children returned to the Village as a home with a part of their family has been unsuccessful, so far –

Visa’s changing, refurbished house, and now to find a car that lets us travel and serve –

Success with understanding and completing directives given by college representatives –

Makumira Lutheran Secondary School looking for an American School to share with -

Mchungaji serving everywhere –

Thankfulness for being seen as useful to folks in their work and their lives –

Our ever expanding family –

Thankfulness for amazing answer to prayer -

Thankfulness for all of you –

Each of you and each 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 -

Dear Cherished Interested,

Hilda took a job this week.

It comes with a house for us to use. The house will need a few weeks to be made habitable. The house is located at the school Hilda and I went to look at our second and third mornings here. It is much nearer the big road but secluded to the back of the school grounds. This is where Hilda will be doing most of her work.

So, this good thing means more prayer..

Hilda is venturing into new territory for her. That is, in the midst of all the new territory she is braving already. The teaching of teachers will be ramping up. The production of preformed labs(kits) for those teachers to take to their students will be ramping up. January looks to be busy as she has a primary school of teachers waiting for her tutelage in addition to an afterschool Science enrichment program to get into place.

Good thing half of January is a training time for teachers before students return.

What is really new though is volunteer coordination, at least in this place and venue. Incoming volunteers are also to be trained to teach laboratory science by Hilda. Laboratory Science as demonstrable in settings that may not be in laboratories.

She has one direct assistant, yet to be found, who is to be both English and Swahili fluent. That is nearly everyone connected with the big road and tourism. That is a large body of potential candidates starving for something to do as the tourist economy is still nearly totally tanked.

Since opportunity here has been so completely tied to tourism, science is an ancillary subject at best. Even those with interest, talent and perhaps calling into the sciences are steered from their youngest years into those things that support tourism leaving study in the sciences a primary school only exposure.

Since the economy here is still nearly totally tanked, there should be more hopelessness here but there isn’t. Subsistence in endemic poverty is such a shared experience that all know what is going on, all are familiar with it. The rest of the economy, non-cash based economy, remains active.

There are hand wash stations built of 5 gallon buckets with spigots everywhere you go. There are face masks available wherever they are called for. Activities continue. There is no option to close the remaining economy as folks work today in order to eat today, feed their still living children, feed their still living elders today.

Churches continue to have worship multiple times a Sunday so those working have a chance to find a time to come around their working. Singing and dancing attend most services. Rapid fire Swahili preaching, seemingly more fire and brimstone than I can produce, flows lovingly out of pulpits filled by those serving multiple parishes with little to no compensation. To many serving likewise at home in North America, the surviving on miracles expressed by Pastor Ombeni resounds on familiar hearing.

That is one piece of many that lets me know that the same Spirit compelling and driving these workers for Christ here, compels those serving in North America, those serving everywhere around this pile of life covered warm wet dirt held together by the blessing of gravity we call the world.

Hilda was sick for part of this last week. As a result I ducked as politely as I could another invitation to preach at a church in Usa River(pronounced oosa river). This invitation came from Reverend Doctor Justin Mungure, a long time Mchungaji(Pastor) given the opportunity and responsibility of higher education.

He completed his education, graduating with his Doctorate in Biblical Hebrew from Tumaini Univeristy Makumira, also in Usa River. He came and ate supper with us. He probed and questioned, found people we knew in common and before leaving directed me to use phone numbers he provided to contact Bishop’s secretary and ask for a meeting with Bishop to discuss my yet attending Tumaini University at Makumira.

With the gift of Hilda’s gifts finding use at an Usa River school site, this reaching out for me to strive after my inclusion at Makumira may be more than just whistling past the grave yard. God knows.

Bishop is wise. He has not officially met with me in person. Our brief heartfelt moments have been casual. He called me on my phone this week while I was in a school bus with Hilda on our way up the hill to The Children’s Village and asked me why I don’t just enroll in person. I had to tell him that when I had attempted to do just that, that I had been told by a steward of the school of theology, to get on a plane and go home to America.

The implication I took from that encounter was that I needed to change the church machine in America before that stewards program would have anything to do with me.

Hilda and I left that encounter, the most .. North American type encounter we have had here, saddened, shook but surprisingly undeterred.. God knows..

Then I apologized for the Lutheran Church as a whole both at home and here in Tanzania.

I apologized to the two non-lutheran Tanzanians whose hearts had compelled them to put us in their own car, drive us to the University our second or third week here, talk us onto and across campus, find the office of the steward we had been sent to and.. who were both deeply offended at how Hilda and I were treated by that steward serving Lutheran education at Makumira.

I have been learning by unintentionally beating my heart against the church machine both at home and in this case here, that there is a church machine, built by human traditions and presumptions and assumptions and human need for order out of what humans see as chaos.

That is what I apologized for.. Not the heart of the unintentionally reforming Luther, never the heart of Jesus Christ that Luther strove to reflect and teach.. I apologized for the machine we make to enable and facilitate us doing the work that Jesus calls us into.

I think that apology worked. That Catholic Tanzanian Daughter, that Jewish Kenyan-British-Canadian-American Son, have not fled from Hilda and I in the light of such a strident rejection by the Lutheran machine, but had continued to draw us close. They continue to trust and support us claiming we are useful in both their work and more importantly their lives.

Bishop heard me say that when I had tried to do just what he was recommending, to simply enroll at Makumira in person, that I had been told to get on a plane and go home. He did not get defensive. He did not become deflecting. He asked for time to talk with a friend on campus and get back to me. God knows..

Just last night God put Bishop Kitoi and I in the same place once again. I asked him how he was, he said fine. He asked me how I was doing, I said fine. Then I showed him the flash drive I prepared for that in person meeting Reverend Dr Justin directed me to seek. It has my college transcripts and AA degree, it has my CV(resume) and samples of my Christian writing and music compositions.

I told Bishop that I had been wearing it around my neck waiting for a time to give it to him and asked if I could give it to him. He said yes. He also said that he hoped he would not lose it. I said that if he did I would try to find and make another to give to him.

God knows..

I have also expressed to this Bishop that I am a child here. I do not know what I do not know. I bounce around intellectually linguistically and culturally like a 2 year old amongst the legs of unseeing shuffling adults. I need a shepherd to guide me through what everyone here already unknowingly knows in their bones. My bones never got those lessons. I am a deeply rural person who has worked hard since I was 7, my bones didn’t get the lessons of our predominantly urban centric North America either.

Given that Bishop Kitoi served as a missionary pastor in Wisconsin USA, has opened his heart briefly to me about his service and time there, I have hope that there may be an empathic ear. What his machine allows him to accomplish is another thing.

God knows..

The machine has seemingly cowed two initially supportive and exited bishops over the many years at home there in North America. The machine is not the church.

The machine we call church is a tool we make.

We are responsible for how it is used because the machine is our tool. We as counselled compelled and guided by The Holy Spirit through scripture, challenges of life, and hearts striving to reflect Jesus Christ are the church. Our Prayers are heard. Jesus hears us. Jesus frees us. Even from our machine, our tool. We are the church.

Yes, I get it. Who am I, whose only certifications in life to date are a Commercial Drivers License since 1983 and an Associate of Arts Degree from 2017, to lecture any machinery of education about its construction and use? Who am I to challenge the church machine?

I have never tried to challenge the machine, yet that is where I find myself. God knows..

God frees those trapped within the machinations we have built throughout history. God frees those who have been in Gods heart and on Gods mind since before the first creation words were spoken.

Are we called to serve our machine? Or, is the machine built to serve us as we strive to serve others. As un-certified as I am, I am still a part of Christ’s body in this here and now place. I hope, in time, that my being owned by Christ as a tiny part of His Body’s functioning in these here and now places, will come to be seen as enough.

Enough to be allowed to strive through education for such outrageous ends as loving those trapped there. Trapped in their circles of affirmation, born of traditions and presumptions and assumptions, that have made rigid our church machine and her systems of education. How dare I?

God knows.. I truly don’t.

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What to pray for?

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us –

Thankfulness for the rain –

For more rain –

For those many at home for whom weather has destroyed .. and taken lives –

Thankfulness for Hilda’s job and service here, something folks understand –

Our strength, energy, health, clear-headed-ness, and ignorance in the next moments –

Changing Visa’s so we can participate and remain here with her job –

Our children and grandchildren who miss us –

We miss them too –

For those precious ones who have courageously sought to include us here –

For a brilliant young American Woman who arrived at this lodge this week, who is bravely travelling the non-covid-closed world and Tanzania alone while recovering from trauma suffered while serving our nation at N.A.S. Whidbey (Naval Air Station Whidbey Island WA) of all places.. Who would have thought she would find us from WA here too –

For me to hold with open hands the hope that has driven me here to study scripture alongside the survivors of deep endemic poverty. God knows.. –

Gratitude for the amazing responses to prayer –

For each of you –

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 -

Dear Cherished Interested,

We were included in goings on up at the children’s village Saturday the 4th. I went along with computer and Bibles to use the internet in the office and even their printer so I could prepare for the Sermon I was expected to give Sunday.

I got the citations I was after copied into a single one page document as paper is rare here. I was about to print it out and pow… No power, no wi-fi, no printer. I laughed a good old belly laugh alone in an office without power.

I laughed because I know Gods sense of humor when I see it.

I was the only one in the office. The festivities going on in and around the buildings up above the office on the hill would go on just fine with the generator. No one else was affected in any important way. So obviously I did not need the printer, even if I thought I did. Nor did I need that full word document of citations, even though I thought I did.

We went to Pastor Ombeni’s church in Kilala Sunday morning arriving at 7:30 with my Common English Bible and a sheet of paper with the following three verses to remind me of the stories around them:

Mark Chapter 2 verse 5.. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Child your sins are forgiven”

Mark Chapter 10 verse 21.. Jesus looked at him carefully and loved him.

Luke Chapter 9 verse 23.. Jesus said to everyone, ”All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.”

Our invitation to offer a word from the word came and we stepped forward. Through an interpreter provided by the congregation we gave greetings as people sent by Freeborn Lutheran Church of Stanwood WA.

Then I paraphrased the story from Mark 2. It is the same story I shared here before we left the states to emphasize the tremendous power your faithful prayers have on where we find ourselves and how we are used in those unknown moments in surprising ways.

It is the story of Jesus in a home in Capernaum with so many people in and around outside, that friends carrying a paralytic could not get in the home to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus. So, they tore the roof open and dropped their paralytic friend down on cords into the presence of Jesus.

The faith Jesus saw, of course, was the faith of those who carried the paralytic, tore open the roof, and dropped the paralyzed one into the His presence. In response to that faith Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic and soon thereafter removed his paralysis. The former paralytic then picked up his mat and walked home. The paralytic’s faith had nothing to do with any of it, only Jesus choosing to respond to the faith of his friends.

What came out after the paraphrase was that as Christians it is a Privilege and a Joy to bring people on faith filled cords of love into the presence of Jesus. That it is something we as Christians can do for anyone.

That we all know someone in our families, our communities, who is paralyzed in some way by something, and that we can bring them into the presence of Jesus with our faith and Spirit inspired prayers knowing that Jesus can free them from anything.

Without citing the story of the Rich man going away saddened after Jesus tells him to sell everything, give the money to the poor and follow Him, Mark Chapter 10.. I expressed that wealth can paralyze people, people who Jesus loves. That it is a privilege to pray for and bring them into the presence of Jesus, to long for their sins and paralysis to be removed.

That we also know that poor people can be paralyzed by their circumstances and situations and that as the Spirit directs and inspires we should always take the time to respond and pray. Pray with all assurance that this record of Jesus and His character from 2000 years ago is still true today, tomorrow, and ever.

Then I asked this listening endemically poor Tanzanian Congregation to consider that if that is how Jesus responds to our faith for the benefit of those who may not yet even know him, just imagine how Jesus longs to help us who do know Him, do trust Him.

I pointed at myself and said that we all have something in each of us that is paralyzed.

It may be small. It may be big. It may be paralyzed for just a moment. It may have been paralyzed for our entire lives. Ask the Holy Spirit to take you to that paralyzed piece of yourself that Jesus longs for you to take to Him. It does not matter what you think of that paralyzed piece of yourself. It does not matter how ugly or wounded you think that piece of yourself may be. Take it into the presence of Jesus in Prayer. Jesus frees people.

This I managed to do without looking down once. I looked each and everyone there in the eye multiple times while speaking.. And they were looking back..

You dear people who know me know that I worry every word on the page like I worry every note on a score. You know that Vern in front of any group of people is unable to be there by himself, let alone without it all written out before hand and in front of him.

God laughs! It didn’t even seem that long.

Then Hilda was asked to share some words and she hit the ball out of the park taking folks to the first Chapter of John and Jesus being the word made flesh. That Christ was there at the beginning and is still with us today. Jesus can, Jesus will, that is the truth.

Service ran for a while still after we spoke and it was a special offering Sunday for Diaconal outreach.

The diocese (Synod in North American Lutheran Terms) seems to give multipoint parishes to pastors that take them to different communities of different depths impoverishment.

No one is to be left out, that is the striving. That means that no matter how poor a church may be it is still expected to help out. Help out so those places where there is no cash economy of any kind, where there is nearly no food and children and parents alike subsist on just one small meal a day as they hope and pray for rain, they too can be served by a Pastor and Evangelists sent by the diocese.

Hold your breath!

This endemically poor Tanzanian Congregation with many members only able to bring chickens and produce as offering raised over 2 million 400 thousand shillings in this one service. That is over $1090. It was a celebration. It was an arm twisting among some of the men. It was Mamas giving out of their families need to empty their purses for the sake of other endemically impoverished people.

It is empathy. It is knowing what it is to have only dust and not wanting others to be left in that state. How will these knowingly empathetic folks get by now with their purses empty?

Their truest and deepest earthly reserves are found in their extended families and neighbors who, like them, will not let others go without something even if it comes off their own table, out of their own trees, out of their own cow, chicken or goat.

Service ended at about 10:30, only three hours.

Hilda and I were lovingly greeted by one of the married couples we had been trusted to give premarital counseling to before we left, Paul and Mary. They are so young, so real, so beautiful, so joyfully inclusive of such as us.

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Then came Monday..

Pastor Lazarus is another ELCT Pastor who chose to step up and translate for us at events we were part of. Pastor Lazarus, 41 years old and full of energy, collected us Monday morning to take us to his remote parish about an hour away.

This remote parish is not among the Meru people. It is among the Maasai people. Pastor Lazarus learned of my time among the Maasai further west of here, sixteen and seventeen years ago, and offered to include us in his visitations among his Maasai parish.

We went.

We have been deeply touched, deeply impressed, by the inclusion extended us by so many in such a short time. We’ve been here for a month and a week. There is deep need everywhere and one could be swallowed up by it. One could also become hardened and immune / choosing to be blind to it.

Pastor Lazarus drove to his remote Parish of Maasai Pastoralists living on the low broad flood plain below the mountains. I had seen this type of scrub and desolation of dust before many years ago west of here.

Cows and goats eat the vegetation away, completely gone but for the large thorns that are gathered to make the kraals. Kraals are where the herds are gathered too each night.

This is the home of the Maasai who, unlike the Meru and the Chagga who marry only one wife, marry multiple wives. They choose to live out the directive in Genesis, go forth and multiply. The Kraals are in the center of a circle of huts, homes, inhabited by the many descendants of one grandfather. The people surround the kraals to protect the highly piled thorn barriers that protect the animals.

Cows are the currency. Cows are spent to purchase wives. That means that girls are sold for cows. Judgement is a waste of energy. These folks love their children and long to find better tomorrows for each. If that means using their traditional means then that is what they use.

I’m now going to talk about an even tougher subject.

Starting with that amazing acceptance Hilda and I have been given. How amazing?

Pastor Lazarus was going to collect a Maasai daughter from her parents and return her to his own home. She had been living with his family attending school and training as a chef until a European man befriended Pastor and offered to pay this precious Maasai daughter to clean house and cook. Further he offered to pay secondary school fees for yet another Maasai daughter.

Why secondary school (grade 7 and up) is so very important for Maasai daughters is because if they can stay in school they have a government protected right to stay in school. If they cannot afford school or do not have the grades to continue in school they have no government protected right to be in school. About grade 7 is when many girls are therefore traditionally exchanged into marriage for cows. The young Maasai daughter mentioned above has an additional new mother who is younger than she is.

Back to this 71 year old European wanting a housekeeper and cook. That was a fabrication. Pastor had to suddenly collect her from the Europeans service and return her to her family on the lowlands full of dust. The European was intending to remove her from the country to Europe and further was insisting that she sleep with him otherwise the other girl would lose her school fees. Then Pastor had to deal with the police regarding the removal of a servant from someone’s premises.

We were going with this very Pastor to collect this very girl. We were going with this very brave Pastor to collect this very brave girl. Why did he want white people in his car??..

There is more..

While traveling Pastor was asking question after question and decided to trust us. Pastor had very recently just ended meetings with other European parties managing a large farm producing products exported for consumption in Europe.

Those parties also have a Safari Lodge here in Tanzania. He discovered that they too were looking for girls with no options and likely nearly nothing to go home to. They were trying to help Pastor form an NGO that on paper educated Maasai daughters but in actuality intended to traffic them at their lodge and likely further afield to where their families would never hear from nor know what happened to them.

Why did he want white people in his car??.. Why would he even consider taking me, a white man, on visitations within his Maasai Parish??..

You dear praying people need to consider that Hilda and I have been put into the life of this one precious pastor in direct response to your prayers.

I understand the near tears in his eyes and his grabbing and holding my hand tight to his shoulder in relief as we discussed what he did not want to. As we discussed how precious each Maasai daughter is because they are each Gods daughter, because they are the future and possibly even the source of others borne by them, each a future, a forever with God as God has intended. Just like you. Just like me. Like strangers everywhere.

Yes Hilda and I were horrified and furious with what this servant of The Lord has had to live through, what his charges have had to live through. But, now you can glimpse just how amazing the acceptance and inclusion is that we have received. Received each and every morning we open our eyes here.. You Pray, The Sprit, Jesus, and God all listen..

Hilda and I just go along for the ride hanging on for things we don’t know are coming.

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Whatever is on your heart for us –

Our strength, weakness, vulnerability, humility, openness -

Gratitude for rain -

for more rain -

Gratitude for verbal job offers for Hilda -

that we make the choices God wants -

Makumira Secondary School from prior posting hoping for a sister school -

Gratitude for Makumira Secondary School including Hilda again on the 8th in last day ceremonies.. until January 17th when they start up again -

Our children and Grandchildren missing us –

We miss them too -

Our weird wonderful stuck-on impossibly inclusive family here in TZ -

You amazing praying people -

Each of you and each and every prayer –

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Adding some more as it is now the 9th of December which is Independence Day here in TZ. I hope that some of what Hilda and I share in these postings describes some deeply good things that are both new and familiar.

We came without any known contacts here. Both of our Dear siblings in Christ who lived and served others here died of Covid this year before I was able to return. We came anyway. We came with the support of amazing, praying, worshipping congregations and people from where we raised our precious biological children and even further afield.

Our Independence Day in the US is louder and more boisterous because we can afford those things in celebration of both our dissolution of relationship with Britain almost 250 years ago and a renewed relationship with many sister nations around the world since as striving equals, not as subjugated peoples.

I point to this as a mirror into what we can hope for our children. That as we age and they mature their independence in time willingly chooses interdependence with us their imperfect parents. This we hope for our children as we see them, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents in the people we encounter anywhere we go.

I had a conversation with my grandmother on the steps of the Children’s village just a week ago. She was speaking to me through an octogenarian nurse who comes to care for the many children and to teach parents nutrition and so many other things.

We hope for a growing interdependence with our children both begotten and stuck on because, if they can overcome our very real and perceived imperfections to choose that interdependence, then they are well and thoroughly on the road to deep interdependence with their perfect parent.

Their perfect parent who had them each lovingly in mind and on an effusively loving heart before the first creation words were spoken.

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Our blog is not perfect either. As one clicks the button to give financially they are taken to someone named: Kajun Crofton.. She is our daughter.. She was lovingly named after my mother and Hildas mother, Katherine June. Squish the names together and you get Kajun. Crofton is the name, her gift of a son to us, gave to her. Without her help we would be voiceless. We are thankful for her help in these many things.

For those who have given financial support we are grateful.

We are grateful for all of you. We are grateful for God and our daily opportunities.

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 -

Dear Cherished Interested,

Could it be a Lutheran School? Yes..

Could it be a non-Lutheran Christian School? Yes..

Could it be a Public School? Why Not?..

Networking now taking place through you who read. You who read and Pray…

The oldest Lutheran Secondary School in Tanzania, built 1973, is still in operation. Many have closed as have many private Christian schools in the United States.

Makumira Secondary School is considering having a Sister School in the United States. Even considering having exchange students. This school starts with students about to enter the 7th grade and it is a boarding school. There is a fence and gate and security however it is in one of the safer places I have taken my wife.

Why?

Much of the food for the school is grown on site. Two tilapia(fish) ponds have been dug, one starts harvesting in January. Water is provided by both an onsite spring and a backup hydraulic ram pump from another spring. No reliance on electrical power for water. Soon the garden below the school will be drip irrigated in addition to being as close to organic as one can get where certifications, if available, are rare. Cows on site provide milk, fertilizer, and hopefully soon biogas for cooking without reliance on wood.

The Students maintain all of it while learning so much from that opportunity.

Just a short time here would change a young person’s outlook, permanently broadening the willing to dare a different not found at home.

So put on your thinking hats. Spread the word about a long standing Lutheran School South of the Equator in endemically impoverished Tanzania seeking to share what they do and how they do it. About a long standing school seeking to share and to learn.

You are right to ask..

No, caning, spanking and even hitting have been banned from this school for a long time and you can see it in the students as they look their teachers, the head master, visiting board members, pastors and even Hilda and I fearlessly in the eye with smiles and even laughter at how different we seem to be. They wave freely. The staff behaves the same. The board and the Headmaster have much to be commended for.

My hope would be an inner city school in the United States. The students in both places having an opportunity to learn about each other and how they survive and thrive in spite of difficulties would be beyond price.

Please Please Please.. Talk, ask, spread the word..

Give people our contact information:

vwilliamson@sprynet.com

We will gladly make introductions.

What to pray for:

More Rain -

Thanks for the rain we have gotten -

Our strength, our weakness, our vulnerability, and God giving all that is needed –

Whatever is on your heart for us –

Our Children and Grandchildren getting used to missing us –

Possibilities to present themselves –

Our language acquisition –

Thankfulness for you, each of you –

Thankfulness for each 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 -