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.

-----------------------------------------------

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 -