Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                                     July 25th, 2023

It is overcast.  It is cool for here.  Here is just north of the Kenyan border on the way to Nairobi but we did not go that far.  We got to the bush.  That is where we are going to be for another 24 hours.  Peacock and other birds sound everywhere.  Eland and other smaller members of that herbivorous family wander in camp and outside the fence that keeps the larger more aggressive critters away from trouble.

Visa compliance got us here.  We are grateful. 

It is like a hot rolling dry Alaska.  So it is Africa, full of living things and nearly nothing for miles in every direction that is obvious rude sign of human occupation.  There is humanity all around but this humanity lives and builds with the materials at hand.  Their occupation is therefore mostly reserved and tucked into the red brown earth beneath the muted and more strident green canopy of Dr. Seuss thorn and other trees.

There is one high voltage powerline running south to behind a hill rising up to the east.  Otherwise, sight can focus into such a comfortable distance. 

A low young mountainous far-ness rising up to the south and west completely un-interfered with.  My old feet want to follow that blessed relaxed gaze full of life in spite of challenge.  Full of life in spite of challenge out beyond the fence and up into the wild passes, gulley’s, swales, and ridges crinkling the dry earth peeking out through that sparse yet indomitable canopy of ageless determination of greys, browns, and nearly all faded and brighter greens possible.

I know other places.  I know cities.  If God calls me to serve there I will. 

But here is where angels meet shepherds to proclaim our effusively creating God bursting in among us from the willing womb of yet another angel of God.  The only shortly earthbound type of angel called woman through whom we all get to find life. 

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Hilda had a birthday celebration on Friday as we went and collected a cake made just for her where we spent our first quarter of a year.  Staff who throw their arms around her in joy.  Staff who text her to share their lives on that mountain that has swept Hilda in among themselves. 

Then Saturday after they had worked long and hard to clean up after a group of developed world educators, I brought two loving ones to the house with yet another birthday cake.  Hilda spent many joyful hours in the kitchen with two women who love her showing, teaching, laughing, and cooking. 

Cooking so much that Hilda knew that impossibly, more was afoot.  Then, their young eager voices preceding them, about fifteen young ones came beaming into the house without running water, without electricity.  Hug Bibi, laugh and dart quickly to the book shelf to select one to hover over and touch and study.   

Women calling children to wash dishes and pots outside next to the water tank in tubs at their feet.  Me sneaking Oreos to the young little girls doing as directed.  That is only their special thing, those little diligent hands and eager capable backs, eyes and minds.

Cake and Soda and beans and chapatti and rice and large common plate.  One for the girls.  A smaller one for the boys.  Joy in preparation.  Joy in the consuming.  Joy in the cleaning.  Yes, boys and girls cleaning the house and more dishes and gathering empty soda bottles to the case.  Smiling, wiggling, wrestling, three boys pulling on one arm another braced against the end of the couch in flag position pulling on my other arm. 

Almost dark.  The women directing me to take the littles back across the mountain to where they walked from in the hot afternoon.  Three boys sitting on the floor of the pick-up bed, arms around the roll bars and each other.  The oldest boy riding shotgun with the two youngest boys on his lap.  The back seat full of beautiful bright-eyed baby angels, at least a half dozen. 

Dropped off in the dark at their homes without water, without electricity.  I had noticed a van filling with more people on the way to those homes awaiting their children.  I got nearly back to gather those hard working women who gave their love to Hilda in kitchen diligence together.  They had the truck to take them across the mountain too.

Back again to Hilda’s birthday house in time to find the people of that van-full filling Hilda’s house with smiles even in the darkness together.  Five adults, three children braving dark to come to Hilda’s birthday house with bubbling joy.

Busy Sunday..  Travel Monday..  Long talk with newlywed German couple..  Hilda to bed peacefully in the bush in warm bed in a luxury tent with bathroom but..  no water..  limited and failing electricity..   

I got to hang out with camp staff and work with them until midnight swept past.  Water(cold) restored partially for the newlyweds and the Birthday Hilda.  They would find out when they awaken.  Electricity restored for Hilda tent..  only for a few hours..  We didn’t need it anyway..

We have the sounds of living things eagerly surrounding us with their eager living..

Ostrich eggs brooding in the warm equatorial sun even beneath clouds.  Aggressive baba Ostrich, head bobbing angrily over the fence to snap beak at walkers by..  Don’t get close to his kids..  Love it.. 

Happy birthday Hilda..

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From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (latter half of June) when we will engage with the University again.  Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving.  Each day is a sincere struggle.  Hopefully that means we’re on the right track.  Please pray for those around us.  Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.  

Please keep crumpling us up and throwing us at God.  That is where we need to be.  God will sort us out.

One day at a time.  Just like how you each live.  Just one day at a time. 

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. 

For Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers 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’s,                                                                                         July 21st, 2023

Heard this week from a brother living in the UK.  Thank You Geoff!!!  Nuts and bolts of what we are doing came out of his concern for our transportation stuff.  

So, nuts and bolts of being a stranger in a strange land.  No one is any stranger than me.  

And, this land is deeply wonderful and wonderfully full of wonderful precious people.  People who, like we, are familiar with how things get done.  Done here and done there are not the same done.

Some nuts and bolts..

Preparing for another dash north of the border to Kenya for a couple days just to come back south and be legal per Tanzanian law for another 90 or so days.  Balancing timing so as to cross borders with Visa’s current and then updating as returning is one of the many little things that most locals have no idea about.  Timing is everything so we return to Kenya before that Visa is invalid.  Then we return to Tanzania before that Visa is invalid.  Getting dated multi-entry stamps each way both sides. 

Bureaucracies worldwide grasp after money anywhere they can.  If it is out of sight from those they allegedly serve, all the better for that grasping to remain hidden.       

That said, we have been treated well either at the airport or the border.  Having the right signature on your Visa stamp helps.  If the correct head man signs and stamps your Visa then fewer attempts to manipulate the system for cash are made on you.     

Every penny, every shilling, needs to go so much further as where we live is a place not of wants but of so very many actual deep needs. 

So, took TZ shillings down off the mountain to our fixer this morning.  2 million TZ shillings to try to buy Kenyan Shillings.  Should be about 102,500 K shillings.  We’ll see.  That same 2 million to buy US dollars gets you less than 800 US dollars.  US dollars are preferred at the border by both crossing stations, both countries, so some will be changed for US dollars. 

The local bank has no Kenyan shillings this morning.  Nor will they have any anytime soon.  Cash machines can go days without cash in them.  Forget any expectations.  Banking works only how it can where it happens.  Shillings and fixer left to go to the big town, Arusha, for meetings for other client needs and hopefully to find Kenyan shillings there.  If not, off to Kilimanjaro and Moshi, another bigger town the wrong direction from where we travel to Kenya on Monday.

Yes we can get to Kenya that way too but there is unrest north of the border in that direction so locals who love us have called our fixer to insist we go the other way which takes us away from the urban unrest and into the bush north of us on the way to Nairobi.  We are staying in the bush.  Nairobi urbane ugliness is not for this farm-boy. 

We leave Monday with or without the right currency.  Paying exchange at the border however was really bad last time so..  fingers crossed.

Yes, cash machines only give out local TZ currency.  Banking inside involves the guards and paperwork.  Ques and paperwork.  Administrators and paperwork.  Then, finally, cashiers locked behind glass, and paperwork.     

The local guards, cashiers and admins are starting to know me.  If I come with a large bill to try to get change for smaller bills and the bank is not busy, I often get waved now right to a cashier so I can buy small bills to give to the little ones who worship with Hilda at church for offering. 

The guards at the local bank have never asked us for money.  They call me pastor in Swahili.  They smile and wave and ask about Hilda.  They beam at Hilda and if monkeys or birds or some other critters are playing behind the bank, they make certain she gets to see them. 

The new local bank manager sat and ate with us at a local church run rehabilitation facility a few weeks back.  Many of the people, we attend English service with at the Cathedral in Usa, use the same bank for their work so we have become known. 

The only time we had white faces, other than our own, in English service was when some missionaries from Cyprus followed me there.  My head still shakes at what happens.  Miracles abound.

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After dashing off the mountain to chase currencies for travel for Visa compliance, I dashed back. 

The local Bishop, a Tanzanian Missionary to Wisconsin, USA, for years serving in rural, suburban and urban American Lutheran churches has another family funeral before him.  His Father and Mother and now, this week, his brother has died.

I stayed away from this funeral too.  His people do not need my big hairy white face distracting them from comforting their Bishop.  The local man they called to be Bishop while he was still serving in America.  They informed him that he was Bishop a few years ago.  They told him to come home.  He did.

This Bishop’s last year has been very hard with the deaths and serious illness for him as well.  From a distance, he looks like a different man, drawn, gaunt and shrunken from life.  Hilda reports speaking with him and describes his attitude as reserved, calm, positive, yet tired.  Please Pray for Bishop Kitoi.  He loves both Tanzania and the United States, so very deeply. 

Dashing up from currency stuff I collected Hilda and our neighbor, who took us along a nearly impossible track to get 15 cases of soda and about ten cases of bottles water.  We then delivered them to the Bishops nephew’s house and greeted the family.  I have been to visitation in this house to pray with these people.  I prayed for and with this brother of Bishop just about a month ago. 

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

From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (coming soon we hope.. a loving representative of ours is engaged with University staff working our process for us so cultural and linguistic issues are sidestepped without more financial outlay on our part ) when we, ourselves, will engage with the University again. 

We now have a calendar of University Enrollment process days and verbal assurance that I will be attending theological studies in September.  I continue to breathe.  I’m not holding it.

Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving.  Each day is a sincere struggle.  Hopefully that means we’re on the right track.  Please pray for those around us.  Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.  

Please keep crumpling us up and throwing us at God.  That is where we need to be.  God will sort us out.

One day at a time.  Just like how you each live.  Just one day at a time. 

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. 

For Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers 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’s,                                                                                         July 10th, 2023

Soup soup was what Hilda and the ladies had.  Soup was the ram sacrifice for a first born child that I bought three or so Sundays ago.  We gentlemen had goat soup.  Elders all gathered and got meat and soup.  Hilda and I count as elders here so we did too. 

Yesterday, we were back in the back of Mulala church with little ones who walked there from the Children’s Village.  It was nearly a three hour service.  That is fine.  People gather as they can.  The church bell starts ringing at 5 AM and rings for quite a while to let a mountain of people who do not have and likely cannot afford a watch know to prepare and come to church.

We then walked on up to The Children’s Village with those bright little ladies who sit with Hilda when we are here. 

There is an older pastor of some local denomination [likely Pentecostal] who is there at The Children’s Village every Sunday before us to pray, teach, and love on the children too.  He walks from much further up the mountain.  He walks from nearly the end of the road up where forest ends human occupation. 

A tremendous blessing has been his acceptance of me, indeed us.  A particularly beautiful part of each Sunday is a greeting of limited verbal communication beyond identifying each other as brother and pastor in Swahili and or English, a little Meru, and long handshake becoming trusted embrace with his head laying first against one shoulder of mine then the other. 

I am so thankful that these little ones see Christian brothers accepting each other no matter any dogmatic or polity differences. 

Given that this Meru Pastor’s wife is one of the indomitable Mamas of The Children’s Village who is not happy without my written message on her lap as my helper reads the Swahili out for all, I am not surprised. 

The reading glasses she got from us so she could read again on her cute little nose, sticker labelling strength and tag hanging from string telling brand still in place.  Many of the Mama’s wear their reading glasses with strings and tags still in place.  Meru Minnie Pearls, for those so aged reading this.   

I preach or present, thinking, that each time is going to be my last.  My life of rejections, big and small, woven into my expectations.  My desire to be ready for the next change God requires woven likewise like two differently colored strands, rejection darkness and service brightness more valuable when together. 

Again surprisingly yesterday, after literally calling blessing of God on me, the Mama’s said that they need my prayers supporting their work.  Their precious hard work.  They are prayed for.  We sing, we go through the message written for them.  They get the priestly blessing two different ways.  We almost always laugh. 

Then after I go collect Hilda and come back by where they are preparing food while we were worshipping, they drink in, shine on, and love Hilda so deeply. 

Children happily wave good bye without fear now. 

We have not disappeared but kept coming back for over a year.  Your prayers have kept us consistent for these children who have lost more than many can even imagine let alone live through.  Can’t thank you enough for that..  There are no words.  

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Had a young man come with us into town on a medical transport for another much younger child.  He did awesome with someone who is his littlest brother.  These young people who have lost everything, in time learn to share huge empathy for each other.  It was fun.  That littlest one goes back to the doctor on 8/7.  Doing well.  Really well.

Yes both of these young people are rare in that they actually have been all the way to our house.  More than once.  Caregiver’s trust is amazing. 

Having a teen fluent in both English and Swahili makes town trips so much more productive.  As a reward, after feeding them well, I took them to a special place.

There is a locally owned and operated business by a pair of young men that I have been made welcome at.  They recycle plastics.  They make plastic lumber.  They make items out of plastic lumber.  The head young man is from here but been blessed to go to college in the Pacific Northwest. 

I took the teen to visit these young entrepreneurs and walked in to find the white board in their office still with the pictures I drew there for them over a month ago.  It is so easy to erase a white board.  They kept them. 

This is one of those places where inventive people invent.  It is so very much fun to swing by and just talk with them about what they are working on and what they might want to work on and how and why. 

This is another place where I have received unexpected acceptance.  My hands understand what they are doing and they know this.  My pockets, as a missionary, are far too empty to help that way.  They do not care.  They like that I understand enough to participate with my experience and crazy creativity of my own. 

Yes, it turns out that they are Christian having gone to St. Judes School for gifted impoverished children.     

Your prayers have made this connection happen too.  Keep praying!!  Thank You!!!

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Just translated, by computer, the last possible message for the 2023 local church calendar.  New Years message for the first of January 2024 has been completed.  Every Sunday for the year now has at least one message prepared.

Your Prayers keep my feet to the fire and my heart longing for study of The Word. 

You save my life..  You do that.. 

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

From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (coming soon we hope.. a loving representative of ours is engaged with University staff working our process for us so cultural and linguistic issues are sidestepped without more financial outlay on our part ) when we, ourselves, will engage with the University again. 

We now have a calendar of University Enrollment process days and verbal assurance that I will be attending theological studies in September.  I continue to breathe.  I’m not holding it.

Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving.  Each day is a sincere struggle.  Hopefully that means we’re on the right track.  Please pray for those around us.  Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.  

Please keep crumpling us up and throwing us at God.  That is where we need to be.  God will sort us out.

One day at a time.  Just like how you each live.  Just one day at a time. 

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. 

For Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers 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