Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         March 10^th, 2024

The last death-toll we found from the bus wreck two weeks ago was 25.  We were not needed to facilitate any foreign based group affected.  We were home though for a young local Maasai Mchungaji to come find us, sit on our porch, and talk briefly about two of his family who did not survive that same bus wreck. 

While talking together on the porch, he got a phone call regarding the, unassociated, death of a baby, also very close to him too.  This is a place of much death, tremendous maturity about death because of that, tremendous suffering in spite of that maturity.  Joy chosen over and over in defiance.

Please keep doing your most precious work and pray often..

Pray for YWAM, YWAM families, Tanzanian families and choose Joy, over and over in defiance of death.  

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Our Sunday activities are reduced and may be changing even more. 

Yesterday, Saturday, we walked the few kilometers to Makumira Seconday School to drop off today’s message written from ELCT, local Lutheran church, scheduled readings.

Today we went to English service in Usa River at the Cathedral.  Other than that, communication needs to be limited for the moment.

Two precious people from where we served for over two years on the mountain found us this morning.  They were both overjoyed and thankful and beautiful and amazing and heartbroken and strong, chins up even with tear brightening eyes that drank us in.

I wish to protect anyone who connects with us from there.                    

So, sadly, I no longer feel comfortable being completely open about that situation.

I write openly here for those with the wisdom to pray.

I wrote that leadership a very kind e-mail inviting them to stop hiding behind children who have no one. 

I invited that leadership to learn from those same children, who had been given permission every week for two years, not to be victims of their situations but, grateful.  They deserve to be grateful.

Grateful for each other.  Grateful for the Mama’s, and teachers, and all those who care for them.  And, grateful for themselves.  And God who gives them all those things.         

Through God’s provision to these precious littles, comes opportunity to serve their vulnerability and need.  Leadership, even confused leadership, deserves gratitude too. 

With that gratitude comes tremendous, vociferous and voluminous joy.  Just watch children who have no one by blood anymore and still choose to teach so much good.

I did not expect that, but it was wonderful to watch, learn, and participate in teaching.

We are outside at the choice of others who are full of fear with no where to turn but themselves. 

Please, let’s keep them all in prayer, they are all God’s children, served and serving, and God will continue to do wonderful things with, through, and even to them.

Our faith is no mistake.  Please, let’s use that faith here too.  Thank you! 

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Her brilliance makes up for our linguistic weaknesses.  She is truly already fluent in English and comes regularly to borrow books, then return them to borrow more.  She loves coming in like she owns the place, because she does..  and loves finding Hilda, so focused on something she[Hilda] is not in the world, and then Hilda jumps, with loud funny exclamations, when she, who is so brilliant, appears quietly and unexpectedly by an elbow.

She is our neighbor.  Her mom, who is a joy, is off to work.  Her dad, who is awesome too, is in bed sick.  She just walked into our house, like it was her own, and found us to talk to.                                                  Hilda sent her home with a cookie to give to her dad.  She came back immediately for another.                Hilda is walking next door with her to check on her dad, who is in bed, sick.

You know Hilda.  This brilliant she, who knows we and our house are hers, like our daughter Kimmy from across the Mt Baker Highway and who also knew that decades ago, is four years old.

She is four years old and stands taller than Hilda’s elbow, looking more like seven or eight years old, having grown nearly a foot in our few short months where we are.  Four, growing so fast it hurts to watch, and full of energy and multi-lingual brilliance.

She is a joy.  And yes, she can have this house too.                                                                                     We miss you, Kimmy, but are reminded of you and all our children, daily. 

Happy Birthday Margretta, Katherine, Kimmy, nephew Paul!

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Was taken to a College in the nearby bush.  Found a mostly intact diesel generator from the late 90’s.   Radiator, shroud, plumbing and some bolts lain on the floor nearby but water pump missing.

Detective work, with the two people who stole me away to that generator, got us the water pump with impeller and case broken, seemly by intention, in ways that make neither the impeller nor the case reusable in any rebuild.

Then, thanks to my faithful Islamic contacts, was able to send the pieces of the water pump off north to Nairobi in hopes of finding replacement, seals, gaskets, mounting bolts.. 

Pray please that we are going to save this generator for a College that serves older students who serve their bush communities by becoming vital lay leadership in their congregations. 

Need to be careful here too as the amazing Maasai mother who serves her diocese at this place deserves protection from possible jealousies and corruption.  She has also asked that we consider teaching English there.  We are not nearly Swahili fluent enough, however, perhaps God can make a way.  If that was to happen, consistent electrical power is necessary for our medical needs.  Much more consistent than is there now; which is none.

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Last Christmas I failed you.  I had hoped to have a book ready, printed locally here, and sent home to you.  We got swept up into a necessary boondoggle for our edification and the edification of those doing the boondoggling, if they so choose to be edified.

WE now have help.  The book, which is completely the fault of local Mama’s, is being edited in two languages and we pray that it will be affordably printed here before we, likely, head back to the states.    

I know, but we have to try.. 

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

 

NO news yet on this.  We were expecting to hear a week ago Friday but, as is usual with UN funding sources or Government funding sources in general, efficiency and consistency are not priority.

Hilda has been asked to serve under an amazingly beautiful and energetic Korean American Christian woman looking for a way to teach young Tanzanian women science.  Predominantly women living in the bush.  Hilda may be teaching teachers for a while again. 

Many things need to be managed by God for this to be possible, including expenses. 

Thank you again for the praying you do..

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

Still working the problem that we think will likely see us heading home to America in a couple to few months.  We are doing the best we can.  We are able because of God.  God is listening to each of you.

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

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

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         February 25^th, 2024

About one minute after getting home we got notification that eight missionaries serving here with YWAM were killed in a bus wreck in Arusha, more are in hospital in varying condition. 

YWAM is Youth With a Mission, so these are likely young people.  Many local Tanzanians are also affected.  We are not in the loop of information but thanks to local contacts we are able to ask that you-all do what you do so very well:

Please look them up on-line and pray for them, their families and the work they are leaving to those who come next.

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

It is important that Hilda and I, who serve outside nearly all structure, foreign or local, speak to this reported tragedy this Sunday morning. 

This is the earliest we have returned home on a Sunday in our brief years here.  That cannot be a mistake.

As we serve outside structure, going predominantly where we are asked, we can go where others do not. 

That is part of why there are structures like YWAM, Neema Village, the ELCA, the ELCT, Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox and all the different traditions of relationship with Jesus as Lord and Savior; as well as those who serve need from other traditions.

Those structures enable people to go / come and serve through structures given to them.  Structures that support and guide them.  Those structures and plans give comfort and community where people can be serving somewhere that is very uncomfortable for them to be in service.

Structures can however lead to viewing in two directions.  Those serving within the comfort of the structure.  Those not serving within the comfort of a structure.

Being outside, and seen as outside, and often ignored, to both our loss and gain; a perspective that holds us together.  A perspective that challenges us to accept the unacceptable wherever we can. 

Here on the outside as we participate with life where preaching does not always sound kind, or gentle, or even particularly enlightening; or maybe even be seen as abusive, is the following from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

Philippians 1:18   New International Version

18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.  Yes, and I will continue to rejoice,

Are we gutted by the loss of so many lives?  Are we not burdened by empathy for survivors, parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, extended family, schoolmates and all the vast web of interconnectedness the vulnerability of life and serving includes?

Yes, we are.  But those lives lost are only lost to us here.  And, those lives suffering are only suffering here.  We who know Jesus as more than a rabbi, prophet or even some narrow human concept of messiah, can find assurance, in the midst of horror, that God does not let it end here, there, or anywhere. 

Hilda and I too can be wiped away from this here and now anytime, even tomorrow, but God does not let it end there.

God wins in horror.. and.. rejoicing. 

Pray each other into the presence of Jesus.  Pray Jesus’ healing into the lives of the unrepentant and undeserving and trust that inside or outside or completely oblivious, they can receive Jesus’ healing love because of the faith put in each of you.  That faith is no mistake, use it.

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

And:   Luke 10:1-3   New International Version

Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. ² He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ³ Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.

The wolves of intent, error, circumstance.. and ignorance may get some.  Those wolves won’t get all.  The wolves only have a moment here and now.  God wins forever!

Thank you for your maturity.  Thank you for your willingness.  Thank you for your faith.

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

Hilda has been asked to serve under an amazingly beautiful and energetic Korean American Christian woman looking for a way to teach young Tanzanian women science.  Predominantly women living in the bush.  Hilda may be teaching teachers for a while again. 

Many things need to be managed by God for this to be possible, including expenses. 

Thank you again for the praying you do..

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

Still working the problem that we think will likely see us heading home to America in a couple to few months.  We are doing the best we can.  We are able because of God.  God is listening to each of you.

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

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

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         February 11^th, 2024

Found an honest mechanic for the stupid little truck, thanks to Mohamad.  It was gone for over a week, so we got some major walking in.  Still no 4wd.  Parts extremely hard to come by.  Mechanic was sent multiple sets of bad, non-working, parts as nearly everything here is taken from wrecks. 

Mechanic is still looking.  He is also waiting for an extremely knowledgeable electronic and electrical systems engineer to return from cancer treatments in India sometime soon.  Perhaps, some of the old junk can be gone through with the right knowledge and equipment.

However: All four doors open from both the outside and the inside.  All four windows go down and up.  The driver’s door has finally been repaired and closes with ease, two fingers only.  Significant good start on front end re-bush.  One cracked lower wishbone replaced too.  The bed of the truck was held on by only one remaining bolt and threatening to stay behind with every bump which is indescribably often.  It is now solid with the frame once more.

I refuse to get rid of the truck in the condition I received it.  Right now the truck is getting better.

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

This morning we went to English service at the Cathedral in Usa.  Faces of little ones, we haven’t seen for nearly a year, were peeking around corners at us. 

This is blessing we could not believe.  Our Sunday-School students from Silverleaf Academy were there for English service with one precious indomitable Mama/Teacher. 

Only God.

We sat amongst them and helped them to follow liturgy.  I stood and introduced them at the request of the Mama, who trusts my English more than her own.  This is a gift we did not expect.  This is an affirmation we desperately needed.  40 or so littles in school uniform, some of the girls from a remote non-Christian tribe out by a lake far away.  About 30 knew us and were so happy to see us that the new 10 or so simply accepted us. 

Unbelievable..

This is the school where the administration of elite ones, both local and significantly foreign people, decided we were to be excised from campus after a year of serving free at the parents, students, and teachers requests. 

This morning we were supposed to see that our efforts were not in vain.  We were supposed to see that we were still trusted.  We were supposed to see those littles and that Mama/Teacher coming to church and finding us, and being happy about finding us. 

This is important because:

The administration of elite ones, both local and significantly foreign people, at The Children’s village have chosen to ban us from the Children’s Village after two and a half years.  This they have chosen due to VISA’s. 

The Visa’s we now have were gotten through a contact provided by one of those in charge at the Children’s Village and we were assured that they were the appropriate Visa’s.

If they were, they are no longer.  We fear we have too few funds to chase yet other Visa’s but we will see. 

We took the message written for the Mama’s at The Children’s Village up and handed it through the gate to the guard who happily ran it up to the Mama’s.  Yes, my head is shaking as I write this.

Local people whose focus is the welfare of the children still trust and want us.  Those from overseas and the locals who cater to those foreign interests have consistently shown cowardice, dissembling and manipulation, of course, calling it something else.  

Yes, I am being hard.  I am also being realistic and praying I can lose some of that realism again in the light of God’s gift to us at English service this morning.  That was beautiful!

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

Starting tomorrow we should have two brilliant young Pentecostal women here assisting with editing a bi-lingual book.  A book we could never afford to print in the USA.  A book that many have insisted get printed and I had hoped to have it done before last Christmas.  Life got in the way.

Well, life has given us many troubles, like everyone else.  Life has also given us these two brilliant young women who we can help train to become editors using what ICT (information and computer Technology) we have here.  Their brilliance fills where my Swahili comprehension is missing.

Their heart for scripture binds us together in this work.

They are also typical young ones who know scripture from a phone app.  I am a stinker.  I make them learn to look the books, chapters, and verses up in a non-power-dependent format, a Bible. 

Cross fingers and pray, pray, pray, that we are doing right.

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

Every local one, we feel needs to know we are not long for here, barring another miracle from God, sits with us and weeps upon hearing.  It is heartbreaking.  This is not a place where people weep openly.  It tells you about who they are though. Good decent people are still with us as we battle the lost abusive ones.  Pray we battle in love.  Sometimes we don’t want to.    

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

Still working the problem that we think will likely see us heading home to America in a couple to few months.  We are doing the best we can.  We are able because of God.  God is listening to each of you.

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

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

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         January 31st, 2024

Vumilia, a now grown and college attending daughter of the Children’s Village, has just left with six of her fellows from college.  They were here for Vumilia’s birthday which meant a cake and bottles of soda. 

It also meant hymns from the small yellow TENZA ZA ROHONI.

These are Business Administration, Law, and IT students and yet, here, hymns really relaxed them all.  They had permission to laugh at our attempts at local language and permission to sing and permission to pick the music.

They got stuffed with cake.  Vumilia left two pieces for the two women who help us again on Friday and took the cake box full of pieces on paper towels to share across campus on their way to their hostels.

Vumilia was head student of her Business Administration classes last year getting an award at the beginning of the semester.  We were in the right place at the right time to witness her getting the award. 

She didn’t know about the award ahead of time.  That was soo fun.  Almost as much fun as having them all come eat cake and drink a bottle of soda and sing hymns.

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

The Children’s Village in Nkoaranga, where we have been serving, in one way or another since our first breakfast in Tanzania, has been grown around a woman who has been caring for other people's children, along with her own, for well over thirty years.  She is a Mama Mchungaji.  Her husband is now a retired Mchungaji(pastor). 

An amazing thing has happened since leaving classes.  Three Sundays in a row now anywhere from one to four of my former classmates have wanted to come along on our Sundays.  After English service we come back to the house and gather whoever wants to go to The Children’s Village.  After Sunday School and mini-worship, with working Mama’s preparing food for the Village, we have gone twice to another orphanage.

That other orphanage is Mosses Confort Home.  Yes it is spelled that way and it now has a website.

https://mossesconfort.or.tz  It is still English, only it is East African English.  Like how Midwest English was different from Northeast English and Gulf coast English not too many years ago.

When we first found them, Moses confort home, had no roof.  They have walls, large chicken coup, roofs, kitchen, toilet and more children where they are than at the Children’s Village.  This place happened because of yet another bibi{grandmother} who refused no child.  She is wearing the same dress today as she has been wearing for the two years we have known her.  Whatever we have been able to spare, she has multiplied into housing and food for little ones.

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

Because students from the theology school have been coming and participating in our Sunday activities, we visited with the head mama of The Children’s Village and her retired Mchungaji husband in their home, the Sunday before last in the evening.

There I told them about my problems with University.  I also told them about the beautiful happenstance of students / Wachingaji{pastors} from the theology program coming with us to The Children’s Village.  I also asked the head Mama for permission to continue bringing them.

Hamna Shida Van.  No problem Vern.  They fed us and prayed for us and I am sure, like so many, are trying to scheme a way that we can afford to stay and pour ourselves out here like we have. 

This is a place quite fundamentally without financial resource.  Nearly no one has. 

Also this is a place with lots of death.  One former classmate and one former professor have had sisters-in-law die in the last two weeks.  Both asked for our prayers.  They have them. 

One of those deaths was from flooding in Dar es Salaam.  The family had to first gather to find her body among other families suffering likewise.  Then they could bury her.

This reminds me of death in the woods at home.  One young man died.  Loggers were denied evacuation.  The family and friends climbed up and into the setting before nightfall to build fires and stand watch against predation until morning when Father, Uncle, Brother and friends were able to bring the deceased young man down off the mountain and home.

We have been trained well for this place and this work.  We didn’t know. 

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

Last Saturday, a bunch of my former classmates rented a large bus and a small bus and took us both along to yet another orphanage on the way to Kilimanjaro.  This one around a Pentacostal Mchungaji and Mama Mchungaji.  We literally arrived in time.  The facility is beautiful.  The food was all gone and had been for two days.  The children had been fasting and eating only a light supper.  We arrived as a group from a Lutheran University packing in sacks of supplies and this living grandmother just sat there with tears running down her face.

She opened the larder and showed us the completely empty shelves as we packed the supplies inside.

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

Still working the problem that we think will likely see us heading home to America in a couple to few months.  We are doing the best we can.  We are able because of God.  God is listening to each of you.

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

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

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         January 18th, 2024

Still, they find me.  He wanted a job.  I don’t have those.  I asked this young man to look at me.  I asked him to see how old I am.  I told him whatever he is facing, God is with him.  I told him to never give up but stay in conversation with God so every step can be taken without knowing how or where. 

Focus on the who.

I am concerned about you who read and pray for us.  Please sit.  Please be willing to suspend any disbelief. 

What I am about to tell you is unbelievable.

Since last writing huge bad news has been trusted to us.  Details are not anything I want to put in writing anywhere.  A certain vagueness is necessary to protect even those who may not be deserving of that protection.  I am not supposed to judge.  In all things I am to be thankful.  Sometimes that is very hard.

I removed myself from University enrollment. 

It came to our attention, after receiving an unexpected bill, that the process that resulted in me becoming a member of the student body likely included payments to people.  Payments never intended to see the light of day.  That means that my enrollment was by extra-scriptural means.

Extra-scriptural is the strictest bar and is what kept me going until the University was no longer directly responsible for me in any way.  I saw my academic advisor, then the Dean, and turned in my student ID. 

Yes, this is devastatingly difficult.  However, striving after obedience has kept my feet and the rest of me going through discovery and as careful as possible management so far of this problem.  A problem made by people instructed NOT to follow extra-scriptural, if traditional, means.  People who love me enough to have worked at this for two years. 

This is also a North American problem and not just a problem here.    

It is a complicated mess requiring me to take a one year deferred enrollment and leave the student body.  After striving to witness through this mess.  After striving to teach through this mess.  We have decisions to make.

Will we still be able to afford staying on?  Please pray that the peace God has already provided to us, as affirmation to having to walk away from classes no matter how hard, includes obvious discernment on this front too.     

Please also pray for those who chose to help, in spite of the mess.

Please pray for my entire class.  All 35 Bachelor of Divinity students who so openly took me as their own.  Also please pray for the entire freshman class of the university, many hundreds, who have seen me before them teaching them, as one of them, either by intent by presentation, being singled out by lecturers, or by answering questions for the group posed by lecturers. 

Please pray for my professors.  No one has wanted me to leave.  Everyone has been praying and trying to figure out a way that affords appropriate scruples and remaining steadfast to scripture.  One professor came to the house with her son to sit with us, demanding to know what is going on, and pray with us after communicating her depth of sorrow and desire that God make a way forward that gets her student back. 

Watching hearts and seeing things grow:

That professor that came to be with us is a Maasai Daughter, now mother of four, and Professor at a University known from Germany to North America.  Lutheran readers need only look at the worship book in your pew to find music there written right here at this University, in Tanzania.

Why is that a huge thing?  Twenty years ago I served for an eye-blink amount of time at the Maasai Girls Lutheran Secondary School in Monduli Tanzania.  A school that plants seeds of change into a people group with gender based roles and traditions that until, seemingly yesterday, denied much education to their daughters. 

Two of my professors were Maasai daughters, now grown women and mothers serving the church here as University Lecturers and Pastors.

I got to see that!

The best part of the University is the class of Bachelor of Divinity Students from around the country.  The Holy Spirit so alive in each that they responded to its prompting to come pray for me those desperate hours and days before I was able to decline active enrollment and be gone from campus.   This without knowing anything about what was wrong. 

I got to see that!

Many from that class of theology students came to the house Saturday.  They came to help Hilda to celebrate my birthday.  After filling them with cake and soda, I had to tell them why they were not seeing me in class with them.  And why they would no longer be seeing me in class with them.  Even the Maasai man I was taking classes with wept openly in front of women and people from other tribes.  In our over-populated living-room.

I got to see that!

Today while collecting pharmaceuticals brought to a close secondary school by our pharmacist, we got lectured yet again.  We got lectured yet again by our Islamic son, his father died this last year, who insists that somehow I will find a job that allows us to stay.  He is one of the team of Islamic medical professionals who gathered after Friday prayers at the Mosque in town to put their heads together to keep Hilda alive and recovering, just a few months back.

I got to see that!

There are in fact too many things we get to see because we dare to come and try to plant the seeds or ourselves as God’s children without fear of dying.  A seed has to die in order for anything to grow. 

This is unbelievable.  We are at peace most of the time within our spirits even as our bodies do reflect the consequences of deep stress and suffering of loss.  Still we strive to focus on the who.

The who is Jesus.  The who is you.

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

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Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         January 1st, 2024

Happy New Year.. 

Photographic evidence of paperwork proving a Student Visa has been issued to me from the Tanzanian Government for a couple of years has arrived by phone during Christmas break.  It was sent on to the University who is in trouble if such things are not in order when immigration comes looking.  Hoping to get our passports back in the next couple weeks.  We were required to surrender them.  I know, I know..  

This is not our country.  Our rules and ways don’t apply.  Still.. THANK YOU for Lifting us up in this regard, you did it!

             

It is too late for 2023 and more importantly you know we cannot give any tax paperwork out.  There is no matching giving program. 

If, however, The Spirit is poking you and you want to tell us or ask us anything, we are where a little can literally save a life.  Share that to others who give regardless of taxes.  Folks like you are beyond precious.  vwilliamson@sprynet.com

Happy to respond about anything when we can.

Hilda got local church calendars for all 36 of us first year Bachelor of Divinity (BD1) students.  Gathering for classes tomorrow should be today, though, I remember being young and being a nearly last minute arrival over the years.

Transportation is an automatic point of grace here.  The roadways are extremely hazardous yet the only source of mass transit.  The only marginally affordable way of getting around is busses of differing sizes corresponding with distance travelled.  Although significantly better than 20 years ago when smoking and burning brakes was a fairly common sight along with riders all over the outside of vehicles, maintenance and repair are still an issue.  Outside riders, except for manual laborers, are nearly no more.  People get where they go when they get there, but almost all are carried on the inside now.

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

We have been hunkered down.  Letting the world go by.  Poking our head out only to leave my tenuous Greek studies to collect supplies. 

Still, they find me.  The last week of school before break in the midst of testing a young man came and spoke to me about his family having nothing (likely true).  He spoke with me about not having all his school fees (likely true).  He wanted a job.  I don’t have those. 

I can’t have his school fees either.  I explained that each member of this older couple has worked over 50 years and have very little to show for it.  That in order to come here and try we had to sell up, just about everything, and come.  But for you –all we are most significantly on our own, there is no sending agency, no official group walking alongside us. 

I asked this young man to look at me.  I asked him to see how old I am.  This grandfather of six has worked over 50 years and not until now, and not until here, and not by anything but God’s effort alone have I finally come to where I am able to attend University.

I told him whatever he is facing, God is with him.  I told him to never give up but stay in conversation with God so every step can be taken without knowing how or where.  Focus on the who.  If his family is starving and he cannot find his school fees, perhaps he is right.  Perhaps he needs to find a job if that is possible.  If that is only by walking out the University Gate, then follow his feet and trust his back, hands, heart, head and the one who truly is walking alongside all of us.   

Cherished interested, I know scripture.  We are to clothe and feed.  Those are deeper things than fabric and nutrition.  We have poured our resources out into lives here, and still are.

Only we cannot set them up for dependency, true.  We cannot set ourselves up for dependency, true.  We cannot let even the desperate use us continuously, true.  We cannot let the manipulative milk us dry.  None of those things are good for anyone. 

We can do no good in any way if we have to leave with one-way-tickets to come home and start over.  Even if that would be the sensible thing, the comfortable thing.  Hilda and I do not have that habit.  It is not part of our life training.  That is part of why we are approachable here.  We really do listen.  We do not understand all, but we do understand much. 

Your prayers help ..  They help them to find us .. They help us to do what we can even if that is to say no.  No as our hearts explode inside us.  We’ve lived too long and with eyes open to not understand much.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.

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Christmas Eve and today I got to walk around campus and find those invisible people. The security people.  Some wanted soda, which I do not have, and God helped make a joke of that.  What I got paid when I was 18 to work security would be a boon for any family with a guard in the home.  Not the case here.  Locals get paid wretchedly.  Guards here pick up sticks while patrolling to build little fires to heat water for tea.  That may be all they have for however many hours or days they are on duty.

Christmas Eve I had juices to hand out.  Today I did not.  Today I have a cough and full on cold but still got around to hand out left over messages from yesterday and the message written for today. 

This insistence of the feet to walk and take sheets of paper with words in two language to people who are hungry and thirsty I do not fully understand.  Yet, each and every face across campus was smiling and grateful. 

That must be your prayers  too..  Great work!

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

Christmas day we were with little ones and their parents and grandparents up on the mountain with a family who insisted we come.   We ate delicious local food and were also blessed to have spoons to use.  We were able to take some sacks of supplies so there would be food left to prepare after we left. 

Yes, the poorest will give everything they have away and eat faith if that is all there is.  Hilda and I see and find these ones to be the foundation of why we are here.  NO one at this meal asked us for anything.  They just told us how happy they were that we came.

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

Hilda did everything at The Children’s Village Yesterday.  I waited and coughed in the truck, teenage girls coming back from church taking my hand through the window to hold while scolding me for not being in service with them. 

We are a different paradigm here.  We are the blessed white faces that are trusted by the best hearts to take the truth, any of the truth, good or bad, happy or sad, or mad, or disappointed.  No performances necessary for Bibi na Babu. 

Sunday before we were at The Cathedral.  The local Pastors who have done so much to help us find affordable have also been leaving me alone to my studies.  Kindness.  

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

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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,                                                                                         December 12th, 2023

Sometimes it feels like I am in a spiritual intensive care ward.  Surrounded by people, many of whom are already serving as Pastors because of call first, who have been given this opportunity to attend theological training.  The deep real kindness and inclusion in important things that we have in common.

And then.. There is the language issue.  Being lost is just the way it needs to be.  The least amount of academic stress and the whole community is back in Swahili managing things.  A few are always trying to keep me included but.  So, faith that somehow I can work my way through each unexpected dumped truckload of requirements that appear into a workload that should be manageable.

Should be but for never quite understanding enough.  Enough whining from me.  I already have Hilda’s permission to flunk though so many are trying to help.

Mchungaji Daktari Justin Mungure just came and took us a few kilometers away to near Makumira Secondary School.  To a church where the students from that Secondary school, located just behind the University, walk to on some Sundays.  There we loaded a table as directed by Mchungaji Ombeni.  That table is now on the porch awaiting cleaning and moving into the house for our use.

We are getting treated here like we are their own missionaries. 

I had made a desk from trunks, bed slats, refrigerator box and bedsheet but that will be going away tomorrow, I think, and the table will take its place looking out onto the shady side of the house from the living room / dining room.  That alone saves us millions of shillings, while also getting the bed slats back available for the bed.

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

We had two major things today.  A presentation on Pastoral counseling for the whole freshman class, many hundreds.  I was selected by my theology classmates to be the primary presenter just a couple days ago.  This done in Swahili by the group.  Me being informed after the decision was hashed out and made, while I was clue-less-ly sitting there blown away by the rapid crosstalk. 

I was a hard case while presenting to a group of young people about heartbreak surrounding relationships, failed relationships.  My fellow Wachungaji and Wachungaji in training acting out culturally appropriate heartbreak and loss as part of the presentation was initially seen as humorous to the greater class.  I shut that down hard.  Telling them that heartbreak is serious and absolutely nothing to laugh about.

I taught from Genesis 1:27 asking the whole room to consider that perhaps the ability to feel heartbreak was also part of being made in God’s image.  That God felt heartbreak in the Garden, during the flood, at the tower of Babel, at Sodom and Gomorrah.  I stopped before challenging them to think of Pharaohs army being drowned during the flight from Egypt. 

Sophies choice is faced by God every moment.  God has to separate his children sometimes.  God lives heartbreak.  They were thinking then.

The presentation grew in unexpected ways and was amazing.  One of my classmates presented as suicidal and with a plan to commit suicide.  No, I did not know about that either until this very morning.  That was taken as a special opportunity to teach.  He was gathered to me in a culturally appropriate way for where we are.   And he was kept there while I explained to the Assembly Hall of hundreds why if we find someone considering suicide and already having plan that nothing else matters, not grades, not food, not anything.  We are to not leave them alone while we get help. 

The format was that of a small short service for youth, centered around their questions and requests for help.  Drama ensued.  Hilarity was squelched.  We then had a blessed time of deep teaching in an amazingly few minutes.

Also in Swahili, me being informed after, my classmates had chosen “What a friend we have in Jesus” for me to sing the first stanza of during movement of presenters.  Somehow, that piece flowed into ending prayer acknowledging our Islamic siblings and any Jewish siblings well enough that as I was leaving later the Islamic women students on campus who had been present not only made eye contact with this big hairy barbarian, but beamed at me.   

Spontaneously, our entire theology class bubbled up on stage near the end so I was able to tell all those hundreds to remember these faces.  We all care and you can come to any and all of us.  Even the grumpy ones came up and were beaming, nearly all with wet eyes.  We did well.

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

Then..  There was a test.  Immediately after for another required course for all freshman.  I do not know. 

I wrote across the top of the empty paper: Genesis 1, Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 6, Mathew 22, Romans 13.  Then started to answer the two parts of the one question selected at random filling both sides of a blank lined sheet of paper.

That instructor likes to single me out at every opportunity while lecturing about Development Studies.  I am not certain whether he is a Marxist.  He loves to lecture in Swahili and make my fellow theologians scramble to translate into my ear.  Yes, a piece of work.

Every part of my answers was bolstered by those scriptures.  He deserves to get to know me.  He deserves to know whose children deserve development and why.  I’m not trying to pick a fight.  I think.   

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

Pray for my brain.  Pray for my information gathering style as it is like being blindfolded and spun twice each minute.

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

Yes please … Keep praying for those we have lost to their self-righteousness..  those we have lost to their lying and now hiding..  Love doesn’t stop but trust does..  Forgiveness we can give but it is best if it is asked for ..

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

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