Dear Cherished Interested’s, February 27th 2022

Bible study at Silverleaf Academy is more like a midweek Sunday school or afternoon recess. 2:20 pm local western time for two Thursdays now Hilda and I have been on the large green in front of the primary school within easy sight and sound of the main office. There little ones are brought by teachers to hear from such as us. They come single file.

Last week they came cautiously. They came looking up at me, someone they have all waved and yelled happily at from afar, and carefully punched my outstretched fist. This week was all smiles, some getting a run-up before trying to knock my fist out of the park.

Last week it was the first day and the creation of light. We had them cup their hands tightly then look inside to see the darkness. Then had them lift a finger to let light leak into those cupped hands. We were then able to talk about how strong light is and how nothing darkness is. How light is strong, always wipes out darkness, and reveals everything we get to see. How darkness is lazy revealing only itself, nothing. Then we walked, about half of the school, 125-ish littles, single file sort of with them following hand signals they could see from my raised hands. We walked around the campus to see what light revealed to our eyes. Yes God knew what he was doing when inventing light first.

This week it was water being separated; what was above from what was below and dry land and water each in its place. I introduced someone else they all know from walking campus twice a week to observe classes, someone they all wave and yell hello happily at. I introduced Science Teacher Hilda to talk at an elemental level about where water is found outside them and inside them. Then we tried another campus walk but the noise level was too high to go among the classes. We went towards the dining hall away from the classes crossing water courses getting quiet to listen and watch. Then next to the dining hall where local farmers hands have cut irrigation trough’s we stopped to see what light and water together can do. That, of course, is grow food.

Two Sundays now we have had a Sunday School on Campus too. All ages, all littles, all boarding students both boys and girls, about 40 total, plus some keepers. We get help with Sunday School from a couple 13-14 year old boys and their slightly younger sister, last week. The younger of the two boys has been in TZ his entire life so is fluent in Swahili, Meru and English. He also shares words in Spanish with Hilda as we travel in a car from place to place. He stands with me in front and translates my English on the fly, stone cold on the fly with no prep, as the message for the littles comes to me from the scheduled readings.

Silverleaf boarding students get their time of teaching and lots of song, almost all their strong-hearted and full-throated doing. Hilda and I just get to watch most, Hilda leads some. They get a blessing then..

We drive up the hill to The Children’s Village and do it again with the littles living there, another 40-ish.

Something put on me from no where but God to do is to leave helpers in charge of the littles up at The Children’s Village, take my amazing young translator out to where the Mama’s are doing laundry for all those 40 kids and give a more adult message just for the Mama’s. Last week I sang a prayer/blessing setting I wrote several years ago for them. This week they sang “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” in Swahili to me. I was able to read out from Numbers 7: 23-25-ish that most ancient of blessings we all hear in service. This week I read it out in Swahili.

Full Sundays indeed. Then yesterday morning, Saturday, I got a call from Reverend Dr. Justin of the Cathedral in Usa River asking me to preach at 7:am for the English service today. We made it in spite of car trouble. We made a new Taxi driving friend, a rare woman who joined us at each Sunday school participating, helped us locate a full bottle of stove gas for the home of our helpers, and treated us and our helpers like gold. Her number is in my phone.

The house still has issues. The thoroughly paid for little truck has issues. We still have health struggles. There are demands out of nowhere like another Pastor I’ve written about before who brought to our door last night, Saturday night, a document in Tanzanian English and needed the logger to rewrite it into North American / European / standard English. He departed happy. We have another supper invite sometime. I am also trusted with his PHD Thesis too..

Blows ones mind. These folks who have only each other and the likes of us and are eager and thankful.

I wish everyone such company. Company of folks who have oversize beds made for you, oversize mosquito nets too. Folks who cook a huge meal for you after letting you take their children to help teach Sunday school. Folks who send you home in their own car so you can rest, they insist. Folks who know you will come day or night when called. Folks who won’t think twice when the need is there.

Folks who don’t care what you look like, what languages you speak or don’t speak, what school you have or haven’t attended. They only care that you care. Unbelievably that’s enough.

Please keep it up! Your prayers are breath-takingly effective. Your hearts are touching our Heavenly Fathers heart and I can’t be more overwhelmed with humility and deep deep gratitude.

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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.. we miss them too.. for the Army family on the move..

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 that person to write with my dear friend Reverend Dr. Justin Mungure -

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

For a way for us to invest with our experience and even financially in support of local industrious people so we can afford to stay and continue to make a difference one face at a time –

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, 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,

Different computer.. Mine is flying to the UK late this week for re-repair. Taken by willing hands traveling there.

A child was taken back to the hospital last night. This dear one has been having a very difficult post-tonsillectomy. Poorly prescribed pharmaceuticals leading to becoming unconscious and unresponsive midweek and a long night for all involved. Being prayed over by someone who scared her deeply, not me.

Beyond a CT Scan scheduled for today, I don’t know details from last night as I was intentionally left uncalled with the intention that I sleep.

Well, why write about a sick child? Why write about a driver who got partially crushed by the bus?

Firstly, you folks are praying ones. That is the biggest reason to include you.

It has been a rougher week than most.

Second is to explain how there was a timely blessing as part of these very recent and difficult events.

That is the arrival of Hilda’s little truck. I got it to the house determined to never drive here after dark.

I was almost in bed, in the dark, when the midweek call came about the child. It was a long night on some unfamiliar roads after dark with a good used but unfamiliar vehicle. Driving on the left not on the right.

The truck paid for itself the first night it was here. Then got loaned out to a family we work with whose car was unavailable. The truck was in the right place for another medical transport on Saturday. One of the drivers got pinned while working on the bus, thankfully the sternum was missed but broke a clavicle and dislocated a shoulder.

That imperfect little truck has mechanical/electrical issues but has been perfectly placed for two events that make its expense seem as nothing. It also has four doors. Four doors that I can get through and get seated beyond. Not everyone’s struggle but limits my options some. It also comes with good people.

It comes from a local family of gearheads. Gearheads who didn’t want to let the truck go but needed to so the owning son could keep his business going and get a smaller city car for his wife. The former owner’s father and I spent a morning comfortably talking about important things, even hard important things. This we did while the truck and another needed vehicle were worked on by the former owner’s brother. Yet another Islamic family who are glad we are here, glad we read scripture, glad we bought the truck, glad to consider us.. trusted.. friends.

A vital member of the vital inside team at the Children’s Village and beyond is heading to the UK this week. There was a death in the family there that needs time. While that member is gone, my imperfect efforts will be in higher demand.

A Teacher at Silverleaf Academy brought her two young children to our door so they could meet us. The people/staff of this Academy want Hilda and I to start a Sunday School. It may be on Saturdays. It may include the Islamic children too as Friday is their important day leaving them free for Saturday. We’ll see.

The best part in all this is we made ourselves visible. We made ourselves available. They had time to get to know us. All of the staff has gotten to know us not just the teachers. The littles who board on site have decided we are to be waved and smiled at. They chose to ask us. It is their idea.

The Spirit has been and is at work, we just need to say yes. When I tell them that the science teacher, they’ve seen active on campus taught Sunday School for 30 years, jaws drop. Again, that is longer than most folks here have been alive, 30 years is older than many get.

Yesterday, Sunday, we went to English service down in Usa River at the Cathedral. Then we drove up the hill to Nkoaranga and went to a Ki-Meru language service with three teenagers, born locally, adopted or in process together now as the children of a diverse family. A family glad for us to go to church with their children.

One of the boys is the one I stood up for at his Baptism and Confirmation those first couple weeks here. Children who have survived things no children should. Children who have been loved softly and firmly enough to trust again. Children whose survival comes with joy and empathy that lovingly, at times laughingly, comes out. It is unconscious for them. They can’t help it.

There is another introduction to make. Reverend Doctor Justin Mungure is a recent graduate with his PHD in Hebrew from Tumaini University at Makumira. He runs the Cathedral and leads the English service. He’s been aware of, helped and included me/us since my first Sunday here when he was given the unfortunate job of translating Bishop’s sermon on the fly for two old folks from the U.S.

He was scheduled to return to Germany to complete his PHD there but COVID changed that. COVID also took away his pen-pals, friends. He sat in our living/dining room this week Friday and decided to trust us enough to ask that there might be someone reading this who would like to communicate with a Tanzanian Pastor. A highly educated Tanzanian Pastor whose linguistic ability includes English, but is not limited by it, I would add.

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What to Pray for:

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

A beloved Mentor at home whose lifelong cousin companion co-mission-ary and brother in Christ went home Friday a week ago –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. we miss them too.. for the Army family on the move..

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 that person to write with my dear friend Reverend Dr. Justin Mungure -

For each and every one of you –

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

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,
Computer is back!

We found an affordable, unsold from the Emirates, computer too so we each have one.

There is an English language service at the Lutheran Cathedral in Usa River not too far away. It has been a pleasant respite for two Sundays now. I haven’t had to preach, though I understand that it is my responsibility and my joy to talk about and proclaim Jesus Christ and all the intricate intimate and public ways God loves.

So far we are the only native English speakers there. Reverend Dr. Justin Mungure heads the Cathedral staff. His PHD is in Biblical Hebrew but his demeanor is kind, very kind and inclusive.

Since last posting we have gotten a fan. A fan. Simple but profound blessing that I understand makes no sense in the context of winter north of the equator as faced by so many of you.

We also have hot water, or cold water, but not both except in one sink just outside the shower room. The Shower room is the same size as the room with the western toilet. It has a tiled floor and walls up five feet or so. So is the room with the toilet.

An electrician came by motorbike replaced half a dozen outlets and got the hot water tank working. More work to do and he insisted he would be back to do it. The kitchen sink and the shower mixer faucets only flow water from what should be the hot water supply. Turn on what should be cold water supply and nothing comes.

So, we turn on the hot water tank and wait for it to heat up. Timing has been everything until very recently because wait too long and even the dribble from the shower head will scald. A fixer(Fundi) from the Children’s Village came down and got some cold water supply to function.

Another plumber came by motorbike a couple days ago and in spite of no common language he and I communicated well. Seeing and showing problems is universal. That and I know the word for crazy now and it fits this houses water supply issues.

There is a spigot in the shower room beneath the cold water supply intended for filling buckets and tubs. Since the fundi from the Children’s Village came down that spigot flows water, cold water. Logically the shower should too but it doesn’t. No matter.. we have a bucket. The dribbling outfall of scalding hot from the shower falls just six inches from the bucket fill spigot. Perfect! One bucket to blend then pour over your head.

Nearly heaven in an instant. Silly, but so very true.

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Hilda is head to toe drying up sores. Those mosquito bites got infected. Then she reacted to the antibiotic. All swelling is down. She is nearly off all meds. She took only part of one day to rest. She is amazing.

I am thankful that the computer died at just the right time for her NOT to be on it all the time while sick. She couldn’t work at home. That is except for observing classrooms and going to meetings here at Silverleaf Academy where the house is.

She could borrow a computer up at the Children’s Village and work lesson plans and dialogues for translation up there. So that she did, around meetings there whenever she was there. Which is whenever she isn’t here. Yes busy..

Basically, it’s complicated, three NGO’s(two mature one just forming up) the churches, several families, lots of dear ones have us at their disposal and believe it or not are glad for it. God is. God does. Us lucky ones get to see.

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I am ashamed to admit that we have help with the house. Heriheti has less English than I have Swahili. My brain is miserably slow yet I am eternally thankful for every miserly word it holds on to. I get to ask about her children and how she is too. She answers but never stops moving.

One of the grown ones aged like our children insisted we get help from Heriheti. That dear one who sent us Heriheti was right. She comes starting this week 2 times a week on the days Hilda is scheduled to be on campus where the house is. We thought she was coming to help with laundry, an old school process of tubs of suds and hands, but she also moves and mops and makes certain everything is spotless. She also finds and brings us good fresh eggs, free range of course.

Later we learned that we are the reason her children are now in school. The help is huge. The result for a young family bursts me.

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This week while up at the Children’s Village a young indispensable teacher came to find me reading scripture in a quiet place. He was very glad to find me reading scripture. He sat with me and then with a huge smile said he needed to tell me something.

He wanted to tell me what the people in the community had decided. Decided, that is, after seeing me at funerals of both Lutherans and Catholics. Decided, after seeing me driving Pastors in their vehicles, driving pastors vehicles. Decided, after me walking and daring to greet glances with what few words and kind gestures I can muster.

He wanted to tell me that the folks, of the mountain on which The Children’s Village is built, have decided that I am good to have around. That I have come not to be a problem but instead to be a help. This quiet, capable, teacher bubbled as he told me.

Like most he calls me Babu(grandfather). He knows and doesn’t care that I am a Christian. This indispensable one who calls me grandfather is not a Christian but Islamic.

Scripture is as scripture does? Or, is The Spirit ever stirring among any who long to talk with God and serve his littles, even the grown ones. Maybe both?

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YES! Your praying efforts show! I pray I can let you see through mere words..

Thankfulness for what you have read thus far –

Thankfulness for Visa’s granted, without us visiting the office, by the head of office before leaving on vacation, certified in writing by the head of office in his own hand, a hand all others including local police know and pay attention too, certified by head of office with a portion of the cost waived –

Thankfulness for Our Children who served and are serving in the Armed Forces who gave us a Navy Federal Account. Thankful that Navy Federal has gotten some money shifted from the U.S. to Tanzania for us –

Thankful for the wheels those shillings will bring to us, hopefully this next week –

Thankfulness for Heriheti –

Thankfulness for Hilda –

For our children and grandchildren who miss us.. we miss them too –

For our children’s helps.. you mean the world to us –

For the Army family moving assignment from Georgia to Colorado in this winter -

For everyone everywhere with winter –

We pray you have some of our heat –

We are thankful for the rain –

Thankfulness for teachers who care more for people than religious barriers –

Thankfulness for busy-ness –

For Makumira Lutheran Secondary school and her students, teachers and helpers –

For Silverleaf Academy and her students, teachers and helpers -

For The Children’s Village, her many faces, hands and hearts –

For whatever is on your hearts and minds for us -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers too -

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,

17 January 2022

Writing this even without internet.

Without internet but pleased to report that after the first night in Hilda’s house left her mosquito bitten to a fair-the-well that the local big young ones who have claimed us as their own appeared with mosquito net and frame for last night and sleeping was good.

Hilda’s house is on the campus of Usa(pronounced ooosa) River Academy. This campus is being used by a local NGO for their growing English medium / language Primary School. Silver Leaf Academy has both day students and boarding students.

About 30 of the littles in care at the Children’s Village travel by bus down each morning now to Silver Leaf Academy for school. Hilda and I just had our second morning ride with that same bus back up the hill to the Children’s Village collecting staff and local preschool littles for a day of preschool there.

Yesterday our work kept us at the Children’s Village until time to collect the Children’s Village Students down at Usa River and that is how we get back to where our trunks are now empty. Trunks empty, refrigerator with pictures of two of our grandchildren so far and when we obtain more magnets or tape.. those precious pictures of all of them, their parents and even some of their artwork we were able to bring along.

It is a blessing to be cooking for ourselves. It is a blessing to use furniture others chose and gathered for us. It is a blessing to be far back off the road at the back of the campus where we hear moving water, a thriving population of frogs, birds, and other nocturnal and early morning throats we have yet to identify.

Today we left the key to the house at the entry gate as we left. I was told that they wanted to get the hot water working. Vulnerable once again it seems as those most precious few things that are now out of the trunks and have helped us have our connections close in familiar ways once more are not under our control while away.

Also not under our control anywhere is how The Word is preached. Swahili Preaching is known for its fire, its rapid pace, its dogmatic approach to defining faith through observable behaviors. Naming things sin, that which separates us from each other and from our creator, and letting that naming come out hard repetitiously and definitively.

The sweetest kindest person will be listening to fire and brimstone preaching while they go about their day. In the context here there is some good in this style of delivery.

Whether it is like alcoholics making fun of the one or two “friends” they keep around who are known to fall over drunk or pass out, I don’t know. That has always seemed ugly to me, using others overt physical problems with alcohol abuse to crutch and justify ones’ own abuse that may show less overt physical problems.

However honesty demands that with regards sin, those things that separate us from each other and from our creator, we are all failed and broken. We are all falling down, passed out disconnected from what could be a best for us as exemplified by the life of Jesus recorded for us in The Word. Recorded for us about God throughout the entirety of scripture.

If the alcoholic analogy is too much to take, consider that the alcoholic needs healthy relationship. The alcoholic needs connection based upon something in common but turned around. Something in common and turned around in hope of something better. Hence the twelve step program. One step for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. One step for each of the twelve apostles.

Sometimes we forget that at the earliest times Christians built hospitals first. We built places where the diseased and broken could find healing because bodies distracted by disease and trauma are most often matched with minds equally unable to focus on hope for something better, something connecting to what can be best.

So lives here in this place are lives lived within the hardness of want. There is no escaping it as there are no resources to enable that escape. So if living is hard and The Word comes preached as hard, then perhaps that is what it takes. That is what it takes for The Word to be heard and felt in the midst of hardness as real and relevant to those sweet kind hearts living in the hardness of deep want like we in “the western world” most predominantly no longer do.

Dear cherished interested ones, there is an engine brake inside me. You know those noisy exhaust throbbing things that class eight trucks use to slow down in addition to the friction brakes?

Only I can hear my engine brake though.

I hear it whenever even the best intended developed world opinion or description of the state of things here is uttered in hope of doing something today to make tomorrow better. I heard it recently again about the local practices of preaching the word. I heard it from an amazingly loving and living outside himself European here to strive like Hilda and I to make a difference.

Go into deeply impoverished North America and listen to how The Word is preached. It’s just not nice enough for the rest of us who can afford to seek comfort and self-actualized self-worth first. Well here those who can afford comfort are the rarest most deeply catered to minority. We come presuming we know what The Word should sound like in order to be what we need.

We don’t know hard. We may think we do but hard living left most of us and our families a good couple generations ago. I remember just a touch of hard.

I remember a time in High School while still growing and sacrifice for the sake of the church oil tank left us eating not the cow planned but a greatly reduced caloric intake of small portions of fish. We had many in college. It was winter. The farm took more calories than we were choosing to consume. It was a very long winter and I remember my belt getting longer and longer and always being so hungry.

My parents were doing everything they could to keep those educations going and taking turns with other families keeping the church from freezing up. I could never admit to those who had survived the depression and WW2 that I was hungry. I watched them and learned. I listened to their stories of their times and learned.

Thanks to these precious ones here and now, I am still learning.

That engine brake throbbing away inside whenever it seems that my thinking, my guiding whisper, that still small voice may be adversely affected. Adversely affected by some self-assured, even huge hearted, well intentioned voice that may be speaking well yet like my own voice may be here. Speaking well, yet, out of context.

Seeing the presumption in one style of proclamation over another. Seeing the presumption in what sounds and is hard. Rather than holding on to the likelihood that any presumption lies with those who can afford to have them.

I have dared to walk alongside local pastors. Their hearts are not hard. Their times and places are. The Word comes out hard so it can cut through to give meaning, some value, where survival speaks even harder.

Is there room for other types of proclamation? Yes. Perhaps that is part of why we are here.

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1/19/22.. No hot water yet.. no internet yet.. we are well.

Time for something that sounds like a North American joke?

8 people went for a trip to see animals in their wild environment:

3 Tanzanians

1 Kenyan

4 Africans

2 Italians

1 Argentinian

2 from the U.K.

1 from Canada

4 from the U.S.

1 Dane

1 German

2 Dutch

6+ teachers

2+ preachers

4+ farmers

1 logger

1 truck driver

1 born Muslim

2 Catholic

2 ordained presbyterian deacons

3 Lutheran

4 Christian

2 Jews

1 Jewish Cantor

2 Christian worship leaders

1 Evangelist

7 working through NGO’s as well as their faith

Love led the way .. All had a wonderful day -

After 11 weeks we were taken so Hilda could finally see deeper African Bush, elephants, ostrich, lioness, mongoose, wildebeest, cape buffalo, dik dik, impala, eland, water buck, giraffe, zebra, too many more to mention.. Now back to work.

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What to pray for:

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us –

That rains continue –

Gratitude for the rains that have come –

Visas –

Pieces to reveal themselves and come together regarding my education –

Thankfulness for local pastors and inclusion –

Thankfulness for inclusion in purposes outside the church that cherish life and point unrelentingly to God, our Savior, and The Holy Spirits endless prompting and empowerment –

Thankfulness for a house –

Thankfulness for a bed –

Thankfulness for a mosquito net –

Thankfulness for running/dribbling water –

Thankfulness for intermittent Power –

The hope of internet at the house -

Thankfulness for Hilda –

For our children and grandchildren missing us –

We miss them too –

Makumira Secondary School –

The Children’s Village –

Silverleaf Academy –

Too much good stuff to list..

Thankfulness for each one of you –

Thankfulness for each one of your prayers –

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,

I make the claim that your Praying efforts make all the difference.

They do.

The plan was for us to be in Hilda’s house by the 3rd. Our plan, thankfully, was changed through the house not yet being ready.

Instead of laying down after moving on the 3rd, I laid down right where we have been laying down each evening since arriving in TZ but, after blooming a fever, chills, and other symptoms.

Thanks to yet another precious someone arriving literally two days before from Europe, we were given a Covid test kit. I tested positive for Covid Tuesday evening. Hilda did not test positive at that time but by Thursday evening developed symptomology parallel to my own.

Thankfully, I have been getting better as she has been taken ill so we have been able to trade places with me hovering and getting food from downstairs. Mrs. Ndosi’s staff have been checking on us. Mrs. Ndosi has been checking on us. All those amazing connections, including the new one arriving with test kits in her bags, you prayed us among have been checking on us.

So, it was not the right time for us to be setting up house in a different area just a few kilometers away with new neighbors.

We are supposed to be ill. We are supposed to be ill right now and right here so something good can be demonstrated through our need and vulnerability.

I remember watching my parents interact with medical professionals over the years I had them. Nearly every interaction included them using some of that time with the medical professional, time they would never have gotten were it not for some illness or injury in the family, to evaluate and invest listening and care into the life of that same medical professional.

That is part of why we all seem to face illnesses and traumas. So we can be given just a second or two here or there around our problem to address the fundamental precious humanity of those who dedicate at least a piece of their lives to serve us. Sometimes those seconds turn into minutes. I have experienced even longer times of use in the lives of care-givers who have let trust grow through my need and vulnerability into something deeper for them as well.

The blame seeking Jesus confronts in John Chapter 9 still blows through our relationships with each other and with our Creator. Blame seeking is a waste of time and energy, we are called to seek after the precious that God is doing in our many shortcomings.

Look out! Love might be shown, healing of things we might not have known were in need of healing might just start or rush to completion in an instant. Love might be shown and healing given not just to patient through care-giver but to care-giver through patient.

As much as I despise being weakened away from my plans, there may be more important plans afoot for us and those around us. Let God be God. Then point it out so that any of my baby boomer whininess can collapse and be as nothing under the beauty of it all.

The beauty of God living in the care-giving hearts of others. The beauty of God living in the care-giving hearts of ourselves. Let it out because the exercise of those things in and among weakness and vulnerability builds strengths that outlast our here and now. It builds relationships that are strong for our work together in this precious here and now too. Paul in both of his Corinthian Letters shares profoundly about weakness for us to follow.

The weakness chosen by our Creator and Savior birthed by human mother, crucified by mere human authorities that are now millennia dust.

The endless strength in the vulnerability remains.

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I promised our son that I would try to write about some of the amazing people your praying has pulled and kept us among. I believe the concern he now shares with many who love us has to do with our ability to find a path for returning physical health.

Well firstly we are blessed to have each other. We have an each other that we both actually like and are comfortable being uncomfortable in. Knowing that even if the rest of humanity were swept home to God before the end of this sentence, If we were either two or one of us left here, even then we would not be alone.

Tanzania is not America. There are some freedoms here that have been destroyed by a legal system at home that is required to measure losses and assign blames.

Without the oppressive liability avoidance scheming birthed from our system, we have found a local Tanzanian pharmacist who sells you nothing.

Nothing, that is, without first knowing and understanding your medical background, current symptomology, what you have already done with and for your symptoms, and your own level of ability, and of those around you, to monitor and care for your illness.

Only then comes prescribing, dispensing, and directing the use of medications all provided by a pharmacist who seems to have instantaneous recall of every article of medical information, every pharmacological catalogue, every medical or pharmacological periodical either historical or from the very mornings eager study.

We are blessed. This pharmacist would be wasted in America as exercising the gift present in that empathetic brilliance for the sake of others would be denied there.

Tanzania has too few resources to tie a pharmacist’s hands like we do so many of our well trained and gifted folks at home. This is a type of freedom I remember living among yet realize my children may only know our current system.

So, no, we do not have to go to a medical doctor to find a pathway way back to physical health if we demonstrate self-awareness, knowledge, and competence in what confronts us. So far we have and do.

Where medical doctors are few and exceedingly pressed with caseload our personal responsibility for ourselves is required to allow them to care where self-care cannot suffice. This too is a freedom I remember living yet realize my children likely do not.

This un-denied freedom of self-responsibility which we have found here is so community minded that ones’ responsibility for oneself flows seamlessly into ones’ responsibility for family, friend, neighbor, tribe, nation, guest, stranger all predicated upon ones’ ability and inclination.

This too is familiar..

Here it can be seen in Pastors who remove young women from trafficking situations.

Pastors who turn out their pockets quietly out of sight of the world for something to give the infirmed, widowed, alone driven to their door. Strangers who empty their purses of what little was therein for others unknown to them.

Ministries started, food taken, risks lived.

Risks lived all free from knowing the fear of having to check to see if our churches insurance policy is up to date and covers our activities.. activities often demanded in the moment..

I remember the freedom to walk into the horror another person is facing. We did that working in the woods for anyone else there. Even if they hated us out of the woods, we were all they had when things went wrong in the woods.

That is what Jesus does for me.. That familiar, that close, that risky.

No wonder those who can call. No wonder they approach, even without masks, some throwing their arms around us.

They are gifted and capable. Young and old alike they have lived uninsulated from hardship pain and want, know what those things are, and have never known the fear of being wealthy enough to avoid consequences.

Consequences that none could afford to pay. That economy, that bargain, that gamble, does not exist in any meaningful way here.

I’m stuck. Everything points to God and Jesus. Jesus, who pays the consequences for all our consequences. Even those consequences we can’t take to a medical doctor or buy insurance for.

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What to Pray..

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us –

Our prior requests –

Gratitude and Grace for and from all I may offend with my imperfect mirror –

For each of you in your situations –

Gratitude for you too –

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,

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 -