Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         June 27th, 2023

Hilda’s student, my first year Sunday service translator, and young man who I was adult for on his baptism and confirmation day is here.  The Aunti now Mama of Hilda’s student is here.  The Mama of three who does our laundry and cares for the house is here.  A chicken was brought, dispatched, scalded, plucked, fried and half is now in a soup pot. 

Us two guys are in the freshly cleaned living room.  Three happy women are hovering over the soup pot communicating with sign, some English, much Swahili.  Tanzanian praise music is blasting from the Bluetooth speaker.  Blasting but not overwhelming eager human communication.  Communication eager to hear and find ways to serve each-others’ needs. 

One of Hilda’s stupid cats goes from one person after another to find a lap or hand or foot to rub on.  The other stupid cat is patrolling outside in the gathering darkness.

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This last Sunday we sat in the back of Mulala church, with four young ladies from The Children’s Village, for the first service which was full and long as lots of little babies were baptized.  One was a first born. 

There was a ram brought as offering to buy the freedom of that precious little first born. 

Third offering outside on the grass had me promising into the ear of Mchungaji Ombeni that whatever he needed to buy that offering ram would be provided, somehow.  The ram is now named soup.  I paid for it.  I got to name it.

The ram is being cared for this week and next week between services, in addition to other offerings of meat promised by many eager others, Soup will become soup.  Soup will be made of soup for the elders.  So, after first service next week in Usa at the Cathedral, we are invited to partake of soup-soup as we walk to the Children’s Village for Sunday school and worship with the Mama’s. 

Yesterday, after being required to teach from Sunday’s readings to visiting Evangelist, Mchungaji and other church staff, I hauled the visiting down off the hill with the bags of produce.  Bags of produce that is most of what they earned for their time given here. 

Our story brings questions everywhere.  The trust is mind-blowing.  We, Mchungaji Ombeni and I went back up the hill after leaving the visitors alongside the road waiting for what passes for a bus, with diesel fuel for his little truck in whatever containers we could scrounge and a small bag of fresh picked and shelled beans for Hilda from Ombeni’s farm plot. 

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Sunday afternoon, after naming the ram soup and Sunday school and worship at The Children’s Village, we got invaded by five teens.  They ate and danced.  They ate and wiggled and listened to music.  They ate until they couldn’t eat anymore. 

Before they got gathered into the truck to be hauled back to where they belong they got together around tubs and washed all our dishes, pots and pans.  Then they swept the house and porch all the while laughing and goofing and smiling.  Mopping all the wet spots and messes up too.

Hilda and I remember our littles.  We loved having the house full of them and their tag-a-longs. 

Our littles are now raising their own.  We pray that they have full houses too.  We are thankful for the reminders coming into our house, wherever it is, filling our time with life.  Eager happy life in spite of struggles.  One of that gaggle of giggles is Hilda’s student, our baptism and confirmation son here with his, Aunti now Mama, to work around cooking chicken on real problems in these lives trusting us to come into our cold mountain house with two stupid cats.

Come and eat and dance.  Come and eat and wiggle.  Come and study.  Come and fill tubs with water to clean our dishes and pots and pans.  Come and blast Tanzanian Swahili praise music and communicate about deeply hard things trusting that something done today can make tomorrow a little better.

Hilda and I are weird.  Ask our children.  We aren’t biological family here anymore than we were biological family many places we have lived.  Yet, we are a place where people can come and talk openly.  Talk and pray and hope and cry and live more openly than many can with biological family. 

Thank You for praying that we are a place free of judgement.  Thank you for praying that we are given discernment; that if asked for and given is seen as trusted and valuable.  That is God stuff.  Your prayers do that!!

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Both stupid cats are inside now and with people.  We have power for the moment so lights are on and studies with Hilda continue.  Two women are huddled close to an electric heater on the floor at their stocking-ed feet.  Swahili, fast and intense, working for those solutions that impoverished lives need for another tomorrow. 

Lives are on the line.  Yet, somehow, smiles and joy often win.  Smiles and joy often win even in the absence of resource.  Gratitude and diligence are the most strikingly beautiful of twins.  They often are birthed into moments we get to see by powerful and faithful women of this place.  They bring our daughters alive to us right here. 

Our sons are alive in the same way right here with us too. 

Our grandchildren are seen alive in the faces everywhere we walk. 

We have wealthy moments here where expectations are broken enough .. to leave room.

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

From last time…

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

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

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

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

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

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

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

For each and every one of you –

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

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers makes all the difference..

Vern W

May life be as Music to your Heart – May Music be as Heart to your Life – May Heart be as Life to your Music

 Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                                     June 5th, 2023

After a late Saturday night request for a specific message about The Holy Trinity, I preached at the Cathedral in Usa River for the 7:00 morning English service yesterday.  Smiling folks came to tell me that it went well.  Amazing..  Always a struggle for me with confidence and I am deeply thankful that I am not alone when preaching.  Still, this is something I do because I have to.  Wanting to preach, wanting to be up front, is not part of it at all.

Paul is imprisoned when he writes:   Philippians 1             “ ¹⁴ And my being in prison has given most of the believers more confidence in the Lord, so that they grow bolder all the time to preach the message^[a] fearlessly.  ¹⁵ Of course some of them preach Christ because they are jealous and quarrelsome, but others from genuine good will. ¹⁶ These do so from love, because they know that God has given me the work of defending the gospel. ¹⁷ The others do not proclaim Christ sincerely, but from a spirit of selfish ambition; they think that they will make more trouble for me while I am in prison.  ¹⁸ It does not matter! I am happy about it—just so Christ is preached in every way possible, whether from wrong or right motives. And I will continue to be happy,..”

This position, this understanding, this expression of faith by Paul has become ever more central to my encountering how Jesus is preached and people are served everywhere; including here where at times we share very little in common.    

Later last week I was asked to attend another special prayer service up on the mountain.  As I walked into the rectory with Mchungaji(pastor I traveled and served with) and sat with the others gathered to run and serve the community through this service, I noticed among the accumulating ever more familiar faces, the face of a special pastor on this mountain.  He is respected by the others.  He is requested for special prayer services like this.  He has gifts of rare perception.  He has inside a kind of hard love that is so deep and powerful that it is willing to face anything. 

This prayer service is 90 percent music and dance then comes simple direct preaching.  The kind that allows those who fear the worst to come forward, run away, run back, then enter struggle to find peace they long for. 

How do I write about possession?  How do I write about those who fear it and face it? 

I would like to start with love that is so deep and powerful that it is willing to face anything.  Reputation of that love follows this older pastor who has had me in attendance now for two of these services high up on this mountain where fancy visitors don’t go and are never asked to.  I have been taken there and into that fear and the face of it.

I sat listening to language I did not know watching the pain and struggle that accompany the fear of what is faced.  My job was obvious.  I was there to pray.  That is what I did. 

As the struggling precious ones shook and dropped and wracked.  I prayed.  As others flew from their seats to keep the thrashing ones from hurting themselves or others, as women attended women safeguarding their modesty.  I prayed. 

The long line of women coming into and through the church to the front where prayer, laying on of hands, and groups of helpers worked with each precious one trying to come back to themselves, eventually stopped coming. 

That gruff old beloved and deeply loving pastor was done.  He did something that I did not expect.

After putting down his microphone, he came and sat next to me.  Then he turned to look me in the eye with such gratitude and thankfulness.  He knew that praying silently was what I had been doing.  He chose to be thankful to this stranger who has been brought now to two of these services for the desperate.  He knew that I was not there to judge.

I love this hard old mountain pastor because as he viewed that long line of fearful women coming seeking peace within themselves, his spoken question was.. “Where are all the men?”  This is a universal heartache for pastors here. 

Without the men seeking peace, the women return to situations that are unimproved.  Part of the greater prayer then is that the women return to their situations as improved people in themselves.  These desperate become missionaries into desperate situations that they cannot flee. 

There were still two struggling and writhing ones after the church cleared.  The old pastor was spent and was taken to rest.  Two groups of us stayed with the remaining two who were carried flailing and straining from church to the rectory where table and chairs were pushed without concern out of the way so those lost from themselves could be laid safely on the floor. 

Precious bibles were literally thrown across the room to land on that table shoved out of the way.  Small yet powerful writhing women were throwing four to six people around at a time.  I came into the room set my bible among those others that had landed on the table and without thinking put my glasses that I do need to see, on top of my bible.  Afterword I understood that not having glasses safeguarded all around me as they were not on my face to be taken in the thrashing and struggle. 

Silent prayer like I’ve had drawn out of me before in bush Alaska as well as here was all my mind and heart were focused on.  My hands are attached to the rest of me which is at times a gift of tremendous weight.  My hands were able to contain the right hand of one of these precious struggling women who came for help. 

She came for help and everyone there was willing to do anything, including throwing expensive tables and chairs out of the way and pitching precious expensive prized bibles through the air, so their hands were immediately free to safeguard as they strove to bring that help.   

The one whose hand was now in mine was no longer able to throw anyone around with that hand.  We prayed, we safeguarded, she returned in time peacefully to herself.  Her wet eyes opened and looked fearlessly into mine and after a time pulled my hand to find her way shakily onto her feet.  Immediately we got her to a chair. 

In about half a minute she was talking normally again with Mchungaji.  Mchungaji who did not judge her but simply smiled hugely at her success.  He then translated introduction and told me she had a young child.  He translated my thanks to her for her hard work as a mother to that precious child.  She stood, squared her shoulders, and was able to walk home before we left.

The last struggling one was taken by about eight people to a dark office in the rectory as Mchungaji and I were leaving.  Those loving people will not leave her even if it takes all night and into the next day.  Love doesn’t judge.  Love doesn’t give up either.

This is something I pray can be re-learned more broadly. 

The desperation and situations lived among the most impoverished people have analogs among the lives of people like you and me.  People who have rare moments of insecurity can learn from people who have only moments of insecurity. 

My time in bush Alaska is alive here.  My time among we who have only rare moments of insecurity is alive here.  This is what shepherds’ do.  Protect the vulnerable and battle what seeks to consume and destroy them.

Faith is academic and vociferous.  Faith at times needs to be uncompromising. 

Faith as love is also quiet, strong and in motion willing to give time, hands, protection and prayer.  Faith as love leaves room for hope.  Faith as love leaves room for God to be God.  Faith as love does not seek to be God, judge, condemnation or self-righteous source of shunning. 

That can happen among people here like it does everywhere.  However those shepherding, these moments of pleading with God for those desperate enough to be vulnerable in their need, also live lives with only moments of insecurity.  This empathy builds wisdom many elsewhere never find.  Wisdom that lets breathtaking good come in hard moments like these that too many ignore and run from.   

Love doesn’t judge.  Love doesn’t give up either. 

Yes, an older term is used here.  Witchcraft.  Mostly women coming to seek help in reclaiming themselves from the destruction of situations that don’t change so, they have to find the strength to be the change themselves.  Here witches are never burned.  Here they self-identify and come among people who will do anything to help.

Love doesn’t judge.  Love doesn’t give up either.  Everyone goes back to doing the best they can the next day.  They go together.

How do I know that these events are sincere and un-staged?  I was the only white person trusted to be there.  I may be the only white person many know.  I am the only white person many of the children have ever seen and they cannot hide that.  Not one person asked this white man for anything.  The ones wanting me there knew I would pray.  No one wanted any money.

Thank You for any discomfort this report may bring for any of you reading.  Your willingness to face that discomfort is beautiful.  Thank you for your prayer.  It really does matter more than anything else.

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

From last time…

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

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

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

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

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

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

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

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

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

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

For each and every one of you –

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

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers makes all the difference..

Vern W

May life be as Music to your Heart – May Music be as Heart to your Life – May Heart be as Life to your Music

 Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         May 28th, 2023

Safety-belt..

I understand where the perspective comes from.  Christianity to most of the non-Christian developed world-mind is at best a crutch.  It can also be seen as only a means of control employed by Christians who are mentally defective or evil. 

I blew it again today.  I was unable to prevent a developed world white person coming into the children’s worship time on Sunday and take one of the children out so that white person could do the job they get paid to do.  A job they have 167 other hours a week to do, other than that hour.

The free work we do in this world is seen as valueless.   This is part of our challenge with regards the message of Jesus Christ.  None of us can do anything to earn what Jesus does.  Jesus simply loves enough to do it for us.  None of us could do anything to have life and be part of creation, God simply loves enough to do it for us. 

By teaching that money and control is all there is to spend time on, we teach so much antithetical to the message of sun and rain and soil and growing things.  Things that we can manipulate some now but, still we cannot create.

Being unpaid and unwilling to live divorced from the local community and the local community of faith around a precious group of children, we are ostracized.  Any and all mistakes, real or imagined, are tabulated and memorialized for use later.  Manipulation for control is good, apparently.  Manipulation for money even better.  Those who complain about feeling manipulated by folks from economically dependent cultures need only look at what we can so sadly teach. 

That is precisely what we face in North America too.  Our culture exported faith to much of the world.  Now our culture exports the shunning of faith as irrelevant mental illness in the way of finding money, money, money.  Faith need not be spoken.

Covid shut down the economy here.  Covid killed many as the disease.  Covid may have killed more in the economic devastation wrought by the global fear that shut down this economy based on tourism.  This is part of what happened at Josephine Sunset Home, an eldercare facility in Stanwood Washington during Covid times too.  The disease took our elders.  The disease took our elders community away and gave them only isolation.  That isolation brought death too.

With people who look like me teaching that money, their paid position to raise money from those who only need to be motivated to give money, and the children learning to be part of that motivating for money, and their worship time together is to be abrogated to that..??

I know.  Vern, stop being a jerk. “I’m only doing my job.  And I get paid to do my job.”  This is only part of the spiritual pressure to extract us from trying to teach that when the money stops, when the buildings collapse, when there is no food to share, when our last breath is taken, there is still a place called home for all of us.  

That is what lets us take our next breath.  That is what lets us teach Jesus’s self-sacrifice by striving to live self-sacrificially.

I can be so furious but, only Jesus has the authority to overturn the money changers tables.  I do not.  I can be so deeply troubled and hurt but, only Jesus has the authority to judge, I do not.  Respect is no longer a part of our world-leading-culture-through-economic-means.  Respect is now a means to an end, a manipulation.  That is poison shared by too many of us too.  Still, I am not qualified to judge.  Pray for me.  Please.

Being a plow-point, the forward most tip of a tool that breaks open the ground and turns it over as part of preparing that ground to become soil, something good for roots and growing, is brutal.  We are not wealthy people because that is often where I found myself in North America. 

That is still where I find myself with North Americans, Europeans, most folks who can afford to travel because they want to.  I know it makes no sense.  We got rid of the house and nearly everything and travelled because we had to.  I pray some day our children will all come to understand that.  It may help them too.

How do we keep going?  You!!, If only one of the readers of this get this far and can know that your inability to articulate words in prayer for us is beautiful beyond expression.  The Holy Spirit wordlessly groans for us.  If you take the time for that groaning to go up to God, because of God, because of you.  You keep us going.

Faces keep us going.  Our sick little non-four-wheel drive forces us to be on foot a lot.  We get to see and be seen.  Just two days ago a young one, who had never seen me before, was dumb-struck watching me climb into the truck at the edge of the road.  I spoke in the language of this mountain.  The eyes got bigger and that little one ran back the way they came to chatter emphatically with other little ones.  Probably something like, “you won’t believe what I just saw!..  and..  and.. it spoke to me!!”

Faces keep us going.  We are known some and the greetings almost always come with deep sincere smiles and waves.  Often a group of two or more women will respond to my greeting now while walking with howls of laughter as they greet me, someone they have seen in their churches, in return as Kisali. 

Here is the joke they all share with such joy.  Kisali means big-brother.  Those who know what I look like understand that I am fairly tall at 190 centimeters, about 6’ 3”.  I have to order shirts and shoes in order to get them the right size.  I am still about 300 lbs and look ridiculous, especially here among the majority genetically predisposed to be beardless head to toe.  I am not.  It is a wonderful joke that means they are too busy laughing to ask for money or even be afraid.

Faces keep us going.  Local pastors, living and serving hand to mouth multiple parishes, who don’t just smile but beam at us.  Local pastors who come quietly to visit us with problems they cannot fix themselves as they live hand to mouth.  We do what we can, which isn’t much.  But we do have the freedom not afforded much of the North American church anymore.  We have no insurance policy.  We have no lawyers, and as unaccompanied missionaries we have no national church telling us what we can and cannot try as ministry and service.  So we try.  Sometimes what we have to try is, “no.”

If we fail.  By Gods grace and help we may come to find forgiveness and energy to try again.     

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

From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (June 1^st?) when we will engage with the University again.  Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving.  Each day is a sincere struggle.  Hopefully that means we’re on the right track.  Please pray for those around us.  Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.  

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

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

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

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

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

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

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

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

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

For each and every one of you –

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

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers makes all the difference..

Vern W

May life be as Music to your Heart – May Music be as Heart to your Life – May Heart be as Life to your Music

 Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         May 15th, 2023

Pastor Lazaro(Lazarus) has trusted me with the people of his Maasai Parish, his Leganga Parish, and now his Ngyani Parish.  Our first parish of his to visit was his Maasai Parish and we did not preach there but were honored by the trust of being taken into some of the most impoverished families on the planet.  This is a community that out of complete desperation can fall victim to trafficking of young women promised jobs that take them far away from family.   

Sunday we walked a short way down the mountain to get our ride to Kanisa Ngyani.  This is the church of the retired Pastors wife around whom The Children’s Village has grown up.  One of her many adopted sons is my English student, he was our ride to their church. 

Local folks planned for me to preach there yesterday with the Pastor translating.  This is the second time and the second church that I have preached for this pastor who was going to translate for me but he has been called away to an emergency each time. 

My English student, was directed by the evangelist to translate for me.  Andrew did well.  Andrew was also singing and singing was a larger than normal part of yesterday’s worship and why we were invited to attend, and preach.  Kanisa Kilinga also sent a kwaya(choir) to worship with Kanisa Ngyani.  About a third attending were worshiping choirs.

Andrew translated for both services. 

Andrew is very shy and reserved while being extremely soft-spoken.  His fellow choir members did not expect to ever see Andrew translating from / preaching from / the pulpit and he did amazingly well in spite of turning to mug and make faces at his choir-mates keeping half the back row where they were seated laughing in their joy. 

Joy and eager teasing by gesture at seeing this extremely bright young man doing something so unexpected.

Where we are the first born child of a family is brought to the church after they can walk and let through the iron altar rail to stay in the altar space where pastor, evangelist, and other presiders direct worship. 

That was the case at the Ki-Swahili service yesterday.  A presider then closes the gate preventing the toddler from reuniting with family below the altar.  The toddler is kept there until the family buys their child’s freedom by offering a goat or cow or sheep or sum of money.  Then they can have their child back. 

That little child wandered into the altar space through the open gate and after the gate closed walked directly up to me lifting his tiny arms to be lifted onto my lap.  There he stayed on my lap for about 5 minutes before squirming down to wander around up in his altar jail waiting for the goat.  The goat came and his father handed the rope for the goat through the rail to his tiny son who held obediently.

This unexpected blessing of total acceptance by a local toddler who had never seen me before was extremely heartening.  Yes the child went home with Mom and Dad.   

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The Sunday prior we were at Kanisa Mulala participating from the back row where four of the girls from The Children’s Village came to sit with Hilda sharing our Swahili Worship books. 

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We found an old friend this last week too.  David Mtui was the business partner of Elizabeth Hudgins, a retired English teacher from Vancouver Washington.  Elizabeth and David took care of two mission groups I have been part of coming here.  The second group included our elder daughter. 

Elizabeth was aware of our planning to come and strive at trying to get me into theological training here.  Unfortunately Elizabeth died of COVID between us selling our house and getting to the plane to fly over.  It has taken about a year and a half to find David. 

Thank You for praying for things none of us can know about.  We were a safe place for David to share about the loss of Elizabeth.  He was comfortable to embrace each of us with sincere happiness.  It has been eighteen years since we have been together in Tanzania.  God willing we will take a break and go see his farm on Kilimanjaro soon.

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

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

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

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

Thank you, each of you.

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

What to Pray for:

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

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

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

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

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

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

For each and every one of you –

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

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers makes all the difference..

Vern W

May life be as Music to your Heart – May Music be as Heart to your Life – May Heart be as Life to your Music

Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                                     May 1st, 2023

We dashed to Nairobi Wednesday morning last week.  Our Visa required leaving the country for a few days and then returning.  So we did.  Without the truck we were limited so we took the bus to Nairobi Kenya. 

Those of you who know the space I take up understand that buses, planes, and small cars are actually extremely uncomfortable to get into and out of, let alone spend hours travelling between nations.  I survived.  We were travelling with an ardent supporter.  The same young man who has managed the government processes that hopefully leads me to applying for matriculation into Tumaini University Makumira sometime this very month. 

We learned right along with him the severe expense of making this trip to Nairobi.  My impressions of the Nairobi I saw was that it is a city trying so hard to be New York, right down to Burger King and Kentucky Fried, that wealth has gone to both its head and heart. 

Bluntly, Nairobi is cruel to her own people.  You leave the hotel bastion out past metal detectors, heavy locked gates, guards to step out on streets with too few sidewalks yet tall fences topped with barbed wire and spikes on both sides protecting wealthy properties behind them.  I found one facility nearby with the words “Faith Center” locked securely up without a soul in view within its perimeter.

We found new shoes for Hilda with a street vender they are bright RED.  So Hilda is happy.  We are poor bargainers as empathy even for those trying to take unfair advantage lives too close to our surface.  Still, that placed us on the street in the right place at the right time to encounter a Burundian father with five children refugees all who had not eaten for days. 

How mean is Nairobi?  In a wealthy part of town it took two American visitors from Tanzania with the wrong East African currency to find a way to get them fed, if only for that day.  We had no local connections in Kenya and could not make heads nor tails of the paperwork they had that entitled them to wander the streets homeless, foodless, looking for help from a church, any church.  All the Nairobi churches apparently are locked up like many places, even at home in the U.S.  Many behind those walls and fences I described.

Yes people were asking for help everywhere we went.  We went anyway.  We went by foot so we were easy to see. 

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

We talked our way into a tall nearly double bullet shaped skyscraper which has windows all the way around.  The guards noted the cross that I wear nearly all the time now as it both invites requests for help and, I believe, shames many false requests away.  The guards overcame my size with the help of that cross and little beaming Hilda.  After explaining our desire to simply go up into the building to look out those windows to many guardians outside and then inside we followed a trail of smiles to a desk and waited for Daudi. 

Daudi is an engineer in the building trades who is responsible for this building.  His English is impeccable.  He came smiling out to greet us and took us to the highest unoccupied floor of the building where we could walk around the open unfinished floor and view the city in 360 degrees.  We got to know Daudi. 

On the way out he brought me a pen and paper and I drew up and talked with him about potential full pasture fed, low animal stress, dairy farming only made possible at the equator with its non-stop growing season. 

We discussed layout, rotating paddocks, central watering and central robot milking.  As a farm kid himself with family still milking cows by hand he was very attentive, interested, and thankful.  He also insisted he was taking the idea to his friends at Government house.  Unbelievable..  May he get rich..  May his wealth save friends, family, neighbors, friends, strangers..

Roy, if you are reading this there in Bolivia, yep..  same idea I asked you to give your Mennonite buddies there near you in the mountains. 

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After two nights we headed back.  Little girls with babies wrapped to their backs and little boys swarming us at the bus station lamenting plaintively in Swahili and English phrases intended to illicit assistance.  Having never changed to the correct Kenyan currency from the Tanzanian currency(much weaker) we were ill prepared to provide any assistance. 

The border crossing both ways still has my head shaking. 

First is the swarming by tribal craftswomen(Maasai) who zero-ed in on Hilda and I before we could exit the bus to be processed and then again upon leaving processing to return to the bus.  Again, the wrong currency helped but, being at the border and the craftswomen being Maasai who ignore the border, they knew their highly fluid prices literally coming and going. 

While waiting in the bus for our fellow travelers to be processed and return, I pulled out my bi-lingual Bible.  Inside the back cover I keep a small book of Swahili Hymns.  I dared, thanks to the last year and a half of Sundays with the Mamas at The Children’s Village, to sing the Swahili Hymns I am able to figure out by knowing the English tunes they are written to.

Persistent peddling through the bus windows significantly abated and then stopped.  Confusion and some disbelief ensued as they gave up, walked away, came back after hearing some semi-familiar text, and then went over to a nearby wall to talk with our ardent supporter who was telling them some story. 

Those who were still near our bus were over there listening to him.  Did I tell you he is a Dad who was almost a Catholic Priest?  I bet he wasn’t missing an opportunity.

A couple of our fellow passengers walked forward in the bus to look over my shoulder and sing the hymns along with me.  I could hear emotion amazement and joy.  Hilda was where she could witness the emotions and made a friend sharing contact info through shared Swahili hymns with her large white hairy husband.

Processing at the border was embarrassing.  We do not have diplomatic passports.  Word had gone ahead of us each time.  We were collected out of que each time by smiling border guards who took us past everyone else and then to each window out of one country and the next window into the next country.  I looked up to see that we were taken through the Diplomatic passport track, our ardent supporter happily chatting with guards and immigration officials he obviously knew.  Well, either those specific officials or their bosses.

We were so quick in processing that we got back to the bus before it could be moved from one side of the station to the other and the drivers were shocked as we were.

Processing back into Tanzania a couple of workers challenged me to explain what a Kenyan Pastor in the news had been doing.  The Kenyan pastor in question has been arrested for insisting that his people fast until they die so they can be with Jesus sooner.  If life is impossibly hard, this may indeed appeal to the helpless. 

I am ever more convinced however, that life is what our God and Savior are most about, having created life and then providing means for life eternal.  In the twenty or so seconds we had to discuss a matter on their hearts I shared my conviction that life is the point, not death.  Life is not to be wasted as it is intended to last forever.  Anything that wastes life seems ever more anti-Christ to me and I pray that the arrested pastor gets help and his people wiser leadership.  I often pray that for myself and those I try to serve too.

For those who know the area, it was raining as we left Nairobi but soon cleared.  We crossed the border coming south into Tanzania coming to predominantly Maasai Longido, then Engikerat and very many Kilometers to Oldonyosambu.  That is where the first signs of any water darkened the bottom of dry riverbeds nearly all the way from Nairobi to Arusha.  Five years of drought are hopefully breaking further afield than just the mountains.  This will save many invisible but so precious lives.

We were back late Friday and did not miss our Saturday and Sunday duties.

Tomorrow we take a child to the doctor in town.

Today is a local holiday..  Still the farm kid, self-employed logger, often holidays confuse me and I never seem to remember or understand them.  Thanks for praying for us in our endless confusion(s)..

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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

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,                                                                                                     April 20-22, 2023

Mchungaji Ombeni, the local pastor, had me read scripture for the 3:pm Good Friday service.  He insisted that I read aloud in Ki-Swahili.  Then I had to speak extemporaneously.  I asked Ombeni if he had already spoken at prior seasonal opportunities about the two Josephs and the two Peters and a couple other topics which he answered all in the affirmative.  I asked if he had spoken about Mary.  He said no.  I had my topic and standing two steps below Ombeni so our ears and mouths could be near enough to hear he graciously translated. 

I still do not understand what I am reading aloud in Swahili however, God somehow gives me clear pronunciation and fluent diction.  I cannot explain it.  No need for a microphone either.  Not too bad for someone who has never been comfortable in front. 

Please don’t be too shocked.  I am not doing something I want to do.  I am doing what I have to do, God help me..  I was scheduled to preach Easter Sunday, my translator, Mchungaji Omeni, was called for emergency fill in a little ways further up the mountain, his fill in, in Mulala, was a wonderful young Ki-Meru speaker so my message waited for Easter Monday. 

Easter Monday was surprisingly full.  After my message was given, Ombeni took his huge smile out to the benches and pulled Hilda forward to speak while he again translated.  She can easily speak extemporaneously.  Career teaching, forty years of Sunday school, and one of eight siblings.

Last Saturday the local Sunday school here in Mulala gathered about 75 children from local parishes onto two large busses including about 15 adults for a morning at the airport watching aircraft, many for the very first time.  Many littles even enjoyed watching cars on the way to Kilimanjaro International Airport, this too a rare thing for them, some of them pointing and claiming this car or that car as their own.

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Truck is gone for a week at the Truck Doctor..  Please pray, yes, please pray that parts can be found and that four wheel drive function be restored.  I used my farm-kid traction control to get the truck out of the hole where the house is and up to the Kanisa(church) where I have been allowed to park it.  Yesterday I took it to town and left it there.  Farm-kid traction control?  The truck bed is full of rocks. 

Monday the truck was still stuck in the hole where the house is.  We set off in the rain to walk the 4 kilometers to Makumira Secondary School down closer to the big road.  We made it about half way before folks who know us saw us walking and sent other folks to take us to Mchungaji Ombeni’s house.  He insisted that he drive is down the rest of the way to the school with the church’s working four wheel drive. 

Today, Saturday, cats and dogs rain again (thank God for a real rainy season!!)  I set off to walk about a kilometer and a half to where I tutor English.  Ruts have become torrents.  Depressions pools.  The younger brother of the man whose house we are residing is was out bundled up in knee length foul weather gear, bare foot, using a shovel to buttress piles here and dig water way to save what little road there is to get in and out.  

It is Eid.  Eid ends the Ramadan fast and celebrates family often including goats cooked and shared with families who have chronic malnutrition.  Eid feast means no community education support at The Children’s Village.  I walked by beneath the Village and came upon littles walking to education support not realizing the Saturday off.  One bright-eyed one asked if Hilda would be up waiting for her there.  I explained Eid and had a companion for a significant part of my walk as she walked back home. 

Walking means we need extra time.  We need extra time as we are slower.  We also need extra time as we are considered by many here now as their people.  We are to be greeted.  We are to be spoken too and appreciated and included.  This is their choice.  We have been diligent in seeing people and not shacks or torn imperfect clothing or the different manner of speaking since arriving among these people. 

We do not ignore them.  We do not hide behind raised tinted car windows.  We risk being taken advantage of.  God pours love into us for each face.  Even the angry faces that frown and glare.  Amazing..  I think you have been praying for us.  Thank you so very very much. 

We walked early afternoon to the home of a retired pastor whose wife is the center of The Children’s Village.  We were fed and had a wonderful conversation at the table afterword.  One of their many adopted children is likely my best English student.  The walk in the rain was about two kilometers the other way from the house from this mornings walk.  My English student happily drove us home.

Hilda is preparing for folks to come to the house for supper today.

A week ago Thursday we had a houseful from The Children’s Village operations staff who came, were fed well, and we then sang Nyimbo(hymns) together.  It was a blessing quite beyond expectation.  I even managed to lead a few.  The young man who is in charge of the Saturday education programing jumped up to pray happily.  Folks know where we are.

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,                                                                                                     April 5^th 2023

My computer is dead once again.  Back on Hilda’s..

Hey..  Not giving up..  We’re now in a house up on the mountain.  Mulala is the community.  We’ve preached at the local church twice now since appearing among these precious people.  Local Tanzanians are our human salvation.  Mixed bag as they are a tremendous challenge as well.  That must mean that we are trusted to be challenged.  Thank you for praying us there.  Thank you for praying us empowered in those challenges. 

When part of working with missionary Pilot trainees at Mission Aviation Training Academy at the Arlington Washington Airport, some of what often got shared is how when striving in missions some of the most difficult times can come through fellows in mission alongside us.  As many of you know Hilda and I are unaccompanied.  We are only able to serve because of what local Tanzanians have asked us to be part of.  No organization surrounds us with any support.  Your prayers are what surround us and keep our faces in front of God’s face.  Your prayers are what keep any reflection in our faces even remotely true in any way to the face of God.  Thank you for that too.

We are up here not because of any fellows in mission.  We are up here because of the same cultural divide faced by anyone daring to live in spite of human longing after money and power first.  Simply, we were not willing to be manipulated and have our pockets picked by highly educated non-Tanzanian folks seeking money only, in service to good things, and those local Tanzanians who have been taught those behaviors in order to have a job.  Yes it is sad. 

Hold on though.  The best, God things, happen anyway.  

The house has power when power is available.  Water, either falls and is collected from the roof in buckets, or we take the little truck further up the mountain to community water near a local hospital tucked up among farms and semi-tropical vegetation and fill buckets and tubs.  Hot water happens when power and water come together. 

WE are well.  In fact, Hilda’s mosquito bites are finally starting to heal up and she is off all the medications needed to combat the severe allergic reactions and post bite infections.  Yes, Hilda is tough. 

Local pastor and wife came to eat supper with us and we were told that many local folks know us as the old white people who don’t ignore them walking along the road but wave and greet as best we can each one.  Many of the littles know Hilda from her Saturday morning participation at The Children’s Village in remediation and tutorial programs for all local children close here on the mountain. 

Another piece communicated to student missionary Pilots was the need to have a habit of participation in ministry wherever they are.  The Academy in Arlington required pilot trainees to be part of active ministry with some local congregation.  The fact is that if ministry among others is not a bones deep habit where culture and language are shared, it will likely have no chance of expression where culture and language are not shared. 

Our bones deep convictions are seen by people and communicate beyond these seemingly impossible barriers.  That is why I keep being asked to preach, something that continues to surprise me from my experiences of a lifetime at home in America.  That is why we have a house up on the mountain when somewhat narrow-minded well-meaning people from North-America, Europe, and other “developed world” context and training inadvertently teach idolatry of money and power first and at any cost to those local ones they work through. 

Humility is hard.  Many life-long ones seeking to help here maintain separations with the local folks having their own gathering places, services, and group-think.  This invades the thinking of many locals too.  All we can do is strive to be aware and willing to lose everything when needing to teach something different.  This we must strive to do with love, patience and grace.  Only your prayer keeps us even remotely in those precious things. 

Our consolation is among those who have nearly nothing, are left out, and still choose to see we have a house to live in.  

While writing Hilda is dancing among wet laundry hung throughout the house on clotheslines strung between curtain rods overhanging windows.  Windows put into this home that never had them.  Windows put into this house by impoverished local others intending us to be here.  We are getting a rainy season this year, however brief it may or may not be. 

One of her two cats, who came with us up the mountain, was missing for four days after arriving up here.  She is overjoyed to have the cat appear in the middle of the night a couple nights ago, well fed and well taken care of.  That cat does not want to leave her side. 

The doors are barred at night but fully open during the day.  Children of all ages come with buckets of water, requests, waves, and smiles.  One very bright teenage girl visits Hilda whenever she can to practice and challenge her already very good English.  And like Hilda’s cats, she is very comfortable in Hilda’s company.  So far, no one has touched the little truck parked outside. 

Saying no..  It may sound harsh, but we spend a lot of time saying no.  We say no to nearly all requests for money.  To protect dignity that seems so willing to be sacrificed, we would rather purchase some eggs or fruit so those who come with defined need can afford to service it themselves.  Also I have to say no to being a taxi-service.  Fuel costs a lot.  We live down a very steep, very rough, shared driveway that I can only drive out of by quickly getting into second gear and speeding in an attempt to fly up onto the main road.  Hilda climbs up to hold traffic as I make my attempts.  Yesterday a tractor and wagon loaded with corn stalks tried to climb out the same driveway and failed.  I was asked to pull them out.  I had to say no. 

School for Vern..  Through the efforts of another amazing local one I now have a Tanzanian Primary School certificate and a Tanzanian Secondary School certificate and a Tanzanian Secondary School transfer certificate.  We have been told..  that in May..  I will be..  applying with those things to be accepted as a student at Tumaini Universtiy Makumira.  Further..  we have been told..  that after some more paperwork with the Tanzanian Government that is in process..  Hilda may be lecturing in the science program there. 

This long year and a half has taught us not to hold our breath.  However, given that we are unaccompanied missionaries.  Given my rejection by a PNW ELCA candidacy committee for being stubbornly adherent to not only a call to pastoral ministry, a call that same committee overwhelmingly affirmed, but also to the long-time call to seek training here among one of the fastest growing Lutheran denominations globally, any progress brought about by the local people right here has to be God sent. 

Whatever barriers we have striven to overcome to study scripture here are barriers reduced for anyone else in the future.  That is more important than any success for me as an individual.  The church must seek discomfort in inclusion of truly impoverished faithful ones no longer as students, but teachers. 

No, we don’t know it all.  That candidacy committee was so very young.  Pray for them.  May sincere regret appear in hearts to break them open to more growth for each precious one.  We still long to include them, indeed anyone willing to let us sacrifice ourselves in the strange and even eccentric ways we are striving in.  The church is not merely American.  The church is not merely urban.  The church is not merely ordained pastors.  The church needs every piece wherever and however it lives. 

Who am I to be saying, living, teaching these things?  Nobody.  I did hard, even dangerous, physical work for half a century.  If success happens for me here, it is NOT my doing.  I know I am unqualified in the eyes of those so believing and sure that they are.  I care too much.  God does not care. 

Hilda does not want our struggles glossed over so we won’t.  Hard is too small a word and the attacks are deep, slanderous, and spiritual too.  We pray that means we are doing something right.  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