Bill and Cyndi Stinson have been the mission administrators for the last 5 1/2 years here in Chimala, Tanzania. As you know, I have moved here to take their role as mission administrator. They departed on Monday, July 9 for Texas to begin their role as the state-side coordinator for the Chimala Mission. They will be missed here at the Chimala Mission. Traveling with them is Corrine Fannaeus and Lacee Sewell from Alabama. They are two nurses who worked at the hospital for two weeks. We bid them all safe journey.
We are continuing to prep the Mays House for us to move in. We are currently staying in the Guest House. We have moved several pieces of furniture back into the Mays House, but are not going to fully move in until we get our container this week (or so they say!!).
Chimala Mission Primary School
I visited with the primary school headmaster this week and gained a greater perpective and understanding of the strengths and needs of the primary school. You can see more information at the Chimala Mission website. The Chimala Mission Primary School has about 600 students from Nursery to 7th grade. They are currently having to turn kids away due to space issues at the school.
The Primary School has several challenges, however, due to their space requirements. Many of the children travel quite a distance to go to the Chimala Mission Primary School and they stay on campus. This has presented a housing issue that needs to be addressed. We are currently housing the primary school students with secondary school students, but this has been an issue -- especially since the dorm fire in May. The top priority for the Primary School is to build a girl's dorm to house these students. Below is a picture of the boy's dormitory for the Primary School.
Preaching the Gospel
We visited several congregations this week. We had quite an adventure going to one congregation at Isitu. It is a small congregation in the bush and I seemed to have taken a wrong turn.
We visited the Chosi B church of Christ. I preached on a Wednesday afternoon to a fairly small crowd. The preacher said that most of the congregation was off playing football and games. During the sermon while I was preaching, I felt something crawling on my neck. I felt my neck to knock it off, but I didn't find anything -- so, I preached on. Following the sermon sitting beside my wife, I felt something crawling on my neck again and I went to knock it off. This time, however, instead of knocking it off my neck, whatever it was fell down my shirt. Then, it began crawling around on my stomach!!! As quietly as I could, I began to swat my stomach to kill whatever it was that was crawling around under my shirt. The more it crawled around, the louder I swatted!! At one point, I was loudly hitting my stomach in my attempts to stop the invasion when I noticed that half of the congregation was looking at me instead of singing!! I quickly went outside to take care of the matter.
Prayer Support
We ask for your prayers as we continue to work at the Chimala Mission. It is quite a big job and your prayers of support are much needed. Also, we are in need of more missionaries to come and work. We are in need of some 'farm hands' to help out the cattle project (more info later) with Don Logsdon. We also need mission evangelists, medical professionals, teachers, etc. We would LOVE for you to come on a short-term or long-term basis. Please, contact us if you are interested.
Chad
If you would like to see the report, complete with pictures, click here.