Hey everybody! We had a good day in Tanzania today.
On the bright side, I only woke up 45 minutes before alarm this morning. (This is better than the 2 hours yesterday). Needless to say we are beginning to conquer jet lag. After a delicious breakfast of Mandazi (sweet rolls) and assorted fruit we headed to the church in Tarime where they described to us a ministry that the church does called Our Fathers House.
Our Fathers House is a ministry that works with street kids. One of the things we will be doing in Tarime is a youth program for these kids. The ministry started almost immediately after the church was built in 2012 when the church leaders noticed that street kids would sleep in front of the church. These street kids have usually left their home because there home life wasn't very good. The main goal of Our Fathers House is to council the kids and the families that they came from to try to get the kids back into their homes and off the street. In this year alone Our Father's house has successfully gotten 9 children back into their homes. We got to meet some of the children and talk with them through a translator (we mostly talked about their favorite futball players). I was really inspired by how much these church leaders care about these kids. After all of this we headed back to our house for delicious PB&J sandwiches.
After lunch we split into two teams: 5 people worked on a program to teach some English to the street kids. The other five worked to practice building stoves and figure out which ones work the best. I was part of the stove team.
The main goal with the stoves today was to build a fully working brick stove and get some feedback from the women. We used mud to seal the bricks and we made a really good stove! The women seamed to like the design but we are going to keep trying to improve it to their needs.
Today we really started getting moving, which is really exciting! Tomorrow we officially start the children's program, stove teaching, and English skills, so we will be even more busy. Looking forward to the rest of the trip!
John Ragland
Hello!
Our team has been fast at work, and we are ready to get this show on the road! No, I really mean it; we were so excited for our skits tomorrow we acted out the three little pigs to the street kids when they asked for a story! As John said, we have so much to do tomorrow. We have an incredibly talented team, and I can't wait to see them grow.
With much love and prayers for our family back home,
2017 Tanzania Team
Did you know I've been pronouncing Tanzania wrong this whole time? You might be too!
Incorrect: Tan-zan-nee-uh
Correct: Tan-zahn-niuh
Who knew?!