hoorayyy!

It has felt a bit like Christmas this week .... look what arrived!



The road/weather situation has thankfully improved somewhat but this plane - a Caravan 208 - had to come for servicing/new pilot training anyway and the timing worked beautifully in our favour!

Having not seen the contents of these boxes since the end of October it was quite a treat unwrapping the contents of our worldly goods and chattels! Now our bungalow feels like home... its amazing what a few bits 'n' bobs can do eh! Sadly our large and small lasagne, pie and a couple of pyrex dishes didn't survive some part of the journey...not sure I could find the ingredients for Jez's beloved cheesecakes anyway (fresh pineapples, mango, oranges and bananas are a healthier alternative eh!); i was a tad sad to lose a special Marheineke lemon meringue pie dish tho, but it's only a bit of 'stuff,' right?! Interestingly the only goods not to have arrived was the Christmas stuff! Maybe it will turn up one day ...



At home in our living room

We've both had more meetings this week.... to organise closure of the Programme, redistribution of the assets and implement a workable plan, write out job descriptions/proposals, lead a Bible study in the splendid book of James, plan a closing/thanksgiving party for the end of May, for a couple of hundred folk, pastoral times.....


Jez leading one of many meetings

Shopping expedition....


Outside, hunting replacement non-breakables! cooking pot anyone?!


and inside the best stocked 'proper' shop in town - it even has some European foods!


Finally, although the rainy season has been awful for some it is also a blessing to many more: crops need rain, there's malnurishment, even starvation from lack of food ... the countryside looks lush in the glorious. We'll leave you for another week with this picture, taken by one of our pilots on one of our regular medical safaris last week - more another time.

Kwa heri xxx

A whole month!

Can you believe it’s exactly 5 months since we sailed from Sweden to the UK and a whole (fabulous) month since we arrived!


Jez: a year ago today – note the frozen sea, beginning to thaw!


View from our flat this time last year


Jez today, just outside the airfield...


View from our house today!

As many of you may know we’ve recently joined thousands in praying for MAF worldwide. We had prayer requests from over 44 different operating locations/ministries ... it was an amazing phenomenon asking the staff here to stop praying – planes were due into the hanger and would have drowned us out!


Carina with translator giving a word of encouragement to some of the staff gathered to pray


One of the groups, eagerly praying in the hanger

Ants. I just reheated some home made (by our lovely mama Ruth, after all who’s Heinz) carrot soup in the microwave .. and noticed half a dozen ants march out, totally unscathed! They get everywhere: fresh milk from the local cow has to be boiled for 2 mins and in the time it took to be on the boil in a saucepan (and not all over the cooker) these wee beasties had crawled into the newly washed milk jug!



We're encouraged to soak and sterilise most fresh foods we eat (rats run over foodstuffs at the market, pee'ing merrily as they go!) and before they were dry it seemed like a million legs marched out of the bowl! Ants... i could write a sermon on ‘em! Thankfully no large 8 legged horrors have been spotted, nor scorpions or any further snakes: thank you if you’ve prayed!

Ants might not be welcome visitors (i think they’re resident anyway!) but we have had a number who are including (a young, now ex) F-16 fighter jet pilot, en route to consider the work in South Sudan and an ex-Formula One motor racing engineer with Le Mans and Jaguar, who very kindly drove 90 minutes across town to collect our belongings which had survived the North Sea, arriving safely from Sweden: hooray! His expert skills enabled him to navigate awful quagmire/floodwaters but took 7 hours to drive that same journey back, the minibus occasionally floating it would seem! So our “worldly goods” remain stranded – but thankfully dry – in Dar es Salaam until the damaged roads/bridges are repaired; we’ve certainly been able to see first-hand just how vital MAF’s aircraft are out here, particularly in the rainy season. Meanwhile we continue to make do/borrow stuff for a little while longer, tho we hear on the grapevine that we might expect our things very soon!


Flooding in Dar .. one doesn't normally associate floods with Africa!

The rainy season is coming to an end as we approach the dry, colder weather...!

Thanks for reading and may God bless you in your part of the world :o)

pictures...

Either we are adapting to the heat or the weather is cooling down at the end of this wet season: December-May.

Amongst other things we attended a 5 hour long funeral service for Tanzania’s loved and revered Bishop,we've organised MAF's International prayer day, had departmental meetings with each of the managers in order to write out plans of actions: you know how without them Jez is ‘listless’ :o)

We thought we’d give you a little pictoral tour of our home and work....



Jez's office in the hanger


View from Jez's office


Office at home...and guest bed


Our bedroom


The kitchen (big walk in larder beyond curtain)


Living room


Discovered a new instrument .. in our back porch


Back porch into garden


Mama Ruth in our back garden

Thanks for taking a tour with us... you're still welcome to come and have a visit in person!
Have a good week - see you next weekend when we shall have been here a whole month!

Kwa heri
xx

Go… the people of South Sudan need you.

I was meeting with Hakili, MAF’s auditor, discussing the re-structuring of MAF in Tanzania and the reasons for it. Hakili has been our auditor for 5 years and was very happy for MAF to have served in his country for over 50 years. Being new to MAF and also Tanzania I was choosing my words carefully, as I certainly didn’t want to create any cultural bloopers in my first week! During our discussions however, Hakili expressed the opinion: “Go, the people of South Sudan need you, we have enough in Tanzania, the people in South Sudan are suffering terribly, they need you.”

As I reflected afterwards, this generosity of spirit shocked and challenged me. I was reminded of Paul’s letter to the Philippians 4:12 “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Tanzania could hardly be described as a rich country but I was encouraged by my brother’s warm and generous spirit to his neighbours in the newly birthed country north of Tanzania.

This was one moment in my first week in the job flying solo; all the staff have been patient, and helpful settling us in both to our new home here Dodoma and the work. You have probably read elsewhere the programme has recently gone through a consultation process to evaluate and re-focus its mission to the tribes-people in the distant and hard-to-get-to parts of Tanzania. Although reducing its presence in Tanzania MAF will continue with medical safaris and providing transportation services to pastors and evangelists in these areas.

I can see that the role is certainly going to be challenging with 83 staff and millions of pounds worth of assets to re-shape so that vital resources can be re-directed to those parts of Africa that are in crisis and need MAF in particular. I took hope in the fact that a Tanzanian was convinced that there were people in other parts of the world who also needed to know that Jesus is coming….my prayer is that Christians in Europe would also adopt that same conviction… whatever their circumstances.


Jez working in the 'home' office/guest room


Carina sat in our 'conservatory'