December 28 – January 4: Tanzania

Ministry in Tanzania is tough. We’ve been to Tanzania several times before and its always been tough.

Tanzania is primarily a Muslim country, at least by name. The Muslim prayers and sermons are prayed/spoken over the speaker system for the whole country to hear them. Tanzania is also paralyzed by witchcraft. Many people believe and go to witch doctors and believe that curses have power over them.

Somehow, every time we go to Tanzania, the group of missionaries with us feels sick and tired. They struggle to wake-up in the morning. They struggle to stay awake during the day. They don’t have energy to do the work that needs to be done. They can’t stay awake during our evening devotional time together. Somehow, everyone in the group feels week.

Language is another stumbling block in Musoma, Tanzania. It is very rare to find someone in Musoma, Tanzania that speaks English. Primary schools in Tanzania don’t teach English and most people don’t make it to Secondary school. Of all the deacons in the Tanzania church, only one knew English well enough to translate and he was out of town the entire time we were in Tanzania except for the last few days. When he came back, he had his fiancée with him and was pretty busy with her.

But somehow, He “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20) Some examples:

• On the 29th, we planned to go and do visitations/market preaching around the church compound, but we didn’t have anyone who could translate for us. We prayed and waited at the entrance of one of the homes in the church compound. All of a sudden a very young boy shows up and starts speaking close to perfect English with us. He mentioned that he had just come to greet Bishop Paul and us. His mom used to teach at the school that we used to operate in Tanzania. We asked if he was free for the day and he said that he was. God had answered our prayers! We collected the deacons, prayed and headed out for visitation/market preaching.
• On the same day, shortly after we began the visitation/market preaching, a teenage boy began speaking to us in perfect English. We asked him who he was and from where he recognized us. He said that he was a deacon at the church. We asked him to join us for a day of visitation/market preaching and he agreed. We split into two groups, one with they young boy and the other with the teenage boy. We spent the day doing visitations/market preaching and returned back to the church with little hope that there was much fruit because people were pretty resistant. When we arrived, we told Bishop Paul about the teenage boy that we met. Bishop Paul told us that there was no such deacon in the Tanzania church and we never saw either of the boys again. Only God knows who they were. God must have arranged for them to meet us and freed them to go with us!
• Shortly after we returned from the visitations, one of the boys that we had visited came and brought two of his friends with him to the church. We spent sometime speaking with us. He and one of his friends came and spent New Year’s Eve with us in overnight prayers. He and his friend stopped by the church every other day thereafter. His friend also brought his family member to the hospital.
• One of the visitations that we did on the same day was to a Muslim family. We visited a widow, her children, and her mother. Her brother showed up shortly into the visit. She knew a little bit of English. Her brother knew a little bit of Arabic. The fact that he knew Arabic scared us at first because it meant that he was probably actively involved in Mosque activities and may even have some Middle Eastern background. We spoke with them for a while first to get to know them and their family, then we asked if we could share a message from the Gospel with them. They hesitantly agreed, but the brother indicated he had to leave because he had to be at work shortly. We said our goodbyes to him and shared the Gospel message with the rest of the family. We invited them to the church and prayed for them. We had little hope that the message we spoke had any impact because the grandmother began to joke about her daughter finding a husband before joining any church and if she finds a husband at the church then she could convert. Little did we knew … the next day the brother came to the church and invited us to his home to share the Gospel there, the widow came to the hospital, was treated, and visited with us…
• On the 2nd, we planned to go visit in one of the areas that has church members, but is a little distant. It was the only area, we still had not visited during our time in Tanzania. Things were busy in the church compound as we were trying to finish all the details related to the Coptic Medical Center and the Doctor’s apartment in preparation for our departure. Everyone was working around the compound, but we knew that God wanted us to go visit the area. Once again, we prayed for a translator. The deacon that was suppose to come first thing in the morning to translate for us still had not shown up at 4:00 PM. Around 4:15 a young man who finished secondary school and knew English perfectly well walked into the church. He was a church member, but not a deacon, and we were not expecting him. We asked him, if he could spend some time with us visiting the area we still had not visited. He gladly agreed. We drove to the area hoping to meet up with some of the church members. We knocked on one door and no one was home. We went to another home and the owner said that the members in the area did not have a fellowship meeting that day and were not prepared to meet with us. At that point, we weren’t sure what to do. We stopped and prayed and asked God what He wanted us to do. We knew he had sent us the translator for a purpose, but now, we needed to understand what that purpose was. After our time of prayer, the translator suggested we go to the market and preach there. We arrived at the market to find approximately 25 men sitting around talking and joking. We joined them and asked if we could introduce ourselves and share the Gospel with them. They agreed. While we were sharing the Gospel with them, the group continued to grow. By the end of our sharing there was approximately 75 men there. They were engaged and had a lot of educated questions for us, some of which caught us by surprise (Why do you worship on Sunday? How do we know you don’t worship Sunday? The Bible says, if our eyes cause us to sin, we should pluck them out, should we really pluck our eyes out?). We spent at least an hour, if not more, with them. We answered their questions and invited to come and visit the church and medical center. Some of the men followed us to the car and continued to ask us questions. After the tough questions and because of the distance (about one hour walking), we weren’t confident that anyone would come. The next morning 4 of the men had walked more than hour to come and visit us at the church.

These are just two of the days we spent in Tanzania. We saw God do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20) each and every day in Kenya and Tanzania. “…To Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20).

I hope to share with you how He worked “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20) in our own lives sometime in the near future.