Makamira / Rivertrees

Today, Sunday, we had a great service at Makamira. Brother Noah Msuya had asked me to have Glen come and teach for them on his last Sunday here. So we went up the mountain again to worship with the wonderful brethren there.


It was a very nice service with everything in good order. The singing today was particularly good. Glen taught on Angels in the Gospel and did a wonderful job.

Glen teaching at Makamira

After services we went and had lunch at Rivertrees - a favourite of Anne and mine. We had a wonderful lunch and then had a walk amongst the trees.

Good friends

Keith and Glen

River trees

Two Beautiful Ladies - note the African made outfits!

The dinning room

Down by the river

Rivertrees

We had a wonderful day together - firstly worshipping our God, then enjoying His creation.

Highlights from Ephesians.

Yesterday we had a full day seminar (meeting) at Nkoaranga, which was the last of the meetings that had been organised for Glen Osburn on this trip.

The preacher there, Aminieli Mbise, had told Glen that he wanted Glen to preach on, "Ephesians, Ephesians, Ephesians". So that was what Glen did!

Glen and Mbise at work!

In his first session, Glen taught on Ephesians the 3rd Chapter and did a great job. The way it works here, we have a translator for all our teaching - as we cannot speak Swahili. Mbise did a wonderful job keeping up with Glen and the brethren were appreciative of his work.

After Glen had finished his first talk there followed a lively Q&A session, where the brothers asked Glen some great questions.

Glen preaching

For his second session, Glen preached on Ephesians Chapter four - dealing firstly with the 7 "ones". He ten moved on to the structure of the church starting with the apostles, prophets, then the evangelist, pastors and teaches. Again this was warmly received.

We then stopped for a short lunch break. The brethren supplied us with a bottle of soda and a bread roll. Previously they had the women cook for these meetings, but they found that the woman missed out on the teaching, so this is their solution - it works really well.

After lunch it was my turn and I taught on the Bible being the word of God, using Hebrews 1:1-2 as a basis. I was told to keep it short, so they received a "whistle stop" lesson.

It was a great day and the brethren there really showed their appreciation for our coming up the mountain. They are very good people and they LOVE Glen and Reba.

Back at Dakawa Teacher's College

The reason Allen and I traveled all the way to Morogoro was to visit the Christians studying at a Teacher's college about an hour to the north of the town.  I had first visited them in August and since then I had wanted to come and encourage them once again.
To see the students we first have to get permission from the staff at the college. While they are nice people, it has been a trial getting through to them and  working this trip out. But we managed it and this morning Allen and I have a good visit with our brethren.
After signing in at the first gate, signing in at the second gate we were then directed to the Admin. block where Mr. Milton was waiting for us. He was in a meeting so he asked us to wait - in the mean time some of the students came up and greeted us.  We managed to get through everything the faculty asked us to do and we were able to visit with our dear brethren.
We had a very good study that was followed but questions and then general discussion. I taught on how the church is the original - all others that have come after it are copies. While copies might look good, they will not be as good as the original. They made us feel very welcome and asked us to come again.  We agreed and plan to go back tomorrow and then again meet with them on Sunday.
Please pray for these young Christians.

Gospel Meeting

Last Friday we had a wonderful meeting at the Nkoaranga church of Christ. The brethren there invited me to speak for them at an all day meeting. Of course I was very happy to do that and I arranged to speak for them on the topic of Spiritual Gifts.

There are a great number of Pentecostal churches in that area so the brethren were very interested to study on what the Bible teaches on this topic.

Harold was translating for the day

I started by teaching on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Most people here think that Spiritual Gifts are all there is about the Holy Spirit. I then went on to teach about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, speakingy in tongues and how spiritual gifts have passed.

After each of the four sessions we had a Q&A time. The brothers came up with some very good questions and through these questions I was able to deal with a numbers of issues I had not had time to deal with in the lessons.

Some of the brethren gathered

Half way through the day, after the second session, the sisters fed us a good lunch. Previously, at other times, they had cooked up a big lunch for these days. But this time they got some sodas for everyone and some bread buns for us to eat. These were totally sufficient and most importantly of all, it meant that the sisters were able to be in each session, rather then being away cooking.

We finished the day off in a wonderful way. After we had finished and the closing pray said, brother Mbise, the preacher there, asked a young man to stand up and speak. This young man, Bernard said he loved the Lord and wanted to be a Christian and wanted to be baptized, but later. One of the brothers asked him why later. The answer was so sweet. Bernard said that the preacher (me) was too tired. So it could be done later so I could get straight home. I assured him and everyone I was NOT too tired to assist a new soul into the kingdom. So we when right out to the truck to go down to the river. Once there Brother Mbise baptized him.

Mbise baptising brother Bernard

Bernard is in the stripes

What a wonderful way to finish the day.

Location:Nkoaranga Tanzania

Sunday at Muriet - what a day!

Anne had been looking forward to last Sunday for a long time.

Solomon and his wife

We had been asked to go to Muriet, in the southern part of Arusha, for worship. This was going to be the first time we had been with this congregation.

The new church building (you can just see the pulpit)

This work was started by a brother, Solomon, from the Philips congregation in Arusha. Solomon is a Maasai man and he went to this village to visit his relatives and told them about the Lord's church. Because of his sharing of the gospel a small church has been started. Solomon and his family have been traveling there each Sunday for worship and last Sunday that had wanted us to come and help them.


Solomon had rented a partially finished house for the church to meet in, they had been meeting there for some weeks. Unfortunately the situation of the owner changed just last week so he had to "swap" houses. The church needed to move out of his new house and move into his old house the other side of the village.

When we arrived on Sunday we were told they had expected many more people, but they had not been able to contact them to tell them about the change of meeting place. We started with about 10 people (including the land lord) which was very good considering.

Solomon told me that they had song books but the man who had looked after them had disappears, so he had photo copied some pages from a song book and they used those. I really appreciate the attitude of this man.

We had a very good song service and by the time I got up to preach we had a full building!  I taught on the difference between the Lord's church and denominations - and how to enter His church and be saved. While Solomon had been preaching for a number of weeks and he has had good numbers present, he has not been able to convert any yet.

Well, we had a very nice service and everybody seemed happy with the new location for worship. We had just said goodbye, Anne and I had loaded Solomon's kids into the car to take them home (they live near us), and I was backing the truck out.

It was then the wheels fell off - literally! The left ball joint gave out and the car was resting on the ground. It was very fortunate that it happened then, I hate to think what it would have been like at highway speeds.

We had to leave the truck overnight - the landlord said he would guard it for us, and today (Monday) I went back with my mechanic to get it fixed.

Please pray for this new work.