What the heck is a blog?
But now... on to more important stuff.
Mission Trip to Tanzania
Our Mission Trip to Tanzania is underway. Pastor Laura, Mark, Al and Andrea are on their way and we have an email from them that they sent to us during their layover in Amsterdam. Here it is:
We had a good flight from MSP to
Amsterdam...nice and smooth. We have a three hour layover here
before our flight leaves for Arusha, Tanzania. The three of us from
Mt Olive met Andrea [redacted], from Globe University, at MSP airport,
and all boarded and left on time at 3:15 PM CT. It is now 7 AM
Amsterdam time. We are all a little tired, but excited that we are
on our way to Tanzania! We have about 9 hours of flight time left
today and plan to arrive around 9 PM in Arusha.
Attached is a picture of Al, Pastor Laura and I in front of Al's house. Hope to have more exciting pictures, such as Al riding a giraffe, later. Rich drove us to the airport....Thanks Rich!
Mark
Attached is a picture of Al, Pastor Laura and I in front of Al's house. Hope to have more exciting pictures, such as Al riding a giraffe, later. Rich drove us to the airport....Thanks Rich!
Mark
You may recall that we sent an earlier mission trip to Tanzania about 4 years ago, in November of 2007. That trip was at the request of Bishop Sima (of the Central Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania), he asked us to do a Technology Assessment of several locations within the Diocese and advise him on which were capable of accepting and using technology and which were not.
Since then, the central government of Tanzania has asked the Lutheran Church to create a University in or around Singida (pronounced Sin-gee'-da ). To do this Bishop Sima (pronounced See'-ma) is leaning on our Technology Assessment rather heavily and planning to put it in the nearby town of Kiomboi expanding the seminary that is already there. Kiomboi (pronounced Key'-o-em-boy' ) was one of the places we visited and evaluated in our earlier mission trip, and it is the best place to place advanced technology.
By 'advanced technology' we mean computers and networks. We have been working with a company in Tanzania to string cables to bring the internet to Kiomboi, and we are purchasing wireless routers and 20 laptops that will connect to the internet and from there, connect to the world. The computers are purchased from a company in Arusha, a large city to the north of Singida and Kiomboi. They will be state of the art as of 2011, will run Windows 7 and have Microsoft Office 2010 installed.
Our missionaries will have some fun while there too. They will visit the game park of the Ngorongoro Crater (pronounced en-gor'-o-en-gor'-o ), a truly breathtaking experience. And they will worship this Sunday with our sister congregation in Kijota as well. I've included a picture I took during the church service on our 2007 trip. It too is a joyful, wonderful and awesome experience.Oh, I should correct myself, some of those 20 computers are meant for the Vivian Gulleen School for Girls in Kijota.
I will post more here as we recieve more dispatches from Tanzania. Check back often!
Larry
PS: Here are some links to some pictures of our last trip to Tanzania in November of 2007. We (Pastor Peter, Mark, Al and Larry (your ink-stained wretch)) went at the Synod's and Bishop Sima's request to do a technology assessment of many places within the Central Diocese, centered in Singida.
People
Tarangiri
Ngorongoro
Lake Malawi
Countryside
