August 2010
Our team is back, safe and sound, with stories of the travel, restaurants and beaches that would make you fall on the floor laughing. No matter how long we live here, the lack of personal space issues will never cease to amaze us. Movies on buses are not ever a good idea. The boys rented motorbikes and not only got lost but also ran out of gas. Good times were had by all!
The team did not come home with a Golden Dhow tucked in one of the suitcases. You probably guessed that since it’s taken me more than a week to get this update out to you! It would have been fun to win, but we’re not particularly surprised. The fact that Nipe Jibu is good enough to be accepted for showing by an International Film Festival, and that it got really great reviews despite the clearly Christian content, is all we could hope for. We’ve been saying all along that the point was not to win awards but rather to bring a message to those who need it. Now we’re living up to our words, and are more than satisfied knowing that there are people all across East Africa who will see the film and have their lives changed by its message. This weekend we’ll be doing our first village showing out in Maasailand, and over the months ahead we’re hoping we’ll be able to do many more showings in remote areas.
Each showing of Nipe Jibu at ZIFF had a larger audience than the last, and you’ll notice that the bit of the audience you can see in the picture are mostly wearing head scarves. The words on the big screen say “Put your trust in God” and being able to show that message on the Muslim Island of Zanzibar was an opportunity we’re amazed to have had.
We know that many of you were rooting for the film and for Pamoja, and we thank you for that! There’s always our next film… 
July 2010
This past Sunday was the World Premiere of our musical, Nipe Jibu! Most of the team from here traveled to the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania for a week surrounding the launch of this great movie, and arrived back on Wednesday evening with great stories and reports. This project has been in the works for the past two and a half years, and to see it finally on the big screen was very satisfying.
The Saturday night showing had the usual African complications, including the holes for the screen still being dug when the film was supposed to be starting. Our team handled the situation with grace and poise and impressed those who were watching. Even with the complications they experienced, the film spoke its intended message and was honoured to be scheduled for two further showings throughout the week.
The Director of the Festival was at the screening, as were a number of other Festival organizers and representatives of other Film Festivals from around the world. During a gala event on Monday afternoon the Director of the Festival said that the thing he was most proud of at this year’s Festival was Nipe Jibu! We have already received requests from a Film Festival in Italy and another in Spain to submit the film for consideration. The message of the movie is designed for Africa, but that by no means limits it to here.
Last Friday, only one day before the screening, we found out that the Festival had allowed that the movie could in fact stand in competition! The rules state that the director must be African (Jeremy’s sister Nadine was the director) but they decided that a movie filmed entirely in Tanzania with an entirely African cast in an African language was more important than the nationality of the director. We are so excited about this! The awards ceremony will be held tomorrow night, and five of our team members will be present for that event. We, of course, are thrilled about the possibility of the movie winning awards and getting a wider audience than we expected to reach. Although the primary purpose of the film isn’t to win awards or travel the world, both are great perks that will allow us to show the movie in places we might not have been welcome otherwise. The message of Hope and Freedom is clear, and we want as many people to hear it as possible.
June 2010
Four year old Jacob is currently having the time of his life out in Maasailand without any parental supervision!
We heard that last night he got to sleep in a tent with Auntie Kim (who is in Maasailand without her husband due to the same set of circumstances) and then early this morning crawled into Davin’s sleeping bag to hang out with him. Davin doesn’t sleep in tents, simply on a tarp out under the stars, so the two of them watched the sun rise and the cows being led out to pasture. It was quite enjoyable until Jacob discovered the rather large bug in Davin’s sleeping bag,
at which point he created quite a scene and the whole group got up for the day. It isn’t bothering him a bit that he’s in Maasailand with five Pamoja folks, none of whom have the same last name as him. That’s probably one of those signs that he’s growing up.
Here’s the story that leads up to Jacob being on this adventure…
When we returned from Canada last fall, Jacob started Kindergarten at a fabulous little British run school that is just 11 km away. It takes us at least twenty minutes to get there, more when it’s been raining, just because of the poor roads between home and school. He goes five mornings a week, and absolutely loves it. There are only about thirty kids in the entire school, spread across five grades.There are five kids in his class – one is Swahili Tanzanian, one is White Tanzanian, one is Danish, one is half Swedish and half British, and Jacob. It’s a great mix of cultures and
languages, and Jacob is eager to go every day.
The cost of operating a vehicle in Africa is quite high, mostly because of repairs and maintenance from bumping around on these crummy roads all the time. Last Spring we did the math and knew that it was going to cost us almost twenty five dollars a day to shuttle him back and forth to school in the big Nissan truck, which was more than the tuition to attend the school. In a stroke of cunning brilliance on Jeremy’s part and a moment of weakness on mine, Jeremy talked me in to him getting a motorbike so he could use that to do the school run. We bought fancy matching helmets for Jeremy and Jacob when we were in Canada last summer, ordered full body armour to come in with one of our short term volunteers, and thanks to our home church Jeremy is now the proud owner of “the bike”.
Our home church in Waterloo, Ontario (WPA) raised the entire amount that we needed to purchase a ‘92 Honda CRM 250, register it properly in Tanzania (it hadn’t been properly registered for seven years so we had to pay all the back taxes and registration fees) and get the road licence. We’re still working on getting all the paperwork in order, a challenging task at any time here, but we’re hopeful that the new ownership is even now waiting for us to pick it up from the Motor Vehicle Licensing Office.
Jeremy has been like a little kid since we bought the bike, looking for any excuse he can find to take it out for a spin, including special trips to get fuel or driving himself to church. We had friends down for dinner the night Jeremy arrived home with bike and they asked if perhaps he was having his mid-life crisis just a little early?? For his part, Jacob is now the coolest kid at school, arriving each morning riding in front of his daddy and needing to find somewhere safe to store his helmet at school. He loves the pikipiki (the Swahili word for motorcycle) with a
crazy abandon and can barely get through breakfast each morning without having to go and check on his helmet. He’s a fantastic passenger, obeying Daddy immediately when given instructions and even taking his first wipe-out in the sand as an adventure. Jeremy can take Jacob to school on the bike for less than five dollars a day which is much, much more reasonable and much, much more exciting than Mommy taking him in the truck.
Yesterday a group from Pamoja headed out to Maasailand for a few days. Three new volunteers have arrived from the States over the last few weeks and they wanted to head out and experience Maasailand early on in their stay here. With Kim Mills and Davin in the truck to host the volunteers, and little Jacob in the very back to provide a running commentary all the way out, the truck with all the supplies left around eight thirty in the morning.
Jeremy and Jacob Mills, who also bought a motorbike at the same time as Jeremy did, had decided to ride their bikes out and back. The first stop on their trip was to get fuel, approximately 100 metres from the gate of the Pamoja property. While sitting at the pump, it appears that the carburetor on Jacob’s bike did something it wasn’t supposed to, and fuel began to pour out of the bike. They pushed it back to Pamoja, worked on it for a while, finally admitted defeat, and phoned the folks in the truck and asked how they felt about having a four year old for the next few days. Since they were already two hours in to the trip, they decided that it would be more fun to have Jacob along than to turn around and retrace their steps. I hope they still believe that when they get home tomorrow!
Life in Tanzania is an ongoing adventure. Ministry, Life, Community are all tied up in one crazy package. Jacob, Natasha, and Paul are growing up surrounded by the greatest set of experiences and people that we could imagine and both of us feel like we’re still in the right place at the right time and making progress on many fronts. Thank you all for your love, prayers, and support.
April 2010
We have been getting rain like crazy these last few weeks, which is nothing short of amazing since we’re technically still in the hot, dry season. To this mountain/coastal girl, you can never get too much rain, so I have been loving every drop that has fallen. The farmers are lamenting the drowned crops and the vegetables that are being eaten by the bugs. For us the rain means green grass, flowers, and running around with buckets every time the sky opens up. We collect the rainwater and use it as drinking water for the kids (and when I say “we” what I mostly mean is my mother-in-law. She is fabulous about noticing the rain, remembering the buckets, getting the guys to haul it to the barrels, all those details!). The ground water here in Arusha is extremely high in fluoride for some reason and the normal filter systems do not filter that out. Too much fluoride causes black spots on kid’s teeth although it is perfectly fine for adults. So, we filter the tap water for us to drink and filter the rain water for the kids.
The other thing the rain does is drive all the ants inside. Hip hip hooray. We have been swarmed with ants lately. They’re just the little sugar ants, not ones that bite or anything, just annoying and everywhere. They’ve been mostly in the kitchen for obvious reasons, but also in the bathroom. I’ve been surprised at what they prefer to eat – margarine is their absolute favourite – as well as what they entirely ignore – bowls that had pureed fruit in them for example.
The other night, on my way to bed, I checked on baby Paul to make sure he had his blankets on and was all settled. As I leaned over the crib to check on him I discovered that his entire bed was crawling with ants! They were in his bedding, in his clothes, even inside his soother! I pulled him out of his bed and his clothes while Jeremy stripped the bedding and proceeded to smush all the ants. While I was still trying to come up with a great idea for the rest of the night, Jeremy very calmly went and got bowls and water and set to work. Each leg of the crib went in to a bowl, each bowl was filled with water. Paul is now sleeping in a crib with its very own moat! I would never have come up with such a fantastic solution. Hooray for Daddy!
I just wanted to share that story, to give you a glimpse of day to day life here in Tanzania. I hope it brought you a smile.
March 2010
Twenty years ago, when Jeremy’s family was rather unceremoniously booted out of what was then Zaire (now DR Congo), they found themselves in an odd situation. They had only been in Africa for eight months and they knew that their time here was not finished.
Yet the country they’d come to minister in had closed every possible door. Instead of returning to Canada, they decided to wait in Nairobi, Kenya, making themselves useful until God showed them what the next step was. They did more than just fill their days, more than just put in time. They saw the need for resource materials, for solid teachings, for books and magazines in the local language and they began to fill the need. They began learning Swahili and Sig began to outline possible writings that would be useful and culturally significant. After eight months in Nairobi, their future was a little clearer, and the work in Tanzania which would eventually come to be known as Pamoja Ministries began.
During their time in Nairobi, Jeremy’s family met a man named Ralph Mahoney who was then head of an organization called World MAP. He was busy creating a reference book that included a mix of his own writings and that of others, designed for uneducated pastors in third world countries and intended to be distributed free of charge.
While in Nairobi, Sig had written a simple, topical concordance for pastors to use when preparing a sermon. If a pastor wanted to preach on love one week, he could use Sig’s concordance to find six verses in the Bible that talked about “love”. Perhaps another week he would want to talk on forgiveness, so he could look up that key word and find direction to related verses. This concordance was included in Ralph Mahoney’s book “The Shepherd’s Staff” and translated in to multiple languages for distribution around the world. The simplicity and accessibility of this book has made it hugely popular among church leaders.
20 years ago, Sig & Joy became the distributors for the English and Swahili copies of The Shepherd’s Staff book.
Last year we received our first shipment of French and Portuguese copies of this book and are now able to handle requests for copies in those languages as well. A few weeks back Kim and I made a trip up to Nairobi to mail over 450 copies of The Shepherd’s Staff all over Kenya. There are another 250 being mailed out to Kenya at the end of the month to each graduate of a Bible school. Last week we sent sixty across Tanzania. For twenty years these books have been distributed across this region by Pamoja Ministries, yet the need and demand is as high as ever. In this day and age of media, of movies and DVDs and music artists, the written word continues to have a high value to people, and we continually receive letters of thanks telling us what a difference this incredible, free, ministry tool has made.
Since Pamoja began distributing the book in East Africa for World MAP, over 50,000 copies have been given out free to church leaders. The only requirement is that a person teaches or preaches to twenty or more once a week.
Jeremy recently watched Invictus at the Arusha Cinemas, a movie about the South African rugby team who took on the world and won the World Cup. During the final match, the cameras pan the crowd and the announcer says something about the crowd having sixty thousand screaming fans out to watch. For us, this is an incredible way to visualize how many pastors and leaders have been directly impacted by this one part of the work Pamoja is involved in, each one of them in turn impacting at least twenty others – some many more. The numbers are huge, but in actually seeing that scene in a movie, it was hard to miss the impact and breadth of the work we’re doing across Africa.
The literature aspect of Pamoja continues to be the backbone of the ministry, as important if not as glamorous as much of the other work going on here.
Pamoja is an exciting place these days. We’re in the last few weeks before completing the movie Nipe Jibu. We’ve got new ISOM schools starting and we’re translating new material to extend the curriculum. We are accelerating the literature ministy, building a distribution network for the great music of the Sowers Group and MAPED, and we’re planning for a bright future. But we need your help.
Come join us! Let me highlight a few roles we need filled: We need a Facilities & Maintenance Manager, a Graphic Designer, a Media Manager, a Record Label Manager, and a Tour Manager. That’s just a taste. We are looking for people in many different areas. Pamoja is growing, and we know that God is putting out the call for people to join us. This is His vision and His timing. You can be a part of it.
Help us to connect. As Pamoja grows, we need to connect with new people and churches, and the best connections possible are created when people who believe in what we’re doing advocate for us to their friends, churches and connections. So many of you have invested yourselves in this ministry, and we’re grateful to you.
Pray for us – our family, our health, our team, our vehicles, our equipment, and our ministry.
Thank you, each and every one of you, for your partnership, friendship, and prayers. You are the reason we are able to be here, fulfilling our purpose in life. We’re happy to be here discipling cultures through media, day by day seeing the possibilities multiply, hearing the reports of changed lives come in, and understanding the reality of the opportunity we have to make a difference on this continent.
February 2010
For the past two years, the extended Feser family (us, Jeremy’s parents and his sister, along with whoever else happens to be part of the Pamoja Family at the time) have celebrated Christmas and New Years at the outdoor pool of a nearby resort.
This time of year is our summer season, and even here in Arusha the temperatures can be in the low thirties during the day. We’re blessed to be high enough in the mountains that the nights get cool even in the summer (it was down to 11C the other night) and there continues to be beautiful rain without humidity. Our kids adore nothing more than heading out in the rain to play and run and splash and slowly strip down until they’re in their knickers. This exact part of Africa is particularly beautiful and pleasant weather wise.
The capital city of Dar es Salaam is located about five hundred km from where we live in Arusha, and right at sea level. The humidity runs around seventy percent and the overnight temperatures are often in the mid-twenties. It was so hot while Jeremy and the others were there at the end of December for The Sowers Group Tour that there were actual salt crystals left on their clothing from the vast amounts of sweat they produced. Some wondered why I didn’t go down with the kids and just hang out with everybody. This is your answer! Even for me it was too hot to be in Dar for no good reason, and Natasha in particular does not do well if she overheats. A cranky, hot two year old is not my idea of fun.
The concert series that was planned for The Sowers was yet another step in the process of learning how to be a record label in Africa. It was a money-losing endeavor, but we also had success where we weren’t expecting to. Jeremy and Jacob Mills had a chance to meet with a number of the biggest names in media in Tanzania as well as connect with a major East African cell phone company. There is now some possibility that future tours could be sponsored in part by that cell company (thank you JESUS). We expect the Dar Tour to become an annual event, along with other Tours around East Africa, and each one to bring hope to more and more people.
The Sowers have the talent and the message and we are God’s choice for getting them out in front of people. It’s powerful ministry. If any of you would like to help sponsor these tours (whether personally or through your business), there’s both a real need and a powerful payoff in terms of the impact to the Kingdom of God.
There was the usual chaos that accompanies new things one tries to do in Africa – the first thing that needed to be done upon arriving in Dar was to negotiate the cost of renting the building we’d already advertised a concert at. This had to be renegotiated again at the time of the event which adds a certain element of je ne sais quoi to the event.
Sound checks that were supposed to start at 4pm and didn’t start until 9pm. The all night Christmas Eve event that was supposed to be at the Stadium, but which had to be moved by the organizers to an open field four days before the event because they forgot it took three days to set up the rental stage. And the best part of all had to be Jeremy’s bed in the hotel room collapsing on Christmas night. Since it was Jeremy and Jacob Mills rooming together just
like they were back in ninth grade, he couldn’t be bothered to fix the bed and slept on the floor for the next three nights. Tanzanian hotels at their best!
Now a prayer request. There was one event that caught us totally unprepared, and we’d appreciate your ongoing prayers regarding the situation. We stumbled into a denominational feud by arranging to have a particular church choir open for the Sowers Group at a venue that belong to a different denomination with leadership that is not on speaking terms with each other (we didn’t know). It was extremely tense. Jeremy was summoned to the bishop’s office for over an hour, and we were actually forced by the leadership of the church to cancel the opening band five minutes before the concert was to start. After this was done that same leadership turned around and claimed they’d had no idea the choir had been invited. It sounds trivial, but the war between the churches drastically impacted the number of people we had attend the events and put the credibility of The Sowers on the line. News of the interruption to the event spread rapidly by SMS and one newspaper had it as their front page story. We told the choir that we’d been asked to have them leave. The leadership said they didn’t know the choir was there. Who’s telling the truth, and how are the choir members to judge? This issue has nothing to do with Pamoja or The Sowers, yet suddenly we were a part of a fifteen year old feud. Would you please pray that God would use our unintentional offense to bring reconciliation between these churches and leaders!
As we plan and prepare to release our movie this summer, we are opening ourselves up for much more of this sort of encounter. We can’t help but be stepping on the toes of the church with the message of our movie – the young man who plays the pastor in our movie has (gasp!) dread locks! And he wears blue jeans! And sneakers!
Our leading lady goes against the wishes of her elders (unheard of!) and chooses to follow God. The church in Tanzania is often trapped in very legalistic habits, which include suits and ties and following the norm to prove your salvation. Our goal is not to offend the church but rather to trigger discussions and thoughts about what Jesus really requires of someone, but obviously there will be many who challenge the grace and freedom we present. We would so so appreciate your prayers as we gear up on this project – that the church would be open and willing to hear the message, that we would bring hope for the future to the young generation, that we wouldn’t find ourselves on a battlefield with those who already believe. Being caught in the mess in Dar has given us a sample of what we may face in the months ahead. The plan is to launch the movie in July, so this whole year may be interesting! We’re thankful for your ongoing prayers and support as we venture on with this project.
Much love from our sunshiny corner of the world
December 2009
This morning I have been trying to sort through all the paperwork we brought back from Canada with us, and one of the big parts of that job is figuring out how many En-kata photobooks we sold while we were there. It appears that we sold just over a hundred books out of the trunk of our borrowed mini-van, which sounds a little shady I’ll admit, but that means Pamoja has another two thousand dollars or so to put towards building the school in Orbili. It’s significant, exciting, and the beginning of a whole lot more work for Jeremy!
Last week we had the two founders of MAPED here for all day meetings, and the basic design of the school has now been established. Another member of MAPED was in town at the same time to pick up children from his village who attend boarding school here in Arusha. It was a reminder of just why we’re doing this project – Isaac (who was visiting) is desperate for the chance to have a school nearby, enabling the children from his village to remain Maasai while still getting a high-level education. It’s a dream for these folks. We’re so, so excited that we can be a part of this. We often say that while there are things we can teach the Maasai there are many things they can teach us as well, one of which is the spirit and reality of community. Imagine, then, a culture that is so communal having to send their small children away for schooling. We’re talking about Kindergarten students, living in a city far from home that speaks a different language and has a totally different culture then what they’re used to. This school will help safeguard one of the fundamental components of the Maasai culture – community – and how exciting to be a part of that.
If you’d like more information about the En-kata project, you can check out the website at www.en-kata.com or just ask me and I’ll be glad to fill you in.
The stacks of paperwork haven’t gone anywhere while I’ve typed this, so it’s back to work for me. Have a fabulous week!
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October 2009
As any of you who talked to me during my pregnancy heard, I was totally convinced that we were going to have a baby girl. Imagine my surprise then when on August 9th I delivered a healthy baby boy. I didn’t have an ultrasound during this pregnancy – they are notoriously unreliable in Tanzania – but I trusted my gut instinct which had been right with both of my other pregnancies. It wasn’t that I had my heart set on a girl, I just thought it would be one.
Whoops! We are delighted to welcome Paul Jeremy Feser to our family. He’s a laid back little boy who is content to travel and be held by an endless stream of new people, who sleeps and eats like a trooper and is well loved by his older siblings. He was 9 lbs 3oz at birth and is already up over 12 lbs – another big, handsome Feser man is on the way!
When Paul was three weeks old we hit the road (again) and began the journey west. I made it as far as Thunder Bay in the van then took my mom up on her offer of a plane ticket the rest of the way for myself, Natasha and Paul. We flew to Calgary while Jeremy, Jacob and Davin followed in the van. The kids and I enjoyed three weeks of sleeping in the same bed at my parents place in BC but we did miss Jeremy since he was on the road for more than half of that time. Paul is now seven weeks old and we’ve turned around and are starting to make our way back east, with stops in Regina, Indian Head, Brandon, Winnipeg and Thunder Bay then on to the Kitchener/Waterloo area for the final few weeks.
Jeremy and Jacob will fly back to Vancouver for the last few days of our time in Canada and will leave from there for Tanzania on October 26th. Jeremy has an opportunity to speak at a church in Quesnel that final Sunday that we’re in Canada which is why he’s flying all the way back west just then. I will leave for Tanzania with Natasha and Paul (and our friend Davin who has been travelling with us this summer) from Toronto on October 27th. We will join up on the flight from London to Nairobi, then a night at the guest house in Nairobi, a six hour shuttle ride the next day and home sweet Arusha on October 29th.
This trip back to Africa is somehow a fitting end to the crazy, whirlwind summer we’ve had, but I’d be kidding myself if I said things will be all nice and calm once we get back to Tanzania. It already looks like Jeremy may be on a trip out to Maasailand the next week guiding another mission partnering with us and with MAPED to dig some wells in the area around Orbili.
The Faces of Change 2009 tour wraps up this weekend in Chicago, and has been a success. The team of Maasai, Canadians, and Americans have all been overwhelmed not only by the generosity of those they’ve encountered but also by the grace of God that has surrounded them every step of the trip. They’ve put on countless miles by air and by car, ministered in dozens of churches and schools, roasted goat over bonfires in multiple states, and have survived on very little sleep. They could not have made this tour happen in their own strength.
The photobook is still available on the website, and we will continue to sell it out of our trunk as we travel. We’re hoping that in the near future (perhaps the spring of 2011?) we’ll be bringing the choir back on tour, this time in Canada. Every moment in the United States was a new experience for the Maasai. Some of the best stories have been posted on the website (www.en-kata.com) of which my favourite is Nemburis and her experiences with American public bathrooms, followed closely by the story of Nadine’s lack of fashion sense. Definitely worth a read. There are pictures of the Maasai on their first roller-coaster at Sea World, of birthday parties and an Umbrella Party and sharing tea with new friends. They fly back to on October 8th and will be carrying 27 suitcases worth of stuff for themselves, the ministry and the missionaries there. Please pray for their safety as they travel, that the luggage travels with them, and that they have no difficulties at all with customs or borders or immigration as they go.
This has been a summer of travel for many of us at Pamoja – we’ve been driving back and forth across the continent, Lis (who joined the Pamoja team full time this past June) has travelled to Kenya and Uganda as well as around the Arusha area, the En-kata tour has been on the move for the last nine weeks, and now we’re ready for another season.
Our family gets back to Tanzania at the end of October, Jacob & Kim Mills join us as new full-time missionaries on November 5th, Nadine comes back at the end of November, and then as we launch into the new year, we’ll be very focussed on preparing the musical, Nipe Jibu, for release. We’re anxiously anticipating all that God has in store and the amazing opportunity that the launch of this movie will bring. It’s exciting to be “discipling cultures through media” and the projects ahead of us are a part of that same vision. This trip home was to a large extent a chance to share this vision with you personally, and I hope you caught our passion for it. The work continues to be more than we can do ourselves and each stop we made included an invitation for others to come work with us.
Please pray for those who are considering joining the Pamoja team, that the timing and finances would fall in to place. We’d love for them to come soon but know that God’s timing is always better than ours.
We’re writing this from Moose Jaw, where we have a wonderful, wireless internet connection and the snow is threatening to fall. Our journey has a few weeks left and many miles to cover but we continue to enjoy our time as a family and our chance to visit with so many of you. Thank you to all who have opened their homes and their lives and allowed us to descend with our own bit of chaos as we’ve covered this great country. We’re blessed indeed to have such a great group of friends and family to share our lives with.
With lots of love.
Pamoja Ministries
discipling cultures through media
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August 2009
It’s surprising to think that it’s been well over a month already since we left Tanzania. There have been a few long days (we spent 38 hours traveling from Arusha to Vancouver) but those were made much easier by the fact that the children don’t yet outnumber the adults.
We’ve already logged over seven thousand kilometres in a borrowed red mini-van courtesy of friends in Southern Ontario, and we’ve slept in twelve different beds. There have been a few adventures (like the motel we stayed at somewhere in Minnesota where the entire door knob fell to pieces when we slammed the door closed for the first time), two beautiful weddings, Dairy Queen ice cream, Starbucks cofee (for Jeremy) and chocolate peanut butter cups to my hearts content. All in all, I consider things to be going fabulously so far!
While our family drives back and forth across the country, the work continues. Jeremy has set himself up with a mobile office in the back of the van, so that as I drive he’s able to continue working. He’s connected his Blackberry again and loves being connected to the world of email as we cruise across the country. One of the things we’ve been so thankful for since arriving back in Canada is a decent internet connection! The internet connection we have in Tanzania is poor at the best of times, terrible most of the time, and basically non-existent during working hours. It has caused us more pain and frustration than I can even explain, so these last few weeks we’ve sat in awe, watching webpages load and files upload.
Our team back at Pamoja has been going non-stop. Besides all the regular activities that keep them busy, and besides picking up the work that Jeremy & I usually take care of, we are also organizing a nine week ministry tour featuring nine of the Maasai choir members featured in the “En-kata, A Time For Singing” photobook. They’ll be promoting the En-kata photobook, singing and sharing in churches, ministering in a couple of different inner-city churches, and raising funds for the school project and Pamoja Ministries. Jacob & Kim Mills, who are the newest members of the Pamoja team, have done the bulk of the planning, booking, scheduling and purchasing. They’ll travel with the choir, along with Jeremy’s sister Nadine and a former volunteer, JoAnna Takeda. There was so much to do in getting ready for the tour, from all the work that Kim & Jacob did in the US, to Nadine creating the stage presentation, to Jeremy designing and sourcing all the promotional materials and merchandise. We’re calling it the “Faces of Change Tour”.
This tour has the potential to minister to thousands of people across the United States as well as raise awareness of the work Pamoja does in areas we’ve never been exposed to before. The Maasai are all first generation Christians who have first hand encounters with God that are reminiscent of Old Testament Stories. We’ve all worked incredibly hard to have this tour succeed, and we are praying that as the team travels they will be covered with traveling mercies, met with open doors, given opportunities to impact the lives of those they meet, and blessed financially.
We’re in the countdown now – the 9 Maasai (Yona, Martha, Maliaki, Nemburis, Isack, Kardone, Naitopwaki, Mathayo, and Sifa) fly from Nairobi to the States next Tuesday – so please pray that they receive favour at the Kenya border and the US border. Only Maliaki speaks enough English to be the spokesperson at immigration and customs. This will also be the first time most of them ever leave Tanzania, their first plane ride, their first taste of a real “road trip”. They will travel and sing and perform and minister until October 8th, and need prayer covering every day they’re away from home.
We’ve just posted the tour schedule on the En-kata website (from http://www.en-kata.com/you can click on the “Faces of Change Tour Schedule”) and we are continuing to update the site to include stories and testimonies from the folks involved in the tour. Several people will be blogging regularly as the tour progresses. This glimpse in to the lives of the Maasai (and the North Americans who will be traveling with them!) will bring laughter and amazement to your lives. If you’re able to catch one of the live performances, do! It promises to be an amazing experience. Also, if you haven’t yet purchased a copy (or copies) of the photobook, check out the new website at www.en-kata.com.
We are grateful to you for your partnership with us on this journey. We are doing our best to visit with each of you individually.
Tomorrow morning we’re off for three VERY long days of traveling, from Brandon, Manitoba to Ottawa, Ontario and from there down to Palmerston to settle in and wait for the arrival of the baby. So far our kids have traveled amazingly well (mommy has to stop for bathroom breaks more often than the kiddos!) and we’ve covered the kilometers in good time. Pray with us that it continues on this way. We’re very much looking forward to a few weeks of sleeping in the same bed once we reach Palmerston, even including the lack of sleep we’ll undoubtedly experience once baby #3 joins us on or about the 15th of August. THANK YOU for your prayers for us so far as we’ve traveled. We wouldn’t be where we are in this journey without the strength of those prayers.
With love from all of us
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May 14, 2009
A number of years ago, Pamoja was introduced to a wonderful ministry called The International School of Ministry (ISOM). ISOM is the result of bringing together some of the best Christian teachers available and having them teach on the subjects they know best. One hour sessions, complete with live translation, were put together into a five-semester program as a means for local churches to offer excellent Bible training to their lay leadership. Few lay leaders have a Bible school background, and this brilliant idea brought world class teaching to anybody who was interested, anywhere there was a dvd player.
The model is fantastic in places like Tanzania. The truth is that many churches across Tanzania (and Africa in general) have been started by people who have zero Bible training, and quite frankly are not likely to ever get Bible school training. These men and women have experienced God in real and dramatic ways, share their stories with those around them, and before you know it there’s a church! There can be no reasonable expectation that these folks can afford the time or the energy or especially the cost of giving up their current livelihood, moving to the city, and immersing themselves in a Bible school for two to four years. Yet in order to lead their churches, they need some kind of training, or things can go horribly wrong (as I’m sure you can imagine!). With the ISOM material and the live translation time built right in to the dvds, any language can be dubbed over the original translation without impacting the quality of the recording. The work of translating the videos and the accompanying notes can be done a trimester at a time, which means the project can go out as it’s completed.
Pamoja saw the huge impact this type of training could have all across East Africa, and we’re now set up to offer the ISOM curriculum in English, Swahili, French and Portuguese. As the cost of dvd duplicating has come down, as the cost of little portable dvd players have come down, as the availability of solar panel battery chargers has increased, the possibility of setting up a training centre in a poor, rural area in a third world country is more and more reasonable.
At this point Pamoja facilitates about a hundred schools serving a thousand people throughout Tanzania, Kenya, DR Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Zambia and the vast majority of these schools are located out in the boonies. It is so amazing to be able to facilitate these folks in getting truly world class teaching, right where they are.
Last fall the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada prepared a catalogue called “Merry Christmas World!” highlighting their missionaries and special projects that each family is involved in. One of the projects that we featured in last year’s catalogue was our desire to equip each of the eight evangelists in MAPED (the Maasai group we worked with to create the En-kata photo book) with the ISOM teaching materials.
We received word at the end of February that enough money had come in to do just that!
MAPED held their AGM at the end of April and invited Jeremy and his dad out to be a part of that. At the end of the meeting, we presented each of the evangelists with a portable, flip-top dvd player, two motorcycle batteries to charge it off of, a full set of dvds and notes for ISOM in Swahili, copies of the children’s videos that Pamoja has produced, and a snazzy bag to carry it all in. These Maasai evangelists are out there, with their people, reaching them for Jesus, and we just put some of the best teaching available anywhere in to their hands.
As Westerners, we could never establish the relationships they have, could never cover the vast area the Maasai travel through, could never dream of reaching the number of people they can. But by providing them with resources and supplies, we’re able to ensure that the Maasai that are being reached are learning solid, core Biblical values and truths.
Up until now these eight guys have been traveling by foot, but along with the ISOM materials and supplies Pamoja agreed that they need bicycles in order to maximize the impact they’re having. We bought bikes for six of the eight (the other two share a motorcycle) but that cost is over and above the donation we received through the Merry Christmas World campaign.
The best part of the Merry Christmas World funding coming was that it was unexpected, outside our budget, something that we hadn’t known we’d be able to do this year at all. It not only impacted the MAPED evangelists, but it was also a very rewarding experience for us here at Pamoja. We fill our days with on-going projects, but a special one time event like this was just fun and rewarding. The looks on the faces of Kadogo, Isaac, Yohana Rangi, Yohana Lekite, Paulo, and Musa as they rode their new bikes for the first time were priceless, and a good reminder of just how much of a difference we’re making over here with your support.
With thanks for all your love, prayers and support
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April 25, 2009
You haven’t heard much lately about the musical we filmed last summer, so before you start to think that there’s nothing happening with it, I thought I’d let you know about all the work that’s going on these days.
When Jeremy’s sister Nadine was back in Canada and the States last fall, she was given an introduction to the home church of a fellow missionary family from California. Although she didn’t speak in their church (or even get invited up to say hello!) the pastor did announce in advancethat she would be there on a particular Sunday and that anybody interested in making movies in Africa could join her for a meeting after church that day. Nadine had the chance to share the potential for media based projects here in general as well as the specifics of the projects we’re working on. What better place to talk about making movies than in Los Angeles???
One of the people in the meeting was Amy Vreeman. She’s a film editor. That’s what she does for a living. She works with Final Cut Pro which is the same software Pamoja uses and the industry standard. When she heard that we had filmed this musical, about the message and our hopes for it, and that we had completed the rough cut but still needed somebody to do the final editing, she knew that she had the skills to make the difference. After lots of emails and prayers, she arrived here at the beginning of February for five weeks. During that time she did two complete passes on the movie. The first time she did a full edit of the rough cut version, cutting almost ten minutes off the playing time, then going through again to smooth out the transitions.
When she returned to L.A., she took back the entire movie on five terabyte hard drives and committed to doing all colour correction. Please pray for Amy as she attempts to complete this project while busy living and working back in her “real life”.
We’ve made the decision to re-record all of the main actors speaking parts in studio. The quality of the live recording just wasn’t up to the quality of the rest of the film. This process will be time consuming, and also involve tracking down all our actors and getting them to come back in to the studio to complete the work. Two of the lead actors have moved and are living in Dar es Salam these days, so bus trips were arranged and we worked around their schedule.
Our leading lady has moved back to Kenya, so we’ll need to arrange for her to come down and record as well. Luckily, most of the remaining actors still live in Arusha so we’ve been able to get them in, one at a time, and we slowly crossing names off the list.
Now that we have a “final” version of the movie, in that the changes we’ll be making will not affect the spoken words, we are able to begin working on the subtitles. Although we filmed the musical entirely in Swahili, our intention was always to distribute it with English and French subtitles. Swahili is the main language spoken in East Africa, but certainly not everybody or all parts of a country speak it. In Kenya there is as much English spoken as Swahili. French allows us to send the movie in to DR Congo and Rwanda. If we can find someone to do a translation in to Portuguese, that opens up Mozambique. We may be listed as “PAOC Missionaries to Tanzania”, but the work that Pamoja does goes well beyond the borders of Tanzania and has the potential to go even further. Please pray that we can find talented, dedicated translators to help us with this stage of the project.
With so many different projects on the go, all the time, sometimes we forget to share the rogress on each of them. The work does continue, although it can change based on who’s around the base at any given time to work on the various projects. Amy made a big difference to the quality of Nipe Jibu, and helped get us one step closer to seeing its release. We’ll keep plugging away on it, and hope that more talented people like Amy arrive at just the right moment to help us.
From our corner of the world to yours
==== March 2009Last week we had the opportunity to spend a few days out in Maasailand, visiting and camping in our friend Yona’s boma. Our family has not pitched our tent in that boma before, so it was a bit different for us yet again. Most often we camp in the village of Orbili, but since there had been rain and it promised to be slightly cooler up the mountain in Lerumo, we choose to camp there instead. It may have been cooler, but don’t be tricked in to thinking that means it was cool! Not so! We threatened to melt, always a good feeling for a Canadian at the end of February, much less exciting for the girl we have visiting from California. We cooked our food and our chai (tea) over the fire in Yona & Martha’s home. For those who have already purchased the photo book, you’ve seen Yona’s story in there. He was a modern day, Maasai version of Saul, going around and beating the Christians and opposing Christianity at every opportunity. He was especially cruel to those in his age group (the Maasai culture having unique relationships & customs amongst those in any particular age category). Jeremy’s sister Nadine would consider Elisaba her closest friend out in Maasailand, the home she stays in when we’re in Lemuro. Elisaba belonged to the same age group as Yona, and was beat almost to death by him at one point. Today, she lives happily in the same community as him, working alongside him as a co-leader on the MAPED leadership team. This could only be possible through the amazing, saving, life-changing blood of Jesus. When we were out last week we had the opportunity to show our copy of the En-Kata photo book to everybody out there. They knew that this book was in the works, they remember when we were there to take the pictures, and they were absolutely thrilled to see the final product. I still do not understand where the Maasai people materialize from – it is flat bush so I ought to see them coming – yet once the book was pulled out they appeared as if from nowhere to look at themselves and their friends. It was hilarious to hear their laughter and watch them make fun of each other, teasing about whether they thought certain pictures were good or not. As we do each time we travel to Maasailand, we again went to visit the land where the school will stand. This time we traveled with Maliaki, Yona and Bushman, and listened as they shared the dream and the vision with our guests. It is just so exciting to know that we’re a part of helping their dream come true. Seeing them with the book in their hands, and them knowing that the book will be the key to that dream succeeding, well, what can we say? It was an amazing time.
Thank you for being a part of our lives and for being a part of the success of MAPED.
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February 15, 2009
Greetings from Tanzania!
These days there are so many different projects that we’re working on – Nipe Jibu (the musical), the children’s videos, our dvd-based Bible training program, World MAP literature – we’re busy!
However, today we want to tell you specifically about En-kata – A Time for Singing.
En-kata is a project that we are delighted to be a part of. En-kata is a photo book designed to give you a window into a world you have likely never experienced. In some ways, it’s a part of our lives, although even after many visits in Maasailand much is still foreign to us. The Maasai faces that grace the pages of the book are faces we know, arms that have held Jacob & Natasha, voices that we have sung with. In short, these are our friends – good friends. They call themselves MAPED, the charity they’ve created to give structure to their outreach.
Their world is one that we can barely understand, but it is full of practical needs that reach across cultures and languages. AIDS is ravaging the tribe as the young men go to the city to find work and come back bearing death. Education is lacking in Maasailand, even compared to the rest of Tanzania; for girls especially there is virtually no opportunity. Water is a daily problem. The ground is sandy and dry, and the walk to water can be hours long. When we visited friends in Lerumo at the beginning of October, Elisaba told us how she stayed in the well through the night before and only managed to gather about two and a half gallons of water. Yet she didn’t hesitate to use that water to make us, her guests, tea. We left behind two bottles of clean, filtered water that we had in our truck with us and watched as she immediately handed one to another of her husband’s wives. It was so incredible to witness that moment, when the love of Jesus radiated in the face of the most basic of needs.
Early ethnologists in Africa looked closely at Maasai culture, and from then until now not much has changed in many areas. The gospel has long been a foreign concept to the Maasai, though there has been evangelism done. Our friend Yohana (Jacob and many others call him “Bushman”) is one of the two founders of MAPED. His story of salvation and life afterwards is stunning and featured in the En-kata photo book. How much can we relate to someone who killed a lion to become a warrior with the same spear his father used for the same purpose? Surprisingly, a fair bit. He is husband to a wife he loves, a father to three little girls whom he adores and the leader of a small congregation who love Jesus and who are trying to figure out how culture and faith should interact. Along with the rest of the leadership team of MAPED, he has big plans and dreams for reaching the Maasai people, both spiritually and practically.
They always start with the gospel, but to them the Good News includes AIDS education, teaching about the rights of women, advocacy for elementary schooling, and the search for ways to provide clean water to their people. This holistic ministry is what we’re helping with, and the reason why we created En-kata. Our friends in MAPED are transforming their culture better than any outsider ever could. They are Maasai, and they have vibrant relationships with Jesus Christ. Their witness is powerful and lives are being changed. Today, in their home villages of Orbili and O’lerumo, approximately 90% of the people have turned to Jesus. It doesn’t look like we expect a Christian culture to look in the west, but the difference in lives is real, apparent, and wonderful. For example, the traditional Maasai spiritual leaders (witch doctors) in this area have all converted to Christianity, died, or moved away. Our friends are taking the Great Commission seriously. But they still need our help.
Sales of this book will build a primary school in Orbili. That’s MAPED’s priority right now: a school with equal enrolment of boys and girls, providing education for many children right at home instead of far away in the cities where the few children who go have no family and nothing familiar. Obviously they need funding for such a project – the government has granted them the land but they must build the school and supply it – which is where you can help. Together, we can enable the Maasai to fulfil their own vision. It is possible!
This project is bigger than just Pamoja. Our ministry continues to be defined by the people, ministries, missions and visions that we are able to partner with. We’re so excited to be able to be a part of what our Maasai friends are doing to reach their own people, and we’re more excited because we and others truly are working in partnership with them. A friend and fellow missionary in Arusha, Jeremy Stephenson, shot the photographs and did much of the layout. ProPack, a logistics company in Washington, has been a huge blessing by offering to handle and warehouse the photo book free of charge. Thanks Phil! A contact through a friend started us on the development of the website and has provided technical help throughout. Thanks Joel! A former Pamoja volunteer has done a lot of the graphics work. Thanks Cynthia! It’s a great deal all around, and the real winners are the kids in Simanjiro who will be able to attend school for the first time.
I hope that each of you will take a few moments to check out the website at www.en-kata.com to see the book, read some of the stories we’ve posted, and place an order. We’re selling the book for just $40 US plus shipping. This is your opportunity to meet our friends and to make a real difference in the lives of their children. On behalf of everybody involved in this project, we thank you for supporting it and for passing on the word to many others, and we pray that you will be blessed as you read the book.
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September 12, 2008
Last week we had the opportunity to show the rough cut version of Nipe Jibu to our Tanzanian workers. Each of our workers had a part to play in the movie, whether in busy market scenes or as an old person in Grandma’s Courtyard. There’s a lot of work left to be done, but it was such fun to watch our staff see themselves on screen, singing and dancing. One thing we hadn’t expected was the level of involvement we got from our Muslim workers! They were so excited by the chance to act in the movie, even though it has a strong Christian message, and we’re praying that our own staff will be the first fruits of the project. Please pray with us for Saidi and Mwanja, that they take the experiences and lessons learned by our lead character to heart and make their own decisions for Christ.
Thank you so much for all your prayers for our safety these past few months. We are so thankful that we have been protected from all the violence and robberies happening around us. We have been taking extra precautions, but we know that the fundamental reason we have been protected is because of the prayers sent up on our behalf. Things have been much quieter and more stable these past few weeks for which this mother’s heart is extremely grateful! We decided to get two additional guard dogs, although they’re coming to us as eight week old puppies. They will stay with us as pets for the first six months, then make the transition outside to run with the other two dogs. I have never had a puppy, and I’m not sure what I’m getting in to, but Jacob at least is thrilled beyond description. As far as he’s concerned, one is his and one is Tasha’s and both are beautiful. I somehow think I’m going to see them as a bit more work than he does!
Please find below our September Newsletter.
We have finished filming our movie, Nipe Jibu! Hooray! What an adventure that was, and what an amazing product we’re going to have. The scheduling difficulties were only the beginning of the unique technical challenges to creating a movie in Tanzania. Transportation was a huge issue for us – only one person who was involved in the project had a vehicle! That meant arranging rides, paying for taxis or giving out bus fare, and more often than not simply going and picking up actors ourselves.
One group of older people who were a part of all of Grandma’s Courtyard scenes lived on a route that was no more than four kilometres round trip, yet it would take about an hour of rough driving through the bush to pick them up each time. Another thing we hadn’t considered beforehand was how we would get in touch with all the various people who were involved. Very few Tanzanians have landline telephones, and although the cell phone saturation here is huge, there are many out in the villages that do not have their own phone. The contact number they list is actually a friend or relative that will pass a message on, the next time they happen to see the person. We often found it easier to drive to the person’s house and deliver the message in person rather than wondering if our actor would know what to wear to the next day of filming. These sorts of things are what makes it Africa!
Although the filming has ended, much of the work continues. Weeks of editing, audio recording and mixing remains, we need DVD covers and menus, mastering the soundtrack awaits and much more. The work is certainly changing – it will be much more technical and somewhat less glamorous – but it will require as much talent and effort as the parts already completed. We’ve been so blessed to have the Sowers come on board for this project. Not only did they write and record the most amazing songs for the musical, they’ve also given of their time and talents in the audio recording & mixing areas.
Mike & Christelle have spent many, many afternoons here working on this project, all the while continuing with their already full lives and ministries. They have two small boys at home (and a third on the way), are the worship directors at a large church in Arusha, have a studio and a business doing professional recordings for musicians, and to top it all off are preparing for a year-long tour with their group through Australia and New Zealand beginning this December. It’s been a huge commitment for them, and such a blessing to us.
The next few months will be quiet around the Pamoja base. Jeremy’s parents and sister will be home on furlough until November while all the short-term missionaries will be returning to Canada permanently. As our short-termers head home, most of them are walking into a bit of unknown. They have given up significant amounts time, put schooling on hold or quit jobs to come. This project would never have gotten off the ground without the commitment these folks made, and we’re thankful for them.
Our short term missionaries come for four months to a year, and they truly make a significant difference in what we can accomplish as a mission. Our need for help continues – if you have an interest in committing a year or a part of a year to working with us, please contact us! The old stereotype of missions does not apply here. You don’t need to be a preacher or a Bible-school graduate to change lives in missions.
We’re desperate for a talented IT person. We had an Engineering co-op student here January through September 2008 April, which was fantastic, but it made us realize that there is need of someone with Richard’s talents here all the time! One of our videographers graduated from Trinity in April with a degree in photography and we’ve worked him non-stop this summer. Jeremy would love to hear from anybody who is interested in spending some quality time here.
We won’t be completely alone here even with everyone returning home. Laura Michielsen, a university student from Waterloo is joining us for the fall semester to help get our children’s video series on the life of Joseph up and running. We’ve been waiting for a long time to begin fulfilling the vision for creating a twelve part, designed-for-TV series aimed at children. We’d like to find a dozen different situations, emotions or family relationships that are important in the life of a Tanzanian child, and then show them how one great man from the Bible dealt with these same feelings and situations.
First we need to find out what’s truly important in the life of a child here. Does it matter if you’re a twin? Or the younger son? What’s a good way to deal with a situation where you feel that you were cheated? We have connections to a number of Tanzanian churches close by and plan for Laura to spend time out in the village visiting and talking to the local children to find out just what matters in their world. We’d like to have all the scripts written (in Swahili of course) and sets built by the end of the year so that we can start filming in the new year. It’s a project with a lot of potential, aimed at a completely different audience than the musical, but still fundamentally the same message – to live each day and each situation for Jesus.
We are celebrating the arrival of the vehicle we purchased. Jeremy spent many hours when we first arrived in Tanzania last fall trying to find a vehicle for us. Through the PAOC Priority One fund (designed for new missionaries to help with start up costs), your generous gifts, and a special donation from an organization in the US, we had about ten thousand dollars to put towards a vehicle. We decided to import one from Dubai as we were unable to find something affordable locally. After a series of delays with shipping, clearing, communication, and importing, the vehicle was finally released on August 30th, which was also our 10 year anniversary. Thank you Jesus!
June 2008
Watching Maasai warriors with their sticks and cows wander down the road while ladies walk by with buckets of water or bundles of firewood on their heads reminds us daily that living in Tanzania is so very different than living in Canada, as I’m sure you can imagine. But there are other more subtle things that make us chuckle from time to time. On Sunday we had communion at church and we used watermelon juice in the communion cup. At a tea party bridal shower for a fellow missionary, I had to chase the monkeys off the treats table. People tell you that driving in mud is the same as driving in ice, but it’s not. When we slip out the back door at church with a fussy baby in our arms, we can listen to the sermon from the shade of the banana trees. All in all, we’re enjoying life as it happens.
We began filming our musical, “Nipe Jibu” in the middle of May. It was so exciting to see the sets come to life and the actors take on their roles. We have a spectacular cast, not the least of which is the lady playing Grandma. Anna Kyungay is the wife of a local pastor who happens to be on the Board of Directors of Pamoja Ministries. Together Anna and Pastor Joseph have an amazing ministry of deliverance, especially in the area of ancestral curses. They are a formidable team, and we’re blessed to have their involvement, commitment and prayers. What a perfect addition to a project that is tackling the very issues this couple is gifted in. Another interesting casting decision was that our leading man happens to be from the Chaga tribe. This is wealthiest tribe in Tanzania, they are also the ones most known for their ancestor worship. We prayed over our casting decisions, and believe each cast member was placed here by God. They will be used to reach their own tribes, their countries and their nations in a way that westerners alone never could.
Our shooting schedule varies day to day. Some days we have only a few actors here over a couple of hours, and some days we’ll have as many as seventy actors here shooting one scene all day long. We’ve rearranged the schedule multiple times to accommodate life – we lost two days filming to the rain, most of a week due to a change in our lead actress and now a weekend because of a death in the family of our main bus conductor. If we thought we needed to be flexible before, we’re learning a whole new meaning to the word now! Although there have been unexpected delays, the time has not been wasted. We’ve used every spare moment to improve the sets, complete the props, and allow our videographers the opportunity to bond ever more closely with our steady-cam system.
We have a recent Trinity Western graduate here as a videographer, and a young family from Ontario joined us on extremely short notice to help with the filming and editing as well. There is also a young man originally from BC who is now living in Tanzania helping us with the videography and editing. This crew of young men is extremely talented and we’re blessed to have their involvement in the project.
Things in our little corner of the world have been tense these past few weeks. There has been an increase in violence, to the point that a nearby mission was attacked in the early hours of the morning by a group of armed men who stole money, passports, even their land deeds. There have been reports of increased witchcraft in the area, and the people are living in fear. We must find the balance between taking wise precautions and living in fear ourselves. Please pray for our safety, for our teammates, our staff, the actors and production team as we travel the roads and live in the community. Pray more, though, that we don’t get distracted from what we’ve been called to do!
Thank you so much for being a part of the work we’re doing here in Tanzania. Your prayers and your gifts are what allows us to be here playing our part in the exciting ministries here at Pamoja. Thank you.
April 2008
Dear Friends,
I remember sitting at home in Palmerston, Ontario a couple of years ago thinking to myself about how wonderful it was to be right exactly where God wanted me to be. Today I was reminded of that. Here we are at Pamoja with that very same awareness of the presence and calling of our Lord. It’s much harder to be beaten down by the cares of this world with that assurance! We pray that each one of you is living with that calling as well!
Our container has arrived! It was completely rearranged, with a very few things broken and a few things missing, but that was not much of a surprise. The things that mattered are here – none of the expensive electronic equipment was damaged, all the goods the mission needed for the various projects are working, and even the few family heirlooms we shipped arrived without a scratch. When the truck pulled up to our gate, everything came to a crashing halt as the entire team ran to watch it be unloaded. It was great to have all the equipment and supplies that we knew were on the way. Things were plugged in and being used before the truck was even totally empty. Perhaps a picture of our music editing room will grace a future letter. Your gifts enabled it – thank you!
The musical project that we’re focusing on right now is gaining momentum and size as the days progress. In fact, it has a name! Nipe Jibu (pronounced Knee-pay Gee-boo) means “Give Me An Answer”. The script is written (in Swahili, with English notes for our volunteers who are helping with filming), the feature songs are almost all written and auditions begin as you are reading this letter. There are sets being built under the direction of a wonderful Namibian young man who is volunteering with us and the choreography is being designed by a Tanzanian who is so cool we can hardly stand it. Our team has a wonderful international flavour. Every one of us is praying that thismusical brings change to the people of Central East Africa. We believe in this vision.
The fear of the ancestors, with the sacrifices and worship tied up in that, is very much alive and well here. Young, modern, Christians who know better with their heads are struggling to break out of the world view and culture that has tied them. We are seeing first hand the ramifications of these practices as one of our Tanzanian staff lives out the themes in this movie before our very eyes. As a child and a young woman, Anna was taken through a number of ceremonies relating to her tribe’s ancestor worship. Now, as a twenty five year old married woman with a small baby, she and her husband are fighting a spiritual battle to try and break the holds placed on her through these ceremonies.
There is an obvious and real need for the people here to see the evil that is in these practices, to break free from their traditions. Our place is to present what we believe is a Godly view of the world for young people in Central Africa. We have been encountering resistance from the enemy because of the nature of this musical project. Many of our workers and members of their immediate family have been very sick over the past few weeks. The home of one of Pamoja’s board members was broken in to, as was the Bible school that shares a fence with us. The power for this little corner of Tengeru has been unpredictable and unreliable and we’ve lost electronic equipment due to the spikes and dips (60 Volts – 300 Volts).
It is clear that many people are praying for us and our property. Thank you! Please continue to pray! Please pray for the health and safety of our employees, friends and those affliated with Pamoja. We truly believe that this movie is going to bring freedom to many lives.