New Family Member & Dodoma Trip

Ashery is the youngest student to attend (and graduate) from the evangelism school. 

Ashery receiving his certificates at the evangelism school graduation

 After graduation he joined our family and medical missionary team.  He is proving to be a GREAT asset to our team.  He is not phased at all when we come  to challenges.  He actually loves them.  He is such a trooper.  When someone starts to ask very challenging questions he is eager to jump in and work out the confusion.  He prays a lot and God is giving him the gift of helping people understand things that seem complicated to them.  We praise the Lord for bringing him into our team and family.  It has been funny though.  We have run into something we didn't expect.  Many people think he is a black American instead of a Tanzanian.  Oh, it makes for some funny misunderstandings.

The trip to Dodoma was longer than we thought.  I had forgotten that the road between Iringa and Dodoma was called "The Road of Death."  We had learned that name for it when we were in language school over two years ago.  It is the shortest route to Dodoma, but many buses and people had been taking the much longer way to Morogoro and back.  We were told that one time someone had been told not to go that way, but he insisted.  He was on motorcycle and thought he could pick his way through.  It took him TWO DAYS to get there!  They have been doing a lot of work (and still are) on the road.  The area that goes through the mountains is something to behold for sure!  WOW.  It was pretty, but a bit scary.  I don't know if I would be so willing to pass through there on bus and certainly think twice about going that route during the rainy season.

The steep mountain-side road (with no guardrails) on the Road of Death

We have been having a steady stream of people getting testing at the health expo.  It isn't much of an expo anymore, since we had to take our banners down.  The wind here is fierce and after one day, several of our banners were BADLY damaged.  I am not sure what I will do about that.  So they have come down and we will not be using them again this trip.  We will need to replace them SOON.

Doug singing and exercising with some students

Our meeting site is on the playground of a school.  We have lots of young visitors everyday.  We have taken turns telling them stories, testing them, playing violin for them, sing songs with them and teach them.

We had hoped that we would have some local assistance with the testing, but that hasn't materialized.  The evening teaching sessions are going great and we have had some extra speaking opportunities also.  We did house to house work Saturday afternoon.  That was great.  We met a lot of people and were able to meet several people with lots of health questions.  We were able to get back with one household today, and more people are coming to the meetings.

Dodoma health expo taking blood pressures

Between us and the other people going door-to-door, people have taken hundreds of
tracts on the Good News of salvation and health.

Today the evangelist and other church members went house to house.  They encountered at least one man that was suffering with demons.  It was a very interesting story (a bit grotesque at points.)  But the man asked for help and they prayed much with him.  He had many witchcraft charms and was scared to touch them and told people if they touched them they (the charms) would kill them.  Well, our group touched them and helped the man make a fire and they burned all the witchcraft items (the man's desire) and he is now wanting to be baptized!  God is amazing.

We have two more weeks to go here.  Thank you for all the prayers!