What a Week!

As we say about most weeks here, what a week! But this week was special most definitely. As a team we felt it necessary to better equip our church body to witness about Christ to their family, friends, and neighbors. A way we reach people here with the Word of God is through chronological Bible story telling. Have you listened to a story lately? Do you realize that nearly 75% of the Bible is narration? Stories are fun to listen to, aren’t they? There is a missionary couple in Tanzania who focuses their work on storying the Bible with people. It is through the stories they can come to understand the whole picture of the Word of God and come to know how Christ saves us from our sins and makes us right with God. Monday through Wednesday the missionary couple and their friend, a native Tanzanian, storied through 37 stories of the Bible. After each, they took time to answer questions. Boy the look on the faces of the church members was beautiful. They weren’t just hearing a story, but the Word of God start to finish. Unbelievable! It was also through the church members’ questions that we realized who among the church body truly understood the Gospel. For those who didn’t understand, we were able to clarify Grace and especially that faith in Christ is a gift. The last two days were used for the church body to themselves story in front of the group. A challenging thing for sure! After they storied, they were given input about how to improve. The highlight of the week was when young man storied who is not able to read or write. He had just listened attentively to when the story was told at the start of the week and then had his children read the passage in the Bible to him the night before and he did a wonderful job of storying. He proved to the church body that is unable to read or write that anybody can do it. At the end of the week he praised God for what he learned this week so he can witness to his friends and neighbors. It almost brings you to tears! Overall, it was a very special week. As a team we are praying about where to go from here to make sure people truly understand what they believe in.
So I bet you all are wondering how our visas/residency permits are coming along. Well we only have 11 more days until we are illegal’s in this country. There continues to be some major glitches, especially with Em’s nursing license. There is so much to this story that we will not go into, but please pray. Our team member has taken our passports to Dar in an effort to get it to go through. If not able by Thursday, she will return and we will have to spend a weekend in Mombasa, Kenya to reenter the country with a 90 day visa. We have been missing going to the movies, so this might be our chance to go see a movie. However, it’s not exactly how we wanted to do it since it takes time away from our community and is rather costly.
We are really getting into our grove of where we fit and what our roles are. Sarah had a break from school this week and returns the middle of next week. Hard to believe midterms were here already for school children (school year runs from January until December). We have two more weeks in the village until we go on a safari with Em’s parents for a week. Then she is very excited because her parents will be coming to the village to experience life here for a few days and meet all our friends and see our church and school. Then we head to our Africa Inland Mission conference in Dar and Em’s parents go to Zanzibar. Needless to say, October is a busy month. Please pray for travel mercies as we are going all over the place! Traveling can always be an interesting adventure.
We hear so often of how many people are tuning into our website. This is such a blessing. Thanks for your prayers and support! Keep them coming!!! We wouldn’t be here without you all, and we are both eternally grateful.


Blessings,
Em & Sarah

PS-GO CARDINALS!!!!
PSS- The dead rat count is now at 5. We have been rat free for 6 days! Praise Jesus!