A lot has happened since I last wrote and I'll do my best to fill you in while keeping it short. When I last wrote I was still in Uganda. I made it back safely to Tanzania a day before Jesse arrived from Washington.
It has been great to be back together and catch up on each other's summers. We stayed in Arusha for a little over a week and then we came back to Waama a couple days before it opened. We got all our stuff moved back into our house and waited for opening day, Oct 16th. The big day came ... as well as about 6 students. We knew that many of the 70-or-so expected students wouldn't arrive that first day, but we didn't expect quite that few. We expected classes to start that following Monday, but the teachers made an ultimatum that they wouldn't start classes until the school board met and discussed the financial short-comings the school is experiencing. The board set the date for the meeting for that Friday, Oct 24. So for that week we waited as the students kept trickling in. Friday came, the board met, and the teachers still weren't happy. Now they are demanding 2 months salary from the church before they start. The Dean tried everything in his power for the sake of the students to get the teachers to start classes and work out the details with the board afterwards, but to no avail. So as of today, Oct. 27, classes still haven't started and we still haven't chosen who will teach what class. Despite all this, we are expecting classes to start tomorrow! Welcome to Africa. As of this morning there were 41 students on campus. We're still waiting for the other 30.
Jesse and I are doing very well. We are eager to know for sure what we are teaching and to actually start teaching, but still doing well. We do ask for your prayers for the present situation at Waama. We realize that there are some very big problems that need to get dealt with, but we also feel that neither the church nor the teachers at Waama are handling the situation very well. Here are some other news items you might be interested in...
* Eivind (the Norwegian MAF pilot who crashed his motorcycle and was
hospitalized last year) ended up having to go back to Norway to
recover. It turns out that he fractured his neck in 2 places (his
C1 and C5 vertebrae). Sounds pretty bleak huh? Well, in God's
mercy he is back in Tanzania flying his normal rigorous schedule.
The bad news... he promised his mom that he would never ride a
motorcycle again and is selling his bike.
* While we have been waiting for classes to start, another Norwegian
missionary, Froydis (Bible translator for the Kiiraqw Bible, she
has been here for over 50 years), asked for our help. Turns out
she had been given 4 computers but she was having problems getting
them all working properly. In the end, Jesse and I took her car
and went to Arusha to clean the hard drives and install Windows XP
and some other programs. We were then able to return to Mbulu and
get them all set up for her.
* Great news! The national power company is bringing electricity to
Waama! This will be a huge help as diesel prices have made running
the generator very expensive. Electricity would cut the power bill
by more than 3/4 while giving us 24-hour power rather than 1.5
hours per day. The only catch is that all the buildings on campus
need to be rewired to meet government code. Please pray for this
project.
* Jesse and I will need to renew our residency permits soon. Our
current permits expire in the middle of January. We have started
gathering all the documents and forms we need, but the process is
always lengthy (and tends to be rather frustrating as well).
Please pray for this too.
Thanks for your prayers for us, for Waama, and for the Lutheran church.
We all need them very much.
May God bless you all,
Ben
