Greetings once again from Tanzania! As I write this, I am sitting in Arusha and Ben and I are enjoying a long-awaited weekend off. In my last update, I mentioned that we had spent a weekend ministering in the region of Daudi. Following that weekend, we had two more blessed weekends of village ministry – the first in the region of Kansay, and the second in the region of Haydom. As many of you probably know, during each weekend of ministry we visit at least two and sometimes three different villages. We generally show the Jesus Film in each village, teach a Saturday seminar and in the Sunday morning service at least one of us will preach, as well. Each place is certainly unique and provides opportunities to interact with people from a variety of backgrounds. One of our favorite aspects of these weekends, however, is that we generally travel with at least a couple of our students and, as a result, have the opportunity to get to know them on a more personal level and let them take part in the ministry with us.
As an example, a couple weeks ago we were in a pretty far-out village with several of our students. On Saturday, the schedule that had been set up by the local leaders had a break in it and I had the opportunity to talk with one of our students about the village he comes from. He told me that due to the recent dry spell local witch doctors had been doing everything possible to get rain to come. Finally, the village leader (who is not a Christian) called everyone in the village together for a day of prayer to see if “the Christian God” could do any better than their local gods. Our student, Yoram, said everyone came out. Pastors, evangelists, and even church choirs and singing groups came together to coordinate a huge day of village-wide prayer and praise. That night the rain came…and he said it has continued since that time. The most amazing part is that this rain has primarily been in their village and the villages immediately surrounding who were not involved in the prayer gathering are still suffering from a practical drought. So that was an exciting testimony to hear!!
Of course, the interactions we have on these weekends are not always so encouraging. For example, two weekends ago while the Jesus Film was running, we had the opportunity to visit with a couple of our accompanying students. Coincidentally, before coming to spend this year at Waama, both of them had been working in an extremely poor, largely un-evangelized area far from their families. The tragedy, as they related it to us, is that even though they have been called by the Tanzanian church to work in this difficult area and were promised that at least their daily needs would be met by the larger, national church, many of these evangelists have received no compensation at all for their work…some for as long as 4 years! It is not that they are in it for the salary, they simply have needs like any of us and have families to support. In fact, the power in their testimonies is that they have continued to work at their own expense. At the same time, there comes a point when you have to confront the lack of faithfulness on the part of the leadership. They apparently did this recently but were simply told by the leaders (who never miss a month’s salary and drive cars provided by the church) that their calling was simply to “self-sacrifice”. And that is just what they continue to do. Please pray for these village evangelists who are the true heart of the church here and receive little to nothing…at least not with regards to worldly compensation. At the same time, I have no doubt these guys are the ones who will “shine as the stars of heaven forever and ever.”
So, I should probably quit here. I just wanted to give you another picture of where we live and who we are working with. Tomorrow (Monday), we make the 3 hour ride back to Mbulu for the month of work leading up to Easter break. Please pray for our safe travel as well as for the classes to be taught in the coming weeks, the finals the students will be taking at the end of this semester, and the villages we will be visiting each weekend. God bless you all for your love and prayers.
Until next time…God’s richest blessings to you all!
Sincerely,
Jesse Long
Mbulu, Tanzania
PS – More pictures went up on the blog this weekend. Check them out at http://benandjesse.blogspot.com
