Belated Easter Greetings! I trust your Easter season has been filled with joy. Our Lord is risen!
Second semester ended very well. It was a long but good semester. Jesse and I were able to spend 5 days of our 2-week Easter Break relaxing, recharging, and soaking up some sun in Zanzibar. It was a much needed break. We left there ready to tackle the third and final semester of the year. But before we headed back to Mbulu we were able to spend a few days in Arusha and even attended a wedding for a couple of our friends.
It was such a blessing to celebrate with them.
Third semester has already started! Even though less than half the students had returned from Easter Break, we started teaching this past Wednesday. I am really excited for this semester. I will be teaching English, Daniel, and Bible Doctrine I. Unfortunately this is a very short semester - only 6.5 weeks of teaching (as opposed to 11 last semester). But we trust that God will continue to do great things despite the brevity of the time. Finals are scheduled for the week of June 8. The following two weeks have been set aside of the corn harvest.
Graduation will follow on June 28.
I recently purchased a plane ticket to return to the US this summer! I am scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis on July 2 and stay till mid-September. I hope to see each of you this summer. If you would be interested in having me share with your church, Sunday school class, youth group, etc. about the ministry in Tanzania, please contact me and I'll do my best to fit it in. Thanks!
**Electricity Update** Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot to report... except that things continue to go at an African pace. The power company's flatbed truck still has not been fixed, so we still don't have the main transformer for the campus. As a result we still don't have power. Rumor has it that the power company is scheduled to review the budget next month and hopefully will budget some money to fix the truck (the previous money in this fund was "misappropriated"). We'll see what happens, but we're not holding our breath. On a slightly more upbeat note, money continues to come in for the rewiring costs.
Currently the school has enough money to rewire 3-4 more buildings on campus (probably staff housing). So the school is trying to contact the electrician so we can get these buildings rewired and ready to be hooked into the power grid... whenever that might happen. Thanks for your prayers and gifts on behalf of this project.
We praise God that despite our busy schedule we still have time to travel to neighboring villages on many of our weekends and show the Jesus Film. This past weekend we showed in two villages only about 5 miles from the school. It was so inspiring when about 1200 people turned out for these two showings and dozens of them came forward to give their lives to Christ. May the good seed grow and bear fruit! Please keep this ministry in your prayers. We have three more Jesus Film weekends (7 film
showings) planned for this semester.
Finally, I'd like to let you know that Jesse and I have requested to remain at Waama for one more (and final) year here at Waama. We feel like the school has made some great strides forward in recent years and is on the threshold of self-sufficiency. We hope that one more year here will "push them over the edge" and into self-sufficiency.
Thank you for your partnership in this ministry. May God richly bless you,
Ben
