Happy Memorial Day!! No matter how much time I spend living outside the U.S., I will always love American holidays. In fact, as some of you may know, I have again arranged my scheduled so that I will arrive in the States for the summer on the 4th of July! I am sure looking forward to it! God bless America!
Since my last update (in which I mentioned the beginning of this third semester) we have already started working towards bringing the school year to a close. The schedule for the coming weeks looks like this:
- May 29-31 – Weekend of Spiritual Meetings for this third semester here at Waama. Please pray for this weekend that it could be a time of blessing and encouragement for staff and students alike as we focus on the theme of “God’s Call”
- June 5 – Last day of teaching for the school year!
- June 8-11 – Final exams
- June 12-14 – Special seminar on mission work held here at the school for all the students. This is being put on by some of our Norwegian missionary friends who are working among the Datooga people.
- June 15-27 – WORK in preparation for graduation. This will include bringing in the year’s harvest of corn, doing some grounds-keeping and clean-up around the campus. We appreciate your prayers during these weeks especially since Ben and I have been assigned to be the teachers on duty! Let’s just say we will be ready to be home!!
- June 28 – Graduation Day!!
- June 30 – Travel to Arusha
- July 3 – Fly out of Kilimanjaro International Airport
Because of all this activity in the coming month, this last weekend was our last weekend of village ministry for this year. Since my last update we had our weekend in the Yaeda Chini – a local region in the Rift Valley. It was a good weekend ministering among several tribes that we do not normally have opportunity to interact with. This last weekend (May 22-24), we were a region called Bassotu. God blessed there as well as we had opportunity to show the film to a total of nearly a thousand people between both Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday afternoon we taught a number of sessions as part of a Saturday afternoon seminar especially geared for youth and finished out the weekend with Ben giving the message in the Sunday morning service. We always enjoy these weekends but they do take a lot of energy and there was certainly something very relieving about knowing that we had successfully reached the end of that part of our ministry for the year.
I should also give you the update on our student’s wife who I took to the hospital during our weekend of ministry in the region of Magang. Unfortunately, the baby was not born on my birthday but rather waited until the next day (May 4th). You may also be interested to know that it was a little girl so will most likely not be called Jesse. Oh well. J Both mother and child are doing well.
For those that haven’t been on the blog lately, more pictures were put up a couple weeks ago. I also have more from our recent weekends of ministry that I hope to post as soon as I have a good enough internet connection. Stay posted.
I am going to sign off at this point but would again ask your continued prayers as we try to bring our classes (as well as other aspects of life here) to a close for the summer. We also appreciate your prayers for our safe travel when that time comes as well as for all that we need to accomplish while we are in the States. It is going to be a busy time. Again, I’m looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible. God bless you all!! Keep up the good work.
In Christ,
Jesse Long
Mbulu, Tanzania
