Wednesday, December 19, 2007
















Along with our work of evangelism and helping Kanisa La Neema to build a school we have taken on the joy of adding kids from the local orphanage into our house.  We first learned of the orphanage shortly after coming out to Sumbawanga.  It is a house for 53 kids from ages 0-6.  Many of the kids there have lost both parents due to AIDS and other illnesses.  Others have lost only one parent but often when parents remarry they do not take their kids from previous marriages into their new families.  The result is many kids with parents being left as orphans.  Becca began visiting and playing with the kids several times a week.  Over time our involvement grew and it broke our hearts to think of these 53 kids with only a limited staff of nuns and helpers there.  The workers do an incredible job to keep the place and the kids clean and healthy but their personal interaction is limited due to their small numbers.  We have begun to take in 2 of the older kids each week to share with them a world beyond the orphanage walls.  We share with them the market in town, some candy in a favorite little shop, our lives and our kids toys.  Here are some pictures of two of our favorites Marta and Lydia.

“I believed you were a Christian because when you saw that I was cold you gave me a shirt.”

Life here has been busy with few reminders of the snowy Christmas we had last year celebrating with extended family. Here things do not slow down for the holidays. In fact as I am writing this, the workers are finishing the foundation of our first stage of our school project. We will then have to wait for the rainy season to end before we can continue building. There is a possibility that we will be going to Malawi after Christmas to help fellow missionaries down there start a new school as well. We are also making plans for starting an English Service this spring with the purpose of evangelism to the high school educated English speaking crowd. Along with all these projects we have a continual line of people coming to our door (I refer to them as Lazarus and his hundred friends) asking for help. The sheer number of people who come and the stories they tell of AIDS, of blindness, of children losing parents, all asking for help, it can be overwhelming. Through it all, I have been traveling with an evangelist in our church, building a community of Christian and non-Christian youth for the purpose of sitting together and discussing the health of our physical and spiritual life. It has been a beautiful experience meeting people from all walks of faith here. I would like to tell you the story of one of these young men in our community.

There are times when community and hope breaks through the feeling of dependence. There is a guy who has been coming to our community meetings since the beginning. I never really believed that he had any interest in spiritual things, but he came. After the first meeting he came to my house and asked if I would support his band to make a recording. I thought this was the whole reason he came. But then the following week, though I did not promise him any support to his band, he came again. Unlike the other Christians in all of our churches, this guy looked cool. Not just cool here but American cool too (My overuse of the word cool shows my own lack of “coolness” I don’t know what the cool word to say is anymore). His name is Enok and he walks around with baggy pants with the ends rolled up, a neat shirt with enough buttons unbuttoned to qualify for an American boy band, and he just carries himself like he is cool. He wears these types of clothes regardless of the weather. The second meeting we had he was wearing an open shirt like this and he looked more than cool- he was freezing. The rain was dripping in on us as we talked about things of God. Surprisingly 12 youth came from outside the church in a heavy rain to talk about God. To talk about community. To talk about life in the body and life of the spirit. Evangelism here cannot separate the two. Enok came and he listened. More than that he actually asked questions. But I could not stand to see him shaking. We were close to my house so as the evangelist Mtoa continued talking I ran home to get a few shirts for the ones who were freezing. When I got back I gave the shirts away. Loaning anything here is dangerous so it is always better to view it as a gift. If it comes back, it too is a gift.I gave a shirt to Enok as well as two other kids.

The next time we met he came first to my house and we drove together to the place we were meeting. He didn’t say much, he got in the back seat with another person in our community and I spent the ride talking with Mtoa. Enock spent the ride reading one of Emma’s easy reader books- this one Scooby Doo. Later, he sat in this meeting not saying a word, looked cool as he slunk in his chair- well as cool as a young 20 year old can look reading a Scooby Doo book. At the end of the meeting he asked if he could borrow the book. The fact that he did not return my shirt jumped into my mind, also that the book wasn’t mine but rather Emma’s jumped in my mind, but again I gave him the book. (Don’t tell Emma.)

To my surprise he returned everything yesterday, his shirt and the other two that he collected back for me. I don’t know if he washed them, but he did cover any smells with perfume. I wasn’t home when he came so he came back today. When he showed up at my door, I expected to talk more about him borrowing money to make a recording. We did talk about this, but after I explained that we have received requests for over $17,000 worth of support this week only (not including money for the school we are building) he saw that his chances were not good. Instead of wandering off, leaving angrily, or being disappointed, he began asking me about my faith. He asked me why I came to Tanzania. He asked me if I was saved. I always find that funny when people ask missionaries if they are Christians as if that is not part of what is required. He told me that he wasn’t saved but that he is trying to sort things out. I was not prompting this conversation but letting the spirit lead through him. He asked me if people who sinned could be saved. Not about what the Bible said but what I believed in my heart. He asked if even people with AIDS could be saved. I was ready for him to open up and tell me that he too had AIDS. He didn’t say it but I told him about another girl who does. A girl who we are helping. A girl who will die leaving her infant an orphan- but a girl that we still pray for- a girl that still has hope not in this world but in the one to come. We talked about David and Peter in the Bible, about others that we both knew, about me. He told me towards the end of the conversation “I knew you were a Christian because when you saw that I was cold you gave me a shirt.”

Thoughts of Isaiah 58:6-8 popped in my mind “Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the chords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked to clothe him, and not turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear.” (NIV)

He told me that he was leaving for the next 5 months to go be a fisherman to make money but that he would come back. I gave him a Bible and showed him the book of John. He asked me to pray for him. When I said I would, he asked again if I really would. How many times do I say that to people and then in the course of the day forget to pray? He is hurting. He is desperate. He needs faith. I hope he finds it. I will be here when he returns. Maybe we can open up a bit more then. Anyway that line that he said, “I knew you were a Christian because when you saw that I was cold you gave me a shirt.” It’s the best thing I have heard out here in a long time. I needed to be reminded that it is my faith not my wealth that is being tested when I am faced with poverty. How should I respond to the world that doesn’t deserve these gifts? To a world that grows dependant on me always giving? How did Christ respond to me in my poverty? In my dependence? Mother Theresa once said, “Following Jesus is simple but not easy.”

In Him who came to share all he had,
Chad, Becca, Emma, Ian and Elizabeth Zuber

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Not Exactly Pilgrims and Indians

Not exactly Pilgrims and Indians.

It seems odd still on American holidays to see life continue here as usual. Thanksgiving is not celebrated here, and of course if it was we wouldn’t be celebrating now. Now is the time of planting not of harvest. It is a time for hope, a time looking off to the future not to the past. In fact, looking back to the last harvest here it is difficult to imagine a large feast of Thankfulness on the hearts of our farmers. Just about everyone in one way or another here gets their income through farming. The farmers are in their fields now with hoes and occasionally plows preparing the red earth for the coming rains.

None the less, we have much to be thankful for. We have begun to fit in to life here in the city of Sumbawanga. Just recently, along with our education plans I have become excited about the possibility of outreach to two distinct groups of people here in Sumbawanga. I will write more of that as it develops, but please pray for the meetings coming up tomorrow.

Despite the harvest, we decided to host a feast anyway. Becca was able to find a few of the Thanksgiving Day essentials such as apples for a pie and sweet potatoes. She had brought out a box of stuffing and substituted the rest as best she could. With no turkeys available in this area we substituted chickens. Yam pie with orange food coloring substituted pumpkin pie. Short on Indians and pilgrims, we substituted Tanzanian and Arab friends of ours. Fellow missionaries, Cory and Kim Hodgson, joined us from Mbeya and have been staying with us all week. The Sumry family had invited us to their celebration feast at the end of Ramadan, so we extended a welcome to our celebration of Thanksgiving. Our kids looked at each other and played a bit. Everyone was a bit nervous and a little out of their comfort zone. The Sumry’s are used to hosting everyone, rarely are they the guests, rarely are they put in a new situation. They know a little of everything that goes on in the city but today they would learn and share community from the other side of the table.

As many did across America, we opened in a prayer of thanksgiving. Our Tanzanian friends who shared the table with us were quiet and spent much of the time watching. Mama Isa and Neema cooked much of the food with Becca and Kim and tried little bits throughout the day as appetizers. They enjoyed the food as we sat together. Others around the table were resistant to the new foods, but all welcomed the pies and cakes. Throughout the meal we talked about traditions and about life here and in America.

Looking over our life here, we have much to be thankful for. Friends and family, both here and around the world. A flavorful life of culture, home and homelessness. A faith that sustained us through past struggles. A hope for a redeemed future. A present washed in grace that opens our eyes to the beauty of this world as God must see it through Christ. It is easy to be thankful with a full harvest. Today we shared thanksgiving in the hopefulness of planting season. May God bless the ministries that are unfolding as he has sustained us in the past.

In Him whom we are eternally thankful,
Chad, Becca, Emma, Ian and Elzabeth Zuber