Tanzania Partnership

'Tis the season.... As these final shopping days before Christmas come to their frenzied end, I'll offer a few final options for gift giving. Gifts to the SOTV - Tungamalenga Partnership can be given in honor of a friend or relative. Please contact Kirsten.Levorson@sotv.org if you would like one of our "honor cards" to send to your gift recipient. Goats for the children of Huruma Center and for the evangelists of Tungamalenga Parish. We have a long and loving relationship with the children of Huruma Center, an orphanage owned and operated by the Iringa Diocese. In the past we have given milk cows and money for corn, we have collected shoes and purchased school supplies for the children, and we have provided scholarships for the children who reach the age of secondary school. Recently it has become difficult to sustain the cows because of the high cost of feed, so we are instead purchasing goats who will provide milk for the children's meals. Goats are also great

Amos Kilipamwambu Amos is a student at Idodi Secondary School, near Tungamalenga. Hi father, Absalum, is one of the evangelists in the parish. Want to see more photos of the students we sponsor? Check them all out here . Thanks to Bo Skillman, one of the Companion Congregation Coordinators who staff the Bega Kwa Bega office in Iringa throughout the year, for taking the photos, and thanks to Kate Penz of the Saint Paul Area Synod staff for posting them online. You will not find photos for all 140 of SOTV's sponsored students. These are just the secondary students from Tungamalenga who happened to be at the school on the day the photographer visited. If you do not see your student here, they may be university students, they may attend a school that was not visited, or they may have been absent that day.

Still searching for the perfect Christmas gifts? Come to worship this weekend at Shepherd of the Valley! Tanzanian handcrafts will be on sale in the narthex, along with other fair trade items from around the world. Ebony cross necklaces are wonderful gifts--we've seen them worn by men, women, young and old. Handmade baskets woven by women of the Iringa region come in many colors, shapes and sizes. Fill a gift basket with fair trade coffee & cocoa from Equal Exchange, or give the small baskets as desk accessories, to hold paper clips, rubber bands, pens and pencils. Tote bags in beautiful batik fabrics are durable and distinctive. The teens who gather each Wednesday evening bought ten of them in one night after last summer's trip. The little hanging baskets in the photo make wonderful Christmas ornaments. Hang them on the tree, fill them with candy as a Christmas morning surpise. One of our members filled them with prayers and gave one to each of her neighbors. If someo