Christmas Gifts & Scholarships

Beatta, with her t-shirt and school bag

'Tis the season of giving.  Here's an opportunity to give in a way that makes a real difference in our world.

Shepherd of the Valley has a Christmas Gift Giving program that provides opportunities to make a difference both locally and globally.  Funds that are given through Christmas Gift Giving to Tungamalenga Partnership are used to provide extra gifts outside our normal partnership ministries of education, evangelism, healthcare and economic development.

This year, a portion of the funds will be used to purchase food --corn flour and vegetables-- for the children at Huruma Centre, an Iringa diocese owned orphanage.  Beatta, the girl pictured above, lives at Huruma and appreciates the gift of a t-shirt and school book bag that was delivered by travelers a year ago.

Another portion of the Christmas funds will be used for a special gift to the evangelists at Tungamelenga.  We purchase goats that are given to the lay evangelists.  Lay evangelists in the villages of this parish do almost all the work of a regular parish pastor -- visiting the sick, teaching confirmation classes, leading worship each week, planning parish projects, overseeing construction of new chapels, and leading outreach efforts in their own communities.  Lay evangelists do all this on a salary of about $10 per month, when the congregation has the funds to pay them (which is not every month).  Our gift of goats enables the evangelists to have an extra source of nutrition (milk from the goats) and income (from the sale of milk or the goat's offspring). 

Our gift of goats comes with an agreement that the gift will be shared in the community -- as modeled by Heifer International, the recipient of our goat promises to share its first offspring with another family in the community. 

"It's the gift that keeps on giving!"

Saalome, a secondary school student

Another opportunity is to support Shepherd of the Valley's scholarship program.  Saalome is an oprhan who lives at Huruma Centre in Iringa.  She has such a beautiful smile.  If you visited the center, you would see her at play after school, tutoring the younger children, or diligently attending to her own studies.  She walks two miles each way to attend secondary school.

She understands very clearly the gift in the opportunity that she is being given -- the opportunity to attend school.  She is among the 10-15% of Tanzanians who are able to attend school beyond 6th grade.  It's an enormous gift to her, and one she shows appreciation for by studying hard.

Sponsoring a student like Saalome is easy.  $1 a day provides the $360 per year cost of tuition, room and board.  You can write a check payable to SOTV with "TZ scholarship" in the memo, you can go online and make a credit card payment, or you can use Simply Giving to make monthly payments.

Shepherd of the Valley supports 125 secondary students and 15 university students.  The Tanzanian school year begins in January, so don't delay.  Give the gift of education -- an opportunity for a lifetime.