Travel plans and preparation

This is the quiet season of our partnership....

Summertime brings all kinds of news, with our visits and meetings in Tanzania.  Last fall this blog was full of Rev. John  Mhekwa's visit to Minnesota. Since then, this blog has been pretty quiet.

As always, there's lots going on behind the scenes.

We have 27 travelers preparing to visit Tanzania in July/August.  Yes, 27!  That's an all time high for our congregation.  There are so many people we are taking two groups.

Travelers made their commitment to the trip last October.  Since then, every two months, the group meets to get to know one another, to learn about our Tanzanian partners, and to plan for our journey.

In November, the group met while Rev. John Mhekwa was visiting us.  He helped with basic Swahili lessons and helped us begin to understand the cultural differences between Americans and Tanzanians.

In January, Bega Kwa Bega's new Director, Rev. Peter Harrits, joined the group to talk about cross cultural travel and accompaniment ministry.  This TED talk by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi was an eloquent and moving caution for travelers, encouraging us to seek out the complexities and diversity of stories in another culture.

At each of our prep meetings, our travelers learn about some of the ministries we share in our partnership -- evangelism, education, health care, and economic development.  While many of our travelers are going to Tanzania for the first time, we help them understand that they will be viewed by our partners as representatives or ambassadors of our congregation.  We all need to be up to speed on the projects and challenges our partners face.

At our March meeting, the group spent some time talking about what to pack and what gifts we will carry with us.  We watched this very funny parody of some aid appeals -- Radiators for Norway.  We had a great conversation about the questions posed by this parody -- are we seeing a complete picture of developing countries when we see aid appeals that only focus on poverty and need without also showing the positive development that occurs? Do our appeals and assistance show respect for the people we want to assist? Are we having the conversations we need to make sure that our assistance is helping real needs and priorities for our partners, rather than the perceived needs from our cultural perspective?

When we walk with our partners in Tungamalenga and Makifu Parishes, we want to be good listeners. We want to see and hear the daily challenges and dreams of our partners, and we want them to identify the things we can do to support their priorities.

We also talked about packing lightly for our own needs. There's two reasons for this -- one, it allows us to carry more gifts for our Tanzanian friends.  The airlines still allow international travelers to check two bags at no extra cost.  For the past several years, we have asked travelers to check two bags of gifts collected from the congregation, and fit their personal things in a rolling carry on bag. 

But there's another reason we pack lightly for ourselves -- and that is because when we carry less of our own personal stuff and cultural baggage with us, we can more readily enter our host culture.  One of my friends describes travelers as "bringing our lifestyle along with us" as we pack hair dryers, curling irons, multiple changes of clothing, make up and all sorts of creature comforts that we think we can't live without.

Instead, we ask travelers to pack lightly for themselves -- for a two week trip, bring three bottoms (skirts for women, pants for men), six or seven short sleeve tops, a long sleeve t-shirt, a jacket or sweater, underwear, pj's, two pair of shoes, nightwear and toiletries.  Laundry service is available at all the places we stay, so we really don't need more.

That enables each traveler to bring a suitcase full of gifts for our partners -- solar calculators for students, tote bags, t-shirts, textbooks for the nursing school, infant items for the dispensary, Bibles for the secondary school.  Instead of bringing our own luxuries, we are able to bring some necessities for our friends.

If you would like to contribute toward the gifts our travelers carry, watch the News for the Flock for items to be collected during the month of June.  Monetary gifts will be used to purchase gifts in country: food for the orphanage, medicines for our dispensary, bikes for the evangelists.

And while this group of 27 travelers prepares to venture out in 2014, it is also time to think ahead to 2015.

Pastor Diane Sponheim and Kirsten Levorson will lead another group of SOTV Ambassadors to Tanzania during the summer of 2015.  Dates are tentative, but probably will be around the first couple weeks in August.

Interested?  Preview meetings are scheduled this May, and a commitment will be needed by September 15, 2014.  

Learn more by attending the travel preview meetings at 11 AM Sunday, May 18 or 7:30 PM Wednesday, May 21.  It will be the journey of a lifetime.