Being Companions While We Are Apart

 

For the first time since our Tanzania Partnership began in 2001, our annual journey from Shepherd of the Valley to visit our partners in Tungamalenga, Makifu, and Usolanga Parishes was cancelled this past July. We describe our partnership as Bega Kwa Bega, the Swahili phrase that means shoulder to shoulder. We name three pillars of our companionship: prayer, presence, and projects. All of these imply spending time together – or do they?

How can we be companions when we are apart? That is the question we have wrestled with for the past six months.

 Our prayers for one another can be more fervent. Our companions are leading the way in this area, reporting that their parishes are meeting weekly to pray for us. Their prayers for us are full of trust that God will shelter us and protect us from the virus, and keep our relationship strong until we can meet again face to face.

August Zoom meeting with Makifu leaders

·       Our presence can be experienced in new ways. During August, we held Zoom partnership meetings with leaders from Tungamalenga and Makifu Parishes. The Bega Kwa Bega Program Coordinator, Deacon April Trout, and Iringa Diocese Pastor Lusungu Msigwa visited each parish on our behalf. Pastors and parish friends have sent weekly email and we received a video from Mpalapande leaders in June.  Those messages are shared on our SOTV Tungamalenga Partnership page on FaceBook.

·       Projects can be discussed, supported, and completed even when we are apart. Usolanga recently completed work on the roof of the Mbuyuni Chapel, and will soon begin the final phase of construction, installing the floor and finishing the walls with plaster and paint. Scholarship students have been back to school since June and are working through their normally scheduled holidays to complete the year’s curriculum on time. The parsonage at Tungamalenga is receiving long needed repairs, and Makifu Parish is putting the finishing touches on the Kisilwa Chapel. Funds were sent in April to restock the rural clinic’s pharmacy. We are able to send funds through our normal synod channels, and the BKB Program Director will disburse the money, visit the site, and send back photos of project progress.

Bridge repair near Tungamalenga

Many of you have asked how our friends in Tanzania are doing during the pandemic. Tanzania’s economy relies heavily on tourism, and the global travel ban has brought hard times in many places. Last January, Tanzania also experienced record setting rains and flooding. The areas around Makifu and Tungamalenga were particularly hard hit, with five bridges destroyed and extensive damage to crops, homes, and water pipelines. They are rebuilding slowly.

During the month of October, we are asking you to support our partners in Makifu, Tungamalenga and Usolanga. Pray for them, follow our FaceBook page for updates, and give generously to support scholarships, medical supplies, and funding for parish projects. There are chapels to roof, motorcycles to buy so that pastors can minister to their far-flung village congregations, water projects that need repair.

Your gifts make a world of difference, now more than ever! While we can’t be together in person, we can demonstrate our strong commitment to this partnership through our financial gifts. You may designate your gift to be used for TZ Scholarships, TZ Medical, or TZ Projects, or you can indicate that it be used where needed most in the partnership. Please write checks payable to SOTV with Tanzania in the memo line, or give online at www.sotv.org/give .

We received these words of thanks from Pastor/Doctor Barnabas Kahwage about a week after the Zoom partnership meeting:

 It is so long time since we met here in Tungamalenga and since I saw you in Zoom last time in Iringa. Oh, it is my hope that by the grace of God you are all fine. We in Tungamalenga are all fine and we are missing you so much that we can't express. We are hoping that one day we will see you face to face hugging each other when covid19 is over in the world which is soon to come. We are so thankful for the support you are doing to our church. We are continuing to pray that let there come a time when the world's free from covid19 which we TRUST it is POSSIBLE.

We are discovering there are many things we can still do together while we are physically apart. So, in the words of St. Paul to the Galatians, let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.