Reaching Out

At HOPAC Service Learning is highly valued. For older grades, this means weekly class trips into the community and/or on campus service. Primary gears up by developing an understanding of needs and doing smaller service projects.
My class, grade three, gets to focus on disabilities. We visited a craft shop where the workers are people with disabilities. We had Disability Day, where each child was assigned a disability to pretend experience for the day. They have also watched movies and had many in class discussions.
Last Friday we got to go to a hospital in Dar where children with disabilities receive treatment for free. My kids got to tour the facilities. They saw people with cleft palates, missing limbs, bone and face deformities, and more... very eye opening for some. Then my kids got to do a craft with the kids at the hospital, and share a snack of juice and cookies.
My students enjoyed the smiles of the kids getting to color, and were impressed with the talents they saw. They felt sorry for the kids and enjoyed seeing how the hospital helps.
I hope and pray this experience stays in their minds as they grow, especially because these kids at HOPAC have the means, educational and otherwise, to become powerful agents in Tanzania and abroad.

Bible Translation News Clip

This news clip talks about the progress in Bible translation happening in recent years. It shows the work and people enjoying the Word. Even though it's about Wycliffe work in general, I noticed many parts are from Africa, and at least some from Tanzania, as I recognized two of the translation consultants!

Your Race

"...Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith...."

Hebrews 12:1-2

This is my student and me after our school's 5K fun run. I haven't run a lot, but took it up for the 5K. My student was funny, because he would walk the race until he saw me closing in on him. Then he would sprint enough to make sure I didn't catch up. 

For me, I was thinking about how I didn't have to compete with other people, but only focus on the race marked out for ME... My goal was to run the whole thing, and finish faster than last year. Other people passed me and pushed on for other goals. I was thinking of the metaphor between races and life, and that God doesn't give us all the same race, the same challenges to meet and good works to do. It's been a struggle here, in a community of missionaries, not to compare my life with others in a destructive way. 

I haven't completely figured it out, but I do know that the solution is looking to Jesus, and His work that supplies my righteousness and continues to work righteousness in me. It's not trying to find or make righteousness in myself, which is what I naturally tend to do.

Zambia Slideshow

See more photos from our Easter trip to Zambia in the slideshow, to the right.

The Power of a Word

Translating Luke

The Mbe translation team in Nigeria was translating Luke 2:7: “She [Mary] gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.”

Taking translation to villages

For the word “manger," the translators immediately used the word “ókpáng.” “What’s an ókpáng?” asked their consultant. One of the translators drew a picture of a traditional cradle hung by ropes so that the newborn could be laid in it and swung comfortably. 

The consultant asked the translators to check the commentaries and notice that the word in the original text meant animal trough.

The next weekend they read the story of Jesus’ birth to many church groups and individuals people in Mbe villages. Often the translators had to explain the reason they had chosen to use " ɛ́dzábrí," instead of the familiar word  “ókpáng.” . As the Mbe people listened, they were visibly moved. 

Picturing the newborn Baby lying in the animals’ feeding basket, they recognized in a new way that Jesus was willing to do whatever it took to reach them. No word in Scripture is too unimportant to translate carefully and accurately. Even the word for a baby’s bed—accurately translated—can show people the lengths to which God will go to reach them, to reach us.

Summarized from a letter by Bob Creson, President/CEO Wycliffe USA

Nuru Center

 Nuru means light in Swahili. The Nuru Center supports people with disabilities, helping them learn and market crafts in Dar es Salaam. People with disabilities are often marginalized in Tanzania.

My kids got to visit the center on a field trip. They received a lesson in sign language, then the artisans taught them how to make paper beads and bookmarks made from cut banana leaves. It was a great experience for my kids, to show them that people with disabilities have much to give. They were impressed that people with disabilities should be treated well, as they are God's creation. Hopefully they will remember this day as some of them grow up to be leaders in Tanzania.

One of my students was especially endearing. He has learned English and Swahili in the past two years (after he came from Germany). He dove right into Sign Language, greeting and asking questions of his craft instructor!

Easter Messages Spoken Via the Zambezi Swing

During our Easter Break trip, two of my friends and I experienced 170 feet of gravity in the Zambezi Gorge. It was an exhilarating experience, which God used to remind me of a few things in HIS character. He used Kulu, the man who you will see helping me jump off the cliff in this video clip, to demonstrate these things. I pray I will remember and apply them as I finish my time at HOPAC and move into the next step.

1. Trust the speaker, who has earned the trust by what he has shown. His voice is sure, clear, strong, and under control.
2. Listen. Don’t dwell on it. Just obey. 3-2-1-step… then it’s exhilarating.
3. I think it would be harder to step if you had doubted and faltered the first time.
4. Yet He firmly and kindly assures and guides those who falter… lifts the chin, asks them to look in his eyes, and leads them through, nudges even.
5. He treats each one differently, as they need.
6. The first moments after the step are the scariest, and most exhilarating. Then it is joy. Joy to see the creation around you and to know you stepped.
7. But during those scary moments you can’t go back. You already stepped in faith. It is out of your hands and in the hands of what and who you have trusted.