The Salamans in Tanzania

Happy Christmas to You all!

2011-12-15T19:04:00.001Z

Dear friends,

This is just a brief post to wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas. We thank you all for your prayers, encouragement and financial support over the past year and we pray that God blesses you all in 2012.

This Christmas is very different to last year - instead of building snowmen we will spend some time on the beach and on safari. Christmas day itself we will be at home with friends visiting from St. Austell.

We praise God that our English choir, which had become very small, has grown once again and we were invited to sing at the Cathedral "Carols by Candlelight" service last week. This video shows a little of that service.

We have also made a DVD of a selection of home videos made over the last 6 months which we have sent to some of you. If anyone else would like a copy please let us know.

With much love and blessings,

Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

Graduations and gatherings

2011-11-17T19:02:00.003Z

Dear Friends,

Oh dear it’s nearly 2 months since the last blog – sorry! We have been very busy!

In October we attended the CMS partners in mission conference in Nairobi. It was a great event with representatives from many different parts of Africa. It was a good time for fellowship and sharing with other mission partners. This picture shows Paul in one of the meetings.

One of the highlights was the kids programme led by a wonderful group of young Kenyans who took the children from 8am to 9pm every day! The children absolutely loved it. They had great fun and some great teaching too. They were a small group of just 7 children but they all got on very well with each other and their leaders. Here are the boys with friend James and leader Shaun (“the sheep”!)

The new semester at the University is into full swing now and Paul is stuck into teaching his courses in laboratory Physics and educational media and technology. Thankfully after years of waiting for the infrastructure Paul has managed to start some e-learning activities with a trial group of 50 students from one of his courses. The analysis of this trial will form the dissertation of Paul’s masters but he is also excited by opportunities to develop more e-learning at the university in the future. We recently got dressed up once more for the second ever graduation ceremony of the university. It was a day of great celebrations but tinged with sadness as one of Paul’s Physics students who was due to graduate tragically died in a bus accident 2 weeks before. He was awarded his degree posthumously.

Paul managed to attend another graduation earlier in October at St John’s Secondary, Kilimatinde where he used to teach. It was great to be a part of the celebrations and to meet up with old friends including Festo the Headmaster who is now in the UK – see later.

Though the previous person we selected was unable to take up the position, we have now employed a new project officer at Christine’s work called Justine, shown in this picture. It is great to have him with us. He is enthusiastic and hard working and will do a good job. He will be working with Christine on all the projects of the youth office though his main role is running the small loans project. We have just begun this project in a new diocese, the diocese of Mpwapwa, and this picture shows Christine with the diocese loans committee at a recent seminar there.
We also recently held a successful seminar on youth bible study together with a meeting of the youth leaders from nearly all the dioceses (of which there are 26) across Tanzania. You can read more about this on my youth office blog http://Tanzaniaanglicanyouth.blogspot.com Thank you to everyone who has been making donations for my work and making these projects possible. If you are able to make a contribution please see my just giving pages which can be accessed through the youth office blog. We will soon be having elections for a new committee of TAYO (the Tanzania Anglican youth Organisation) – please pray that the right people will be selected and also that God continues to provide the resources we need to keep our work going.

Christine has also been busy with the Kikuyu Gospel Singers. We recently held a very successful event to launch the new choir which has only been going since February, and to raise funds to buy new instruments for the choir. We were also invited to represent our diocese at an event of the neighbouring diocese of the Rift Valley in Manyoni and had a wonderful weekend there. This picture shows us (in the yellow shirts) during a procession through the town on the final day of the event. Christine has also recently been elected as “Katibu” (secretary) of the choir – a big job – in Tanzania the Katibu is the person who does everything! Please pray for us as we continue to grow and develop.

The boys are very happy and enjoying life and school. They are also very much enjoying their cat, Vanilla, pictured here with Isaac (due to the many requests for more pictures!) The weather is getting very hot now so they are particularly enjoying swimming and the paddling pool in the garden. We had a lovely visit from our friends the Aylings from Dar recently and (for all the CTK crowd) here is a picture of the boys with the Ayling children on lion rock in Dodoma.

Finally we are very happy that our dear friends Festo from Kilimatinde and Grace from St. Austell were married last week. We can’t wait to see them when the return to Tanzania in January. Congratulations Mr. And Mrs Kanungha!

Go-goes galore

2011-09-19T19:30:00.002+01:00

Dear friends,

Thank you for your messages, prayers and encouragement which we really appreciate. You are all a great blessing to us.

We continue to enjoy life here in Tanzania. Vanilla is growing bigger rapidly, and as next door’s cat had tiny kittens on Sunday, Isaac has now decided we can no longer call Vanilla a kitten!

Daniel turned 8 on Sunday and had a lovely party at the local pizzeria/ crazy golf course (one of the few exciting places to go in Dodoma!) with 10 friends. The party had a “Gogo” theme. Though the Gogo is the name of the local tribe here in Dodoma the theme was based on a craze which many of you may be familiar with, of little plastic collectable figures called Gogos. They were introduced to the boys by their cousins when we were back in the UK. This picture shows the boys with the cake in the shape of Daniel’s favourite Gogo, with Gogo figures on top. Daniel and Isaac both recently participated in leading their class assemblies at school and did very well. Below is a video of Daniel’s assembly. Daniel is narrator.

The interviews for the project officer at Christine’s office went well and we have selected Geofrey Njama for the job. He will start at the beginning of October. He is an ex-student of St. John’s who we know very well as he helped us to run the English choir, so we also look forward to having him back to sing. Christine is currently busy planning a music and worship seminar for choir leaders from four dioceses in the central zone of the Anglican Church. We hope that the seminar will help choir leaders to develop their musical skills but also to develop an understanding of worship and how to write songs with a meaningful message. Please pray for this seminar which will take place in 2 weeks time. When Geofrey starts work we will also get going on the next phase of the small loans project. We need to choose a diocese to take part in this project so please pray that we select the right one. Last week we held a big event for choirs from 4 dioceses from the central zone of Tanzania. This picture shows a choir in traditional Gogo dress (this time the local tribe, not the toy!)

I have started a new blog specifically about my work and the projects that we are running, together with a Just Giving page which enables you to make contributions towards these projects. http://tanzaniaanglicanyouth.blogspot.com and http://www.justgiving.com/ACT-youth-projects Please have a look at these and please consider making a donation if you are able as we are surviving on a steady trickle of small donations. We are really grateful for those of you who have helped with my work, as much of what I am doing now would otherwise be impossible.

The diocesan youth event in which we participated with Kikuyu Gospel Singers went really well. 53 choirs participated in all over 3 days. It was held in a small village and the whole choir stayed in one small mud brick house. It was a great event and the choir is now known in the diocese, and since then we have had many invitations to participate in services and evangelistic meetings in other churches. We praise God for the way the choir has grown and developed from a difficult beginning earlier in the year. This picture shows Christine on stage with the choir.

Paul is gearing up for the new academic year -finishing off the prospectus, working on the timetable and preparing his e-learning study. This is the final part of his seemingly eternal Masters course and involves piloting a small e-learning initiative at the University replacing face to face seminars with on-line asynchronous discussion (bit like a more academic form of facebook), before analysing its impact. What with that and teaching 3 courses in the coming semester Paul’s quite busy at present but fairly content and leaving the question of “how will it all get done?” to God.

We also recently went to the “nane nane” agricultural show – an annual event here in Dodoma. It is a great event where people can learn new and efficient ways of growing fruit and vegetables and keeping livestock. There are also wild animals on show, including a lion. This picture shows the boys with their friend Prince on a display tractor.

Thank you all once more for all your support in so many ways and please keep praying as we are constantly aware that apart from God we can do nothing.

Much Love,

Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac

Cats, Containers and Chameleons

2011-08-04T19:06:00.008+01:00

Dear friends,
On looking through our photos we realised we should have written a blog earlier – and there were many more we could have included! So be prepared for a long picture show this entry!

The boys have just started back at school after a month’s break. Isaac has now entered standard 1 and is very excited to be in the “big school” with Daniel who is now in standard 3. They enjoyed their holiday and had fun playing with friends. This picture shows them with neighbours Ema, K and P.

We had a lovely walk one evening up “lion rock,” one of the biggest hills in Dodoma with our new aussie neighbours, the Buchanans. This shows us near the top looking down over Dodoma.

Christine also took the boys for our regular holiday visit to Kilimatinde where we were able to relax for a few days with friends. This shows our friend Ema with his daughter Janeth (our God-daughter) in their new house which he has been hard at work building. It is coming on well but he still needs a roof which is always the difficult part both in terms of cost and expertise.

Monday this week was a very exciting day. Firstly the boys went back to school and into their new classes. Secondly we gained a new member of the family, Vanilla, a lovely kitten who you can see in this picture. Thirdly, the container which we have been waiting for finally arrived safely at the university. These pictures show the container being unloaded outside the main admin block at the university. So far everything seems to be in order and unbroken! We brought computers, books, lab equipment and furniture for the university which have all been well received. We also fitted in a few boxes of our own stuff and were all very happy to see it arrive – toys for the boys, a bike and a hammock for Paul, and a comfy deck chair and a ton of conditioner for Christine!

We’re at the end of the university year now with students already starting to leave after their exams. Staff are still busy marking, planning for the new year and developing research projects. Paul hopes to complete a few holiday jobs including supervising the laboratory air extraction system and bench resurfacing, building a projection and sound system for the main hall and (once more) painting out the badminton court.

Please continue to pray for Christine’s work. She is now receiving lots of applications for the job of youth projects officer to work alongside her. Please pray that we will find the right person and that the plans for various projects come together. Christine’s Swahili choir, Kikuyu Gospel Singers is doing well and was recently selected to be part of the diocese “tamasha” which is an event for youth choirs throughout the diocese – it is quite a privilege to be selected especially as we are such a new choir. Please pray for us as we go there next week. This picture shows Christine with the choir

Sadly we recently said goodbye to our good friends the Cousleys who have moved to Uganda to continue their work with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) The boys were particularly sad to see the Cousley boys, Joshua and Benjamin leave as they have been great friends over the last 3 years. Shortly before they left they came for a sleepover – this picture shows them all watching a DVD on the little sofa underneath Isaac’s new bed! We also said goodbye last week to Neville and Elspeth (our previous Aussie Neighbours!) who have been living next door since we arrived in Dodoma back in 2007 and are now returning to Australia. We were very sad to see them go.

As well as the goodbyes we were very happy to welcome the Aylings, good friends from “Christ the King” church in Kettering where we worshipped from 1996-2000 before going to Kilimatinde, and who still support us as a link church. The Aylings will be living in Dar-es-Salaam and working for MAF. In the last week of the school holidays we were able to spend a lovely few days with them in Dar, mostly playing on the beach. This picture shows Daniel and Isaac with their 3 children Jack, Harry and Robyn.

Our garden is flourishing and our bananas, papaya and passion are doing particularly well. This picture shows a chameleon trying to disguise itself as a banana.

With lots of love and blessings,
Paul, Christine, Daniel, Isaac and Vanilla.xxx

Back in the URTZ

2011-06-29T20:15:00.008+01:00

Dear Friends,
We have now been back in Dodoma for about a month and are feeling very settled and at home. We had a shaky start as after a great flight we broke down in the car around 3 hours from Dodoma and had to be towed home by a petrol tanker! But we got there safely and 2 weeks later our car was finally roadworthy again. It has been wonderful to catch up with friends, to get back into routine and to settle back into our home.

Thank you all for your encouragement, hospitality and friendship whilst we were back in the UK. We had a great time and it was wonderful to see so many of our family and old friends and to make some new friends.

Christine is back to a very quiet office. Beatrice who she worked with over the last few years is now studying at the university so Christine is on her own, though hopes to be able to employ someone else very soon. Thanks to everyone who made generous contributions to the work of the youth office whilst we were back in the UK, Christine is now planning several projects such as a continuation of the small loans scheme for youth groups, seminars in music and worship and training in youth bible study, so it is a busy but exciting time. There is still a lot of fundraising to do for the recording studio project but even this is well on the way. Please pray that we find the right person to work alongside Christine and that the funding continues to come in so that we are able to support him/her.

Paul was thrust straight back into the thick of it on his return to the university as due to staff changes and sickness the Physics laboratory courses had collapsed. With the help of Mr Mwaka who stepped down stairs from Biology to help out, things are now ticking over well and Saimon the lab scientists is due to return shortly after an improvement in his health – an answer to prayer. Paul has also been teaching on the Physics Teaching Methods and Special Relativity courses but still finds that he has plenty of spare time having not as yet taken back the responsibilities of timetable and database coordination. Please pray that Paul seeks God’s will in what responsibilities to take on this year. There are many new possible exciting opportunities and projects both academically, administratively and pastorally as well as existing areas of need. At the moment he’s not rushing into anything.

Thanks to everyone who bought a CD of the University’s English choir we managed to return with a lovely keyboard which is a real boost to the worship in the English service. The English choir is still very small after so many members graduated last year but they struggled on in our absence and we are now trying to build it up again. Please pray for new members and growth of the choir particularly in the new university year which starts in October.

Christine also continues to sing with the Swahili choir of the local parish congregation. Sadly Revival choir split after a number of problems, so Christine now sings with “Kikuyu Gospel Singers” with many members of Revival and many new members. Please pray for the development of this new choir and pray that the remaining issues following the split are resolved quickly and peacefully.

The boys have enjoyed the month in school and have now broken up for their long holidays, and will start back again in August. Isaac was proud to be captain of the lions team in the nursery and reception sports day and Daniel took part in the end of year assembly singing in sign language with his class, as you can see in the pictures above. We have new next door neighbours, mission partners from CMS Australia who have four children, including a boy in each of Daniel and Isaac’s classes, so they are all very happy.

We were able to visit Kilimatinde a couple of weeks ago where we went to a fundraising event to raise money to wire up the church and vicarage as electricity will be coming to the village later this year which is very exciting. Meanwhile the electricity supply here in Dodoma is very erratic at the moment as a big hydroelectric power station has had to close down due to water shortages. We are therefore having power-rationing here with regular 12 hour power cuts. The university has invested in a large backup generator for when there are cuts during working hours which hopefully will mean that Paul’s lab sessions will be undisturbed but unfortunately it does not cover the staff houses so candles and torches are still in regular use at home and we are aiming to get a gas cooker very soon!

With much love and blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

Containers and Cheerios

2011-05-12T16:25:00.000+01:00

Dear All,

Just a quick last post before we head off back to Tanzania on the 24th of May.

With a lot of help from St Austell Besom and staff of Plymouth University the container was filled and sealed on Tuesday. With over 50 computers, over 600 books and nearly 100 boxes of apparatus it was quite an undertaking and we are very grateful for all those who donated things, space, their time or their labour.

Less than two weeks now remain with one official link visit still to do and many people to say goodbye to. Please pray for us as we tie off loose ends, travel, and settle back into our life back in Tanzania.

Thankyou for your ongoing support and may God bless you all.

3 weeks left!

2011-05-03T20:27:00.012+01:00

Dear friends,

3 weeks to go! 3 weeks today we fly to Dar-es-Salaam and then straight on to Dodoma and back to life as usual! We have been really blessed during our time here by the interest so many people have shown in our work and by the way so many people are praying for us and keen to support us. Please pray for us as we prepare to travel and as we adjust back to life in Tanzania, especially for the boys as they cope with another transition. They have thoroughly enjoyed their time in the UK but are now looking forward to going back and seeing their friends again.

We have been continuing to visit all of our link churches around the country and it has been wonderful to see you all and get to know you. Thank you all for your warm welcomes, encouragement and support. These pictures show lunchtime after the service at Chilcompton, and Paul preaching in the evening service at Saltford.

The next week will also be very busy as Paul is finalising the container which will be sent to Tanzania on 10th May. He has managed to collect books, computers, lab equipment, furniture and lots of other things from various generous donors. All of this is now being collected together at Plymouth university who, as well as donating equipment, have agreed to allow us to store it until the container comes next week. Please pray for Paul as he collects all the equipment this week, and pray that all the contacts he has who have promised items or assitance will do so and that everything will come together, and for the safe and trouble free arrival of the container in Tanzania.

One of the boys' aims when coming to the UK was to see some castles, so a visit to Granny and Granpy in Cardiff was a great opportunity for this. They had a wonderful time. Here they are at Caerphilly castle.

We have also enjoyed receiving several visitors - thanks to everyone who has taken the trouble to come and see us - we really appreciate it as it's lovely to catch up. This picture shows our friend Rachel enjoying an afternoon on the beach with the boys.

During Holy week we went to Spring Harvest in Minehead with our good friends the Groths, for a wonderful time of relaxation and refreshment which was much needed during this busy final month in the UK. We had a great time and the boys loved their group the "Whizz Kids".
At the end of March Isaac turned 5 and as usual wanted a big party with all his new friends. Here he is in his new Buzz Lightyear costume with his favourite girlfriend, Stella.

With much love to you all. God bless
Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

Visits and visitors and the joys of Cornwall

2011-03-15T19:59:00.014Z

Dear Friends,

We are still enjoying life here in the UK, though are missing Tanzania too. We have had a wonderful time visting churches and friends and family, and receiving lots of visitors too.(including cousins Thomas and Adam, and Christine's mum, shown on these pictures) It is great to catch up with you all. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to come and see us and to everyone who has been so welcoming on our visits to you. Thanks to all our friends in St. Austell too. We really value our time with you. We are now past the half way mark as we plan to return to Tanzania in late May. We are enjoying the spring weather, the daffodils and the opportunities to walk on the coast path and enjoy some of the beautiful areas around St. Austell.

We are keeping ourselves busy as we are still trying to find equipment to send back to the university in a container. Things are coming in slowly but it is looking possible so please if you know of any sources of equipment such as computers (not too old), university level books, lab equipment, musical equipment please let us know. Christine is also looking for funds for some of her projects, particularly the recording studio project and the small loans project and has been searching for various trusts and organisations who may be able to help. We are very grateful to everyone who has helped us with donations for this so far. Please pray for God's provision for our work.

We are also looking to boost our own financial support through CMS so that we are able to continue serving in Tanzania for the next 3 years. We are so grateful to all of you who support us as individuals or through your churches. If you don't already, please consider whether you or your church are able to support us in this way. Please again pray that God will provide all that we need.

The boys continue to enjoy life at school. Daniel has been learning about Jamaica this term, and Isaac about Australia. This picture is of Isaac telling the tale of "Sheila and the 3 Kangaroos" at their school performance. (some resemblance to Goldilocks and the 3 bears) They also love their swimming lessons. This is Daniel with his teacher, Ross.

We have a busy 2 weekends ahead visiting link churches in the Bath area and then will be looking forward to Easter and the chance to spend some time with Paul's parents before going to Spring Harvest with some good friends.

With much love and God's blessings,

Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

The Chill, Churches and Cornish Cycling

2011-02-03T22:11:00.012Z

Dear Friends,
We are now gradually acclimatising to the cold of the UK, though the boys did enjoy a trip to the tropical dome at the Eden Project which really felt like home! Here they are with Grandma at the “Baobab bar” – definitely a taste of Tanzania! Since the end of December we have been settled in St. Austell in a lovely little cottage which we are renting as we have very good tenants in our own home. We are very happy here and it has been wonderful to get involved with our church here again and to catch up with old friends. We have started attending a house-group and Christine has re-joined the worship group. Paul has been helping out with the “Besom” Project run by the church to practically support local people in need. We have also been enjoying the beauty of Cornwall and doing some walking on the coast.

A few weeks ago we attended the CMS Partners in Mission conference at Clanfield near Oxford. It was a wonderful chance to meet other mission partners and to relax, learn, worship and pray together. This picture shows Christine at the conference. Unfortunately this coincided with the boys’ first week at school so we left them at home in the capable hands of Granny and Granpy. They are going to a local C of E school here in St. Austell. Daniel found it hard to settle for the first few weeks but they are now both doing well and making a few friends. They have also started swimming lessons which they are thoroughly enjoying. Daniel has been getting lots of swimming badges and Isaac was delighted last week as on the same day he could suddenly both swim and cycle without help.

We have had a few more very enjoyable visits to link churches. We are very grateful to you all for your continued support and for the great welcome we receive wherever we go. We look forward to meeting many more of you over the next few months. This picture shows us with the wonderful mission team at Hart Plain Church near Portsmouth.

Whilst here in the UK we are also trying to find some support for some of our work. Paul is trying to collect equipment for the university to send back in a container. He is particularly looking for computers (2nd hand but not more than a few years old), university level books and laboratory equipment. If you know of a school, college or company who are clearing out old equipment please let us know, or get in touch for more information. Christine is also trying to raise funds for some of the youth projects, including the recording studio project. For this project she is also looking for donations of studio equipment or electric instruments, which must be of good quality. If you are able to help in any way we would be grateful.

Also if anyone would like to buy or is able to sell our CD to raise money for the studio project, or our English choir CD we would be grateful. Please get in touch

With lots of love and blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

A White Christmas

2010-12-30T20:58:00.010Z

Dear Friends,

Firstly apologies for not writing a proper blog entry for 3 months, but hopefully you have received our updates and link letter in the meantime.

Our last couple of months in Tanzania were very busy as we were handing over our work to colleagues as well as saying our farewells. Christine’s main focus was a very big fundraising event to raise money for a recording studio which we hope to develop in Dodoma. The studio will be a huge benefit for the local youth choirs and will also be a source of income for the youth office where Christine works, where we are really struggling for funds. The event took place at the end of October and was a great event involving several choirs performing together with speeches from various important people. The guest of honour was the Chief Justice of Tanzania, Augustino Ramadhani, who contributed generously towards the project. In total we raised around £4,000 and together with funds we raised previously we now have around £5,000 towards the studio. We thank God for this encouraging start, but please pray for the project as we continue to work towards our target of £20,000.

Early November saw St John’s very first Graduation which was a wonderful celebration of three years of hard work by students and staff. The event went well and kick started the new academic year which had been delayed due to the General elections which passed peacefully. Paul managed to hand over all responsibilities and see the new timetable into action with a few days to spare before our flight. We had a small leaving party with some of our closest friends before we left which was a wonderful time of sharing together, though sad to say goodbye for the next 6 months. The picture at the top shows members of Revival choir giving us a leaving present, and this picture shows Christine feeding cake to the university chaplain, Bishop Ntiruka at our leaving party (a Tanzanian tradition!)

We arrived back in the UK at the end of November, probably at the coldest and snowiest time. We have spent the last month travelling, firstly to CMS house for a debrief, and then to London for a medical at interhealth. We made the most of this and had a few days in London which was a great time – the highlight was building a snowman in St. James’ Park! After this we went up to Manchester and spent a couple of weeks with Christine’s mum. During this time we were able to visit 2 of our link churches – the Avenue Methodist, Sale and Christ the King, Kettering. It was lovely to see friends again, and we very much look forward to visiting all our other supporting churches over the next few months.

For Christmas week we went up to the Lake District where we stayed in a big old farmhouse with all of Paul’s family. We are now in St. Austell where we will be for our remaining 5 months in the UK. We are renting a little house here as we have good tenants in our own house. It is nice to be settled, to catch up with friends and to get involved with our church here again.

As well as visiting our supporters we also hope to do some networking and fundraising whilst we are back in the UK. Paul is planning to send back to Tanzania a shipping container (or two?) and so is busy calling on all the contacts he can in the hope of finding schools, universities or businesses having a clean out. We’re primarily looking for good quality second hand computers, university level text books and scientific apparatus in quantity but so far we’ve yet to strike gold. Please contact us if you think you may be able to help (or know someone else who can).
Christine is trying to raise funds for a number of projects including the recording studio, the small loans project for youth groups, seminars in youth bible study and seminars in music and worship. If anyone has any ideas of organisations she could approach, or if anyone would like to do some fundraising for us (maybe through your church youth group or music group) please let us know.

We’re really sorry we will not be able to visit all our individual friends we would like to see during the 6 months we are here. However, we do welcome visitors here in St. Austell, and we would love to see you.

Please pray for us over the next few months as we settle back into life in the UK, travel around our link churches, and for the boys in school.

Lots of love and blessings,
Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac.xxx

Parties and Performances

2010-09-27T19:20:00.005+01:00

Dear Friends,

The main event this month was Daniel's 7th birthday. We had a great party in the garden with lots of friends, and this is his Tom and Jerry birthday cake, which was quite a challenge for mummy! Tom and Jerry and lots of other old fashioned cartoons are all the rage here in Tanzania!

Last weekend Revival choir entered a big competition here in Dodoma. It was organised by the health department of CCT (the Christian Council of Tanzania). Choirs from all denominations could enter and had to write and perform 2 songs raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and a Christian response to the issue. We came 3rd out of 19 choirs and are now taking part in an X-factor style competition including just 10 choirs from 4 regions of Tanzania. It will be televised on local TV each Sunday for 6 weeks starting this Sunday and people will vote for their favourite choirs by text until there are 4 choirs left which will enter the final. Please pray for us, especially this week as we do some more filming for the TV. It was a wonderful weekend. This picture shows the choir after the event.

Christine has been running a youth bible study with choir Revival called Mwamba Salama (Solid Rock) and this picture shows some of the group. It is a very good study guide in Swahili covering all the basics of Christianity and aimed particularly at youth groups. Christine also hopes to run a seminar at work to train youth officers from all the dioceses to use this recource as group bible study is very uncommon in Tanzania, and there is a real need to encourage youth groups to read and discuss the Word together.

This picture shows Isaac with some of his class who led their school assembly recently for the first time. Isaac did very well and is very happy to stand up and perform!

At the University we are getting ready for graduation including finalising assessments of who is able to graduate or not - this is obviously a difficult task and tensions are high with a need for a balance of compassion and justice.

We are busy getting ready for our return to the UK in November. We fly on the 21st November and will spend a week in St. Austell followed by a few weeks up North, and then will settle in St. Austell from Dec 27th. The boys will be going to Bishop Bronscombe school for a few months. Please pray for us all as we prepare for this. We are looking forward to seeing many of you soon.

Love and blessings,
Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac. xxx

Boats, Bibles and Betrothals

2010-08-22T19:28:00.013+01:00

Dear Friends,

We continued to enjoy the boys’ school holiday in July and had a trip to Musoma up in the North of Tanzania on the shores of lake Victoria. We were apprehensive about the 15 hour bus journey each way, but the boys had a great time and had no problems at all. We were visiting our friend, Grace who is there with CMS. These pictures show Grace with us on a boat trip to an island in the lake. We had a lovely holiday there – it’s a very beautiful part of the country. We have also enjoyed some country walks at home. This picture is at our favourite local spot in Dodoma where cows and goats regularly come to drink at the lake.

The boys are now back at school and very much enjoying it. Isaac is in reception class and is very happy to be a “big boy” now. Daniel loves his new class and teacher in standard 2 and has made some new friends so is much happier than he was. Please pray that both continue to enjoy and do well at school. We have also started up bible club again, which had a break since our friends, the Garretts left for a year’s furlough in the USA. Christine is now hosting it at home and it has been very well attended so far. This picture shows some of the children singing praises.

On the 8th of August was the annual “Farmer’s Day” in Tanzania and we went to the agricultural show in Dodoma. These pictures show Daniel testing out a pump for watering vegetables and Isaac playing with a friendly bunny.

A few weeks ago we were invited to the launch of a new English service which will be held once a week at the hospital chapel in Kilimatinde. Paul was asked to preach at the launch service. This weekend we were invited to be witnesses of the engagement of two of our close friends from Kilimatinde, Rev. Silla and Janeth. This picture shows the ring giving. They hope to get married in November. Please pray for them as they prepare.

Paul is currently involved in visiting/assessing our teaching practice students on placement whilst Christine is busy at work preparing for a big fundraising event for our recording studio project which will take place in October. Please pray that this event will be a success and plenty of people will come and contribute to the project. When we are back in the UK Christine wants to try and visit some studios or other organisations which may be interested in this project to look for funding or possibly second hand equipment to help with the project. Paul will also be looking for second hand books, computers and laboratory apparatus for the University from schools, universities and other organisations back in the UK. The plan is to fill a container ready to ship to Tanzania by the time we return in May. If anyone knows of organisations who may be able to help us concerning equipment, or for funding for the small loans project please let us know.

This final picture shows Rosie, who works for us in the garden. She is also a member of the Mothers Union choir, and this is her dancing at church.

Many thanks for all your support and may God bless you as you bless us.

Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

Hellos and Goodbyes

2010-07-19T19:56:00.012+01:00

Dear Friends,

Sorry for the long break from the blog but hopefully you have received our link letter in the meantime. Dodoma is now very dry again. Many parts of the country have had a very good harvest this year, though as usual Dodoma region has suffered due to lack of rain. At least there should be plenty of food around from surrounding areas this year.

Christine’s small loans project is continuing to go well in the diocese of Kiteto. Thank you to everyone who has made contributions on my just giving page or to me personally and please pray that this avenue continues to be effective. We recently carried out training of 8 youth groups and have distributed loans to them. This work would have been impossible without your contributions and more is still needed. The pictures show the training event. The groups will be carrying out a range of projects including vegetable gardening, carpentry, pig and chicken keeping, small shops and others.

In June Revival Choir (the Swahili choir with which Christine sings) held a big event to launch our CD which we recorded late last year. It was a great event. A well known Christian singer from Kenya, Solomon Mkubwa, joined us. He is pictured here performing, and the group shows Revival choir with him and others.

Paul is starting to hand various responsibilities over to others at the university as we get ready for our furlough. He has promised to see the new timetable in and so we’ll be leaving shortly after the university opens in November and not long after our first graduation for which frantic preparations are ongoing and for which your prayers are welcome. In the mean time there will still be the usual tasks to keep Paul busy: marking, exam mark collation, teaching practice observation, timetable creation along with this year a little bit of teaching A-level Physics on a pre-university entry course. The university year has just come to an end and we were very sad to say goodbye to graduating students who have been with us in the English choir for the last 3 years. A few weeks ago we had a lovely farewell party with them. This picture shows the members who will be leaving us singing at the party.

We have just had a visit from Christine’s mum. This picture shows us picnicing with her and some friends beside our favourite lake in Dodoma. We also had a few days holiday in Bagamoyo. Here the boys are catching crabs with daddy and playing in the sea with Grandma.

We have had a couple of trips to Kilimatinde recently. Here Isaac is helping our friend Ema to wash the car with water from the lake in the village.

We are busy making preparations to come back to the UK on Furlough in November this year for 6 months. Thanks for your prayers for the practical side of things. We have just confirmed a house to rent in St. Austell and CMS will be lending us a vehicle, so things are coming together now. We are in the process of arranging dates to visit all our link churches and generally planning our busy schedule. Please pray for God’s hand over the whole process both in terms of our time back in the UK and the situations we leave behind.

Though the house is well equipped there are a few things we will be looking to borrow if any of our friends in St. Austell are able to help out. If anyone has a spare oil fired or electric radiator which we could use in a bedroom we would be very grateful. We would also be grateful for the loan of a few toys and especially kids bikes (for a proficient 7 year old, and a 4 year old needing stabilizers)

With love,
Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

Videos and justgiving page

2010-05-05T07:56:00.009+01:00

Please take a look at my just giving page www.justgiving.com/Tanzania-Youth

We are trying to raise funds for the youth small loans project which Christine is working on. CMS are supporting us in this and will channel all donations made through this page to my project. You can read more about the project on the page itself and see some pictures of the work so far. Any help you are able to be give would be hugely appreciated. Thanks.x

Here are a couple of videos to give you some idea of our everyday life in Dodoma. The first is of our general life and work, and the second of the boys school and some of their activities. As usual they are low quality because of problems with uploading.

Isaac's Birthday

2010-05-03T18:57:00.013+01:00

Dear all,

We have had a good couple of months. Isaac turned 4 at the end of March. Here he is with his veggietales birthday cake. He had a great party with around 30 friends - a very sociable boy!

We were treated to another great show at school at Easter and spent Easter day in Msalato village with Rev. Sambayi, the ex vicar of our church, and his family in their new parish. Christine and the boys had their usual few days retreat to Kilimatinde during the Easter holidays. These pictures show Isaac and some friends enjoying looking at some pigs belonging to our friend Baraka, and the boys singing with Amani on the rock in Kilimatinde.

We also enjoyed a few days visit from our friends Grace and Mark from St. Austell passing through on their way up to Musoma where Grace will be working for a while.

Christine has now started some of the preparatory training work for the small loans project in the diocese of Kiteto and is trying to find funding to continue with this. She is also busy planning and looking for funding for other projects such as the development of a recording studio for youth choirs in dodoma, and various training programmes for young people. This picture shows some of the young people during the initial seminar. Please pray for theis project and for all of Christine's work.

Our English choir CD "Light of the World" has now been produced and is on sale so we are busy promoting it. Next week we will be going to lead a service at the cathedral in town and promoting it there. Please pray for the choir as we will lose many of our members this year as they are final year students in the university. Pray that we are able to find some new members to continue the good work that the group has started in the English congregation.

After a hectic inter-semester break we're now into the swing of a slightly easier paced second semester here at the University. The picture shows some first years working away at one of the electronics practicals. First year and second year labs are going well and Paul is now working on practical tests and datalogging workshops (new for this year as we've recently received the sensors and interfaces from labaid). The Dodoma Physics Teachers Network is at a critical phase. Poor attendance from members so far suggest that it simply is not fulfilling a need and so not worth continuing however Paul has decided to try again one more time, setting a meeting for next month - please pray that if this is part of Gods will for Paul's work here in Dodoma then it may be revealed in new interest (or however God decides to do it).

Many thanks for all your support financially and prayerfully.
Much love
Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

Travels and treehouses

2010-03-03T19:12:00.009Z

Dear Friends,

It is now raining again, so much so that in some parts of the country there has been flooding, though in other parts there has been drought. In the Dodoma area the harvest, though not brilliant, promises to be quite good this year relative to recent years. This picture shows the maize crop of one of our neighbours on the university campus.

Christine has recently been travelling to the dioceses of Mpwapwa and Kiteto to talk to diocesan and youth leaders to determine if one of these dioceses is suitable to start the next stage of our loans and savings scheme. Though we have not yet managed to find a grant to continue the project we have a little money which we can use to at least begin the project in one diocese. Please pray that more funds will come through for this project. The picture shows Christine and Beatrice with the Bishop and various youth leaders in Mpwapwa.

Paul, whilst taking a break from writing timetables and collating student results over the short break between semesters, has been very busy building a tree house in the garden which the boys and their friends love. Daniel loves reading and writing these days and now enjoys taking his books up in the tree house to read to himself or to Isaac. This is the house under construction and the boys in the not-quite-finished product. The long awaited Physics Teachers Network has at last met for the first time with a number of interested members from local schools. Please pray that the Network grows and becomes effective in improving the quality of Physics Teaching in Dodoma and that Paul gets the timetable ready in time for the new semester

We have several new mission partners at the university, including the Heaneys, a crosslinks family with a little boy called Sam, who is already Isaac’s best friend. They go to school together. It is lovely to have another family around.

We are beginning to think about our time of furlough which will begin in November this year for 6 months. We plan to be based in St. Austell but although we have a house there, we now have very good tenants who we do not want to lose. So, if they plan to stay we would need to find alternative accommodation. If any of our Cornwall friends have any ideas of somewhere we could stay for that time please let us know. Perhaps someone has a friend with a holiday let which would be quiet over the winter months and we could rent at low cost? Hopefully the boys will be going to Bishop Bronscombe School for a few months. We may also be looking to borrow a car, either for the whole time or just for some of our weekend link church visits, if anyone has any ideas?

This picture shows some of the girls from Revival choir who were cooking in our garden when we had some choir guests last weekend.

Below ore 3 videos - the first is a video of Daniel's birthday back in September. Second, you should find a video of our Christmas break, and finally a video of our English choir when we went to record an album in January. All have been reduced in size (and quality) to be uploadable.

New Year 2010

2010-01-21T19:22:00.023Z

Dear friends,

Happy New Year! The special Christmas blog turned into a special Christmas email – hope you all got that, and hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Over Christmas we took a short holiday at Bagamoyo with some neighbours. The boys were particularly excited about having Christmas on the beach and it made a nice relaxing break for us all.

Whilst we were away the rain here in Dodoma was very heavy and this continued into January, though it now hasn’t rained for over a week and if it doesn’t start again soon crops will be badly affected so please pray that it returns soon. The picture shows the usually very dry river which runs through the middle of the university campus, at full flow.

On new year’s eve we celebrated with Christmas crackers and Christmas pudding with our neighbours. This is our neighbour Elspeth and Paul thoroughly enjoying themselves. Christine then went to see the new year in at church at a big celebration with hours of singing and dancing led by revival choir and various university choirs. (unfortunately I forgot to take the camera to this one!) Then on new years day we headed off to Kilimatinde to greet our friends there and for the baptism service of our new God-daughter, Janeth, daughter of our good friends Ema and Beatrice.

The boys are just finishing their long Christmas holiday and are back to school on Monday. Please pray for them as they settle back into the routine of school again. They have enjoyed the break and are now much happier to be left at home with Lidia when Christine goes to work.

Last week we did yet another recording, this time with the English choir. The photos show the whole choir in our new uniforms and the tenors rehearsing in our garden. It was hard work but good fun and hopefully we should produce a good CD.

Today Paul was granted an audience with the Heads of all the Secondary Schools in Dodoma Muunicipality to seek their support as we plan to launch the Dodoma Physics Teacher’s Network. He and the idea of the network were warmly welcomed and the date has been set or the first meeting in February. After what has been a relatively stress free semester, as it draws to its close, Paul is bracing himself for one of the busiest times of the year. He has the task of assessment coordinator for the faculty which requires many hours of slaving over databases and spreadsheets for the next couple of months and also needs to have the second semester timetable ready after what will be just a short break. These big jobs come on top of other tasks such as preparing new teaching courses and practicals and keeping up with the marking but Paul is trying to relax and trust in God’s provision day by day and is determined not to let himself become overstressed as he did last year.

The final picture shows our friend Yohana and his son Joshua (other God-children) having a relaxing sunday afternoon in our garden!

Lots of love and blessings
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac. xxx

Dear friends,

Happy New Year! The special Christmas blog turned into a special Christmas email – hope you all got that, and hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Over Christmas we took a short holiday at Bagamoyo with some neighbours. The boys were particularly excited about having Christmas on the beach and it made a nice relaxing break for us all.

Whilst we were away the rain here in Dodoma was very heavy and this continued into January, though it now hasn’t rained for over a week and if it doesn’t start again soon crops will be badly affected so please pray that it returns soon. The picture shows the usually very dry river which runs through the middle of the university campus, at full flow.

On new year’s eve we celebrated with Christmas crackers and Christmas pudding with our neighbours. This is our neighbour Elspeth and Paul thoroughly enjoying themselves. Christine then went to see the new year in at church at a big celebration with hours of singing and dancing led by revival choir and various university choirs. (unfortunately I forgot to take the camera to this one!) Then on new years day we headed off to Kilimatinde to greet our friends there and for the baptism service of our new God-daughter, Janeth, daughter of our good friends Ema and Beatrice.

The boys are just finishing their long Christmas holiday and are back to school on Monday. Please pray for them as they settle back into the routine of school again. They have enjoyed the break and are now much happier to be left at home with Lidia when Christine goes to work.

Last week we did yet another recording, this time with the English choir. The photos show the whole choir in our new uniforms and the tenors rehearsing in our garden. It was hard work but good fun and hopefully we should produce a good CD.

Today Paul was granted an audience with the Heads of all the Secondary Schools in Dodoma Muunicipality to seek their support as we plan to launch the Dodoma Physics Teacher’s Network. He and the idea of the network were warmly welcomed and the date has been set or the first meeting in February. After what has been a relatively stress free semester, as it draws to its close, Paul is bracing himself for one of the busiest times of the year. He has the task of assessment coordinator for the faculty which requires many hours of slaving over databases and spreadsheets for the next couple of months and also needs to have the second semester timetable ready after what will be just a short break. These big jobs come on top of other tasks such as preparing new teaching courses and practicals and keeping up with the marking but Paul is trying to relax and trust in God’s provision day by day and is determined not to let himself become overstressed as he did last year.

Lots of love and blessings
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac. xxx

Rain and Recording

2009-11-30T19:24:00.009Z

Dear all,

A few weeks ago the rain started. We thought it had come early and it looked very promising. The boys went straight out to play in their wellies! However, after a week or so of heavy rain, we have had a couple of weeks now with none at all and people are concerned it was a false alarm and are not sure whether or not to start planting. In the mean time it’s all very hot and very sticky. Please pray that the rains will start properly soon and last long enough to produce a good harvest this year.

At the end of October we enjoyed a visit from our friends from Kettering, the Aylings, who are thinking of coming to Tanzania as mission partners. We had a lovely few days with them, though sadly too short! Please pray for them as they make plans for the future, and thank God that their children loved their time here after being very apprehensive. The picture shows Stewart and Michelle with their children Jack, Harry and Robyn, together with the head and deputy head at a local primary school.

We also welcomed home from Nairobi our friends, the Garrets, with their new baby Christiana Danielle, shown here with Wendy her mum.

At the beginning of November we attended a CMS “Partners in Mission” conference at a lovely Catholic Retreat centre in Veyula just outside Dodoma. We got together with all the CMS UK mission partners in Tanzania, Tim and Steve from the UK office and Sarah from the CMS Africa office in Nairobi, for a wonderful time of sharing, encouraging and praying for one another. This picture shows nearly everyone who attended.

Last week Christine went to Dar-es-Salaam to record a CD with Revival choir after 2 hard weeks of rehearsing every day. We had a good trip and the CD is excellent though was very hard work especially due to lack of air conditioning in a small sealed studio in the hot season in Dar-es-Salaam! These pictures shows Venace recording the keyboard in the studio and Mama Glory relaxing outside the studio.

Christine’s workload has become much easier now. We are now mainly trying to find ways to fundraise for the various projects we have in the pipeline. Please pray that some of these projects and ideas will be successful and especially that we find a way to fund Beatrice’s salary as we only have a few months of money left.

Despite the heavy number of contact hours this semester Paul is fairly chipper, enjoying the teaching and finding time to devote to work issues, helping others out, the masters course and of course home and family commitments. The pergola at the back of the house has been the latest weekend project – all we need to do now is wait for the vines and passion plants, currently about 10cm tall, to grow up and over it to get some shade – may be some time.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. Unfortunately we missed the deadline to get a link letter out before Christmas but watch this space for a special Christmas blog!

Lots of love and blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

New Term

2009-10-20T20:16:00.008+01:00

Dear all,

The new term has started this week at the university so the place is buzzing again after the peace and quiet of the last few months – it was beginning to get a little boring!

With the ink not quite dry on the timetable, Paul’s efforts are now being directed at registration of new students, sorting out seminar groups, oh and teaching 3 different courses (1 st year Physics labs, 2nd year Physics labs and a new third year education course “Educational Media and Technology”). Its all a bit hectic with study for the masters in full swing too but God is good and Paul is quite upbeat, trusting God to see him from one day to the next.

We are also extremely busy in the choir shop now all the students have come back and even more than last year. We are frantically trying to stock up to cope with the demand this week. Today I came home from town with over 500 bottles of water in the car!

Christine’s trips to Masasi and Manyoni for the small loans project evaluation went well. It was wonderful to see some of the projects the groups have developed and how much they have helped them in raising money for their groups as well as income for individuals and their churches and even helping their local communities in many ways, and all made possible with a loan of just a few hundred pounds. The first picture shows our discussions with members of youth groups in Masasi and the second shows a successful market gardening project which one of the groups set up. Please pray for funding so that we can continue this project in other dioceses.

The only down-side of the trip was the journey – it is a long way to Masasi – at least 12 hours drive, and we had an accident on the way being hit by a bus. We praise God that we were able to avoid what looked like a certain head-on collision, no-one was hurt, and though the car took quite a bashing it was still running perfectly and we were able to continue with the journey. Repair work is still on-going!

The boys have just gone back to school after a 2 week break. The climax of last term was sports day which was great fun, and a very colourful occasion as you can see on the pictures. During the holiday Christine and the boys spent a few days relaxing in Kilimatinde whilst Paul was busy registering students. We had a lovely time with our friends there. The picture shows our friends Amani and Faraja with their week old baby Nehemiah Daniel, and the boys with their friends Gift, Tumaini and Given.

Now the university term has started again we are re-starting the English service at the chapel and welcoming back our English choir who we have missed. This will be much better for the boys who find the Swahili service a struggle. We are planning to make a recording of the English choir this term, and also next month Christine will be recording with Revival choir. Please pray for both of these projects.

Lots of love and blessings to you all,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac. xxx

cousins, cake and conference

2009-09-21T13:50:00.016+01:00

Dear all,

Greetings from the Salamans who are currently enjoying a relaxing bank-holiday weekend at home, recovering from a busy “summer break”.

Our second group of visitors over the break was Paul’s sister Mary and her family (husband David and girls Rebecca, Harriet and Rachel). They were with us for a total of just over two weeks and managed to take in all manner of vistas on Tanzanian life from visiting schools and villages to enjoying a safari park and the beach. the first picture shows the girls at a school in Dodoma, and the second shows everyone on safari on the roofrack! It was lovely to spend time with them and show them a bit of our lives here. The boys had a whale of a time with all the attention from their big cousins and really miss them now they’ve gone back.

Paul has been travelling here and there observing the university students during their block teaching practice whilst at the same time trying to organise the release of the student results for the last semester. After a manic few days things are complete and the dust has now settled leaving him free to work on preparation for the forthcoming semester, including the timetable, at a more leisurely pace. Please pray that everything will be ready for the start of the new semester in 4 weeks time.

Last week was Daniel’s 6th birthday and he had a lovely day. The pictures are of his party with some of his school friends which we had at the new Italian restaurant, and was a great success. The boys are continuing to do well at school. They just have a couple of weeks until the end of term one and then have a 2 week break. Please continue to pray for them as they develop in their school life and relationships.

Christine has had a very busy time recently preparing for and running the national youth conference which took place last weekend. It was a great success with 18 of the 23 dioceses of the Anglican church represented, with 14 choir groups, and a number of other young people and youth leaders. The weekend consisted of a great deal of singing (which is what the youth do best in Tanzania!) together with biblical teaching, practical teaching and sports. Amongst some wonderful preachers and speakers from Tanzania, we were privileged to have with us Billy Birungi, an evangelist from Uganda who heads up a very large annual youth conference there and was able to come and share the Word of God with us. We had some problems with catering but otherwise the event was enjoyed by all. Many thanks to all those who were able to support the conference in prayer and financially. God is good and we were able to raise just enough to run the conference. Now after selling some T shirts at the event we have even managed to make a slight profit. The pictures show one of the choirs performing, and Christine with her colleague Beatrice and youth leaders from all the dioceses. After a short time to recover Christine and Beatrice are now planning a trip to Masasi, a day’s drive away in the South East of the country, and Manyoni, not too far from Dodoma. Our small loans project is coming to an end and we will be visiting various youth groups in these dioceses to evaluate the success of the project. Please pray for us as we travel and for Paul and the boys back home. Please also pray that God will provide funding to continue with this project and others which we are planning.

Lots of love and Blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

Camels and encounters

2009-08-08T19:35:00.007+01:00

Dear all,

Just to make us feel at home, today we went to Dodoma’s version of the Royal Cornwall show! Today is the “nane nane” public holiday (literally meaning 8th of the 8th!) to celebrate farmers day. Dodoma has over the last few years developed its own agricultural show which is very good, demonstrating modern techniques in arable and livestock farming. There is also an amazing display of wild animals including a very noisy, hungry lion, and the livestock section included a camel! We had a lovely morning there with our good friends John and Mama Prince, and their little boy, Prince, all with the boys in this picture.

The boys have been on holiday from school during July and had a very happy time. We were concerned that it would be difficult to leave them whilst we were at work but it worked out that one of us could be around for them most of the time and they were happy to be left with some friends on occasions. Praise God for that. They are now back at school and enjoying it as usual. Daniel now has a longer day at school so gets quite tired but is very happy.

A friend of ours, Noeli, who is a theology student at the university, was married in July to Eveline. Christine was part of the “wedding committee” who traditionally organise the wedding and party on behalf of the groom’s family. It was hard work but a lovely day. Unfortunately the batteries ran out on the camera that day so we haven’t any pictures for you! Please pray for Noeli and Eveline as they start their new life together.

At the end of July we hosted a CMS “encounter group”. A group of 9, young people and their leaders, from Brighton came to Dodoma for a week. They were a great group and we had a wonderful time with them. Each morning they ran a holiday club at the boys’ school (pictured here) which around 70 children attended and thoroughly enjoyed. In the afternoons they met up with Revival choir to sing together and teach each other songs, preparing for an event on the Sunday to launch Revival Choir’s “compassionate fund”. This fund is to help choir members when they are bereaved, ill or in difficulty, and will also be used as a loan fund for members who want to set up small enterprises etc. We raised a good amount of money at the event to kick-start the fund, and now choir members will continue to pay into it each month. On the final evening the encounter group and Revival choir had a football match which was great fun. This picture shows the 2 groups together after the match. It was lovely to see the way the two groups built up a relationship over the week. The group have now moved on to Moshi where they are helping in an orphanage. Thank God for them and all they have done in Tanzania and pray for them as they travel home next week.

Paul has been occupied with marking and collating student results for the past few weeks – a never ending process as now the provisional results are out there will be appeals, re-marks and then supplementary exams before results are finalised. He has also just come back from a trip to Dar to get his leg checked out at a posh hospital after a week of hobbling around due to some unknown condition. After a lot of prodding and poking, numerous different drug regimes and a Doppler ultrasound scan we are still none the wiser as to what the root problem is but it seems to be fairly harmless and getting better anyway. This week will see Paul off again to Singida to try to get as many teaching practice observations covered as possible before he has to come back through Dodoma and off to Dar to pick his sister (Mary) and family up who will be visiting for a week or two. The boys are all looking forward to playing with their cousins who they haven’t seen for 2 years.

Christine has been busy at work preparing for our big national youth conference in September. The plans are coming together very well though the fundraising is still an issue. Please pray that God will provide for this event. We have also just been invited by an organisation in Dar-es-Salaam to submit a proposal for funding for our recording studio project. We aim to build a recording studio in Dodoma where the youth choirs can record their music, which will build up and encourage the choirs, and will also generate a sustainable income to help the TAYO office, which is really struggling financially. Please pray that this proposal is well received and we are able to get the funding for the project. We are also selling CDs to raise extra money for this project. The CD includes 10 youth choirs (including Revival) from the Dodoma area who got together specifically to record in order to raise money for this purpose. It is a great CD. If you would like one, or are able to sell some please email me and I will arrange for some to be sent to you. They are priced at £10 each.

One great answer to prayer is that we have tenants in our house in St. Austell. They have been there nearly 2 months now and seem to be happy. Please pray that they will be happy in the house and will stay for a good length of time.

Lots of love and blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.xxx

some fun videos

2009-06-25T17:59:00.004+01:00

Hope you enjoy this video - just the boys having fun - flying kites on the football ground by our house, Daniel when he first learned to cycle properly, Easter hat parade at school and water play with our good friends the Garretts.

...And this is Isaac's 3rd birthday, 30th March 2009

... And this is Christine's birthday, May 2009, featuring singing by Revival Choir, the University English Choir, and Amani

Golf, Grandma and Gifts

2009-06-23T19:54:00.007+01:00

Dear all,

Sorry its been so long since we updated this but hopefully you have received link letters in the meantime!

Christine’s work is going well and Beatrice has now started working at the office. It’s good to have the company and someone to share ideas with and she is great fun and a hard worker. Her baby boy, Brilliant, was born safely and is doing well. Please pray for them, and please pray for our work. We are continuing with our small loans project which is going really well in one of the 2 dioceses but not so well in the other, as the groups are not returning their loans as required. We are also planning a big youth conference in September, bringing together Anglican youth groups from every diocese across Tanzania, but at present are struggling to raise funds and have not had sufficient response from the dioceses. We need to make a decision at the end of this month whether to go ahead in September or postpone. Either way, please pray that the funds come in and the conference will be a success. As Christine is now doing more work for TAYO she has had to give up her work helping at the nursery school at Ipagala. She was given 2 lovely leaving parties. This picture shows Christine receiving a gift from one of the children, and Julianne, a good friend of ours who is the matron of the nursery.

Christine’s mum came to visit in May and we were able to have a lovely holiday at the beach and Mikumi Wildlife park as well as a good time together in Dodoma, and a trip to Kilimatinde. The boys were very happy to have some time with Grandma.

A very exciting new development in Dodoma is the opening of a new Italian restaurant complete with crazy golf course – a new favourite place for the boys, who love the crazy golf!

Isaac has now started at nursery and loves it and Daniel is continuing to do well and enjoy school too. They have a month’s holiday during July and then Daniel will be moving up to standard 1 in the main part of the school. Isaac will be in the nursery class for another year. They recently had a nursery and reception fun sports day which was great. The picture shows Paul helping out with the relay race.

Paul has finished his teaching for this semester (and all the dreaded coursework marking) and the students are now in the middle of exams. The picture below shows the now common sight around campus of students huddling together in small groups in the shade of a tree quizzing each other on the finer points of biochemistry, educational theory or maybe just the latest gossip. Paul is now looking forward (once the exam marking is finished) to the long break where work will continue but at a more gentle pace with the opportunity to do a little travelling and receive visitors. Projects on the go include: writing the timetable for next year – think of a huge, three dimensional sudoku that never stops changing, observing students during their teaching practice – both near and far, planning new courses for next year, collating this years results and finally getting around to starting the Physics Teachers Network that’s been on the backburner for far too long. Hopefully he’ll also have time to complete a few half finished projects at home such as the rainwater catchment system and the bikeshed/carport and maybe start a new one like the roundabout he promised Daniel when we first got here nearly 2 years ago.

At the end of July we will be hosting a CMS encounter group – a group of young people from the UK. They will run a holiday club at the school which the boys will attend and will also meet with Revival choir each afternoon. Please pray for this group as they prepare for their trip and pray for God’s blessing on all they do here in Dodoma and later in Moshi.

Please also continue to pray for our friend Amani who did not do well in his A level resits but is awaiting the results of a re-mark, and looking for what possible future paths God may have for him, now that it looks like his plans to study for a degree may not be possible.

With love and blessings,
Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac. xxx

Isaac's Birthday

2009-04-05T19:19:00.003+01:00

Dear all,

Isaac turned 3 at the end of March and had a lovely day. This is him opening presents in the morning, and enjoying his elephant cake with his friends at his party. Now he is 3 he is able to start the nursery class at Daniel’s school. They have just broken up for a 2 week Easter break but after that he will go each morning from 9 until 12. He is very excited and looking forward to it. Unfortunately this means 2 morning school runs for Christine as Daniel’s school day starts at 7.45. However, it also means Christine will be able to increase her work days and plans to work every morning from 9 til 12, which will give her much more time to get into the work. Work is going well and the loans project is progressing nicely. We are also trying to plan a big youth event later this year which will be held here at the university. Please pray that everything comes together for this event and especially that we are able to raise the funds that we need for it. Praise God that we have found a new staff member for the office, though she hasn’t started yet as she is having a baby very shortly. We decided to delay her start date until after the baby is born rather than employing her and have her leave immediately for 3 months maternity leave. Her name is Beatrice and coincidentally she is married to a member of staff here at the university. Please pray for her and her family as the baby is born and she prepares to start work, and pray that Christine and Beatrice will work well together and develop a good friendship.

Daniel has had a good term at school and came home with a certificate for getting “the most smiley face stickers for good behaviour” over the term which we were all very pleased with. His teacher says he has done really well this term and developed well both academically and socially, so thank you all for your prayers for him. At the end of term we had 2 big events – firstly the Reception class “Easter hat parade” and Easter egg hunt and then the school Easter show. The show was very impressive and had a very powerful Christian message which was wonderful to see considering around half the students acting it out were muslim, and their parents were all there watching too. Christian staff and students at the school are a wonderful witness to the rest of their community. Please pray for them.

Paul is recovering from a rough couple of weeks but is thankful to God for seeing him through it unscathed. The beginning of semester was manic to say the least with timetables to sort out, new courses to plan and last semester’s exam results still to be finalised. A few too many short deadlines meant that Paul overstretched and overstressed himself and succumbed to some sort of virus which kept him off work for a week (the longest he’s been off work in many years). Once nearly recovered Paul decided to go for a walk with the Boys and our friend Brandon at a local mountain however in a remote area we were robbed of everything we had on us by a group of youths in a fairly unpleasant experience that shook us all up for a while. Fortunately the Boys don’t seem to be affected much by the incident and Paul is now back to full health and feeling a lot more at peace such that he’s starting to take on more teaching (special relativity and teaching methods) and found some time to work on his shed whilst at the same time taking great care not to over do it again. Please pray for peace and perspective in Paul’s work and that he manages to find time to prepare all practicals for this semester’s Physics lab.

During March Revival choir visited a different church each Sunday, mostly in villages around Dodoma, which was exhausting but a great experience and wonderful to be able to share in fellowship with village churches and be a blessing to them. One of these trips was a weekend visit to Kilimatinde. We were very well received there and had a wonderful time. It’s great to see a real friendship building up between Revival and Masada choirs. This picture shows some of Revival choir at “the point” in Kilimatinde. Isaac came with us on this weekend too and Paul and Daniel had a nice boys’ weekend at home.

For a few months now Christine and a group of other missionary ladies in Dodoma have been meeting regularly for bible study, to pray for each other and especially to pray for the many muslims we know in Dodoma. A few weeks ago our friend Amani (see earlier blogs) came to speak to the group about his conversion to Christianity. It was a wonderful evening and a real blessing both to the group and to Amani. Following this some of the teachers from CAMS (Daniel’s school) who were at the meeting invited him to sing in the school assembly and to tell his story in several classes, which was very well received. Last week we held a fun night with the group and invited a muslim family from Dodoma to come and join us. Two ladies, Rose and Anna, and 3 girls came and we had a wonderful evening together. Please join us in praying for this family and our other Muslim friends, and for Amani and his family, many of whom are Muslim.

Lots of love,
Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac.

Babies and bananas

2009-02-22T19:30:00.004Z

Dear all,

The University is relatively empty at present with students enjoying an inter-semester break along with many staff. Paul is still active though, having spent time off around Christmas, and is now working on exam results, timetables, course outlines and Physics practicals. He is still finding space to work on his masters course and the workshop/shed he is building is near completion.

In January we became God-parents to twins Joshua and Jospehine, pictured here with their parents. Their dad is an electrician here at the university. The second picture shows Josephine feeding cake to Isaac, a Tanzanian tradition! Please pray for them as they grow and develop.

Christine has now started work with TAYO (Tanzania Anglican Youth Organisation) at the head office of the Anglican Church, though the start has been rather more of a challenge than expected. The plan was that she would be assisting a Tanzanian project officer who has been in post for a few months before Christmas, having had all the work of TAYO handed over to him by a USPG mission partner who has now returned to the UK. However, this project officer did not return to work after Christmas so Christine has been on her own trying to keep the office running with little knowledge of what needs to be done, and little support. However, she is now getting to grips with the work and is excited about some of the projects she will be involved with. Initially, alongside the general running of the department and its activities, the main project is a small loans project for youth choirs in 2 dioceses to help them with income generation projects to develop their groups. We do need to employ a new youth co-ordinator for TAYO. Please pray that we find a good and reliable person to fill this role and who Christine can work alongside easily. Please pray for Christine as she gets used to the work and that her work permit will be processed quickly.

We had a long gap in the rains after an encouraging start and people were worried that there would not be enough for the crops. However, the last few weeks we have seen good, continuous rains, and though the crops will not be as good as they might have been had the gap not occurred, they should be sufficient. Our garden is flourishing, and our banana tree is doing very well.

Daniel is now back at school and loving it and Isaac gets on very well with our new house help Rosie while Lidia is on maternity leave. Each week they go to “Childrens Church” run by Michaela a 9 year old friend who plans all sorts of activities for the kids and occasional adult who come along. Michaela and her brothers Schuyler and Zachary are children of Jeff and Wendy an american pentecostal missionary couple here in Dodoma who are great friends of ours (and the boys).

Sadly the Alpha course has not taken off. We have arranged to start it on a couple of occasions and people have not turned up. We are not sure why but need to think of a better way to approach it. Please pray for guidance on this and for the plans to start an English language alpha for students.

Tragically, Leon, the youngest son (2 years) of our parish vicar died a couple of weeks ago after falling in a hand dug well outside their house after heavy rains. It has been a very sad and difficult time for the family and the church. We were both able to attend the funeral and other services which were very moving occasions. Please pray for the family including their other two children.

Last week we had a weekend break in Kilimatinde together with our American neighbour, Brandon. We had a lovely weekend just meeting up with friends. This shows us at the Kilimatinde guest house with our good friend Daniel and his wife Teresia, and another friend of theirs. We may look a bit tired as we had just had a very energetic walk down to the valley where Daniel lives and back up again. The road we used to drive on regularly to the valley is now impassable in most vehicles.

This picture is taken from Radio Hill overlooking Dodoma. The hill lies above the dam where we often go for picnics, which you may have seen in several photos before. The views there are wonderful and it is a lovely spot for a quiet Sunday afternoon walk.

Revival Choir’s shop is doing very well. We have a new shop-keeper, one of our choir members, who is honest and reliable and we have started to make a good profit (though the last couple of weeks have been poor as the students have not been around). In March we have a month of visits to different churches around Dodoma each Sunday, and one weekend in Kilimatinde. Please pray that these visits will be a success and that we are able to share in fellowship with and encourage the churches we visit as well as reaching people with God’s word.

With love

Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

Grandparents, a tortoise and lots of elephants

2009-01-15T18:40:00.010Z

Dear all,
Apologies for not updating the blog for so long (though hopefully you have had a link letter in between! – please email us if you're not on our link letter list and wish to be), here's a longer than normal post to make up for it. Happy new year to you all and we hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

We were very busy in the run up to Christmas. This picture shows our English language choir (students and staff) before the carols by candlelight service at the cathedral in Dodoma. We were asked to lead the worship at this service which was quite a privilege. We also organised a big ecumenical carol service for the university which again we led with the choir. It was a great success with all the denominations of Christian students coming together in a joint service of worship for the first time.

Daniel also spent lots of time preparing for his Christmas show at school which was a wonderful event. This is him afterwards with his best schoolfriend, Kirby. Daniel is now much more settled at school. He loves his reading and writing. He had a good report saying that he is doing very well academically and is now starting to relate much better with other children. Kirby has been a great help with this. Thank you for all your prayers for Daniel and please continue to pray that he continues to progress.

Shortly before Christmas we went to Kilimatinde for the wedding of our good friend, ex-student of Paul’s, and ex-choir colleague of Christine’s, James Msawile. He was married to Monica and it was a lovely day. We ended up taking the wedding video and providing the wedding car so it was a busy day too!

Having been here a year now we thank God Paul is fairly settled in his work, enjoying both the teaching and administrative tasks (except marking of course) as well as having developed good friendships and working relations with colleagues. His role is still a little unclear – teaching within three different departments as well as taking on administrative duties – but he is starting to enjoy this flexibility and stress levels are low. He is currently coordinating coursework data entry across two faculties, preparing Physics practicals for next semester, writing next semesters timetable, starting up a Physics Teachers Network for the Dodoma area and planning a science teaching methods course for next semester. Just one more week of teaching and then the exams start after which it’s marking followed by a short break before the second semester starts in March. With one module completed (result pending) Paul is just about to start on his second of 7 modules which will make up his MSc in E-learning. We pray that this will not just be an academic exercise but something that he will be able to apply here at the university in the not too distant future as we develop our e-learning systems.

We have a new addition to the family – this is Tricky, our tortoise. He was sold to us by some local children for 75p! We don’t see him very often as he finds lots of cosy places to hide in our garden but the boys enjoy hunting for him!

Over Christmas Paul’s parents came to stay. We had a lovely time with them. The boys were very happy to have them with us and enjoyed bonding/rebonding with them over lego and stories etc. having not seen them for a year. Paul and his dad kept themselves busy creating a rainwater catchment system on the house and started work on a shed! They ended their time with us with a safari to Mikumi wildlife park where we managed to see many animals close up even from our chalet and Isaac’s love of elephants was confirmed!

After they had left we had a visit from Grace (our friend and church youth worker from St. Austell, and Isaac’s God-mother) and Claire (another friend and church youth worker in Cornwall). We had a lovely time with them too and finished their visit with another short holiday on the beach in Bagamoyo.

Now we are back to our normal routine! We hope to start the Alpha course very soon. We have been praying for more people to join before we start. We have about 7 people already so we think we will now go ahead. Although it is a small group, if it is the right people we believe God will do great things with them. Please pray for this as we begin and for a possible student alpha in English that may run this year.

Christine (seen here with Greatlove our neighbours baby after her christening) hopes to start work within the next couple of weeks, working for TAYO (Tanzanian Anglican Youth Organisation) based at the Anglican church headquarters in Dodoma. At first she will just be working for 2 mornings a week until Isaac starts nursery at Easter. Our house help, Lidia, who we had thought would look after Isaac on these mornings is having 3 months off whilst she has a baby. Please pray for her and pray that we find a suitable person to help whilst she is away.

Revival Choir’s shop is continuing to do well. We have had a number of issues with the running and management of the shop but it is a steep learning curve for many of the people involved. However we are making a big profit and have been able to increase our stock so now we are in a position to start returning our loan and saving money to buy instruments. We raised enough money to buy a new keyboard which arrived from the UK with Paul’s parents much to everyone’s delight. Praise God for this and pray for the shop project that it will run smoothly from now on.

Our house back in St. Austell continues to be a worry. We still have no tenant despite dropping the rent and due to the financial crisis there are now a huge number of houses on the market for letting so there is big competition. We are very grateful to our wonderful friends Helen and Nigel Furneaux and Richard Staples, who have been working very hard to maintain and improve the house to try to attract tenants. Please pray that we will soon find a good tenant.

videos

2008-10-10T17:47:00.003+01:00

Finally managed to upload these. See the previous new post (New university year and Daniel's birthday) for explanation!

New University Year & Daniel's birthday

2008-10-09T19:07:00.015+01:00

Dear all,
The university campus is suddenly buzzing as students have been returning over the last couple of weeks, more than double the number that were here last year as we are now into the second year of the university. Apart from helping out with registration (as seen in the picture being assited by Daniel) Paul has been very busy finalising timetables, allocating students to seminar groups and taught his first lecture today in a new "Maths for Scientists" course which he discovered he was to teach a week ago. The Physics is also kicking off soon as Paul has been joined by a Mr Kingu who will lecture in physics and maths. Paul is also now in his third week of his masters course and managing to keep up with all the reading/blogging/discussion boards etc. involved in the distance e-learning course.

Daniel is on holiday from school for two weeks so we are having lots of fun playing with friends and swimming (as the weather is now hotting up!) and enthusiastically practising reading and writing ready for the new term. Daniel had a wonderful 5th birthday. Isaac was also very excited, possibly even more so than Daniel! We had a lovely party in the garden with local friends and friends from school, as you can see in the video. Both boys are well and happy, and enjoying their local friends very much. Daniel has also made a new best friend at school, a Tanzanian boy called Kirby. He has really struggled to make close friends but his teachers say that it is good to see a real bond being formed for the first time.

Christine has had further meetings about her future position at the provincial office, and assuming her work permit is processed in time hopes to start work after Christmas for a couple of mornings a week and then every morning after Easter (when Isaac begins nursery at Daniel's school). We continue to enjoy helping at the nursery school in Ipagala. The picture shows one of the classes with their teacher and Rev. Erasto Mwambeje, a Tanzania Assemblies of God pastor who set up and runs the nursery. He is a wonderful man of God with a great vision for the school and for church planting. We also attended his church a few weekends ago where Paul preached and we were made very welcome. We are now preparing for a prayer and fellowship meeting on Saturday for teachers, parents and supporters of the nursery, where Paul will again preach and Christine will lead the sung worship.

Christine has been very busy with choir Revival recently. We have now started having rehersals at our home, as the church will be used as an extra classroom for theology students this year. It is great to welcome everyone to our home and it also solves the problem I had of getting babysitters! We also attended another Assemblies of God, church as a choir, to worship with them recently, and it was a wonderful service. This week we have been given a small shop on the university campus to use as an income generating project for the choir. It is very exciting and the shop is in a great position to get a lot of trade from students. It is taking a lot of prayer, organisation and money to get it up and running, but we hope to open next week and we pray that it will be successful and profitable as it will be great to be self sufficient in the long term. Alongside her duties as choir treasurer, Christine has also just been elected, together with another member, to organise the spiritual programme for the choir. This initially will involve our regular prayer and worship times (which hopefully will now be more regular!), though in the future I hope to run an alpha course with the choir too.

On the 20/21st September we went to Kilimatinde for the jubilee celebrations of the building of Kilimatinde church 80 years ago. CMS missionary Canon Ralph Banks, who was vicar of Kilimatinde at the time oversaw the building of the church. The jubilee was a great event. On the Saturday there was a very big youth event with lots of choirs singing from all over the diocese of the Rift Valley, and then on the Sunday was a big service of celebration held outside the church on a new platform constructed specially for the event. The first picture shows Masada Gospel Singers singing at the Sunday service, and the second shows Bishop John Lupaa (left), bishop of the Diocese of the Rift Valley, and Archibishop Valentino Mokiwa, the new archbishop of Tanzania.

Hope you enjoy the videos. One is of Daniel's birthday party. The other is some snippets of the wedding of Amani and Faraja, friends from Kilimatinde, who were married in July.

.... sorry the videos aren't here yet - having trouble uploading - will be here soon - watch this space! .......

Please pray:

n For Rev. Erasto, that God will bless him in his work provide for the needs of the nursery.
n For choir Revival and our new shop, that it will be successful and enable us to become self sufficient and further develop our work to God’s glory
n For Daniel and Isaac, that they will continue in good health, continue to develop lasting friendships, and grow in their love of God.
n For Paul as he tries to manage time commitments and develops working relationships with new staff

With love and prayers,

Christine, Paul, Daniel and Isaac

Grandma's visit

2008-09-12T18:04:00.011+01:00

Dear all,
We had a lovely few weeks with Christine’s mum in August, starting with a few days on the beach in Bagamoyo, where Isaac can be seen proudly displaying a freshly fallen coconut. We spent most of her visit just relaxing in Dodoma and enjoying all our usual activities with her.

Daniel is loving school and is very excited about learning to read. Whilst mum was here we had the annual sports day at school. These pictures are of Daniel and his classmates on the day. Daniel had a great time, though unfortunately the yellow team came in last place! Isaac continues to enjoy life too and we are particularly enjoying volunteering at the local nursery school.

Christine recently met with the general secretary at the provincial offices of the Anglican church about a possible future role. It was a really good meeting and hopefully she will start working there sometime next year as a “consultant” involved initially with a youth development project focussing on small loans for youth choirs to carry out small scale income generation projects. Later this may extend into similar work on other projects within the youth and development departments.
Paul has been continuing to prepare for the new semester whilst doing the occasional teaching practice observation.

Two weeks ago a large consignment of apparatus arrived from Lab Aid UK. It felt like Christmas opening up the boxes and cataloguing all the pieces from resistors to binocular microscopes and now the increase in many essential items means that we are much better prepared to deliver practical science to our ever growing number of students.

Last week our friend, neighbour and colleague, Elizabeth Taylor had her 60th birthday and we had a wonderful party in her garden with over 100 guests, at which Christine sang with choir Revival. The picture shows Elizabeth at the party.

We recently said goodbye to our good friends and fellow CMS mission partners Simon and Laura Walton, their girls Grace and Esther and their newly adopted son James, who have returned to England. They will be back though after an extended break back in the UK.

Our house in Tanzania has seen some forward and backward developments this week. It is now encircled by a new concrete path and patio which has become the boys’ cycle race track. Unfortunately whilst this work was going on our roof tank leaked flooding several rooms. Most things were saved (we have no carpets) although we now have a few crinkly bed time story books and rather unsightly patches on the walls and ceiling. Plans are now afoot to install an external tank and redecorate.

We are still selling CDs by Musa Njagamba and Amani Shaban for £7 each (see last entry) If you would like one please get in touch.
Please pray:
n for Daniel's birthday on Thursday, that he enjoys the day and his party
n for the new students who will be enrolling at the university in the next two weeks
n for our house back in the UK, that a tenant is found soon
n for Elizabeth, her work and life here at the University

St. Austell Visit

2008-08-11T19:47:00.007+01:00

Dear all,

Sorry for not up-dating the blog for some time. We have had a busy summer! (or winter here!)

At the beginning of July the long planned “tamasha” (sort of fundraising concert) with Revival choir took place. It turned out to be smaller than expected our special guest singer didn’t turn up, but several choirs joined us, including Masada from Kilimatinde, and we had a great weekend and managed to raise a good amount of money to help buy some new equipment.

For 3 weeks in July we hosted a youth group from Holy Trinity, St. Austell, who came primarily for a mission in Kilimatinde and surrounding villages, involving singing, drama, preaching the gospel and playing with local children. It was great for us to meet old friends again, and a great experience for the group, many of whom had not experienced such a different culture to their own before. The trip was amazing and many Tanzanians told us how touched they were by the work the group did and how wonderful it was to see such spirit filled young people, who were so eager to pray, worship and preach the good news. The trip was not without it’s problems, mainly involving transport, which is always difficult here in Tanzania, but God provided for us and protected us.

Since returning from the mission we have started to get back into our usual routine. Daniel has started in the reception class at school which he has enjoyed but has been poorly recently so has not been able to participate fully. Christine (and Isaac) has stated volunteering once a week at the local Pentecostal nursery school (see earlier entries) which is great fun. We are now looking forward to a visit from Christine’s mum later this week, and a few days on the beach.

Paul has been spending the university break doing a variety of jobs getting ready for the new semester which starts in September including, preparation of apparatus for practicals, writing prospectus entries and planning the university timetable for the coming year. He has also managed to travel around the Singida region supervising and observing/assessing university students that are out on teaching practice.
Come September things will be get very busy with the new Physics course starting (with currently no other staff but Paul appointed to teach it), the university more than doubling its size and Paul starts his distance masters course as well and so he is planning to make good use of the few weeks of break left for both preparation and relaxation.

Two of our good friends have recently made CDs of their own Christian music which we are helping them to sell. One is by Musa Njagamba – some of you may have bought a CD of “The Njagamba Band” which Christine recorded with Musa and others back in 2001. This is now his latest solo album. The other is by Amani Shaban who you can read about in earlier blogs. Both CDs are excellent and we are selling them for £7 each. If you would like one or both please contact us by email and we will send you details of how to pay us. If you are able to let us know soon we can send the CDs back with Christine’s mum when she returns to the UK at the end of August. Thanks.

Please Pray:
n For the university and for Paul as the new semester approaches
n For the people with whom the group from St. Austell met here in Tanzania, that seeds that were sown will bear fruit.
n For Christine as she discusses her future role here.
n For Daniel as he starts reception at school and for his health
n For our parish of Kikuyu and our new vicar, that the change will bring positive developments.

With love and blessings,
Paul, Christine, Daniel and Isaac

Video Clip

2008-06-12T22:14:00.004+01:00

Dear All,
Please find here a video clip we have made for you to view now or download to show at your church. It lasts 6 and a half minutes and is not the best quality as we have tried to make the file as small as possible (7Mb) for ease of download however we hope it gives you a little more info on what we're up to in a different way. Please email us if you would like a higher quality version (bigger file size).
Much love
Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

Toddlers,toys,exams & enthronements

2008-05-25T19:24:00.007+01:00

Dear all,
Sorry for not updating the blog for so long – we have been extremely busy as the end of term approaches.

A few weeks ago we visited this nursery school run by the Pentecostal church on the outskirts of Dodoma. A local pastor we know invited us and although we were only able to go on a Saturday we were warmly welcomed by a large group of children and teachers and given a good meal and gifts. The boys had a great time showing off their jigsaw skills! Christine hopes to visit with Isaac some mornings on an informal basis.

The following day Paul and Daniel had a very exciting trip to Mpwapwa, a village a couple of hours drive away from Dodoma where a missionary family are just packing up to return to the UK. They came back with a car full of goodies including a slide and lots of toys, books and jigsaws, as well as 360 copies of the Swahili alpha book we have been using, as it was this family who originally translated and produced it. We are confident that we will be able to use these or pass some on for use in other areas over the coming years.

Our first Alpha course ended last week. It was a great success and everyone is keen to see another course take place. We already have a good number of people signed up, mostly non-Christian friends of the participants of the last course. We hope to get enough people signed up to run 2 groups simultaneously – one for men and one for women – enabling freer discussion especially in the women’s group. We aim to start again in September.

The toddler group is still going well. The twins in the picture are two of our regulars and they talk about the group all week referring to it as “school”. Sadly, our neighbours and very good friends suddenly moved house into town so we have lost our most regular members.

Paul has been busy as usual within the Education and Science faculties at the university. The second semester is now drawing to a close and lectures and seminars are now finished with exams starting on Monday. Before students can sit for exams they need to pass their coursework element but checking this has involved entering the data for over 20 pieces of coursework (once marked) per student for 400 students into a newly written database on our computer. This has proved hectic but we’re just about there and fortunately very few students have failed. After the exams and the subsequent marking and collating of results Paul will have some time to focus on preparing for the Physics course. TCU have provisionally approved the Physics course to run in August but have yet to give the final thumbs up and may come and inspect the laboratories at any time. Paul is still cataloguing, testing and mending the apparatus and may need to prepare some practical experiments for a group of students from the Open University of Tanzania who may visit in June. With this and preparing course material for August there won’t be much time for an end of year break before observation of teaching practice students starts in early August before the start of the new term.

Julius, our gardener, continues to work hard with much help from Isaac and is very creative. Our garden has been looking beautiful recently and has started to produce fruit and veg too.

Christine has nearly completed her distance course which has been really interesting. She is also busy working with the choir continuing to plan for the big event in July. We have been visiting various local churches to sing and to generate support for the event which is great fun. Christine has also attended her first “Mkesha” since returning to Tanzania - an all night celebration to mark the end of a period of mourning following the death of a local man and to give thanks for his life. It began at 9pm and went on to 6am with a huge amount of singing and dancing led by the choir, and was followed (after a snatched 2 hours sleep) at 10am by a service of thanksgiving.

We recently went to Kilimatinde for the annual confirmation service at which Amani Shaban (see earlier blogs) was confirmed, by Bishop John Lupaa.

We are much more settled at church now and have been going to the English Sunday school in town from time to time. We have discovered that the service at our local church is exactly the right length for Daniel to complete a box of three 50 piece jigsaws so he is very happy! The English language choir has made a huge difference to the worship at the English service and we enjoy the fellowship we have with that group.

Today was a very important day for the Anglican church in Tanzania, with the enthronement of the new Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa. We didn’t attend the service as we anticipated the 5 hour marathon that it was and knew the boys would not cope, but we went to the welcome party (which took place here at the university) representing CMS UK.

Please pray:
n For the newly elected Archbishop of Tanzania – that God will guide him in his service to the church
n For the boys – that they continue to settle here, making new friends and growing in confidence
n For the tasks that Paul faces over the new few months – that he keeps focussed on God, manages to complete the many essential tasks ahead and settles into the role God wants him to play at the university
n For the forthcoming tamasha that Revival Choir are organising – that it be a success in that the church is encouraged, funds are raised and God’s name is praised.

Brides, Birthdays & Alpha away days

2008-04-19T21:17:00.008+01:00

Dear All,
God’s still keeping us busy and blessed at work, Church and through our family.
The end of the first academic year for St John’s University of Tanzania draws near and despite all that has to be done in that short time such (lectures, exams, marking, teaching practices) it is incredible to see how God has made the seemingly impossible possible that we should have got to this point. The University is still incredibly under-resourced under-staffed and suffering first year teething problems. With an extra 1000 students joining us in September, more than doubling its size, we will no doubt be continuing to rely on God’s grace to survive.

Christine continues to be very involved with Revival choir (the Tanzanian group) and after encouraging them to introduce times of bible study, worship and prayer, we have started including this in each of our rehearsals. We have had some amazing times together which is really encouraging for the young Christians in the group and those who have not yet made a commitment to Christ. It is also great for Christine to have a group with which she can share in fellowship. Christine is also teaching choir members English once a week. Most have very little English having never been to secondary school, but are keen to learn! We are also planning a “tamasha” – a big sort of concert/ fundraising event to which the local MP has agreed to come as guest of honour. It promises to be a very big event to which we will be inviting various other choirs and singers who are quite well known in Tanzania. Much prayer is needed for it to be a success.

Recent events in our diary have included the wedding of Patrick John (an ex student of Paul’s) which was a great event to catch up with Kilimatinde folk despite it being held here in Dodoma.
Isaac’s Birthday was great fun. Presents were opened before Church and then we managed to ensure that the chain bridge in the playground was finished with an hour to spare before 20 children of a variety of nationalities descended on us with a few parents in tow. Isaac’s Tanzanian friends took a little while to understand the concept of ‘pass the parcel’ but soon joined in all the games and were delighted with their party bags.

Today was our Alpha away day which we held at the Cathedral. It was a great success and it culminated in a time of prayer when the presence of the Holy Spirit was experienced in power by all, some possibly for the first time. It has been encouraging to see God blessing this course despite initial apprehensions however we are already starting to think about how the current members can help to draw people to future courses.

Daniel is looking forward to the start of his new term on Monday, after a 2 week break which has been fun, though sometimes a little boring for him, especially as most of his school friends have been on holiday. He is generally much happier now and enjoying life. His photo was featured in the Thomas the Tank Engine magazaine which was very exciting for him.

Christine is now 2 weeks into her distance course in Christian microfinance which is really interesting. It is all done over email and gives the chance to interact with missionaries and development workers all over the world.

This picture shows our local dam – a “beauty spot” we have discovered which is good for walks and picnics!

We have some sad news for those who have contacts with Kilimatinde. We just heard yesterday that Canon Sospeter Ndahani, who we knew well as the head of the Bible School in Kilimatinde , died unexpectedly from malaria. We had not seen him for some time as he had moved to Kongwa Theological College before we came back to Dodoma however the news came as quite a surprise.

Please pray for:
n The university, staff and students, as the academic year starts to draw to a close
n Revival Choir as they plan the ‘tamasha’ and as they grow in numbers and faith
n The alpha course – that those on the current course become strengthened in their faith and empowered in their work for the Lord. Also that God may prepare those people who are right to attend the next course
n For the family of Canon Sospeter Ndahani, that they might be comforted in this time of grief

2008-03-27T19:52:00.005Z

Dear All,

Thank you all for your continued support. HERI ZA PASAKA (literally Easter blessings) to you all.
There were three bank holidays here straddling the Easter weekend and so we took the opportunity to travel to Kilimatinde and beyond to Singida after being invited by the church to share in their Easter celebrations. Despite some scary driving conditions in the rain on dirt tracks the trip was very enjoyable even for the boys. We managed to project the recently finished video of Masada on to the wall of the church in Kilimatinde which both amazed and entertained half the village who came to watch. We also had a very enjoyable picnic on the shore of one of the large lakes in Singida with friends old & new.

We’ve now had two sessions of the Alpha course at our house which has gone well although many of the people seem to have some faith already and so it’s very difficult to judge what impact it is having. However these are still early days and we are trusting God that he will bless what we’re doing in ways we may not expect.

Christine & Isaac’s toddler group is going well with new members coming each week although sometimes erratically. Daniel’s enjoying school and likes entertaining friends at home especially now that the climbing frame in the garden is near completion.
Paul is frantically trying to get the play area in a semi finished state before Isaac’s second birthday party this Sunday when all his friends both Tanzanian and International will descend upon us with parents in tow.

Church life has been a struggle with choir commitments and little in the way of Sunday school at the university church such that the Boys were not getting much from church. We have now, however, started going to the cathedral service in town on alternate Sundays which has a good English language Sunday school that the boys enjoy.

Paul was glad to get a few lectures behind him before the Easter break and is now busy preparing for further lectures, redrafting next years courses for TCU approval (still no news on the Physics course) and writing exams for the end of the year.

Next week Christine will be starting the third in the series of distance learning courses in Christian development and microfinance which she started back in the UK. Hopefully this will prove very useful in the future as there seem to be many opportunities to get involved in this sort of work with the church in Dodoma.

We now have internet access in our home so emailing will be much easier and if you have skype we can talk at leisure!

Please pray:
n Continue to pray that the Physics course is approved by the TCU so that it is able to start next academic year.
n Pray for Christine as she begins studying next week that she is able to balance her time between all her various commitments and time with the family
n Pray that Alpha continues to be a blessing to all who attend
n Pray for Isaac on his birthday, that he has a lovely day with all his friends
n Pray for Daniel that he will continue to develop friendships and feel more at home here.
n Pray for the parish of Singida, especially Rev. Mlowezi, that God blesses their work in the town.

Rev Mlowezi is pictured here on the left with Rev Deo a visiting preacher and ex teacher at Kilimatinde

2008-03-03T05:43:00.008Z

Dear all,
There’s been a lot happening over the last few weeks, beginning with a weekend away in Kilimatinde 3 weeks ago.

We spent most of our time there helping choir Masada to make a video of one of their songs which was great fun. We are now busy editing it and if it produces good results we will continue to record other songs with them to make a marketable DVD.
This week the university chapel was honoured to host the elections of the new archbishop of Tanzania. The elections went smoothly and a new archibishop was chosen who will begin his role in May this year. In the evening we were invited to a big farewell do for the retiring archbishop Donald Mtetemela at which Christine sang with choir revival. It was a great event though extremely long as is always the case for such parties, finishing after 1am.

The Alpha course now has a full quota of people and we even have several on the waiting list for the next course! It is due to start on Monday 10th March. Thank you to those who have made contributions towards the cost of running the course. We are still looking for more funding to cover our costs.

The English language music group is growing slowly and surely and we have led the singing in the Sunday morning English service for the last 2 weeks which has been greatly appreciated by many. We have a keen core of regulars some of whom can be seen in the picture but are still looking for new members.

Paul has been quite busy with his work mainly within the education department, leading seminars and preparing for the lectures (to over 400 students) that he will deliver in a week or so’s time. Preparations for next years’ Physics course are still ongoing although we are still waiting for confirmation from the TCU (The body that authorises university courses in Tanzania) that it can go ahead. This depends on the quality of the paperwork we have sent them and a forthcoming inspection of the laboratories. We’re also still on the lookout for suitable books, apparatus and computers that people are throwing out in the UK that could be shipped here. Please contact us if your workplace is doing a clearout.

Daniel is happier at present than he has been recently, partly as he has a new best friend at school called Timo, who is from Germany, although communication can still be difficult. Isaac is still entertaining all the local people and enjoying all his friends. He is speaking much more (both English and Swahili) and still loves helping. He can be seen here helping our neighbours to collect water! The Tanzanian toddler group has had rather low numbers recently although everyone still seems interested. They probably just need reminding regularly.

Please pray:

n Give thanks that so many have signed up for the alpha course and pray for the course as it begins on the 10th that many people will come to know Jesus.
n Give thanks for the English language music group and pray that it will continue to grow and be a blessing in the worship at the English service.
n Pray that the Physics course is approved by the JCU so that it is able to start next academic year.

n Pray that the local toddler group grows and is a blessing to all who come.
n Pray for the Anglican church of Tanzania during the transition between archbishops.

2008-02-11T05:59:00.000Z

Dear all,
Looking back over our last entry it seems much more than 2 weeks since we wrote it. We have been very busy!

Our new tenants moved in to our house back in the UK last week which was a real answer to prayer although things haven’t gone that smoothly and we are indebted to Richard Staples for sorting out malfunctioning boilers and other teething problems.

Paul has had his first taste of teaching here and is glad to be back in the saddle. At the moment he’s taking seminars on educational psychology (of which he knows very little) and is preparing to teach on the curriculum and teaching methods courses in the next few weeks (of which he knows slightly more). Other jobs have included helping interview prospective new staff, planning the refurbishment of the current laboratories and the development of new ones, looking into helping run a college virtual learning environment and trying to resource unwanted laboratory apparatus back in the UK.

Daniel is loving school and is always very excited when he is met afterwards proudly displaying his most recent creation. Praise God that he is now slowly getting more settled here.
Isaac is getting a busy routine too with 2 ex-pat toddler groups and our new Tanzanian group which was a great success this week. It was lovely to spend time with local mums and their children rather than just being invaded by all the local kids! Isaac loves trying to ‘help’ everybody at the moment and can be seen here ‘helping’ Julius, our gardener, to water the plants and Paul to build the playground.

Christine has just been elected on to the committee of the choir as treasurer. This week we will also be trying to start up the English language music group again which failed to take off at the end of last semester as students were too busy with exams.

Preparations for the Alpha course are going well. We now have a set of Swahili course books and several people are already signed up to attend. We are looking for funds to help run the course, to pay for meals for the group at each session, course books and away day expenses. We need around £250 for this first course. If you or your church are able to make a contribution towards this please get in touch but please do not let this detract from your giving to CMS.

Our official CMS link letter should be distributed shortly in paper form and as an email attachment to our bloggers mailing list. Please let us know if you do not receive either of these and wish to be added to the appropriate list.

Please pray:

n Once more for the English language music group – that a sufficient core of committed people come forward.
n For the students and staff at the University as they start the second semester of the University’s first year.
n For the forthcoming elections for the new archbishop of Tanzania – that a Godly and wise man be chosen to continue the work done so well by archbishop Mtetemela who retires this month.
n For all the preparations required to start the alpha course especially that God prompts the right people to sign up to the course
n That we as a family continue to develop good relationships with the people we work and live with.

2008-01-28T06:19:00.000Z

Dear all,
Thank you for all your prayers – its great to know there are people back home praying for us. We have just had one answer to prayer in that we think we now have a tenant for our house back in the UK which will mean that we will be a little more secure financially.
We had a wonderful holiday in Bagamoyo as can be seen from the pictures. The kids loved the beach and pool and we managed to all keep ourselves from frying to a crisp in the scorchingly hot weather (sorry if this makes you all jealous back in the wet and cold UK but there are some advantages to living in an equatorial climate).
We have been busy in other ways too: Paul has been helping the english and chemistry departments in their exam marking and is busily preparing for the new term. He was also invited to speak to a group of pastors on Christian Unity at the weekend. The talk went down well and it was encouraging to see church leaders from a variety of denominations within a local area coming together to see how they can support each other.
It was good to see Amani Shabani today who has recently managed to re-establish relations with his parents (see earlier entry). He is now planning to make a CD of Christian songs he has written and has asked Christine to be part of the backing group.
Daniel is looking forward to starting nursery school on Monday from 9 til 12 each day and Isaac will be joining his ex-pat toddler group. Christine is hoping to also start a local toddler group at home for Tanzanian mums and tots – something new to Tanzania.

Please pray:
n Praise God for answered prayer and pray that the new tenancy goes ahead smoothly
n That Daniel will settle quickly into his school and make new friends
n For the local church leaders group – that they may be encouraged to work together under a common purpose
n For all who are supporting us in our mission both prayerfully and financially

2008-01-13T17:19:00.000Z

Dear all,

Sorry for the long break since the last blog entry and thank you to all those who have been asking when the next one is coming! Its good to know you are enjoying reading it! Sorry we have been a bit slack in taking photos recently too. We will take more for next time!

Paul has been very busy preparing for his teaching in the new semester as well as collecting & downloading materials for the faculty of education electronic library, preaching at morning prayers, invigilating university exams and spending our Christmas money on wood, pipe, chain, cement, sand, gravel, rope and tools for building the adventure playground he’s designed for our back garden!

We had a difficult few days the week before last as Daniel managed to get malaria. He was very poorly to start with especially as he was delayed starting his medication due to the local doctor diagnosing the flu! However once he had started his medication and many of you back home started praying for him he recovered very quickly apart from being very tired for a few days. He has also been having a difficult time settling in but during this last week he has suddenly become much happier and has been really enjoying his new Tanzanian friends. It his great to see his happy face again. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for him.

Isaac continues to enjoy life and is becoming very Tanzanian! His favourite foods are beans with rice or ugali (a stodgy maize dish) and chips mayai (chip omelette!) – real Tanzanian staples! He loves the local children and stands on the step shouting until they come to play with him (this usually involves them pushing him around on his new bike).

Christine has been working hard entertaining the entire population of small children in the area who love to play with the boys (and their toys!) and continues to enjoy the choir. This week she will also be starting a music group of students from the university who want to learn English songs. We have an English service at the church following the Swahili service which we usually attend. At present the music is pretty awful as nobody really knows any of the songs. The plan is to start up a group which will lead the worship at these services.

We are also hoping to start an Alpha course through the church. We heard from some missionary friends elsewhere in Tanzania that the course has been translated into Swahili and they have been using it with great success in their church. We are still in the early stages of planning this but the vicar seems very interested in the idea.

At the end of the week we are planning to go to Bagamoyo on the coast for a few days break before term begins for Paul and Daniel and we all get very busy! Daniel is very excited at the prospect of swimming in a warm sea! Isaac has been missing the beach so will be very happy.

Due to the miracles of modern technology we can get free phone calls over the internet using skype. Our skype name is SalamansTz. We have also bought a webcam so should even be able to do video calls with anyone who’s interested.
Today we had a visit from our good friend John Lupaa now Bishop of the Dicoese of the Rift Valley - it was good to chat over some dinner and even though we are no longer in that diocese I'm sure we will still work together alot over the coming years.

Please pray:
n For continued health and protection especially for the boys
n For our holiday that it be a time of relaxation and refreshment
n For the college and its students during the current exams
n That Paul will be ready for the start of term on the 4th of Feb
n For the English service music group – that they may worship God faithfully and draw people to this service

n For John Lupaa as he leads the Diocese of the Rift Valley at a crucial stage in its history

2008-01-01T13:52:00.001Z

Dear all,

Heri za mwaka mpya (happy new year)

It seems a lot more than a week and a bit since our last blog entry. First there was Christmas day – we managed to wake the boys and open stockings before going to the 7:30 am service after which we opened more presents, (including the bikes which were a real hit) and had dinner with a group of staff and students.
It was nice to be able to the share the festivities with new friends, however it was even better to meet up with old friends in Kilimatinde on boxing day.
We stayed there for 4 days and had a very relaxing and fun time and were very well looked after in the guest house by mama Pulo and Teresia. We spent a lot of time with Choir Masada and met up with Festo, Allan and Agnes Sallum and family, Ernest and Ester Ndahani and family and John Lupaa, the new bishop of the Rift Valley, to name a few whom people will know.
The boys had a great time playing with various friends’ children and are keen to go back and visit again. It will be a nice place for us to go for breaks.
We were back home for new years eve which was a quiet celebration with our neighbours and then 7.30 in church again on New Years Day!

Paul is busy preparing lectures for the “teaching methods in science” course which he will start teaching in the new semester in February and is also now starting to do some preaching during daily worship.

Daniel has a long break now before starting pre-school properly on 28th Jan. He is getting more confident now and is happy to play with the local children, but it will be a challenge to stop him getting bored over the next few weeks. Isaac is very settled and happy to play with anyone now.

We are beginning to settle into church life now and Christine is enjoying singing with the Revival choir. We have also started taking it in turns to go to a little housegroup at our neighbours house on Sunday nights with missionaries from the university and from town.

Please pray:
n That the new year will bring opportunities for us to serve God using the gifts He has given us
n For the village of Kilimatinde and the Diocese of the Rift Valley, that recent changes under the new bishop will lead to spiritual, practical and economic growth
n For Rev Allan Sallum and his family (now vicar of Kilimatinde) and for choir Masada in their work in Kilimatinde and surrounding villages.
n For Christine, Daniel and Isaac over the next few weeks before school starts, that they will have an enjoyable time and develop new friendships and relationships.
n For Paul as he begins preparing for the new course and preaching

Heri za Krismasi

2007-12-24T05:30:00.001Z

Dear All,

We wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas. Thank you for the Christmas cards and greetings. We have a good display on the wall and no doubt more to come as the post takes a very long time around Christmas! It will be a bit different for us this year but we are looking forward to celebrating with our new Tanzanian (and Australian!) friends and neighbours. Daniel has been opening his advent calendar and is getting quite excited. We managed to find him a first bike in Dar-es-Salaam which should be a wonderful surprise for him, as well as a little car for Isaac.

We are in the middle of a very hot and wet season at the moment and praise God that the rains are still going strong. The usually dry river that runs across the campus even has some water in it now.

Christine has been busy this week writing a project proposal for a development centre which the university plans to set up, reaching out into local village communities to carry out research and small development projects. It has been really interesting and is something I may well be involved in later if the funding comes in. I have also joined the local church choir, called “Revival” which has been great fun so far. Hopefully I will sing with them on Christmas morning.

Paul’s been pottering about at home and in the lab over the last week fixing things as diverse as galvanometers, shower curtains and 8ft long desks. Apart from some furniture that is to be made by Jackson, a local fundi (carpenter), the house is almost a home however I still have a few projects in mind for the future including rain water collection and playground equipment for the boys.

The boys have been enjoying various Christmas activities at the school, going swimming at the local pool (like pea soup!) and getting to know their neighbours a bit more. They are starting to settle in a bit more though still miss their friends.

Please pray:
n That we find a tenant for our house back home in the new year
n That we grow in the knowledge of how God wants to use us here.
n That Christmas is a wonderful time of fellowship and joy and especially that the boys have a lovely day.
n For our trip to Kilimatinde from boxing day for a few days, for safe travel and joyful reunion with old friends.
n For Revival choir, that they will be faithful in their service to the Lord

2007-12-17T05:50:00.000Z

Dear All,
Thank you for all you prayers, emails and texts over the last week. It’s lovely to know that people are keen to hear our news.
After Paul wondering what to do with himself last week he’s been quite busy this week preparing syllabi for next year and travelling to Dar-es-Salaam to pick up our new car (see picture – safi sana as we say in Tanzania) along with our freight.
The boys have been busy networking with all the other Children of Dodoma, Daniel starting preschool and Isaac starting toddler group and both of them exchanging visits with our neighbours. Christine has been spending time talking to local mums and generally getting to know the neighbours. She also has been looking over a proposal for a university development project which is something she may get involved with in the future.
Lidia has started working for us helping around the house. She is lovely and has been a great help and is sure to be a good friend and part of the household.
It’s been like an early Christmas getting things out of our boxes of freight. Daniel has loved being reunited with his train set, and Isaac feels like he’s back on a Cornish beach and is very happy digging in the dirt with his bucket and spade.
Lots more things are available in Dodoma these days and we have managed to get ourselves some Christmas decorations supplemented by the boys being creative with glitter.
We’re slowly settling into the congregation of the local Swahili service at the University chapel and are occasional visitors to the cathedral in town but are finding it hard to find ways that each of us can meet our needs for teaching, fellowship and accountability that we were so used to back in St Austell.
Please pray for:
n The boys’ continual adjustment to life in Tanzania, especially Daniel
n Preparations for Christmas – that it be a special time for the boys and a festival that we can share in within the local church
n That we find ways of being church in a different context from back home
n The university – that it soon receive the student loan fee payments from the government so that it can ease its financial pressures
n That we all remain anchored to God and dependant on his provision

2007-12-09T10:10:00.000Z

Dear All,
Thanks for all your prayers and messages during our difficult first few days here. Daniel is now back to full health (and fortunately doesn’t have to take his foul tasting medicine) and we are pretty well settled into our new house with a few mod cons such as a sofa and fridge.

You can check out the exact location of our house on google earth coordinates lat -6.19663245822, lon 35.7324128041.

Paul has sort of started work, sorting out all the apparatus for the physics lab. The physics course doesn’t start until next August but we hope Paul will be able to do some teaching starting this February in the mean time he is trying to seek clarity from God and from the University as to how he can best use his time.
We have already had some interesting conversations with people at the University and at the provincial office which may lead to a role for Christine in the future in terms of development or microfinance projects.
The boys are very much enjoying life here especially Isaac who is loving playing around the house and is sleeping better than he ever did at home. We’ll all get a bit of a treat when our freight arrives shortly and they unpack all their toys and we unpack essentials such as Paul’s tools and Christine’s cake tins.

Daniel will start school this week for two days a week and then will be full time after the Christmas break.
News travelled quickly to Kilimatinde that we were in town and have had a regular stream of old friends visiting us. We have promised to visit there soon once we have sorted out purchasing our new car (watch this space). One of our visitors was an ex student who we knew as Said Shaban – a very keen and able muslim student who threw himself into the life of the school, graduated with flying colours, went on to study at sixth form and is now back at Kilimatinde teaching Chemistry. It was great to hear how Paul’s teaching had born fruit but even greater to hear how he has now made a commitment to Christ, been baptised and is now named Amani (meaning peace) despite considerable opposition from his family.
We met our new house girl this week who will start on Monday. Her name is Lidia and she has experience of working for westerners with children.

Please pray:
n That Paul’s coming trip to Dar to collect the car goes smoothly and that he finds more clarity in his role
n That the freight arrives soon and in good condition
n That Lidia fits well into the family and becomes a help to Christine and a friend and carer to the boys
n Last night saw the first rain of the season – Praise God for this and pray that it continues consistently long enough to produce a good harvest this year
n For Amani Shabani and his family that he may grow in faith yety be able to restore relations with his family

With much love and thanks

Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

2007-12-03T12:45:00.000Z

We're Here ,

The Salamans have arrived at our new home in Tanzania. After a frantic time of tieing up loose ends back home - getting the house ready for renting, packing and saying goodbyes we started our Journey by driving to Heathrow from St Austell. There then followed a nine hour flight and then another 7 hour car journey in Tanzania before we arrived at our final destination. Needless to say that the travelling was very tiring and took its toll on all of us such that our first evening in Tanzania was a fairly low point with Daniel becoming ill and refusing to take his Larium and arriving at a house that was as we expected fairly spartanly furnished. By bedtime with the help of our now good friend Mbarikiwa we managed to all have something to sleep on and I managed to hang all the mosquito nets.
Once the boys were finally asleep and we had collapsed on the few chairs in the house we could easily have started to question our calling. However as we started to upack we looked through some of the cards that we'd been given in the last week (now on our wall see below)and the messages within them together with Bible verses texted to us restored our faith in God's provision and helped us carry on.
Things have improved since then - Daniel is still poorly but on the mend, our house is becoming more like a home but still lacks some essentials and we have started some god relationships with staff and neighbours here. Within the next few weeks we hope to have more furniture, a new mobile number (watch this space), our freight arriving and even a new car
Please continue to pray for:

A tenant for our house back home
Daniel's health
That our home can become a place of comfort, security and hospitality
That we keep good relations with all

With much love and thanks for your prayers and support,

Paul, Christine, Daniel & Isaac

And we're off

2007-10-08T16:22:00.000+01:00

After much consideration by CMS of whether we had enough financial support promissed we've been given the thumbs up to fly on the 28th of November.
It's all systems go now as we still have boxes to pack and air freight, a house to decorate, empty of furniture and rent out, a few more deputations to do, study to complete, goodbyes to be said and all manner of loose ends and paperwork to sort out over the next few weeks.
We're hoping that our work permits will be ready soon after lots of work by our colleagues in Tanzania and are looking forward to Tim Sanders' ( CMS regional manager) return from his whistle stop tour of East Africa to let us know a little bit more about the University and our accomodation there.
Thankyou for all your support prayefully and financially however please continue to pray for:

The renting out of our house - that a good tenant be found and all the technical side goes well
The boys as they prepare to say goodbye to their friends and cope with what must be a big transition
The University - that they overcome any teething problems during this their first year and make a good foundation for future years - and that they may find a role for Paul suited to his skills and experience
Our family and friends that we will be saying our goodbyes to
God's protection - so that we can continue unhindered in seeking out and following his will

2007-07-17T22:42:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the Salamans blog

2007-07-17T15:26:00.000+01:00

We hope to keep friends, family, supporters and the just plain interested regularly informed of what's going on in our lives as we leave the UK and Head for Tanzania once more to serve God and his people in Dodoma.