cousins, cake and conference

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