Easter

We pray that you have all had a wonderful Easter time celebrating the ressurection of our Lord. We had a wonderful celebration here in Dodoma, starting with a procession with real palms fresh from the tree on Palm Sunday (I hope to post some video of this at a later date) This picture shows a gathering at our neighbours' house for lunch on Easter Sunday with fellow mission partners living at the university.

It has been a long time since our last blog but we hope many of you have received our link letter in between. If anyone would like to go onto our email list to receive our link letter please let us know. Thank you for your prayers for rain. We praise God that after the lull in the rainfall it did return in plenty, and though some crops were lost many were salvaged and this year the harvest is reasonable.

At the end of March Isaac celebrated his 6th birthday with his usual party in the garden. This year it had an "Angry Birds" theme (a computer game for those who are confused!) The picture shows him, with his Angry Birds cake. The boys are now on a 2 week school holiday following Easter and are very much enjoying the break.

At the end of term we were treated to the usual Easter production at school. This year a very straightforward gospel story acted out by the children, interspersed with songs, which was very powerful. This picture shows the boys preparing to sing with their classmates. Daniel was also presented with his certificate as the winner for his year of the school poetry competition. Here he is proudly displaying his certicate together with winners from other classes.


With the second semester in full swing at the university, Paul is back into the regular routine of labs and lectures but has managed to get Fridays off to focus on finishing off his masters dissertation. The English Service Choir is also back into action in good voice but still a little low on numbers. Please pray that it grows this semester before we lose a good proportion who will be graduating at the end of the year. June will also see the culmination of Paul's and many others' work in preparing a large fundraiser, Tanzanian style, for a student accomodation building project. This is a partnership between the university and the English Service and should be a great venture for all however there is still a lot of work to be done, you're prayers for which we would be very much appreciated.

Christine has been very busy at work. We held a second music and worship seminar in March in the southern zone of the country - this meant a  journey to Songea in the far South West of Tanzania, a very long but very beautiful journey. The seminar was a huge success and a great blessing to all involved. We have also just held elections for a new TAYO youth committee and an enthusiastic new committee has been chosen. They are pictured here together with the archbishop of Tanzania, the general secretary of the Anglican church of Tanzania and Rt.Rev Bill Atwood, an American bishop visiting from Nairobi. We praise God for the new committee which will be a huge help to Christine in her work. You can read more about both of these events on the TAYO blog. (http://tanzaniaanglicanyouth.blogspot.com)

At the end of March, Kikuyu Gospel Singers held a 3 day mission to the local community - a time of powerful preaching, prayer, music and worship. It was a wonderful and blessed time, many people gave their lives to Christ, and others were delivered from demons. These pictures show some of the crowd during a prayer time and another choir worshipping at the mission . Kikuyu Gopsel Singers are now preparing to record ourfirst music album in September. Please pray for us as we prepare and fundraise for this project.

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