Fundraising and Farewells

Dear all,

It’s been a little while since our last posting but it seems that an awful lot has happened since then so this one should be a bit longer than normal.

 The rains have now ended and the colour everywhere is turning from green to beige while the temperature has dropped enough for us to put a blanket on the bed. We celebrated Christine’s birthday in May with a trip to the pizzeria (requested by the boys) and managed to smuggle in our own birthday cake made by Paul & the boys seen here.

We thought it about time to change our profile picture so got a friend to take the following photo while on a walk at the dam on a public holiday – a favourite place of ours which has featured here before.

Paul has had a busy end to this semester with a few projects on the go on top of the usual teaching commitments. As part of the second year Physics laboratory classes we ran a 2 week IT workshop where the students had to perform 7 different datalogging experiments. We’ve been doing this for the last 2 years but having received some shiny new kit from Labaid and some new computers in the container over the past year, this year’s workshop was all whistles and bells like nothing ever seen before in Dodoma. The photo shows students analysing data from one of the experiments.

Paul’s main project over the past few weeks has been the fundraising event mentioned in the last post. An enormous amount of work was put into preparing for the event by the team Paul headed up especially immediately before the event when our guest of honour pulled out at short notice. Thankfully Professor Meshack, the retired Vice Chancellor of the university stepped in and despite their being a low turnout we rather miraculously still managed to raise over 5 million shillings (£2000). A great achievement but not an experience Paul wants to repeat in a hurry. The picture shows our guest singer Jennifer Mgendi who was a big hit with the other choirs who attended the event. The project will still be ongoing (but at a less frantic pace) as we seek to raise or borrow the remaining funds and start contacting building contractors. Your prayers are appreciated.

One weekend recently we decided to try to scale radio hill, a local hill that we once before tried to climb but at that time it was too much for the boys. This time, a little bigger and stronger they made it to the top (along with mum & dad of course) and the two pictures here were taken as the intrepid explorers made their way down to base camp (the car).

At work Christine has been busy planning for 2 big events, firstly a fundraising event for the studio project in July, and secondly a national youth conference in September which will be a huge event held here in Dodoma. Please pray for these events that they will be successful and glorify God. Please have a look at the ACT youth office blog on the link above for more information and also a video about my work.

The university year is now coming to an end and once again we have had to say goodbye to a large part of our English choir as some of our longstanding members graduate. A few weeks ago we had a lovely but quite sad party in our garden to see them off, as shown in this picture.

Lots of Love and Blessings,

Paul, Christine. Daniel and Isaac.xxx