Elections, Events and Electronics

Dear all,

Hopefully some of you will have received our most recent linkletter which tells of all our news up to a few weeks ago. It should shortly be available from the link letter section of the CMS website here: http://www.cms-uk.org/Resources/Publications/Linkletters/tabid/158/language/en-US/Default.aspx

The university is now in its inter-semester break so things are a little quiet on campus with no English service or Choir however we are still keeping ourselves busy both in and outside of work. We have had the real pleasure of having Chris, a young friend from our church back in St Austell, staying with us over the past few weeks. The boys have loved the extra attention and Christine and Paul have both enjoyed the evenings of settlers (a board game) and having a helping hand around. The photo shows Chris with the boys on Radio Hill in Dodoma as Isaac discovers a fear of heights.

Paul’s usual ‘holiday jobs’ of timetable construction and teaching practice observations have been complimented this year with supervision of some 3^rd year students who have stayed back for a time to work on their final year Physics projects. The photo show James Kapinga, one of my more promising students as he struggles over his digital electronics project constructing a simple calculator.

Christine is just beginning her new role in the mission department of the Anglican Church of Tanzania, after finishing off various youth projects such as the small loans project in the diocese of Mpwapwa. In this picture she is with one of the youth groups and their pig project. The new role will be exciting but also full of challenges so please pray for God’s guidance in this. Look out for a new blog coming soon too!

The Anglican Church of Tanzania recently elected a new archbishop. Bishop Jacob Chimeledya of Mpwapwa diocese was elected, and God willing will be installed  in May this year. The picture shows the preparations for the elections in the cathedral in Dodoma. The banner reads “ Special Synod for the election of the Archbishop”

We are now approaching the end of the rainy season here. The harvest will be mixed – in some areas the maize has grown well (as you can see in this picture) but in others the rain stopped early and the sun has been very harsh and the crops have dried up.

On Sunday Kikuyu Gospel Singers (Christine’s Swahili choir) held a special event to launch our first album. It was a wonderful event and we were able to raise a good amount of money to help us towards our next goal of recording a video of the album. The video clip shows our entrance on the day! If anyone would like to buy a CD please let me know as I have some people in the UK who could send you one.

The next clip is the video which we tried to upload in our last post but failed! Hope it works this time. It shows a few highlights from Christmas 2011 to Christmas 2012, with more music from Kikuyu Gospel Singers.