Missions, Music and Milkshakes

We praise God for the last few months since we last wrote and as always we thank you all for your prayers, support and encouragement.

The boys continued to enjoy their school holidays in July. Isaac had a new guitar teacher over the holidays called Imani, who has, unfortunately for us, now left Tanzania to study in the US. He taught Isaac lots of new skills and he now has even more enthusiasm for his playing. Daniel has also begun drum lessons with a drummer from a friend's church,

which he is thoroughly enjoying.

We had a fun trip to Kilimatinde during the holidays with the Chance family, good friends and fellow missionaries in Dodoma shown in this picture at the point in Kilimatinde.


We visited Grace and Festo and their boys Zephania and William who are in the picture below.

Christine has been very busy at work. In August we carried out the latest in a series of Evangelism seminars for the central zone of the Anglican Church, which took place in the diocese of Kondoa, training lay evangelists and carrying out door to door evangelism and open air missions in the area.

We have also just finished our annual music and worship school which as always was a great success. You can read more about both these projects on my work blog http://actmission.blogspot.com.

Please also continue to pray for our project to develop an Anglican Church radio station. We have finally been able to apply for a license so please pray that this application will be successful and that funding will become available to enable us to go ahead with this project.

Kikuyu Gospel Singers held their annual mission in September, reaching out to the local people. Many people came to faith and were healed and the event was a great success. This was followed by the launch of our latest CD at which we were able to raise funds to buy a new mixing desk which we desperately needed.

Please pray for us as we now search for funds for a new keyboard. In August we also enjoyed a trip to Iringa to visit and minister to a church there.

As usual at the end of the academic year we had to say farewell to another group of students who are leaving the English choir as they are graduating this year. This is always a sad time but we celebrate our time together with a lovely farewell party shown in these pictures. Please pray for these graduating students as they look for work and move forward in their lives.

Daniel became a teenager in September and chose to have a party at the local hotel with his friends. This included swimming, games, and most importantly amazing chocolate cakes and milkshakes!

Paul has reached the end of his first year as acting head of Physics at the university and is hopeful that, with the appointment of extra staff in the department over the next few weeks, the workload for all will settle down to something more manageable than the rather hectic past year. One of the highlights of the past year was seeing some of the students get carried away with their final year projects. The photo shows some local school students who had been invited in to test out some science-museum style hands on exhibits constructed by one of Paul's students. As Paul starts what will be his last academic year at the university he is focussing on succession, training others and winding down roles in order to leave well.
At the same time he has been getting more involved in supporting CAMS, the boys' school initially as part of the parents society as it fundraises for building a new school laboratory (see photo). However, recently the diocesan Bishop has asked Paul to take on a senior role in the school as the current Principal's time comes to close and as a new principal is appointed.

We have just got back from a short holiday at the beach in Dar-es-Salaam, which was a much needed time of relaxation after and before some very busy times for us at work. We stayed at Kipepeo, a lovely beach to the South of Dar and enjoyed swimming, sandcastles and snorkelling!

With love and blessings,
Christine, Paul, Daniel & Isaac.x