2026 Tanzania STM 
Tues June 23rd
Kigoma 
 
This morning started out with a lazy pace. Most of us have adjusted and have gotten a good night’s sleep.
All of our ministry supplies and our personal bags have been taken to the boat for our trip  tonight on the lake to Igalulu.
Coni and Harold arrived at lunchtime to bring sandwiches, fruit and chips for the entire team.
Later, we joined Harold for a tour by Bible college bus to the Hope of the Nations properties in the surrounding areas. 
We toured the elementary school, a new hilltop church building property in Kamala, and the future location of a church and soccer field in Kigera. The community is excited about the future well at this location which has been funded by SVCC.
After we returned to the campus, it was time for another nap, and then dinner provided by Coni before heading out to the boat!

We arrived in Kigoma and were greeted by Hope of The Nations staff and volunteer ministry leaders they call Buddies. They loaded all of our luggage off and we went to the Bible Collage to get settled in. After getting settled in we meet our team buddies. Each team member was assigned a buddy who will be our translator and our host. Then Harold held a team orientation and we had breakfast.
After breakfast we all got settled in to our rooms. Then we meet up with our buddies and dug in to all of the ministry supplies we brought. (games, crafts etc...) and we all went over the schedule for our time down the lake for youth camp (16 - 26 years of age). Our journey down the lake will take 10 hours, we will be traveling throughout the night and when we arrive in Igalula around 5:00am we will setup camp and be ready to start camp by 11:00am.

After we went through and sorted out the ministry supplies we were all very tired so we all went and took a longgg nap and woke up in time to have lunch with our buddies. After lunch we packed our personal bags for down the lake. After that our buddies treated us to an outing and we traveled by Bajajis in to Ujiji for dinner. After dinner we went for a long walk to the Livingstone center and to the lake. We all received a lot of information about Ujiji from our buddies. A few of them had grown up there and it was very interesting to hear them share.
We then headed back to the Bible college and the team huddled up and went over our lesson plans and held our daily briefing. Then off to be we went. Trust me when I say it was not hard at all to fall asleep. I think we all were asleep before our heads hit our pillows. I stated this blog last night but fell asleep with my laptop becoming my pillow mid sentence before I could finish.
It is now 6:19am Tuesday and we have to have all of our supplies out in the staging area by 7:00am then I am going to need a gallon of coffee and breakfast for our long day that Harold and our buddies have planned for us. We were told we will be touring the HOTN schools and a tour of the local villages and visit the local market to purchase a few ministry supplies we need for camp. Then we will eat dinner and be loading on to the boat by 7:00pm to start our 10 hour boat journey to Igalula. We do not know if we will have access to the internet to blog while we are there and if not we will give you all a full update when we return. 

We made it to Tanzania, it's 1am Monday here. Now we wait for the small in country airplane that takes us into Kigoma. We will be in Kigoma at 8:00am. We had no issue through customs and all of our luggage arrived with us. yaaaaaa..
Everyone is pretty jet lagged. When we get to Kigoma today we will rest and prepare for the 8hr boat ride our first camp that we take on Tuesday.
When we get to HOtN Bible Collage we will blog again.

Tanzania Short Term Mission 2026
Day 1 San Francisco to Amsterdam
Habari Mchana!
Operating on little sleep, hungry, and ever-so-slightly apprehensive, the team met up at 7:45AM to put last minute items into bags, and wait for our ride with Alan Kirk and his roomy truck.
Alan had kindly offered to pick all of us up (with our ministry supplies and luggage) to haul us to SFO!
We had helpful ticket agents who managed the tagging all of our bulky luggage and supplies.
We are currently at our gate waiting for our flight from SFO to AMS. We have a very tight connection in Amsterdam so please pray that our flight is early or on time so that we don’t miss our connecting flight to Dar Es Salaam and on to Kigoma (via Kilimanjaro).
Kevin and Aidan are especially excited for the 25+ hour total in-the-air flight time!

We are only a few short weeks away from our Tanzania short term mission trip June 20-July 8, and there has been a whirlwind of activity!

This morning, we met our support team of Buddies working with Coni and Harold Knepper at Hope of the Nation in Tanzania via Google Meets. These young people, many of whom are recent graduates of the Bible college, are enthusiastic and dedicated to helping make this short-term mission a huge success. Their enthusiasm is contagious! Harold and Coni Knepper are equally excited for our arrival and to see the Lord work His will through all of us.

Our team is now meeting twice a week to dive into further cultural discussion, get answers to our many questions, fine tune our lesson plans, and build out and set our daily calendar with assigned ministry tasks.

Thanks to the generosity of our SVCC family and friends the lengthy STM Amazon ministry supplies list has been completely fulfilled!
In just a few days our team will gather for a long day of packing and weighing all of our supplies and personal belongings, practice making some of the fun crafts, and give the group games a trial run through.

We are beyond blessed to have this opportunity to experience the Tanzanian culture and way of life, engage in a meaningful way with the children and young people we will minister to, partner with and learn from the Kneppers and their team of capable young leaders, stretch ourselves spiritually, and build lasting relationships with the people we encounter.
Thank you for partnering with us on this journey. We are so blessed by your generosity and your prayer support.

FULFILLING TANZANIA MISSION TRIP NEEDS

As our team counts down the days until we leave, we need your help to purchase needed supplies.
Supplies are needed by June 11th so the team can pack, weigh and label all of our luggage
You can purchase the supplies on our Amazon registry here.

Feel free to email tammy@SVCCchurch.com or reach out to one of the team members if you have any questions.
Asante sana
(Thank you in Swahili) 

Our team of 6 is meeting weekly.
There is so much to learn. So much to discuss. The details are endless.
We are excited to learn everything we can about missionaries Coni and Harold Kneppers, Hope of the Nations, and the people we will encounter in and around Kigoma during this 18-day ministry.
We have been studying God’s word as relating to missions, spent time studying and discussing workbooks and videos, and have shared on the topics of culture, traditions, food, necessary vaccines, jet-travel, language, weather, necessary equipment, testimonies and culture shock.  

The VBS theme for this trip is Trust and Obey. The various stations and lesson plans are already coming together, and are currently being fine-tuned. It’s going to be incredible!  
Please partner with the team in prayer. Pray that the Lord would do a mighty work in our attitudes, that our hearts are softened towards the people in Tanzania, and that we can encourage and fellowship with them deeply.
 
Left: Kathleen Youngberg (VBS Leader), Tammy Stone (Team leader), and Laurel Lindner (Team Blogger).
Center: Aidan Tomasini (Games, YAS Co-Leader), Jack Daly (Young Adult Seminar Leader, Co-team leader), and Kevin Higgins (Games, YAS Co-Leader).
Bottom: Our curriculum

The team participating in the Tanzania STM 2026 have been solidified and started meeting regularly.
We meet in person or via Zoom to go over our study guide on "Before You Pack Your Bag, Prepare Your Heart", watch instructional videos, discuss the culture of Tanzania and program planning.
The excitement is building and team fundraising has began!
On the 2026 STM team is:
Jack Daley (Co-team Leader)
Kevin Higgins
Kathleen Youngberg
Aidan Tomasini
Laurel Lindner
Tammy Stone (Team Leader)

Aidan discusses fundraising issues and ideas for some VBS group games.

Tammy, Kathleen, Aidan, and Jack at our team meeting, Tammy is holding our Tanzania 2026 Preparation Packet we are working through, Kevin in on Zoom and I (Laurel) am taking pictures. 

A significant percentage of funding for TZ26 team supplies will come from the sales of burritos on monthly Burrito Sundays.
Here, the church kitchen is abuzz with helpers creating hundreds of delicious handmade burritos.