Over 110 children from four local villages excitedly lined up Friday morning to register for three days of VBS at Hope of The Nations primary school campus, following a theme of “Trust & Obey”. The children were separated into “teams”, and picked team names and each team was assigned a team color with bands and received tee-shirts, toothbrushes, and homemade soap made by the local village women. Then, the fun began! Live music produced an atmosphere of joy, praise and hundreds of feet moving esthetically to the beat! WOW! Can these local’s dance! Taylor and Susan, surrounded by the crowd, taught the group four songs. John 14:23 was read as the daily devotional. Taylor, assisted by the local camp leaders to translate, and Devan, using a puppet, told the story of Miriam as an example of obedience. Zakiya, LouAnn and Tammy taught a lesson about how the bible gives us God’s instructions to follow in life, we used the example of how making a cake without instructions turns out without following the instructions. Just before lunch, each team created a cheer creating an atmosphere of exuberant competition.
We all enjoyed a lunch of Ugali (corn meal mash), meat and fried cabbage. Leader Tammy and Jack developed a program that involved moving the children to stations. Station one Zakiya taught a lesson on journaling, after the children designed and decorated their journals. Station two, Kickball, taught by Dan, was a highlight, and then the children were moved to station three on the pavilion where Devan had the children, running, jumping, doing relays, hula-hooping, while balls were bouncing off their heads, playing soccer. Devan, blind-folded himself, while the children used him as a human goal post.
While being obedient to God’s will for this mission, we learned the luggage had arrived at The Kigoma airport and Tammy arranged pick-up, so when The Tanzania team gratefully returned “home” dusty and physically and emotional drained had dinner, showered, and held a team debriefing while all were thrilled to unpack, again. The nine of us look forward, after a good night’s rest, to do it again on Saturday!
Susan Mister, team blogger
