Salamu! Greetings in Swahili. Thanks for following along on our adventure.
Our apologies for not having a blog post after a planned zoom meeting on January 19th. Easy explanation…Hollister experienced a severed cable, which caused a major internet failure for an8-hour period. We made up for the missed meeting on January 25th,with an in person meeting at Jack Daley’s home.
During our meeting, we watched a video about short term missions, which taught us that those experiencing poverty have a sense of shame, inferiority, and powerlessness. The goals of short term missionaries are to fellowship and encourage those serving in long term missions. Tammy suggested we read “Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions,” a resource that prepares and debriefs short-term missionaries while also preventing inadvertent harm when entering materially poor communities. Jack shared that Pastor Sam recommended that we use the term "developing countries," rather than "3rd world," which is less demeaning.
Our team consists of, three from the Hollister campus, three from the Gilroy campus and Tammy our SVCC Mission Director. We are all excited about our mission trip even after Tammy delegated leadership responsibilities to each of us that will stretch some of us out of our comfort zone as we prepare for our June departure.
Also added to our calendar are monthly fun, team-building gatherings to get to know each other personally outside of our team meetings where we primarily focus on preparing for our STM (short term mission).
This meeting we learned more about poverty, culture, appropriate clothing, money, and creative ways to cover tattoos.
Thankyou, Jack, for generously paying up! Susan won 30,500 Tanzanian shillings for correctly guessing that its US conversion was $13.08. Pretty money with the elephant, huh?!
Thankyou, Jack, for not only hosting us, again, but for being Tammy’s co-leader on this short-term mission team.
Our February 2nd meeting will be a Zoom meeting. Please, Lord, let the internet connections work this time!
Susan Mister,
Designated team blogger
