Greetings from the Eastern Team in Iringa, Tanzania!

 

Greetings from us to you from Iringa, Tanzania. We have all arrived safely (well, kinda) - the driving here is a very frightful experience. Kip, Kim, and Leslie arrived first in Iringa via a single-prop plane and the view coming over the mountaintops was breathtaking!! The rest of the guys had an exciting time traveling by car to Iringa where they got to sightsee along the way. They wanted me to let you know that Floyd's driving is not much better here then it is in the States. Good thing for traffic laws (insert sarcasm)!

The wavulana (boys) drive here consisted of them stopping along the way to have lunch at a good friend's house.  They also drove through one of the National Parks where they got to see lots of animals.  Once they arrived at the Daily Bread Children's home, they were greeted by the children with song and dance!  Song and dance is a way that the children worship and praise thanks.

Chris and Agrey are two of the original children from DBLCH and proud to announce that they were selected out of 1,000 applicants as two of the 16 selected to go to Technical College.  They plan to study to be a mechanic and electrician.  This is monumental time in the history of DBLCH.  We send our blessings and prayers with them as they continue their education!

Day 1:
Sunday, we all gathered in the town of Kidetete and joined the villagers at church. The Sunday message was given by Jacksonville Cares Champion Tony.  He delivered the message in Swahili to us and the members of the church.  Tony has a history with Tanzania...he lived in Dar es Salaam for six years.  His son, Joe, who is also on the trip, was born in Tanzania. This is his first time back since they moved away.  After church at Kidetete we continued on to visit ACTS Church and worshiped with them followed by a delicious lunch back at DBLCH.

Following lunch the group ventured out to visit the new Secondary School being built next to the farm.  Neema and Mpeli had a vision to build a school, and it is truly amazing to see their vision come to light.  Below is a picture of some of the classrooms.  Thirty children will attend school on this campus in February.

For dinner, we did something different and ate at the home with the children. Jonas cooked everyone pizza which was delicious! For some of the children, it was their first time eating pizza. We followed pizza with a cake for Kim to celebrate her birthday!!!

Work starts tomorrow!  For now, Hakuna Matata!