Tanzania 2024 - Mtwara, the Sunday

We get up relatively early again because we are attending the church service at school, so at 8:15 a.m. Students take our bags at the entrance and carry them to our seats. A group of children/teens are standing at the front (the school is for 8th grade and up, as the elementary school goes up to 7th grade). Dressed in school uniforms, they lead the singing, dancing lightly and clapping.

One item on the program is our welcome and introduction, we explain our connection to the project and to Tanzania: all three communities support the Weiss family, Haiger is their home and, like Rüsselsheim, has had contacts with the missionary work here for a long time and supports it. Relationships were also formed through Magonga's visit last year.

There is the opportunity to tell how one has experienced God and some students tell of situations in which God has answered prayers and sick people have recovered. Some recite a Bible verse that they have learned and they are blessed, i.e. people pray with them. There is also a time when the donations are put together, while the singing continues and the money is put into a large basket at the front, i.e. everyone gradually goes to the front and (probably) puts in a donation.

There is a lot of praise and worship in song and dance, and finally a sermon follows from a young man who is a teacher and the second school pastor. He speaks about 2 Corinthians chapter 5, that we have been made new through Jesus and are on the move as ambassadors for God. Gert had already read the same Bible verse in his greeting - without prior agreement.

We get the sermon and most of the other things translated from Swahili into German.

Afterwards we went straight to a second service, which takes place in the former school hall, a round grass-roofed building without windows, a branch of the larger church we visited yesterday. People sit on plastic chairs or on benches along the wall. We meet around 50 people there, the children sit on plastic children's chairs at the front, they later sing two children's songs in a fairly brisk rhythm and then leave with their chairs, the children's service takes place under a tree a few meters away and at least from a distance everything seems super disciplined.

Here, too, there is a long, moving singing, there is a donation queue to put in at the front and here, too, we are allowed to introduce ourselves and say hello. A newly married couple who have returned is also greeted and congratulated - for this they are wrapped in a long piece of fabric.

After a short attempt to simultaneously translate the sermon, Marko asks permission and translates for us from the beginning. The sermon is intense and long; the preacher comes to a conclusion about three times after his words, but then you can read the next text and explain it. We Germans are not used to a service that lasts a good two hours, and it can be quite exhausting.

After the service, a young woman, the bride from before, speaks to me. She was here at CVS as a student several years ago and we had the school sponsorship. I had written back at the time. She has since studied and returned to the school as a teacher. There she also met her husband, who also works there. She thanks me profusely and for us too, this is a very special meeting and getting to know each other.

After lunch, we take a nap, then some of us go swimming and in the evening we go for a short walk along the beach to a restaurant that is beautifully situated and has the freshest fish, among other things. Amazingly, the European Championship final is being broadcast there (there is also a lot of football broadcast, mostly some European game from any time, sometimes the "Goal of the Month" or the country's own league). So we stay there with just a few people, and I use the free WiFi there. Congratulations to Spain...