04 September 2016

a quick summary...

It has been a year many changes and uncertainties, however during the last few month things have started to come together in terms of the management and operation of the program in Tanzania. Although there is a lot of work ahead of us, at least we now know what needs to be done. Despite it all we still managed to continue serving our mission partners with medical and evangelistic outreach throughout the year. Our services in the south of the country had to be suspended when the pilot based there was diagnosed with a heart condition while on furlough in the US. He also served as Operations Director and since his replacement did not work out, it left me to take on the role in the interim. As things go, the temporary solution became permanent and I completed the training and serve as Ops Director as well.

During the first 6 months of the year 10,215 pregnant mothers and babies attended our monthly mobile clinics which we support in partnership with three local health centres. We encourage local evangelists to attend these clinic days in order to use it as an opportunity to reach those who attend it, with the Gospel. At some of the places we are also able to take teams of evangelists with us who attend to the spiritual needs while the medical clinic is in progress.

I recently had the privilege to attend the Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering in Jakarta, Indonesia, where nearly 1000 younger evangelical leaders from 140 different nations involved in a variety of fields gathered. Together with senior leaders and mentor, we made connections for partnerships and learned from the knowledge and experience of others so that we can go out and more effectively serve and bring the Gospel to all people. One of the workshops I attended was Health in Missions where we discussed ways to better integrate our medical missions with a Gospel message and to bring physical and spiritual health together. I am looking for to incorporate these concepts in the work we are doing here.

At home, Johann has grown into an energetic toddler and brings us endless entertainment and joy. Amelia has recently started working full-time at the Christian International School just down the road from us. This term she is standing in for one of the teachers who went back to Australia on furlough and from next term she will start working full-time as a music teacher for the school. We are all healthy and doing well, we greatly appreciate all the support from family and friends.

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