Tuesday Catch Up–In Dar, heading home

The last two days have been very busy and I have been too tired to post at night, so here’s a quick catch-up of what has been going on from my perspective.  Those of you who have been following our other blog, http://tzblog.schrull.us know the general shape of the last two days.

IMGP4095When we arrived back at the compound after finishing up all of our work on Saturday at the Bible College, we were treated to the sight of a wedding party that had come to use the compound garden for wedding pictures.  It was delightful.  Everyone was dressed in a way that was obviously for a wedding, but also distinctly African in style.  We went out to dinner at a hotel with our friends Olivia and Daudi. DSC00602 The best part about this experience was that Olivia did not have to cook (This is Olivia’s Kitchen).  The menu was very familiar: rice, potatoes, spinach, chicken, beef stew, followed by fresh fruit, bananas and pineapple on this occasion.

DSC00617Sunday was wonderful worship at Murusi Parish, another confirmation and installing our friend, Cannon Daniel as the zone director.  This was a big deal.  Media coverage, including the local television station, ITV, recording the service for later re-broadcast.  Of course there were three choirs: the Murusi choir, the Murusi women’s choir and the Kasulu Cathedral choir.  (Murusi is actually a district of Kasulu and the church is only about 3 kilometers from the cathedral.  Of course Bill and I sang too.  We were hoping to do an additional song with Cathedral choir, but 2/3rds of the way thru the service the lights went out.  I mentioned how you have to pay ahead and have credits added to your power meter earlier.  The Murusi Parish forgot to check their meter and buy more credits before the service.  Being “on the grid” is still very new for them.

The confirmands, especially the girls, were all beautifully turned out.  It is easy to see the Murusi has a much higher standard of living than Msagara Parish, which we visited last weekend.  While the Msagara girls all wore black school skirts and white school blouses, the Murusi girls all wore new white dresses, many with silver motifs.  Many of them had elaborate hair-dos with strings of small white pearl beads and rhinestones wrapped around the up-dos, not to mention other “bling” of necklaces, bracelets, and in some cases, earrings.

Dinner Sunday night was a get together at another hotel (can you guess the menu?) with most of our friends from the diocese and Bible College.  A guest speaker, who had been spending the weekend teaching at the Cathedral about stewardship was also present and thanked.  The diocese and Bible College thanked us with a framed certificate and a surprise:  a painting of Bill and I that had been done from picture that Daudi had taken earlier in the week.  The stretchers were too big for the painting to be able to fit in our luggage so Daudi took it off the stretchers Monday morning before we left and it is currently folded up in Bill’s guitar case.

It was sad saying goodbye to Olivia, my Tanzanian sister.

We left the compound Monday morning at 7:15 after a quick chai (breakfast) at the Bishop’s house.  Daudi was coming with us to the airport along with Mama Askufo.  We were also carrying another young man who had an earlier flight to Dar es Salam.  As we had a couple of hours before our flight, we headed into Kigoma where we hit the fabric markets.  Our flight to Mwanza left on time.  I have to admit that I am VERY impressed with the changes to Precision Air since I last flew them 5 years ago.  We had a great time in Mwanza.  I am going to end here as we expect to board our flight Dubai soon.  I’ll try to post more from Dubai.

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