Greetings from COVID-free Tanzania, at least, that’s what the president declared last month. Life is back to normal with no restrictions; however, I do believe that, in general, COVID has opened the eyes of the folks here about being more aware of germs and overall cleanliness, so that is a blessing. We watch the news sometimes and take it with a grain of salt most times, but we do pray fervently for you all. We pray that God will raise up Christians who stand firm and that wisdom will be used. We are looking forward to seeing how God will get the glory in spite of the chaos.
As I said before, life continues. Ministry is going well. We continue to do what we know to do here, which is loving people and praying for patience. If we continue to do that, God will bless in time. These past months, we have seen three families come and join the church and start to get involved.
Fred is the designer we have used for many years for our church. He designs and prints our calendars, banners, etc. He wasn’t coming to church. We have invited him before and another member in our church who works with him has also tried several times. Well, he finally came last month, along with his wife and three kids; he was only expecting to come one time and be done. Well, the family came, got saved, eventually got baptized, and have been coming ever since.
The next family is Baba Rachel and his wife and two kids. They actually started coming back in May because their church closed due to COVID. They wanted to continue in church somewhere, so they came and enjoyed our church services. Once their church opened up again, they said they realized the doctrinal errors their church had and wanted to stay here in our church and be members.
Let me give you the background of this last story. So, some of our ladies were out soul winning in their area. During that morning, they met a lady who lived in the neighborhood, and they gave her a tract, inviting her to church. She told the ladies she was very busy, and they said, “That’s fine; you can keep the tract.” She yelled at them, cursed at them, and just carried on about her life and her problems and then just chased them away. Our ladies kindly left and moved on. Well, later that day, the lady felt so bad about what she had done that she found out where our ladies lived and went to apologize to them. She told them she was having family issues and really didn’t mean to snap. She told them that she would come to church the next time we had services, and she did. She also brought her grandkids, and now they come regularly.
Prayer Requests
• Please continue to pray for these families. They are new to Christianity and have a lot of zeal, which is good, but pray that they can continue. We know that the Devil likes to attack and destroy, so pray that we as a church can be a help to them as they grow.
• Pray for my wife, who is pregnant with Baby #3, due in February.
• Pray as we are trying to finalize our future plans due to the fact that Martha will be delivering Stateside.
• Pray for our upcoming election here in October that things will go smoothly.
We love and appreciate all of you. Again, we do pray for your ministries and families. Thank you for being faithful to the Lord.
Your missionary representatives,
Mshama, Martha, Esther, & Benjamin Kinyonga