"Humanly speaking it is impossible, but not with God. Everything is possible with God." Mk 10:29
"For the man who wants to save his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it." Mt 16:25
"Some want to keep the gospel so disembodied that it doesn't get involved at all in the world to save it. Christ is now in history." Oscar Romero


Nov 7, 2007

our new amigos...

You never know…

Who you are going to meet at language camp in Iringa. For instance, we met two French brothers who have been “on the road” for over a year. They left France and drove to Greece, which took them through a few months (how cool!), then hopped a boat to Malta and then onto Alexandria. They then drove into Somalia (how I don’t quite know), down through Ethiopia and Kenya, and they’ve been in Tanzania the last month touring the parks. Their plan is to continue down the eastern coast to South Africa and return to France via the Western coast of Africa; Angola, etc…The whole tour they estimate will take 3 years. They’re doing all this in a make-shift pickup that modified with a camper hard top on the bed. Also, these guys must’ve been in their late 60’s. Another couple at the camp works for SIL (look them up). He does video and there are still many unreached people groups in Tanzania and he’s in charge of translating various media into a certain tribes language – things like the Jesus Film, Bible Teachings, Kids programs, etc. Another couple is from the Farrow Islands. There are only 35k people that live on the Farrow Islands and we know four of them! They have their own language – Faroese. It’s a tiny fishing island between Europe and Iceland, technically owned by Denmark, but they hate the Dutch. Out camp owners served in British Royal army, but grew up in Tanzania, and the wife is from Liverpool. Our Banda mates are from Bath, England and former Anglican ministers acquainted with the Mumfords. We hung out a few evenings with a French family, who insisted that they, with their kids, smoke a water bong every night before dinner. This wasn’t a small bong, but a giant 4 ft tall bong with a long tube that would be smoked right alongside the dinner table. Why, I didn’t quite understand. There are some single girls from Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark, an Australian married to an American and the occasional guest visiting from Iringa born and bread in Tanzania…small world huh.

Other Happenings…
Jude has Giardia. A smelly diarrhea causing intestinal amoeba – not fun for him or us. To diagnosis his condition we had to take him to a lab. Literally, drive up to this one room building with a microscope on the table and some syringes and a few other medical looking items laying around in plastic buckets (the same kind you’d use to wash your car or store old rags). We mentioned what we wanted tested and he handed us an old 24mm plastic film container which we were supposed to capture the “sample”. So we asked where the toilet was and he just shrugged his shoulders, a bush out back was suitable enough for Jude. TIA (this is Africa).