Easter week

The past week has been a great one! Due to the Easter public holidays, and a Tanzanian holiday (7th April), I only needed to take 2 days off in order to have a whole week to spend with my guests. Only Saturday 4th my friends Amy and Rachel and Jonathan Morgan travelled the long journey from Dodoma to Musoma. I believe Jonathan drove the whole way with very few stops, quite a feat when the journey takes 11 ½ hours! They arrived safely, and dropped Amy off with us, as she was to spend the week with us in our house. Since then, we have had some great times, playing football with other missionary friends, watching films and visiting other people’s houses. I’ll just mention a few of those events, since we have been pretty busy!

On Wednesday 8th, we cooked up loads of good food and had a bunch of people round to our house for my birthday party. It was a really fun evening, despite the effort it took to prepare, and I even got brownie cake with 24 candles in it!

On Saturday, we made a big trip to Lukuba Island for the day. Our party included 15 adults and 6 kids, so was pretty big, yet we managed to arrive on time, even if the boat driver didn’t. The island was as relaxing as the last time I went, and the resort had even bought 2 canoes and a kayak since I last went in December, so we had a chance to float around on Lake Victoria as well as sit and sunbathe beside it. We saw huge monitor lizards as we drifted around the rocks near the resort, and lots of cool birds, though I have no idea what they were. The crossing back to the mainland was a bit more choppy, but we all made it safe and sound, and bid each other goodbye for the evening before we saw each other again the next day.

Sunday, being Easter Sunday, was our day for a special service where we gathered together for brunch, then worshipped in English and read from the Word. I tried my hand at hot cross buns, and they turned out reasonably well except for the burnt bottoms due to the stupid gas oven. The worship was really great. We generally don’t get that much chance to worship in English together, especially since Missionary Fellowship hasn’t happened for 2 months now, and it was really awesome to get that chance. We even had a small informal communion service, which was also a real blessing to take part in. I don’t think I have had communion since going to a Tanzanian church here in Musoma. I know that it would have been good to participate in a Swahili service, especially to show support of our church, but in order to really meditate on Easter, and all it means to us, it was definitely necessary to do it in English. I can understand so much better now how important the mother-tongue is when learning about, or worshipping, God.

So, it is back to work, but I am very thankful for having a week to relax before the madness of survey begins!