NOTE: SOMEONE WROTE THIS UPDATE ON TIME **coughJoshcough BUT THEN SOMEONE ELSE DIDN’T COMPLETE THEIR COMMENTS UNTIL A MONTH LATER….. *coughRebekahcough
Hey all! It’s been a crazy few months, and we wanted to update all our friends and ministry partners with the happenings for our family! But first, prayer requests up front. As usual, Rebekah’s comments are in italics.
Pray for believers here in our area, especially our local baptist churches as they try to stand firm in their convictions and be shrewd in their dealings with the government.
Pray for the start of school for all the missionary kids here in Kigoma. The boys at home are starting 11th, 9th, 7th, and 2nd grade.
Pray for our team here as we try to equip the national church to fulfill the great commission- we need to strive for unity and rely on the power of the Spirit.
In mid-July we said goodby to our friends here in TZ and flew to the US! We stopped in the big city on the coast(Dar es Salaam) for a couple days, then 7 hours to Doha(Our layover was 8 hours and we had 3 separate evacuations in that time frame!), 14 hours to Dallas(helloooooooo ChickFilA!), and 2 hours to Grand Junction.
While in the states we got to connect with family and friends, enjoyed time in the mountains, visited some partner churches, restocked on curriculum, played a lot of disc golf, pinochle, and pickleball, witnessed the nuptials of my brother Jake and his new bride Emy, and left Elijah there to start his bible-school gap-year. It was a busy trip, and we had a wonderful time! Many thanks to my parents, who hosted us in their house for 5 weeks.
Each time we go back to the US it feels little less familiar and a little more foreign to us. It’s really interesting how as we adopt more cultural understanding and experience in TZ we feel like we leave behind part of the US culture (this goes for language as well, at least for me. Seems there’s only space for 1.5 languages. The more Swahili I learn, the more ESL I sound) . We’re still solidly in the American identity, but it is more faded not than it used to be. It’s worth noting that there are aspects of visiting that we LOVE, such as the general cleanliness, the convenience of living, the orderliness of life, the paved roads everywhere, climate controls, reliable utlilities, the rule of law, (mostly) just legal systems, the ethos of individual freedom, and more (places designed specifically for the enrichment of children’s minds, being able to drink water straight from the tap, not having to soak all fresh foods in potassium premanganate for 20 minutes and then rinsing twice with filtered water before eating, not worrying about where or what kind of bathroom there will be if any when we go out, not having to travel with toilet paper, not having to chew rice slowly in case of tooth breaking rocks, not finding mystery bites or itchy spots after waking up in the morning, not watching red dirt shower water run down the drain every night…etc,)
At the end of August we packed up an unholy number of bags, including a kitchen sink (which still hasn’t been installed. Check back in a year) , a wood lathe, a guitar and a banjo, and we flew back to TZ(this time we had a 10 hour layover in Doha, so they put us up in a hotel in the airport- so fancy!).
On the way back to TZ we picked up our newest team-member. Emily is a young lady who committed 4 months to come and start some English classes in our churches. English proficiency is a great benefit to Tanzanians, and the classes use a curriculum designed to help start spiritual conversations. Emily is doing a great job teaching about 18 hours of class a week with ~14 students in each class!
In addition, we started back up with our children’s spiritual formation classes, serving in our local church(newly named Mwamba Imara Baptist Church), and planning other ministry events.
In early September, a multi-church meeting was broken up by the police and 4 of the local leaders were jailed for 2 nights. Even now they continue to be harassed by the local police and other persecutors. Based on this latest in a long history of similar issues, the churches in our local area have decided to obtain their own denominational registration(all churches here must be registered with the government, which includes having a board of trustees, a constitutions, and filing a bunch of paperwork with the national gov). They’ve enlisted our help to do this, so our team is working with local leaders to craft a durable constitution that meets legal requirements but preserves a baptistic ecclesiology(especially the independence of the local church).
A couple of other fun changes-
We came back to puppies! Right before we left, one of our German Shepherds got together with our neighbors’ mutt and had 7 puppies right before we got home. 6 survived, and are growing like crazy! It’s been really fun to have them! They’re about a month old now, and starting to really act like puppies, which is fun!
We’re starting a homeschool co-op. I’ve(Josh) been doing science and theology with the local highschoolers for the past year or two, but now we’ve got science and art for all grade levels, and systematic theology for the highschoolers. We’re hoping it will be a blessing to the homeschoolers here and a great experience for the students.
That’s it for this short update.
Next week we have a family from our sending church visiting, and we’ll be doing some ministry with them and showing them the area!
Thanks for supporting us in so many ways- we thank God for you all.
You can support our work financially here: www.imb.org/give
Giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goes 100% to missionaries on the field!
Get this update by email by sending me a message here: M28StoreyFam@gmail.com
Until next time, may the God of truth bless you all with his grace and peace.
Josh, Bek, and the boys