Back to Africa + 2024 review

/

Hello dear friends! It has been TOO long since I wrote, but better late than never, right? As always, prayer requests first. Also as per our usual, Rebekah’s comments in italics:

  • Continue to lift up our friend Kulwa in your prayers. This brother of ours has been jailed under false pretenses, and because he is from Burundi he has few rights here in TZ. We continue to try to be of assistance to him, but the system here is broken and near impossible to navigate. We are praying for his swift release, and peace and strength while he is imprisoned.

  • We are all recovering from influenza, and it has really slowed us down! We are trying to embrace the forced rest, though it can be difficult!

  • Pray for our team-mates here who had to suddenly leave the field after 3 decades in Africa. The manner of their departure is heartbreaking- we are praying peace and strength for them in this difficult season.

Brief 2024 Review:

  • Our ministry here in TZ in 2024 took shape in the first half of the year, really dividing into a few different approaches.

    • We supported children’s education with hundreds served and 2 “kids clubs” weekly.

    • I(Josh) facilitated a preaching cohort, where we completed preaching through the book of Matthew and started the book of Acts. This weekly time was an encouragement to me and we have seen the changes brought to our church through the regular exposition of the Word!

    • Our monthly pastoral fellowship continued for the first half of the year, as we studied Baptist distinctives together.

    • We held a seminar for church leaders here in Kigoma and were encouraged by leaders from Kenya and TZ who came to teach and learn together. (This felt like a sweet affirmation from the Lord and from others who spoke into our lives regarding the seminar, that we’ve been sensitive to the Spirit’s leading in this particular work. We spent much of our first term struggling and floundering, not sure why the Lord led us to Kigoma, but certain he would show us the road forward. The conference was a cap to a long few years and a beautiful reminder that the Lord had paved the way long before we had our heads above water here.)

    • The Mercy Ministry to palliative care patients continued apace- we distributed 140 kits with medical supplies to families in need and saw 2 dozen churches encouraged/discipled and many professions of faith. (our national partners are taking full ownership of this now, going weekly, and that is such an encouragement. Our goal in all the work here is for the Tanzanian’s to take over and run! We are simply here to train and equip in the ways the Lord leads.)

  • We went on our first STAS(stateside assignment) in July and returned to the field in January. It was a sweet time!

    • We bought a house in CO just around the corner from my parents. This was both a blessing and a lot of work, but we’re hopeful that it will be a good investment! We’re currently renting it out.

    • We were able to visit many of our partner churches, most for the first time. It was sweet to share what God is doing here in TZ with them.

    • The younger three boys all went to a small private school while back in the states. They learned so much about classroom environment, teacher expectations, tests and deadlines! They miss their teachers and classmates, but their glad to be back to the homeschooled life.

    • We had wonderful time with family and friends in CO, got to go camping, river rafting, sledding, and much more. We also got to vote in the 2024 election, which was a privilege(though we were not sad to see the political ads go away on Nov 5!).

Overall, we learned alot about the process of coming back on furlough/STAS, and are glad that we all felt ready to come back to Tanzania. May the Lord be pleased with the work of our hands and the state of our hearts as we join back in the work here!


On the way back from our time in the states we attended a meeting for our organization in Johannesburg, South Africa. While the travel was exhausting, it was a sweet time to see friends from around Africa and be encouraged by their stories.

At the same time the three older boys were able to attend a camp for MKs with kids from all over sub-Saharan Africa. These kids are their community here, and even though they only see one another once or twice a year, they have formed strong friendships and rely on each other. We are so thankful that they are able to do those sorts of things because of the generosity of so many SBC believers in the states! Thank you!

After the meeting we took the chance to go see Cape Town, which we had been told was a real gem of Africa. It did not disappoint! Our team-sister Debra joined us for the trip and we had an amazing time! South Africa was remarkably affordable, and Cape Town was simply beautiful!

We returned to Tanzania in early January and spent the first couple weeks re-establishing with our friends here. It was a blessed reunion with so many and we were glad to be back! Only a few things needed fixed on the house(plumbing, electical, windows, etc…) and we’re in good shape now. (for reference, plumbing and electrical seem to be a constant in line for fixing. After being gone for 6 months, there were just MORE fixes, not necessarily different ones. It’s been a sharp learning curve living in a place where the supplies and even the way things are “fixed” are for temporary fixes only. Much of our time here is spent calling and explaining things to “fundis” (repairmen) and then overseeing the work they do to be sure it’s done well. We love our fundis and are thankful we’ve learned together over many a repair project).

Rebekah and I have reflected on how easy this transition was to the first time we came to TZ. We give glory to God for teaching us so much about how to live here, and giving us so many friends that support us and help us get along! (Night and day, apples and oranges, tropics and desert, vultures and song birds, ugali and corn tortillas, meat and veggies, black and white, summer and winter - you get the gist. We are mightily thankful there’s such a huge difference)

Some things we’ve learned:

  • We pasteurize all our milk(16L) for the week on the same day because it allows us to separate the cream(with our snazzy new cream separator).

  • We have a good plumber, electrician, mechanic, carpenter, small appliance fixer and shoemaker to make repairs when needed.

  • We know which seller have the good popcorn that hasn’t been eaten by weevils(the problem isn’t the bugs, it’s that the popcorn doesn’t pop with a weevil in it!). (but also, weevil is a rather unpleasant and very distinct flavor. One knows when one has eaten weevil’d popcorn. It’s also not very pleasant to see their grease covered bodies stuck to the underside of the pot lid as they splatter upward in the heat)

  • $500 for an air conditioner in the master bedroom is a GAME CHANGER. (our room would frequently reach 91 F in the heat of the season/days. With three outside walls, this means that heat didn’t subside until midnight or later, and often would only drop a handful of degrees overnight. This meant lots of cold showers, wearing damp clothes to bed for evaporative cooling, a fan on high and restless nights. Take my money, AC, take it!)

  • It’s easier to climb in the attic and put out a bucket than it is to find the roof leak and plug it. (especially since getting rid of the hundreds of bats that were inhabiting the space and leaking their guano down our bedroom walls!)

All this and much more have made our return to the field so smooth! We’re glad to return to our sisters Kari and Debra and to put our hand to the work in the Lord’s harvest field.

After we were back for a month or so we packed up and drove to Nairobi for a homeschool conference for families from our region. It was a wonderful opportunity to network with other homeschoolers and share tips and tricks(homeschooling in rural TZ is a bit challenging at times!). The boys also got a chance to connect with some of their friends, and that was great. The trip up was a bit challenging as we had a GI bug and a bad battery in the truck, but we made it!
The conference itself was good, but Rebekah and the boys started to come down with a bad flu(now suspect Influenza A that is currently taking Nairobi by storm!), so they were only able to take part in parts of the conference.

While in Nairobi we had a team meeting with our new team, and it was great to look ahead to what ministry will look like over the next few years.

We returned from Nairobi a couple of days ago, and are trying to get back to it. As I mentioned above, some of our previous team-mates have had to suddenly leave the field(due to health issues) after 29 years in Africa. We’re trying to help them with the packing and transitioning of housing and ministry and supplies and all that goes with it. Pray for them!

At the same time we’re in the midst of a large renovation project for Kari’s future house, and it is an incredibly time-consuming and oversight-intensive project. Pray for Kari and Josh as they try to coordinate all the workers and work!

We have two teams coming in the next couple of months, and this is a very labor intensive process as well. Be praying that we can receive them well, that they are blessed through their time here, and that they are able to have a kingdom-impact!


I think that’s about it! We are grateful for you all! Those of you who give to the IMB make our work possible. More than that, we know that many of you pray for us regularly, and we do not take those prayers for granted! Thank you!

Ways you can continue to support us:

  • Pray!

  • Pray!

  • Also pray.

  • Come and visit! We are working on developing some reproducible models for short term teams.

  • Come and work with us: We’re looking for college students to teach ESL, and a single or a family to help with theological education. There are other opportunities within the IMB as well. Email me at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com for more info.

  • Give financially at www.imb.org/give

May the Lord bless and keep you all until our next update.

Love,
Josh, Bek, and the boys

Back in the US, Update#2

/

Merry Christmas! We’ve been busy and blessed these past couple of months, so here’s an update of some of the things we’ve been up to(As always, Rebekah’s 2 cents in italics). But first, some prayer requests:

  • We head back to Africa on December 28th! Please pray for safe and smooth travel, and for the family/friends we are leaving behind in the States. (and for our hearts - it’s a very bitter sweet departure, indeed)

  • We are renting out our house in Colorado, so please pray the renters we found are a good fit!

  • We are returning to some uncertainty due to persecution and conflict in TZ(more on that below), but please pray for our friends and national partners- for perseverance in trials and joy in suffering.

  • Please pray for our friend “Neddy”, who is in the process of coming to join our team as a homeschool helper/teacher. She is a great answer to prayer!

One of the big to-do things when we’re back in the US is to get caught up on medical and dental issues. In that respect, this trip has been a success! We’ve had preventive visits, dental visits, a root canal, some dental crowns and fillings, and Rebekah had surgery to repair her esotropia (a HUGE praise)!! We’re heading back with clean bills of health. (Being able to get in for corrective surgery for my eyes was truly a miraculous act of God. I had an appointment only two weeks after my initial phone call with them, was told I was an excellent candidate and approved for surgery in that first visit, and had surgery scheduled within an hour of leaving the office. I was fully expecting follow up appointments would be necessary to determine if surgery was the best option, and for surgery to not be available during our short timeline in the States. What a relief to have it done! I feel like I have new eyes and continue to marvel at the Lord’s provision.)

We were blessed with the chance to buy a house 200 yards from my parents’ house here in Grand Junction. It’s been amazing being around the corner from them and has made this time in the States such a blessing! Luke went over most school afternoons and worked on homework with Grandma, and my dad frequently dropped in to say hey while walking the dog.
It added a fair bit of work to get things fixed up after we moved in, but it was (mostly) fun work and we think it’s ready for renters. We’re two weeks out from returning to Africa, which gives me palpitations (He’s JUST now getting palpitations. I’ve been waking in the wee hours of morning for WEEKS!) just writing it down this morning, so please pray we can get everything done!

In October we made a trip out to Virginia for a conference with the IMB. It was a great time connecting with some of our fellow laborers in the harvest field and reconnecting with some friends from our time living in Cheyenne, Maryland, and Turkey. We were able to make a quick day-trip to DC and show the boys some of the sights.

When we returned we snuck in a final camping trip with Mom and Dad at the end of October, staying in some cabins up in the Uncompaghre Forest. It was a sweet time of campfires, hiking, fishing, and games. We’re trying to treasure these times- it’ll be a couple years at least before we see them in person again!

In November we celebrated birthdays for Judah and Zeke, had a lovely visit from Rebekah’s sister and her family, and spent some time with old friends. Bek made a trip up to Ohio to visit her Dad. I(Josh) also got my driver’s license, but because I had let me old US license lapse I had to do a driving test. Rebekah found this scenario hilarious. (Because it was HILARIOUS that he had to drive a student driver car!) I also got to make a trip out to Omaha for a Simeon Trust workshop, which I attended with some of the men from our sending church. It was a really sweet time!

We’ve gotten to do all the wintery things here in CO, drinking hot cocoa in bulk, sledding, ice skating, and going up to cut down our Christmas trees. Speaking of trees, we were shocked to see the cost of a pre-cut tree these days! Ya’ll we can’t afford to stay in the US- we gotta’ go back to the land of cheap living!!
5 of 7 Storey siblings were in town for Thanksgiving, so we went and watched the lighting of the tree, hiked, and enjoyed the time together!

We are excited to announce that the Lord has answered our prayers for someone to come help teach the boys in Kigoma. Our new friend “Neddy” is in the application process with the IMB to come over and join us on the field! She’s a retired school teacher with 30+ years of experience mostly in 1-room schoolhouses in remote locations! Rebekah says that if she could make up the perfect candidate, it would be someone like Neddy! She continues to move through the process of applying with the IMB, and we hope she’ll be able to join us sometime this summer.

We were so blessed just this week to have our Kigoma sister Kari come visit us here in GJ. She is currently back in the States as she prepares to return to Kigoma in 2025 as a career missionary, and she took a week to come visit us. We’ve really enjoyed having her and showing her around western Colorado!

That’s it for now!

I’ll send a year-end update sometime in January and try to recap this crazy year! We love you all!

-You can follow us on FB HERE.
-Email us at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com

It’s the season of the Lottie Moon Christmas offering, the annual fundraising drive for the IMB. 100% of your donation through the LMCO goes to people on the mission field! We are thankful for the many people who have given sacrificially to allow us to stay on the field.
You can give once or regularly here: www.imb.org/give

Back in the US, Update #1

/

We’re baaaaack!
Here’s some prayer requests up front:

  • Rest for our family- as many of you know, our first term on the field was tiring in a lot of ways. We’re asking the Lord to provide us with physical, emotional and spiritual rest in these months back.

  • Transition- this is the story of our lives! Please pray especially for the boys as they are getting used to (another!) new environment.

  • House- we bought a house! We’re praying that the Lord would provide the perfect renters for when we head back to Africa at the end of the year, and that we can get all the update projects done.

We left Kigoma at the end of July. Traveling in and out is never simple- this time we made it to Omaha with just under 48 hours of travel time, including a 12 hour layover in Dar es Salaam, a 4am international departure, and a weird 2 hour tarmac wait in Denver because there wasn’t a gate for us to deplane!
We were welcomed by our friends and hosts the Padillas and ferried back to their house to start some rest and recovery from jet lag.

We spent just over 2 weeks in Omaha, and connected with our church and many friends. We landed just as the Olympics was starting, so we watched our fair share of coverage as we go over jet lag and some viral bugs we picked up in transit.
We were able to have some lovely meals at our friend’s houses, and paid the famous Omaha Zoo a visit.

We had to stop in Gothenburg, NE to pick up some things we had stored in a cargo trailer. Mice got in and made a lovely little colony amongst our stuff, leading us to throw away/burn a lot of it. Below is a picture of me trying to contain the mattress fire. We went from there to Cheyenne where we stayed with some old friends and then down to Grand Junction.

We came into Grand Junction and saw our new house for the first time! We had to stay a little longer with Mom and Dad than we planned thanks to a plumbing issue, but then we were in! We got to float the river before it got too cold/low, and hike on the Colorado National Monument.

A couple weeks after we arrived we travelled up to Laramie and Denver to visit family, churches and friends. We got to see Rebekah’s sister and her family, spend time with a couple of Rebekah’s friends from way back, climb Vedawoo, swim in the Saratoga Hot Springs, connect with my sister Amy, and visit Mary’s memorial bench in Idaho Springs. We also took the boys out to eat at Bernie’s, the local restaurant where Bek and I dated(and ate the night I proposed!).

We’ve gotten some sweet outdoor time enjoying creation and praising God for what He has made! We hiked the Craig’s Crest trail on the Mesa, floated the Colorado River, and hiked up in Wyoming. One thing we wanted to do while we’re back is go camping- we did that just this last weekend in the Uncompahgre National Forest. We rented a camper and spent 3 wonderful days in the mountains, where the aspens were in the middle of some amazing color change. (Joel and I have decided together we could be perfectly happy never ever EVER leaving the mountains with their glorious high altitude pine aromas. This trip was good for our hearts and so good for our family to get some time away together, just the 7 of us.) The boys learned the time-tested fact that camp food is the best food (but two of them also commented on how ironic it is that we eat junk food in an environment where people lived for centuries foraging off the land).

We’re slowly getting settled into a rhythm in Grand Junction. Joel, Luke and Zeke are all going to school at a small private school, and getting a taste of the routine and expectations of “real” school. They aren’t sure they like it!
We were privileged to get some time with Bill, Mary’s husband, and it was really sweet for Rebekah and the boys to reconnect with him after only seeing him briefly for the celebration of life last summer. We also got to see Josh’s grandma Storey (she’s 91!), as she and her husband drove down from Ennis, Montana to visit us and spend time here for Rob’s birthday. (It was so good to see them. It’s been 4 long years since we hugged their necks last!)
The older boys are going to youth group consistently and enjoying those times(90’s game night pic below), and we’re working on getting the house fixed up to rent when we head back to Africa at the end of the year.

That’s the end of this long (you call that long?! This has been a whirl of two months and he cut it down to just a sentence or two about each big thing. Psht!) update! We’re glad to be back in the US (all the while realizing we don’t quite feel at home here either. Pretty sure we’ve officially entered the 3rd culture category where we just kinda feel a little out of place in any country). If you’ll be in the Grand Junction area, come and see us!!

We continue to pray for a volunteer to help us with homeschooling in Kigoma. We have had some very promising interest, and we are asking the Lord to give us wisdom and discernment! (please pray with us for Him to open and close doors as he sees fit!)

Support our work and the work of thousands of other IMB missionaries at www.imb.org/give.

Storey Update: better late than never?

/

Dear friends,

We pray this update finds all of you well and thriving! Most of you are into the summer months in the US, and we’re in our dry cooler (but barely cooler) season here.

Prayer requests up front:
One Bibi(grandma) told me recently that, “We don’t pray about the work. Prayer IS the work.”
Let us remember to be lifting one another up continuously before the throne of grace.

  • We thank God for safe travels over the past couple of months as we went for our Greece meeting.

  • We are transitioning ministry here to continue being led by our national partners while we are in the US for our Stateside Assignment(STAS). Please pray that our national partners would be well equipped to continue the discipleship work we share together.

  • We head to the US for 5 months at the end of July. We are praying that it is a time of rest for our family, and a chance to encourage local churches in the states with what God is doing in SubSaharan Africa.

Alright- I’ve been VERY remiss in updating you all with our happenings. This newsletter should provide a brief update of what’s been going on, with a few pictures(though our internet here can make uploads difficult). As always, Rebekah’s comments in italics.

In the end of April we all travelled as a family to Greece for a medical conference that also incorporated a spouses program and kids/youth sessions. Before the conference we rented a van (and filled it to max capacity - driving it tiny the wee morning hours on winding roads at the beginning of our trip, and through nearly the entirety of the country on that back end of our week of vacation) and stayed in Airbnbs with our sisters Kari and Debra. It was an amazing trip and we were so thankful for our friends and family who supported us and made the travel possible.
Greece was incredible! The medical conference was really helpful for my(Josh) continuing medical education, and the boys were all encouraged and blessed to connect with other TCKs from around the world. (We’d been strongly encouraged to attend the conference by some fellow company friends - they stressed how beneficial the conference had been for them in years past and how the Women’s program particularly is designed to be a place of rest and healing - I found this to be true and really felt like the conference came in perfect timing, as we near the end of a very difficult first term).

We got back from Greece (for a much more in-depth at the picture side of our trip, you can see posts I uploaded to instagram under our profile “storeybookafrica” and Facebook under my name, but there’s 130 pictures, so click in at your own risk) and jumped right in to helping host a team of college students from California Baptist University. We enjoy this group every year as they bring so much energy and many are new to Africa! We helped them to run blood pressure and diabetes screening clinics, and work with local churches to go door-to-door evangelizing. This year they did 10 days of clinics. and saw hundreds of people, diagnosing dozens of new cases of chronic illness.

After the CBU team left we started planning a pastoral seminar that we’d been dreaming of for a couple of years. 112 pastors and church leaders came from the region to fellowship together for 3 days, and received teaching from Kenyan and Tanzanian teachers on basics of the Christian faith(Marks of a Believer, What is the Gospel, Biblical worship through song, etc).
It was a sweet time and we are so thankful for how God blessed the seminar, and for the sacrifice the teachers made to come and work with us. We hope to do this a couple times a year, Lord willing. (There are so many things we could say about this seminar, but on a purely personal level for us it was a really sweet confirmation and affirmation from the Lord about the work he’s called us to do here - which to us, prior to landing here, was never on our radar!)
The conference is shockingly cheap to provide(about 10-15 USD/person, including food, lodging, supplies, and transportation). We are grateful for the partners who give to our ministry gifts- that’s the primary way we fund these events.

Life continues apace! This last few months we had end-of-school parties, snakes in the yard, “you’re not real!” sunsets, and other happenings.

STAS plans:
We’ll be in Omaha, NE from the end of July to the middle of August. We’ll be in Grand Junction, CO from the middle of August until the end of December. We hope to do some traveling to KS and WY in that time frame- send us an email at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com if you or your church want us to pay you a visit!

If you’d like to give directly to our ministry gifts for the next pastoral seminar or similar projects, go to www.imb.org/givenow, then select “Missionary or Team” in the dropdown, and put our names(Josh and Rebekah Storey) in the “missionary or team” field, and “Tanzania” for the “affinity or country field”.

Join our Facebook group for other updates.

Email us at M28Storeyfam@gmail.com

January and February '24

/

We hope this update finds you all well!

This update will be long on pictures and short on words, because we have so many great pics from the last couple of months! ***NOTE: I’ve been trying to finish this for a couple weeks, but our internet connections here have been on the struggle bus. Something about undersea cables being cut… Better late than never, right?”

Prayer Requests Up Front:
- We’re on the home stretch for homeschooling- a couple more months in the school year! Please pray for endurance to finish strong for all the boys and their beleaguered teachers(us).
-We are praying for little “Rehema”, a girl with a presumed massive hemangioma on her head as we are trying to find someone who will operate on her.
-We continue to pray for local churches and leaders- that God would guard them against false gospels and doctrine, and give them a heart for the Great Commission- making disciples here and abroad.

MINISTRY

In January we had a lovely baptism down at Lake Tanganyika. 5 individuals were baptized, and became members of Azimio Baptist Church. 2 of the new believers came from a Muslim background.
We continue to see God’s blessing in the Mercy Ministry. Our home visits to palliative/home-bound patients is a beautiful expression of Christ’s love and mercy. In January, a village we had worked with for months planted it’s first Baptist church, and today that gathering is about 24 adults and they’re looking to build a small banda(until now they’ve been meeting under a tree!).
Rebekah’s Kids Club on Mondays had a guest leader for a bit in January as our dear friend Rachel came to visit and brought all her energy!!
Every last Thursday of the month a dozen local pastors come to our house to fellowship and share a meal. This has been a sweet joy and encouragement to all of us! Pray for these men and their wives- ministry in Tanzania is HARD!
The last picture is of a special project Rebekah has been working on for a while. She designed and created a leather bag with her dear friend Francey, and it’s beautiful! It’s so nice that some missionary friends of ours asked if they could use her design in their leather-working ministry. They have a workshop in a slum in Nairobi as a part of their ministry. While we travelled last month Rebekah got to go up and teach the men in the shop how to cut, sew, and build her bag. She had a great time working with those guys- peas in a pod! You can check out our friend’s ministry here: Kilele Gear.

Life update

Busy as usual! For New Year’s Eve, the local missionary fellowship has a fun/silly talent show. Our team this year did the Silent Monks “singing” the Hallelujah Chorus. Our sister Kari worked hard to organize and direct, and we all had a blast!
In January our dear friends the Sagers left the field to transition to a position with Member Care in our organization. They were such great friends and mentors to us, and we miss them terribly, but are excited for the things God has in store for them in the future!
February marked the 1 year anniversary of Mary’s(Rebekah’s mom) passing, so we remembered her by going out for a hike- one of her favorite things to do together when she was alive.
We had some friends come visit us from the capital city for a couple of days, and we took a break from ministry and went out to camp. It was a sweet time getting to know them better, and the kids got along great. They have one daughter and three boys, but H held her own!
When we got back from our trip to Nairobi we had a lot of catching up to do, so our sisters(Kari and Debra) came up for a surprise sleepover. We played games and hung out for a very restful Saturday as a “family”. We love these ladies like sisters, for sure!

We were blessed to take a couple of trips these past couple of months.

First Judah, Luke, and I(Josh) drove to north of Arusha for a medical camp in a group of Masaai villages. On the way I had my battery run out of charge WHILE I WAS DRIVING. That as a first! The engine shut off while going 55 on the highway, and fortunately I was able to pop the clutch before we slowed down too much and we rolled into a car shop a few hours later to replace the battery. It’s a two day drive, and we were exhausted when we got there. We took the opportunity to snag a pizza lunch at Pizza Hut in Arusha though! The night we arrived they cancelled the camp. That area of TZ hadn’t had rain for over THREE YEARS, but in November the rains returned. As a result, in the end of January the road was too muddy to pass, and in fact, they got all three 4WD trucks stuck trying to get in. So the next day we turned around and headed back to Kigoma! One thing that Africa teaches you is to go with the flow, and expected nothing! We got a good few days in the car, and to see some beautiful country!

In the end of February we went up to Nairobi for some ministry, medical, and vacation. We love visiting Nairobi- it feels a little homey and familiar because that’s where we started our time on the field. We stay at the Hampton House compound- the same place we lived for 6 months in 2021. We got to take part in church services in English, connect with friends, eat out at fun restaurants, go bowling, and experience the big city conveniences! Unfortunately we also experience the big city costs, so a couple weeks is about all we can afford! We can’t return without something ridiculous- this time it was three 50lb prices of tree trunk(they were trimming trees on the compound) so that Rebekah and Judah can make tables…

Driving in Tanzania is really great! You get stopped by police a lot, but they’re generally very pleasant. Kenya is another matter! There are so many cars and so many police! Just an hour or so from the border a Kenyan officer flagged us down, probably due to our lack of melanin. Kenyan cops are notoriously corrupt- they supplement their salaries with roadside bribes for $5-10 each. After flagging us down the officer noted a small crack in the windshield on the passenger side. He was very upset about the crack and tacitly asked for a bribe. We by principle don’t pay bribes, so he made us drive to the nearest police station, where we were told to park in the impound lot. They had me come into the police office where they scolded me for my dangerous infraction of a 6 inch crack, and told me that we would have to return in 4 days for a court date OR leave the car in the impound lot until it could be inspected. They had me sit and sweat for 15-20 minutes before taking me up to the police captain in her office. She was actually very reasonable, rolled her eyes when they told her why I was there, and told me to just go home! Praise the Lord they didn’t decide to make it a whole thing!

That’s it for this update. We’ll have another after our big medical/family conference in April. Thanks to those who helped us raise funds to go- we hope it will be a blessing.
Thanks to all those who faithfully pray for, encourage, and support us and other field workers. You all “hold the rope” for us, so we can go down into the places where God has called us.

Follow us on Facebook HERE.
If you want to receive this as an email, send me a note at M28Storeyfam@gmail.com.
If you want to support our work financially, you can do that at www.imb.org/give

2023 Review

/

Even though we are well into the new year, I wanted to write a newsletter looking back at 2023 and reminding myself(and you) of all that God has done. In Genesis chapter 28 Jacob raised a stone at Bethel as a reminder and monument to the covenant he made there with God. Joshua and Samuel did something similar. It is good to be reminded of the ways God has blessed, challenged, and even disciplined us. So my prayer is that this short letter would be a reminder to me and my family about the goodness of God, and perhaps encourage those who read it as well. As usual, Rebekah’s comments in italics. 

            2023 started with the end of my parents visit, and ended with a visit from our dear friends the Sundmans. It is SO sweet to have people come and visit us! You can’t begin to understand Tanzania unless you experience it in all its beautiful, crazy, messy, complex, frustrating glory. Mom and Dad were real troopers, even hazarding a road trip to Mwanza(13 hours away) with a screeching cat in the car(who we were taking to get spayed)…(We had tried to drug her with valium before leaving but she was so neurotic that the valium just didn’t cut it. So, we pulled over and gave her another little dose. This seemed to maybe sort of work, but really, it didn’t. She was in a loosely woven basket that had a lid on it in the very back with two of the boys. The lid was held down by one of their legs, but that didn’t always work. She got out at one point and snuck under the back seats into the center, tearing all over the middle row passengers before climbing up and over into the front with my Josh and me. She was in sheer panic mode, and being afraid for the wellbeing of my arms and legs, and also for Josh’s ability to drive uninhibited by a terror filled 4 pound kitten, I grabbed her by her scruff, to which she responded VERY poorly. The boys passed the basket up and once I had her safely inserted back in the basket, we pulled over and put her in our foot locker that was on top of our car. We know…but also, please keep your thoughts to yourself about this. She was just fine. We checked on her at the gas station where we could hear her screeching from the top of the car. We put a strap around her neck and I attempted to take her under-grown, enraged self for a walk so she could pee, but she just ran frantically barely hovering over the ground while the Tanzanians working at the gas station watched on in awe and didn’t put an ounce of effort toward containing their laughter. Back up in the basket she went after having a little food and water, until we arrived at our destination where we dropped her off at the vet. We often recount the absurdity of that story and laugh about it. It was well worth it though, because cats in heat are really hard to live with, and we’d have a perpetual stream of kittens with as many strays live around us. She was also a much more pleasant cat after her hormones weren’t raging. On the way home we have her a LITTLE more valium than before, for good measure. We had borrowed a cat carrier from the vet (that I sent back by bus) and at one point I asked the boys in the back if she seemed ok. Luke said, “I think so. Well, I don’t know. I said her name and tapped the side and her tongue is just kinda hanging out of her mouth..” HA! She was completely stoned on valium (safely so, so don’t get all up in arms!), which made a much more pleasant ride home for us all!)

 

            A couple weeks into January we learned of the destruction of 200+ homes in Ujiji, and our church sprang into action to help meet needs of displaced families. Many of our friends and family also sent support and prayed for the relief project, which was funded through SEND Relief, a Baptist organization. It was an awesome team effort including multiple churches in Ujiji, our missions partners here, and SEND Relief(who approved an $11,000 grant in 2 days!). 230 families(1000+people) were served with temporary shelter and food supplies, 400 people heard the gospel, and over a dozen baptisms resulted.

             On February 14 we learned of the sudden, tragic death of Rebekah’s mother, Mary. The waves of grief continue to crash onto Rebekah’s consciousness at unexpected times, but God has been gracious to provide slow and steady healing. This year has been full of sorrowful “firsts” without Mary for all of us, but true to his word, when we have cast our burdens on the Lord, He has sustained us(Ps55:22).

Church members came over to mourn with and comfort rebekah

             March was a travel month as we drove (20 hours each way) to Nairobi for a homeschool conference, education testing for the boys, and some work meetings. It was beautiful and actually less stressful than flying, AND cheaper(which is usually my highest priority). We had a great visit with some of our Nairobi friends and met some new folks from around Africa. We also got to scratch our “regular life” itch by eating out, bowling, and pushing shopping carts! (Until you have lived in a place devoid of such things, it’s really hard to imagine how simple things like these could be so exciting. We feel like kids in a candy store when we come to Nairobi. Not only because of the amenities, but also because it’s a really nostalgic place for all of us, even Zeke, and really does feel like home to some extent.) March was also the month of the much anticipated wedding- Sarah and Isaac tied the knot, FINALLY! Isaac saved for the bride price for a year and a half and put up with a bunch of extra demands from Sarah’s uncle(who directs the process more than the father of the bride). In true local style, they were pregnant within a couple months, and their daughter Rebekah was born in mid-January! She is the second baby to be named after Bek in the last year.


            In Kigoma April brings the END of the showers and the beginning of the dry season. April was full of emergency dental visits, a TZ conference in Dar es Salaam, hiking to try(unsuccessfully) to find waterfalls, birthday parties, funerals, and baptisms. Some of the men at Azimio Baptist Church started a preaching cohort with me, and we’re still going strong today.

Me and my preaching cohort brothers(+jonathan)

 

            In May Rebekah and I celebrated 18 years of wedded bliss(at least for me, more like 18 years of sanctification for her) with a sunrise kayak trip. Our favorite college students came for a mission trip visit from California Baptist University, and we continued with our weekly palliative care/mercy ministry. In May we also got back all the results of education testing, learning that one of our kids has some serious challenges, and we tried to start planning on how to help him learn what he needs in this very challenging educational environment.

Nothing like a sunrise kayak to celebrate 18 years!

((You couldn’t have picked a better picture of our kayak morning??)

June-August was a blur! We closed out our ministry activities here in Kigoma, flew to the states, visited our sending church(We love you, Emmaus Bible Church!),(spent some MUCH needed time with sweet old friends in Omaha!) saw family in CO, went to Mary’s memorial service in CO(ripping open some of those grief wounds from the spring), limped into a company conference in Amsterdam, then enjoyed seeing a little bit of France and Switzerland (When we first saw the towering peaks of Western Switzerland, I told Josh I wasn’t even going to leave. Never.) after the conference, returning to Kigoma in early August. Phew! I get tired just typing it! Our travel all went smoothly, thanks be to God, and all the travel was a net good, even with the hard parts. Elijah spent the summer in Grand Junction with my parents(thanks Mom and Dad!!), working and hanging out. We were glad to have him back home at the end of the month, and now he can say that he’s travelled internationally solo twice- a feat for a 15/16 year-old!

 

            On our return we jumped back into ministry here. God has really opened doors for us to be working with churches and church leaders, and we’ve seen our ministry change to move through those doors. In September Josh started meeting with pastors and elders from a dozen churches in the area, working through a book and discussion on church health and following God’s design for the church. The book is written by an African pastor/teacher(Conrad Mbewe) and has been really helpful! It’s a blessing to host them in our home and discuss the topics in the book and what’s going on in life.

 

            This year was marked by getting to know our Kigoma sisters, Kari and Debra, better and better. These two are a gift to us- both are serving a three year term as nurses, and they have truly become as sisters to us. We spend Sunday evenings together eating popcorn and smoothies, playing board games, and talking about life and ministry. We thank God for them!

In October, Luke and Joel got baptized in Lake Tanganyika by Onesimus. It was a joy to see them publicly profess their faith in obedience to Christ. We’re proud of them both!

 

            In December, our friends Jonathan and Esther visited. We knew them from our small-group time together during COVID in the states, and they somewhat spontaneously decided to come spend a couple weeks with us! We did a murder mystery dinner party for Rebekah’s birthday, which was a lot of fun! Jonathan and Esther brought a pile of American goodies, and we got to celebrate Christmas together, which was sweet. I’ve written before about how difficult holidays are in another culture, but having familiar faces around really helps the celebration. I honeybaked a ham for Christmas dinner, and it was a hit (from that pig he butchered himself over a tarp on an old wooden table on our back patio!)! We even got to go up to Gombe National Park with them and see some chimps up close. On the way back we got caught in a classic Tanzanian downpour!
December is also when we tried our hand at slaughtering and butchering a sow in the back yard. This meant we got pork belly and I got to try my hand at bacon. It worked! Picture for proof. This felt like a major victory.

 

            2023 was our second full year on the field, and we’re ever-grateful for the Lord’s grace throughout the season. Elijah turned 16, Judah turned 14, Joel turned 12, Luke 10 and Zeke turned 5. They all continue to grow in wisdom and stature, for which we praise God. They’re learning Swahili at varying rates, and making new friends all the time.

In 2024 we will be completing 3 years on the field, and heading back to the US for a stateside assignment. We hope to connect with as many people as we can manage. We’ll be based out of Grand Junction, CO, and making various trips to see family and friends. Let’s connect!!

As always, you can support us here through prayers, calls, messages, visits and more!

Follow us on Facebook at the group: African Storeybook
Send me an email at M28Storeyfam@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list.
Support us and thousands of other IMB missionaries financially at www.imb.org/give

November: Tis the Season!

/

Hello!! This is our November update(in mid-December). Read below about celebrating Thanksgiving and birthdays in Africa, what we’re doing in ministry, and how working in the ER here is a little different…

Prayer requests:
- As I think I mentioned in the last update, holidays are weird/hard. Please pray for our family as we try to find our holiday traditions here, and try to not miss home TOO much!
-Pray for Rebekah as she navigates the first holiday season without her mom Mary, and as she expands some of her ministry with women and children.
-Pray for the boys- that they would thrive here and not be discouraged by the challenges.

This year has gone by FAST!! We didn’t do any traveling this month, just plugging along with life in Kigoma. Some notable events, (with Rebekah’s comments in italics):

Zeke turned 5 on Nov 2, and Judah turned 14 on Nov 5. There is a bar down by the lake that blows up a big inflatable slide on the weekends as some sort of rebranding effort(we advised them that they might want to clean up the broken bottles and trash as a part of that effort). (Every time we’ve driven by and Zeke sees it he has informed us that he really wants to “go to that place”). We got to go down and have a little party with some of the local missionary kids. It was a lot of fun! It was ALSO very Kigoma. (First, we waited for 45 minutes for some rando to come from some other location in town to plug it in. Yes, he is the expert on how to blow it up. No one else on the property, including the VERY friendly owner knows how to plug it in). The slide wasn’t secured in any way (like ANY way, folks. We’re talking… with the gusts of wind we get here, it could have straight up taken flight with all our precious skinny cargo on it), so you have to support it as it inflates to make sure it’s upright (and you also have to constantly yell remind the kids to NOT lean against the back or the sides of the slide when standing on that top, because they WHOOOOLE thing would just kinda leeeean.) There was also a moment when the city power went out, and the 20 foot slide started to collapse, quickly, leading to a frantic attempt to get all the kids off before the slide fell backwards(onto aforementioned broken glass). Risk management just doesn’t translate into Swahili… (speaking of risk management not translating - we take full advantage of that at times. One of our very bright boys decided to pick up a discarded whole beer bottle and run to down to the lake to get some water. After many trips and some acquisition of soap from a place that none of the parents could figure out, we had children dangerously launching forward onto glass ridden sand.)

We put our smoker to good use, and smoked a ham, (several eggplants for smoked baba ganoush) and some chickens for Thanksgiving, and then went to enjoy a meal with the larger missionary community. It was a sweet time with friends, and while different from celebrating in the US, is a part of living here we’ve come to appreciate!

This past week we did have a Kigoma first when we slaughtered and butchered a pig in our backyard (I hid in our room with noise canceling headphones on during the slaughtering). A friend of ours knew I was itching to try to cure and smoke my own bacon(a true delicacy here- nearly impossible to find in-country), and he was due to slaughter one of his sows, so he brought it over here. We hung up the carcass on the shed porch and went to work(this story is WAY too short! But, for the sake of weak stomached readers, I won’t expound). I got to carve out my own pork bellies, ribs, and loins. The bacon is curing in the fridge as we speak and we’re hoping to cut some up for Christmas. If this project succeeds we have reached PEAK missionary food victory.

The Lord continues to bless us with caring friends and fruitful ministry opportunities.

Rebekah enjoys spending some time each week with her kids club (thought ironically, being the mother of five boys, I feel QUITE out of my element at kids club). They are working through the action Bible, which has been translated into Swahili, and love their games and popcorn!

This month we had a training on children’s education for a lot of the churches in the area- we had a good turnout to hear a teacher from Arusha speak. The meal we shared afterward was funded by faithful giving by our supporters!

I(Josh) continue to preach every few months, and it’s been a blessed and challenging experience. As I told a brother serving in another country recently- trying to preach in another language is one of the most humbling things I’ve ever done! (He truly blows my mind. He gets so much better each time he preaches) To make up for my gross inadequacy, some of the preachers from our church meet together weekly for encouragement and to talk about the passages for the weeks to come.

I’ve started volunteering occasionally in our regional referral hospital ER, which has been a great way to brush up on some of my rural EM skills. Things are a bit different here, as patient’s have to pre-pay for every test, treatment or medication. If they don’t have the money for the test, they don’t get it. This makes for a very challenging medical environment when you’ve trained and worked somewhere that you have access to all the basic labs and treatments. About 30% of the “real” ER cases that come in are from boda boda(motorcycle taxi) accidents. The drivers are typically young men, who rarely wear any protective equipment. It’s a BAD combination.

That’s our November update! At the beginning of the New Year I’ll send out our annual update/report. Thanks to all of our wapendwa(loved ones) who support us with calls, texts, prayers, letters, etc.

As a reminder, all of our work is funded through the IMB’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. This fund supports our salaries, health insurance, schooling for kids, etc. Help support us and thousands of other cross-cultural missionaries by clicking —> HERE.

Another praise is that we’ve been tremendously blessed to have people step in and support our member care/CME trip to the medical conference this spring. We’re on track to meet our goal. If you want to give to our family’s ministry here, you can go HERE. Once on that page you can select “Missionary or Team” under the “Where do you want your gift to go?” option, then type Josh and Rebekah Storey and type SSAP for the “Affinity” option or simply, Tanzania.

That’s it for the month. May the Lord bless you and keep you in this holiday season!

Bless the rains: Oct/Sep Update

/

Hello from Tanzania, where the rains have arrived, bringing cooler temperatures (sweet, sweet relief!), humidity, and green popping up everywhere!(as per our usual arrangement, Rebekah’s comments are in italics)

Prayer requests up front:
-We continue to seek the Father’s will for our future on the field. As we start the last year of our “first term”, we are looking seriously at how God is calling and using us. We are always dependent on his will and guiding, remembering his sovereignty.
-Homeschooling is always one of our biggest challenges. We would love to bring out a teammate(or teammates) to work with us here and help with the homeschooling load. We’ve put in a request, but those jobs are difficult to fill, so we are praying for the Lord to bring some help to Kigoma as He sees fit.
-The fall/winter season in the US is a hard time for us here, especially for Rebekah as she continues to grieve the loss of her mother this year. Please continue to pray for her and the rest of us as we miss home but create new and different traditions and memories here.
-Our family is hoping to go to a medical missions conference next spring, for some counseling care for our family and for CME credits for Josh. We will need God to provide in a couple of ways for this to happen, so please pray with us that if it is his will, He will make a way. If you’d like to know how you can help, feel free to contact us.

September and October have been busy! We welcomed a new missionary family to our community and started school up again. We lasted out the heat and are welcoming the rains.

The Ayer family arrived with their 8 kids! Dave is a pediatrician who plans to work at the hospital here. They’ve been in a couple of other East African countries before, and are now here with us in Kigoma. 7 of their 8 kids are here, and they have brought a lot of life and energy to our local community! It’s been a joy to help them transition into the area, prepare a house, and learn the culture.

School started again in Sep, with a 10th, 8th, 6th, and 4th grader, and a pre-k student (My frequent midnight insomnia is filled with thoughts about how old our boys are getting. How did it even happen!? How have I not yet gotten used to the passage of time?) The older 2 are taking a Biology class with 3 other high schoolers in town, and enjoying the camaraderie. Rebekah is enjoying working in some field trips and art classes (We’ll soon be starting a candle and soap making home-ec unit with some of the other kids in town participating as well. Finding things here is a major challenge, so we are excited that most our supplies can be sourced at a local honey factory run by an Australian.) Below is a couple pictures from a tour of a local soap “factory” to see the process. Elijah is volunteering at a local primary school teaching reading and English, and loving it!

The seasons here are fun- we only have 2. Wet and dry. The dry season is rainless, usually from May-Oct (known as “Winter” here, but this year it was hot as blazes for all of those months). The rains arrive in October and it will rain consistently every 2-5 days until April/May. We start with the “mango rains”, which are short and lighter (and live up to their name by bringing the delicious nectar of the tropics, mangoes), and then around the New Year we transition to the heavier rains (mask) in the Feb-Apr time (These are the ones that blow in with a fury. They wake us up frequently and give us opportunities to secure flapping window shutters and wipe down wet surfaces when we haven’t gotten to the windows in time. These are the rains that give us ideas about rain catchment water projects, have us walking the whole house with our heads tilted back watching for signs of roof leakage, and bestowing comfort to a tot who’s still quite shaken by the sound of thunder. We bless these rains, down here in Africa. Truly, they bring a lot of joy to us all, and are a blessing for our friends who rely on the rains for their crops!)

Ministry these months continue apace. Rebekah continues to minister in the home, teaching boys, feeding a small army, and mastering living in Africa! Just surviving here takes a TON of time and energy, and she supports us so well! She also is doing a weekly Kid’s Club with neighborhood kids in partnership with our neighbor, Mama Maombi who she is discipling. I’m staying busy in our palliative-care mercy ministry with our teammates, bible studies and church health workshops, and starting a fellowship time for local pastors, whose jobs are thankless, difficult, and usually unpaid.
I also get the opportunity to preach to our local fellowship(Azimio Baptist Church) once every few months, which has been a great honor and joy. I’m actually a pretty terrible preacher (not true), but practice makes perfect!
The most wonderful thing that happened this month was Joel and Luke making the decision to be baptized! They had both previously made professions of faith, and expressed a desire to obey Christ’s command by publicly professing. Onesimus and I baptized them into the body of Christ down at the lake, which was special.

That’s the admittedly short update! We’re so grateful for all of our family and friends who love us so well!
Here are some ways you can support and encourage us:
-We love getting letters! Small/medium envelopes are usually just a few bucks to send to us here and they’re SO fun to receive! Let us know if you need our very short and simple address.
-Follow along with our Facebook group. Search African Storeybook.
-Give to the IMB’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering- these donation goes 100% to supporting cross-cultural missions.
-If you want to give to our family’s ministry here, you can go to https://www.imb.org/generosity/give-now/. Once on that page you can select “Missionary or Team” under the “Where do you want your gift to go?” option, then type our names and type SSAP for the “Affinity” option or simply, Tanzania. If you give in this way we will contact you to ask how you’d like your gifts to be used.

Summer adventures!

/

Greeting from Tanzania in the dry season!

We’re back in Kigoma after our summer travels, and trying to get enough internet signal to put up this update! It’s been a struggle, but I think we’re going to make it! (we have “fiber”, but it’s new to this area where so much of the population still doesn’t have simply electricity and there’s only one company that provides it, and they only have one repairman, so…..)

Prayer requests up front:
-Homeschool for the boys is something that takes up a lot of time and energy! We’re excited about the school year, but continue to struggle with making sure the boys are all getting the education they need. We thank God for a supportive community here to help us out!
-Pray for our partner church here, Azimio Baptist Church, that they would be unified in purpose and not tire of working to fulfill the Great Commission!
-Pray for a new missionary family who arrived here in Kigoma to work with our larger IMB team- transitions are so hard, but they are doing great and are a great addition to our community here.

Just after I sent the last update we headed out for a whirlwind world tour! We left Kigoma, flew to Dar es Salaam, then Amsterdam, then Dallas, then Omaha. All in all it was about 36 hours of travel, and as exhausted as we were, it was wonderful to be greeted by some wonderful friends and have a peaceful place to stay. We are forever grateful to the Padilla family for welcoming us so well! (and feeding us like kings! Berries, meats, cheeses, crackers, cold cut sandwiches, steaks, fresh salads…..mercy!)
Omaha was wonderful as we got to worship together with our sending church, Emmaus Bible Church for the first time in 2 and 1/2 years. What a blessing! (I warned them I’d cry through part of the service, and cry I did.)
From there we drove to Grand Junction, CO and spent a week with my family. We got to see four of my six siblings there and celebrate the 4th of July. We also got to spend the next couple of weeks with Elijah.

We drove to Denver on July 7th for the memorial service for Rebekah’s mom, Mary. This was a really important but hard time- Bek felt like she was going through the grieving process all over again as she experienced CO/WY for the first time without her mom. We were happy to see a lot of old friends and family during this part of the trip as well.

We next stopped up in Laramie, WY for a day to visit my brother Nate(making it 5/6 siblings seen- sorry Matt!) and his family. We also got a chance to run up and hike Vedawoo, a place very special to both Bek and I.

We then drove back to Omaha with a quick pitstop in Gothenburg, NE to see Shane-O, Kerry, and their growing goat herd.

Omaha was a couple days of last-minute appointments, packing and visits, then we were off to Amsterdam!

We stopped in Amsterdam for a week for a meeting with missionaries from all over Sub-Saharan Africa. We came in jet lagged, but had a good time that week being encouraged about the plans the Lord has for us in Tanzania, and the plans He has for Africa as a continent. Did you know that by 2060, half of all Christians in the world will be located in sub-saharan Africa? Numerically speaking, this continent will be the epicenter of Christianity in the next few decades, which makes the task of supporting African churches as they seek to be biblically faithful all the more important!
One of the biggest blessings of the meeting was the many volunteers who came to do a kids/youth program. The boys had a wonderful time connecting with other kids and the volunteers were amazing!
The Netherlands was a very interesting place- everything just so, super clean, very pastoral. It was lovely and peaceful to visit.

After our meeting ended we got in a rental van(bigger than I wanted!) and drove to Paris for a couple of days. Rebekah has always dreamed of going to Paris (just not sure my daydreams about it included 4 young, exhausted and sick little boys…)! We stayed in the tiniest AirBnB we’ve ever done as a family, and found out how expensive public transport is in the big city! We got to see the Louvre, Notre Dame(from the outside), eat some amazing ice cream, visit with some friends who are in Paris for language training, ride scooters along the Seine, walk around the Eiffel Tower, and have a meal with my second cousins who live near the Bastille. It was exhausting but good. Next we go we’ll leave the kids at home…

From Paris we drove to Switzerland to see the Alps. This was a highlight of the trip, for sure! Switzerland doesn’t seem real- nearly everywhere you look it is post-card beautiful. (When we were journeying to our airbnb I informed Josh I wouldn’t be leaving Switzerland, probably ever. It didn’t work. Four days was simply not enough time!) Rebekah likened the Alps to the drama-queen of mountain ranges (because why be a mountain when you can be a MOUNTAIN?!) . We stayed in a little town called Chateau D’Oex, and got to ride up a gondola to see the mountains, take some nice hikes, see the waterfalls at Lauterbrunen, and visit an old castle/museum. Also, cheese. Oh, the cheese! (and the ice blue rivers and lakes, Lupines, chalets, window boxes crowded with red flowers, cows with bells grazing and gracing the mountainsides with adorably cheerful cowbell sounds, and the list goes on…)

From Switzerland we drove back up to Amsterdam through Germany, stayed the night in a cottage near the airport(got in a quick and frigid swim in the Atlantic), and got back on a plane. At the Amsterdam airport we met up with our “sisters” Debra and Kari, and we all flew back to Dar/Kigoma together.

Vacation

The week we got home a medical clinic team from Kentucky arrived, and on Monday we started a big medical/dental clinic outreach in a small village about 45 minutes out of town. We went like gang-busters all week, and the Lord blessed our time with safety and lots of evangelism. We continue to pray for the new believers in the Mkuti area. The next week we returned to do some home-visits in the surrounding area, and will now go back regularly for some short-term discipleship training in local churches.

One other quick story- last week at church a young man(JM) came up after the service and said that he had come to church that day to hear the good news, and wanted to be saved. He has practiced witchcraft his whole life and testified to how he was ruled by fear- of others, of evil spirits, and of God. We shared the story of the demoniac from Mark 6, and JM confessed and believed! That evening a few of the men from church went to visit him at home and he brought out all of his witchcraft supplies(pictured below) and burned them up(also picture below). Be praying for this man as he tries to lead his family and stay true to the faith. He is sure to face persecution from the people who know his history. Witchcraft is VERY common here and there is a tangible physical effect of the spiritual battles being fought.

In two weeks Elijah will come home after his summer in the States to work- we’re ready to have him back!

That’s it for our update for now. Thanks for loving us well. We got to connect with many of you while we travelled, and you all took care of us so well! Thanks also to those who contribute financially to our work here. Your faithful giving makes it all possible, including meeting like the one we had in Amsterdam!

Love, the Storeys

April and May Update

/

It’s been a minute! Here’s an update before the craziness of June/July/August starts:

Prayer requests up front:
-Elijah is safely in Grand Junction for the summer. Please pray for his growth and learning there, for his job, and for good relationships with family and new friends!
-We have travel upcoming- a lot of it! To the US briefly in June/July for a memorial service for Mary(Bek’s mom), then to a meeting in Europe, then we’ll do a short week of vacation in Europe before returning to TZ in the beginning of August. Please pray for safety, sweet time with family and friends, and a productive/encouraging meeting with our ministry friends/family.

Life continues apace here in East Africa. I’m SUPER late in sending this out, so this will be a brief update of the past few months with a bunch of pictures. We are so thankful for everyone who takes the time to read these updates, for all of you who so faithfully pray for us and support us in so many ways!

At the end of April we spent some time in Dar es Salaam for a retreat with some other missionaries. It was a sweet time of getting to know others who are working in this region and connecting with dear friends. We got dental appointments done for everyone(my 39 year record of no cavities continues!), and Rebekah made sure to liberate some plant cuttings from the place where we stayed (I must. I cannot help myself. Each time we fly or drive there is sure to be an actual potted plant or a cutting coming home with us), so we flew those back safely…

Church services here are a little different. Because of how draining going to a Tanzania worship service is, we alternate every other week, so that on off weeks we have a family worship time at home. One week we decided to have our service down at the lake. We got rained out for a little bit, but still had a nice time singing together and listening to a sermon from our sending church in Omaha.
Another week we took a hike to find a nearby waterfall, and found two!! But only from a distance. We had a local coffee farmer who offered to show us the way, and it was a huge help because he helped carry Zeke. It was a good 2.5 hour hike, and we can’t wait to go back and make another attempt at actually getting to the bottom of the falls…(the coffee farmer was older than any of us and hiked those hills like a boss. The younger guy that came with us carried Zeke on ONE shoulder almost the entire time and was wearing very loose fitting foam slide on sandals. He never seemed tired or out of breath, while all the rest of us were puffing and panting. Three little girls decided they tag along and not a one of them had shoes on. The plowed through the tall grasses like pros. We are continually amazed at the strength of the people we encounter here.)

In May we had a team of college students, mostly pre-med and pre-nursing, to do some screening clinics. They were here for 2 weeks, did a dozen clinics where they screened for hypertension and diabetes. It was a wonderful time to get to know some great young people and their fearless leader, Meg.
At the end of May Rebekah and I celebrated 18 year of wedded bliss. We had a morning kayak trip with breakfast and coffee and watched the sunrise. We love our anniversary because it is always such a great reminder of the joy we have in Christ through our marriage. We are truly blessed beyond measure!

(I’m not sure why he chose THAT picture of us! I looked like I’m laughing, but also in pain)

Our ministry time here is a grab-bag of activities.
Rebekah continues to do a Monday afternoon kids club, and the attendance keeps growing! It’s a great chance to partner with our next-door neighbor, Mama Maombi. She also goes on the occasional house visit for discipleship/followup, and sometimes brings Zeke along to play.

I(Josh) stay busy with 3-4 Bible studies throughout the week, evangelism on Wednesdays, and church leadership development on Thursdays and Fridays.
One of my favorite Bible studies is my Friday morning study at the bar. The bar is a house that happens to serve liquor and beer(in a society where drinking is considered sinful by both Christians and Muslims), where we went for a medical visit a few months ago. There are a couple of women there with HIV/AIDS, and on our first visit there we shared the gospel and a dozen people professed faith in Christ! I began returning with a local pastor every week to teach a bible study method and work through short 10 week discipleship lesson. It’s been really encouraging to see 10-20 people show up every Friday morning, take part in a local church, and for some to be baptized.
Another big piece of our ministry here is our work with Azimio Baptist Church. This is what we consider OUR church here. We are considered members and we pour a lot of our time and effort into strengthening this church. I lead a study on church health every Friday, and we’re currently working through a book written by Conrad Mbewe, and pastor from Zambia. This book is a wonderful resource, because it is written from an East African perspective and addresses problems in the East African church.
We also recently had a preaching cohort with 7 men from the church; we studied expositional preaching. At the end of the study we made a preaching schedule to preach through the gospel of Matthew. We’re greatly encouraged by the things that God is doing through this church!
All of our work here in possible only through the generosity of those who pray for us, visit us, and give to the IMB. Thank you!

Finally, the boys are doing great here. Elijah trooped off to the US in the end of May where he’s working hard at some general contracting/remodeling. The other boys will be heading off with us in a couple of days to start the travel season. They still have a great time having their friends over to play. A couple weeks ago we got to take an over night trip to camp with some other boys for a friend’s birthday party. The highlight of the trip was nighttime spearfishing in the lake- we had a blast! (I’m really glad I wasn’t a part of this. I would have put the kabash to it) Between the group we got about a dozen rockfish and one big kuhe (pronounced koo-hay).

That does it for this very belated update!!
May the Lord bless and keep you all. Looking forward to seeing some of you while we’re in the US.

Josh

www.imb.org/give

March and half of April

/

Hello to all our friends and loved-ones! This is our March update, just a few days late…
Rebekah’s (insightful) comments in italics.

Prayer Requests:
-We have some travel upcoming this summer for Mary’s memorial service in CO, a work meeting, and some vacation time. We’re still working out the details for these trips, so please pray for smooth travel, sweet times with family and God’s provision financially.
-Please be praying for the Baptist Hospital here in Kigoma as they try to make some much needed reforms and changes to the hospital. May God be glorified through the process!
-Please be praying for us as we try to figure out the best way to educate the boys amidst the craziness of African life. We really need God to provide us with wisdom and discernment, and maybe a good bit of energy!!


March recap: March started off with a trip to Nairobi for a homeschool conference. We are enjoying the African roadtrips! This time was especially beautiful as it is the rainy season in most of the country, so the drive was green and lush, and not too hot! Below is a gallery of various landscape pictures we took this month. We’re so blessed to live in such a beautiful place- the earth is full of His handwork!

The drive to Nairobi is about 21 hours of road time, and stops don’t add much because there really isn’t anywhere to stop! (when we say there really isn’t much of any place to stop, what we mean is that when we DO stop it’s at one little gas station at the half way point on the first day. They have two different options for your restroom needs. One was new as of December of last year, but when I received the key and unlocked the door this time around, a mere 3 1/2 months after the last time I was in there, I was certain I had been the very last person to have been in there since December. A strange sandy looking substance was strewn about and brilliant yellow mushrooms were growing on every conceivable surface. I even walked into one of the stalls to see if perhaps I could just work around this short little forest of fungus, but decided against it as I wasn’t sure I could use the squatty potty without disturbing the landscape - or without risking tripping or shuffling through or falling on these little caps and suffering who knows what kind of rash. I exited the bathroom, relocked it and as quickly as I could used the bathroom that has no door and smells as if it hasn’t been cleaned….ever.) We’re still waiting for our first Buc-ee’s, that legendary Texan rest-stop my sisters keep bragging about…
We spend the night in Singida, TZ next to a salt-lake. The guesthouse there is safe, clean, and has a good restaurant(we can order food ahead so it’s ready when we arrive!). Finding a place to stay is the most stressful part of traveling, as guesthouses can run the gamut from a simple room with a bed and a shared toilet($4-6/night) to a full-on western-style hotel room($20-40/night). The second day is less driving, but includes crossing the TZ/Kenya border. We’re getting better at getting through efficiently and talking our way out of customs inspections that would require us to unload the entire vehicle. Usually the encounter goes something like this:
TZ Customs Agent: What is in your car?
Me: Things of the house, clothes. We are traveling to Nairobi to visit our friends.
CA: I need to see them
Me: It is a lot of work to unpack the box on the top of the car. It is only things like clothes for our trip. (and the sun is very hot today)
CA: All bags must be scanned inside.
Me: Truly? That is strange, we have passed here 4 times before and have never had to scan our bags. (when it’s me, I typically say something like, “but you really don’t need to see our stuff. Truly, it’s just clothes and shoes. Thank you, but I am not going to climb and unpack”)
CA: Yes, all bags should be scanned.
Me: I see. I see the tourists scanning their bags, but you know, we are not tourists. We’re locals. We’re Tanzanians. We aren’t visiting here, we live here, in Kigoma. They call Kigoma the End-of-the-Rail. Do you know it?
CA: That is very far! How was the trip?
Me: The trip has been good, thanks be to God. They speak Kiha and Kibembe(local languages) in Kigoma, do you know that language? ‘entertain the guard for a moment with a few Kiha and Kibembe phrases’
CA: ….
Me: OK, thank you very much for your help! Greet your family, and God bless you!
CA: Thanks, have a safe trip!
Me: ‘drives off with a small feeling of triumph’

In Nairobi we got a chance to connect with friends from around Africa, and Rebekah got some good homeschooling tips and resources, and a healthy dose of feeling inadequate. (a healthier dose than I’m comfortable with - we are in a very unique situations here. Our location and the ages of our boys when we arrived on the field have left us feeling quite unique in the struggles we deal with just in homeschooling alone. Friends, please pray for us in this area.)
I also had a chance to go visit Ekklesia Afrika, a local org that does translation and printing of theological resources, and they had three great books in Swahili!

The trip back was uneventful, included a very similar conversation to the one above at the border. Most of the roads are asphalt, with only a couple of hours of dirt-road driving near Kigoma. That’s the roughest part of the trip, but still isn’t bad at all. A couple decades ago this trip would have taken 2-3 times as long because of the roads, but we’re moving on up in the world!

When we got back from Nairobi we had Isaac and Sarah’s wedding to attend. Weddings are an all-day affair! Isaac and Sarah have been ready to marry for over a year, but Isaac had to save up for the bride-price, and Sarah’s family kept adding demands, thus delaying the marriage. Sarah is a believer, but comes from a Muslim family, and they weren’t happy about her marrying Isaac, who is a Christian. One uncle especially created a lot of trouble ahead of time, but it finally happened! The wedding was scheduled to start at 9AM, but that’s just a number- everyone understood the actual start time would be 10-10:30. We got there at NOON, and still beat the bridal party and the groom by more than 30 minutes. The service went from around 1-4. Then everyone takes a break, and the wedding party goes to take pictures, rest, and get a make-up refresh at the salon. They were supposed to return in an hour(yeah, right!). We returned at 5pm, and the wedding party got back around 6:30. More ceremony happened, and food was served around 9PM. (The boys and I, save Judah, had bugged out well before that) Because they forgot to get a “disco permit” to play music at night, the party ended early around 10PM. Phew! It was a day. We’re so happy for Isaac and Sarah and their new life together! Rebekah and I will be doing some marriage counseling with them in the coming weeks, walking through what a biblically faithful marriage looks like.

The last couple of pics there are of a different wedding the next weekend.

Life here continues apace. We’ve had some baptisms and started two new bible studies in the community. We said goodbye to Grayse, Zeke’s favorite lady, as she graduated from high-school and moved to the US to start working and preparing for college.
The boys are doing well, enjoying a mini-break from school while we travelled and got back.
I got the truck stuck for the first time, which is when I discovered that our 4WD wasn’t working. No worries, a couple shovels and the goodwill of passersby got us unstuck.
We continue to covet your prayers as we do our best to be actively obedient to the Great Commission here. God is moving, and we’re blessed to be a part of what He is doing.

We celebrated Easter last weekend, and we’re still struggling with figuring out how to do holidays here. These are hard holidays because our traditions and nostalgia are so culturally influenced, our holidays typically involve family, and everyone who lives cross culturally has to strike the balance of preserving/recreating traditions and practices with immersing in local culture. We aren’t there yet. But Easter was good, in its way. Church was actually quite nice, as we sang a lot of songs together as a congregation. A friend of our generously provided songbooks and bibles for the sanctuary, so people are able to sing along with more songs and read along as we listen to preaching. It’s great!

That’s the update for now! We plan to be in the US this summer for a few weeks, and look forward to catching up with everyone, even if only briefly. May the Lord bless you and keep you!

As always, our work is supported by the generous giving of individuals and churches all over the US. If you’d like to give you can go to www.imb.org/give

We post a little more regularly to our Facebook Group: The African Storeybook

If you would like to get this newsletter in your email, send me a note at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com

February Update

/

Here’s an update on our lives and ministry here in Tanzania this month:

Pray Requests Up Front

We’re traveling next week to Nairobi, by car. Please pray for traveling mercies, safety, no car troubles, and a good conference for Bek and the boys.

Please be praying for our church, Azimio Baptist Church, for the weekly evangelism outings, for various building projects, and for the preaching cohort starting up.

Pray for the boys in their schoolwork, both in and out of the classroom.

Pray for Rebekah and her family as they continue to grieve the sudden loss of her mother.

February had some ups and downs, that’s for sure.

On Valentine’s Day morning we received news that Mary, Rebekah’s mom, had passed away suddenly the day before. Because of the time differences, she didn’t see the messages and get the news until the morning. Though her health had been poor recently, her passing was very unexpected for everyone. She was 67, just 1 week shy of her birthday.
We are learning that losing a loved one while overseas is uniquely difficult. Separation from family is especially bitter in these times, and Bek has missed out on the opportunity to grieve this loss with a community that knew and lover her mom. Nonetheless, thanks to all of you who have reached out with condolences, or to share a memory of Mary, it has been a blessing for Rebekah.
Finally, I would say that we are confident that Mary had a personal relationship with Jesus and while we mourn her today, we are confident that she has entered into rest with the Savior who she loved so much during her mortal life. We do not mourn as those who have no hope, because our hope is built on the promises of the Gospel, and we look forward with great anticipation to the day when we will be reunited with her and all of our fellow believers who have gone before us.

We had some fun things this month-

Spent time with some other missionary families celebrating a birthday by the lake. Down at the beach they cut back some of the reeds so the area is a lot more fun to explore now(pics below).
Tried to oversee a roofing project to deal with the leaks and bats in the attic. This has been an ongoing source of stress for us, so we’re hoping we’re done dealing with it for a while. Just a little bit left to do, and hopefully the guano stains and the early morning bat alarm with by things of memories…

Our leadership from Nairobi came into town for a couple days, and we really enjoyed time with them and their kids. It was great to show someone around the area- there are just things you can’t “get” about Kigoma until you’ve been here and seen it for yourself!
Had a remembrance/comfort service at the house for Rebekah’s mom. This is a sweet(strange for us) part of Tanzania culture. A group of about 20 people came by bodaboda(motorcycle taxi) or bajaji(three wheel taxi) to sit with Rebekah and bring comfort. We sang some songs, prayed, and heard a short devotional from Onesimus. This is an important part of the culture surrounding death/funerals here.

We were blessed to bear witness this month as the Lord called many new believers to follow Him. God continues to be present and working as our team does evangelism in this area. Through our visits to deliver palliative care supplies we encounter many individuals who feel abandoned or hopeless, and are excited to hear of the hope and communion of the Gospel. We have around 5 Bible studies happening as a result of these visits, and one larger study that is looking more like a church plant(pending raising up some strong leaders).

The month we also got to see Issa, a former Muslim sheik, come to faith in Christ! He was visiting the area from another region to oversee several mosques, and had to go to the hospital for a small issue, where he met Onesimus(our pastor, and a MBB). They began to talk, and Issa said he suddenly understood the Gospel for the first time, gave up Islam, and became a follower of Jesus! Because of his position as a cleric, he was immediately in danger, and basically went into hiding. He’s now making arrangements to go pick his family up from their home to find a new place to live. But ya’ll, this guys is like a new man- he is filled with such joy! Praise God for the changes only the Spirit can bring, and pray for Issa and his family as they persevere in faith under trial!

This is it for the month. In March we’re traveling to Nairobi for a conference and some work stuff, then we’ll be back to celebrate Isaac and Sarah’s wedding! We’re so excited for this young couple who has waited a long time and been through a lot for this day! We’ll have lots of pictures of the big day with all the cultural trappings, to be sure!

May God bless and keep you all!

Josh

www.imb.org/give

January Update from the Storey Fam

/

Hello from Kigoma to all our friends and family! As always, Rebekah’s comments in italics.

Please pray this month for:
Elijah’s school as we try to find a school rhythm that uses his gifts well and doesn’t make us all crazy!
Our neighborhood as we try to find ways to be the light of Christ to the people around us.
Our church, Azimio Baptist Church, as we followup with many new believers and questioners in Ujiji, Tanzania.

We had a good January here in TZ. We’re in the midst of a rainy season that isn’t quite as rainy as we(or our subsistence farming neighbors) would like! (I thought the rainy season would be a little rainier that this…)

We said goodbye to Mom and Dad on the 4th, and jumped back into life. Rebekah is doing the vast majority of the homeschooling with help from our teammate and friend Laura, who comes a few times a week to help with the boys’ individual work. Their group learning varies, and often includes “spontaneous experiential learning activities”, like learning to take public transportation and use Swahili to go downtown and buy groceries, musical lessons with visiting musicians, and blacksmithing for shop… (or helping me weed the garden spontaneously when I realize it’s being taken over and feel panicky that if I wait until the weekend there will be no crops left)

We had a team strategy and building day in the middle of the month with our organization’s “Member Care”, It was a good experience as we went through personality/teaming profiles, spiritual gifts/inclinations, and spent some time learning more about one another and how we function on a team. It might come as no surprise that my teaming preference is a “Let’s Go” approach(task oriented), while Rebekah takes the “Let’s Stay Together”(team unity/collaboration) approach. (we are thankful the Lord has been gracious to help us learn how to balance each other out in a healthy way with these very different approaches to life for the 17+ years we’ve been walking together).

We completed a couple of home-improvement projects this month. One was the kitchen(finally!)- when we moved in we knocked out a wall and trimmed out the new/bigger doorway. Then Rebekah painted ( the gypsum paste/”plaster of Paris” patch work had to be done before painting. Once that was speckled on, and sanded down I was able to start painting with the for reals washable paint that we brought back with us from Kenya in October - the paint here in Kigoma resembles chalk board paint. It can be wiped-ish, but not very successfully, which leaves our original yellow walls with little red dirt hand prints all over). While Dad was here he helped me hang a shelf and take out an older open cabinet. We’ve always spent a lot of time in the kitchen, but that is magnified here because of the lifestyle (and the cooking from scratch requirement), and this relatively small change opens up the space and makes working in there much more manageable. (and bright, and happy and beautiful and breezy and cozy!)

The other project is some outdoor furniture for our back patio. It was our Christmas gift to one another, but in typical fashion, Rebekah was not willing to have the fundi(carpenter) just slap some varnish on it, (I HATE sanding and stripping furniture to revarnish it, so if it can be avoided, that clearly is the most logical approach) instead opting to source raw linseed oil (from an Australian honey processing plant owner who just randomly had some he didn’t need), boil it(heat to 460ish F)(not safe!), and treat the chairs with it. (I was on the struggle bus for a few days about how dark the chairs turned after being oiled, but they’ve grown on me. I just had to change up my idea about my color scheme for out there - why does a patio have to have a color scheme? That isn’t something I would have thought twice about until we lived here. It’s a bit absurd.) We got the cushion covers sewn last week (after the agonizing process of choosing the color of upholstery fabric I wanted) and we are really enjoying having the space! Our house isn’t huge, so it’s nice to have an outdoor space to spread out a little.(Even today, aside from just little harmless sprinkles of water splattering in here and there,, it kept us dry during the torrential downpour of rain)

It was a busy ministry month as we got back in the swing of things, and had one unexpected event!

Midway through the month we got home from our Wednesday night fellowship and our friend and guard Musa noted that the government was tearing houses down in Ujiji, a town just down the road, and the town where our church is. There had been rumors of this happening for months, because many of the plots of land were built on government reserve land, having been sold and “deeded” in the past by a corrupt seller and local government chairperson. So many of the families who had paid a market price for their land were learning that they did not actually own it, and the government was reclaiming it. There were attempts to prevent it, but these obviously failed, because that week the government had showed up with power equipment and soldiers to carry out their orders.
This kind of thing is not uncommon here in TZ, but it hit especially close to home as it affected a community that we know and love. Musa lost a plot that he bought for 1.5 million shillings(about $700) (roughly 6 months of wages), but thankfully had not started on a house yet. But in the course of the week more than 230 homes were destroyed, in the middle of the rainy/malaria season.
We found this out on a Wednesday and thanks to Rebekah’s sweet empathy immediately started brainstorming what could be done to help this community. We spoke to our team, our relief organization, local pastors, and government leaders. By Wednesday night we had a plan for relief kits and a budget. On Thursday I wrote and submitted an application for a disaster relief grant, and it was approved on Friday night. We had a planning meeting on Friday night at church, and started the project on Saturday morning. The challenge was accessing the grant money- credit cards are not useable here, cash is the only way to conduct transactions. But $10,000 in aid money is 23,000,000 shillings, and we can only take out 400,000-600,000 shillings a time at the ATM. So after a LOT of trips to the ATM by all the members of our team, we had enough to go out and buy supplies for the relief kits. 30-50 volunteers showed up each day to help us with the project, building a small pavilion out front for shade for people who were waiting and for the registration desk, providing security/crowd control, and helping to build the kits. Over the course of the weekend(Sat-Mon) we handed out over 2500 pounds each of flour, rice and beans, 700 pounds of sugar, 650 mosquito nets, 232 liters of cooking oil, and 232 temporary shelters. At the end of the weekend, 300 plus families had received some sort of relief, and more than 400 people heard the Gospel. It was a wonderful opportunity for our church in a town that is 90%+ Muslim to show the love of Christ practically, and preach the love of Christ with words. Thanks to everyone who prayed for us, and Send Relief for the rapid response with grant money! If you want an organization that is on the front lines of disaster relief, we can highly recommend Send Relief!

That’s it for this month-thanks for reading along with us! We covet your prayer support! February is looking to be a big month with ministry, and the in March we’re making another cross country road trip.

Our work here is supported through giving to the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Offering of the IMB/SBC. You can give here: www.imb.org/give. May the Lord bless and keep you all.

josh

Happy New Year/Where has the time gone?

/

Happy New Year! This is a belated post, for sure! Somehow we missed our November update, so this one will be BIG! We’ll still start with the prayer requests upfront.

PRUF:
-Language and culture will continue to be a prayer request! Please pray that we would be diligent in study, quick to learn, and retain well. Please pray that we would navigate relationships here well and glorify God as we do so.
-Local churches- we are burdened for the health of local churches. Please pray that we would be able to be good members of our local church, Azimio Baptist Church, and that we would be able to serve in a way that helps Azimio to become a catalyst church in this area.
-Home visits- Please pray for Josh as he increased his home-based medical care with followups from the hospital and other new visits. Please pray that he would be effective in meeting physical and spiritual needs.
-The Storey Boys- the life of a Third Culture Kid is hard! Please pray for our boys as they get so many wonderful opportunities, but also miss out on a lot of typical experiences. Please pray that they would love learning and flourish academically as each is able.

November! It was a good month- we returned from our conference in Nairobi and got back in the swing of routine. I(Josh) continue to lead multiple Bible studies every week, and in November got to do that partnering with my friend Afrika. It’s a joy to do ministry with him- he’s young in the faith, but very gifted and loves to share the gospel and lead in Bible studies.
Rebekah and the boys continue to plug away at schoolwork, and finished up their watercolor section of art with some beautiful Christmas paintings.

We celebrated 2 birthdays, Halloween, Reformation Day, and Thanksgiving! Judah turned 13 and Ezekiel turned 4 in early November. Zeke asked for a watermelon cake that tasted like chocolate (correction: Zeke asked for a watermelon cake, but also a strawberry cake. So I made a strawberry flavored cake that looked like a watermelon), and Judah had a big shindig with our friends and caramel apple bar PLUS a cake.

Thanksgiving was a lovely time as we got together with our local missionary community and celebrated God’s goodness in our lives this year (We are both so thankful to be in a much different place emotionally than we were last year!) We are so thankful for His persistent presence and work in our lives!

December was a great month, because Mom and Dad came from the USA! We left Kigoma before they arrived and flew to the capital city, Dar es Salaam. The day we got in we had the chance to spend time with some old friends of ours.

From Dar we all took a ferry to Zanzibar and spent a relaxing week on the beach, collecting seashells, swimming, snorkeling, and even got to do a spice tour(Zanzibar is home to many spice farms!). We stayed in a less developed area of Zanzibar, so Mom and Dad got a good exposure to the culture (but for that same reason felt a little less like vacation for us. Zeke fevered every day but the last day we were there and felt awful, so we did a bit less than we’d planned, but that was probably for the better. He healed up just in time to get another bug from our plane ride home and that one slowly worked it’s way through all of us. It was a month full of more illness than we’ve had all year, which was discouraging, but we were so thankful for Rob and Lyn’s graciousness through it all, and for their vital help as we all struggled to get ahead of the viruses)!

We all flew back to Kigoma together and had a whirlwind week and a half for holiday celebrations. On December 21 we celebrated Rebekah’s 40th with a murder-mystery dinner and had a great time play-acting and solving the mystery. My mom ended up as the top detective, and our visiting friend Teagan was the killer.

Christmas here in Kigoma feels very different! The weather has something to do with it, as it was a balmy 75-85 degrees all week. Also, in Tanzania Christmas is not celebrated ahead of time, like you seen in America(for better or worse!). If you tell someone Merry Christmas on December 20th they’ll look at you like you have your days confused! Finally, local culture celebrates Christmas by going to church for 6+ hours on Christmas Day and sharing a meal with the church. There are few/no Christmas carols, no gift-giving, no candle-light services, etc. (No beautiful Christmas decorations, no lights, no Christmas songs on the radio - so, lights in our home and decor and a pine scented candle helped us feel a little more like it was December)

We were so glad to have Mom and Dad here to celebrate with us! We had a pretty nasty cold tear through during the holidays (I couldn’t help but notice you left out the fact that you got raked over the coals by a sudden onset stomach bug/food toxicity that NONE of the rest of us got! Who’s got the “immune system of a demi-god” now?!…It’s still not me, but it’s also not you!), but we still had a nice day with a traditional breakfast(with artichoke casserole) and hams for dinner! We’re pretty excited that we’ve learned to make hams, but it isn’t a quick process! I have to go to the pork market (in an isolated part of town due to the local Muslim population), and explain to a local pork seller that I want a whole pork butt from a female hog (verify this be checking for nipples on the hanging carcass). This includes showing the seller exactly where to cut with his panga(machete). The pigs here aren’t big or meaty, so each whole bone-in butt is only about 6-10lbs. We usually get two. The seller makes the cuts on a old stump in his shop that looks to be several years old. I bring the meat home in a bucket, and place it in the sink, where we wash it with cold water and dish soap. Then I trim the cuts, removing any leftover skin,(don’t forget the wiry hairs!) wood chips, dirt, etc. The cuts go into the fridge while we mix the brine for the hams, which includes curing salt we get from the US (thanks!). The hams cure in the brine in the fridge for 3ish days, then we soak them in fresh water for 24 hours, then they can be cooked (instant pot, roasted, etc). Perhaps your wondering why we go to all the trouble. I ask the same thing frequently! (because….meat - only beans for protein can get a little rough on the system!)

We got a chance that week to go do some bible studies and I took Dad along to give him a taste of the work we’re doing here.

The week before Christmas we took Mom and Dad (along with a good chunk of our team here) to Gombe National Park, one of two parks in TZ where you can see wild chimpanzees. This is the place where Jane Goodall did her research, and it’s only a short boat ride from Kigoma (Short? A short boat ride? 2 1/2 hours of to and fro is not short). It was an amazing experience. We got to see countless interaction between chimps of all ages (including the interaction between me and Grayse and the alpha male chimp and his cronies. I forgot about being told, just 30 minutes before, to not make eye contact. I was sure to stare that guy down the entire time he was baring his dagger teeth at me, while he hollered his deep guttural “I’m the boss!” holler.) and the country there is beautiful!

On the day after Christmas Elijah and Judah went off to camp. They flew with our dear friend and team-mate Kari to South Africa for a camp with a bunch of other TCKs(third-culture kids). They spent a week there with 60 other kids, and had a great time. They swam, played games, sang songs, listened to teaching and got to know a bunch of their peers from all over the continent. It was a great experience that we hope will become a tradition!

On the 27th the seven of us that remained all loaded up and left the house around 0600 for the long drive to Mwanza, Tanzania. It took about 13 hours, all but 3 of those hours were on pavement. It was a long trip, but you get to see a real bit of TZ on the way up! We decided to kill two birds with one stone and took the cat with us to get her spayed (no veterinarians in Kigoma!) (Why the abbreviated story about our drive up? We took the cat in a lidded grass basket that we’d fought to win for Lyn at a Dirty Santa party. She screeched like a banshee, though I’d tried sedating her a bit with some benzoes. I gave her more, it didn't work. She kept getting out of the basket and running around the car, including in the front seat where she about ripped my arms to shreds out of panic and anger. If you are a hardcore pet person, it may be best for you to skip this next part……here’s your chance to stop reading…….We decided that 13 hours was too long in the car for animal and human both. So, we secured her in her basket, removed some items from a footlocker we had strapped to the roof of the truck, and carefully tucked her basket in the footlocker. Rest assured, there was plenty of airflow, and it was a delightfully cool and overcast day, so we knew she would be fine. We stopped at a gas station a few ours after putting her up top and took her out to check on her. There were about 10 Tanzanians standing around and they rolled with laughter when I pulled her out. All we could do was shrug and laugh with them before putting her back in after she’d had a drink and a breather. We drove straight to the vet that evening when we arrived in Mwanza, and he was less than happy to see we’d put her up top - but he wasn’t the one driving 13 hours with 7 people and an angry, hostile cat who’s claws hadn’t been trimmed in weeks. She’s fine. She's back to her old self with nary a grudge.) We stayed in Mwanza for a night and then had a safari truck pick us up and take us into the Serengeti, where we stayed 2 nights. We had a great time, saw 50+ different animals/birds, and had a lot of time for great conversations. One of the things we enjoy about doing animal safaris is the great time you get sitting in the car talking. After a couple days we drove back to Mwanza, got the cat, and then did the drive back to Kigoma on New Year’s Eve, where we all crashed into bed before 10. (we were able to cut an hour off the return drive, which was good because it was a much hotter day and we had to make a couple emergency stops for various reasons. The cat was comfortably and safely under the influence of a bit heavier dose of benzos, which are commonly used by vets to prep animals for surgery. So, our drive was much more pleasant without her yowling, and the vet sent us with a cat carrier to make for easier transport, which we were very thankful for!)

Elijah and Judah returned that week, and then Mom and Dad got out on the 4th, arriving back in Grand Junction 2 days later. We are so thankful to get to see them. It’s impossible to understand life here unless you’ve experienced it, so we’re so glad they got a chance to do that. God is so good to us!!

We would be remiss to not mention also what a blessing it was to receive all the gifts that many of you sent us from our Amazon list. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! We’ve been eating bacon bits, dehydrating fruit, fighting Nerf battles, and more all because of y’all’s generous support. (it was interesting and enlightening to hear Lyn’s suggestions for future list items after she’d been here and seen how the things they brought from you all helped us. Again, thank you so much. While some of those items are just simply for fun and familiarity, many of them truly do make life just a little simpler here - like the little oil sprayer bottles. The lack of cooking spray here has been a big headache. Wiping shortening or oil doesn’t work for whatever reason, but sprayed on oil does and every spray bottle I tried didn’t work. We’ve use both the olive oil and veggie oil spray bottle regularly since filling them and I feel so excited every time I remember I have them when I’m cooking and need spray oil. So, thank you!)

That’s it for the Nov/Dec update! This year we’re going to try to be more active on the Facebook group, posting more frequently and doing some live, short Q&A sessions. You can find that group under the name African Storeybook.

If you want to get these updates in your email, let me know at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com.

If you would like to support our work and the work of 3000+ IMB missionaries around the world you can do that here: www.imb.org/give

Thanks for reading! We are grateful for your prayers, words of encouragement and other forms of support. May the Father of Lights bless you all richly in the New Year!

October update: Safari squared

/

Happy October! Update below, with Rebekah‘s comments in italics.

Pray requests up front:

-Language and culture: we have so much to learn! Please pray that we would ALL (speak for yourself - I’ve arrived) apply ourselves to learning Swahili and Tanzanian culture so that we can truly be a part of our community!

-Bible studies: we have a handful of Bible studies happening around the area, please pray that we would be adept at training others to study the Bible for themselves and that God would be glorified through all our efforts.

-Personal holiness: please pray for us all as we strive to honor God in our daily lives through reading his Word, prayer, fellowship with other believers, etc.

It was a weird month, to be sure! We spent most of the month on the road, as we drove up to Nairobi, Kenya for a meeting. It was a meeting for all of the missionaries in Sub-Saharan Africa who had been on the field for 18 months or less. We stayed a week after the meeting for some medical appointments.

One of the Bible studies we’re doing is in a village called Mlole (pronounced: m- lo -lay), here in the Kigoma municipality. It’s a study of “seekers” mostly, Muslim men and women who are open to reading and talking about the Bible. We spend time reading together and talking about the passage. There is one believer there, a Muslim background believer named Juma who became a follower of Jesus through our “bucket ministry”. Juma is a middle-aged man who had a truck and drove for living before a large stroke left him with partial paralysis on the left side of his body. He is now disabled, and had been largely abandoned by his community. We first met when we brought a bucket full of medical/hygeine supplies to help him and his family out. He and Rehema later decided to follow Jesus, and now he is a regular at our weekly bible-study. His health challenges are difficult, but every Tuesday morning will find him slowly shuffling down the road with his cane and his Bible to sit with us for an hour or so. I’m excited to see this study go deeper- it is a neat example of how using healthcare strategies helps us get to the Gospel!

The trip to Nairobi was great. It started with 20 hours of driving and 2 hours at the border over 2 days. We drive a 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser built for function over comfort, but it’s fun car to drive as it can go just about anywhere, and it’s almost as practical as our old Dodge minivan.

We arrived in Nairobi, went to church (at an English-speaking service!), and then drove up the mountain to a conference center for the first week. It was wonderful to see some familiar faces, hear about everyone’s first year and a half, commiserate together about the common challenges we face, and eat really good food that we didn’t have to prepare!

The week was filled with workshops, seminars, and the like. It was a good reminder in a lot of ways! Mostly we really loved catching up with lots of friends, most of which we hadn’t seen for 18 months or more. We were also encouraged by older missionaries who have experience on the field and were helpful as we talked about strategy and mission in our location.

The kids also had a blast! For the conference, a church in TX brought in a whole team of volunteers to do childcare and coordinate the youth activities. They showed our kids so much love, and the youth teams really connected with and encouraged Elijah and Judah.

After the conference we went down to Nairobi and spent the next week with medical appointments, shopping to stock up on some things we can’t get here, and catching up with old friends. We did our first 6 months here in Africa in Nairobi for language learning, and have a lot of really great relationships there that we cherish.

In Nairobi Joel got to go to an EPIC Harry Potter themed birthday, Judah got his face torn up by a dog, and Elijah got to continue with online high school(yay!). We really did have a blessed time! We got to go bowling and eat Indian food thanks to a generous gift, and got fast-food TWICE(not a thing in Kigoma).

On the way home we took a small detour to drive through Lake Manyara National Park, and while we didn’t see the tree-climbing lions the park is famous for, we got up close and personal with some elephants, giraffes and baboons. We arrived safely after a third day driving. The roads in TZ are notoriously good, thanks to the last president who made infrastructure one of his top priorities. There is about 3 hours of really rough dirt between Kigoma and the next big town(Tabora), but after that it is remarkably smooth sailing! One of the other nice things about the roads here are that there are hardly any cars. When you cross into Kenya the density of cars increases significantly, making driving much less pleasant.

I actually wrote my own summary of the Nairobi trip before I saw Josh’s, so here’s mine:

Where to begin? We made the trip up in just two long days of driving and were able to laugh Saturday evening into the night with sweet friends that loved on us well during our 6+ months that we lived there on the compound last year before moving to TZ. I was able to get some plant shopping, a sushi lunch and much needed girl time with my dear friend there as well that weekend before the conference. We attended the same church that Sunday that we’d attended while living there last year, Emmanuel Bible Church. We like to describe it as a sister to our sending church back home. They are similar is many, uncanny ways. And, it’s in English. It was hard for us to understand the whole concept of “heart language” until moving to TZ and not being able to attend an English speaking church. I choked up and then full on wept through a hymn we sang, as it’s one of my favorites, and to sing it and hear it sung in English for the first time in a year was completely overwhelming. The conference started later that day and we were there through Saturday morning. It was exhausting emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually, but refreshing in all the same ways. We learned a lot, contemplated a lot, had many very important conversations that lifted burdens from our shoulders and felt loved and cared for in ways that we truly needed. Our boys were loved on so well all week long by the volunteer team that had come from the States. They went above and beyond in blessing us all in various ways. We headed back down the mountain on Saturday morning and that’s when our medical stay at the compound started. For those of you who track my posts, Judah was bit (or scratched - we aren’t totally sure) by a large dog that spooked for some reason. The laceration was severe enough that a plastic surgeon was needed and we felt humbled by the Lord’s provision of one available in Nairobi, on a Saturday night. Joel attended an epic Harry Potter birthday party that same afternoon, we went to Emmanuel Baptist again the next day and medical appointments started on Monday. In between medical we were able to get some stock up shopping done, take a bowling trip with boys with fun money we were gifted, hike with sweet friends that we hadn’t seen in 18 months, eat fun food, rest and enjoy cooler weather, and got clean bills of health for both Josh and me! We extended our trip one day, taking a vacation day to enjoy one last meal with sweet friends and then we were off on Saturday morning to cross the border back into our host country. We crossed the border in about 45 minutes, while lacking 3 documents we were supposed to have! Woop! We took three days to drive back home, stopping along the way to visit a sweet friend in her new home, drive through an animal park and spend the night at a hotel with a pool, but that also had a soccer game after party that went into the late late night - that choice of hotel was a mistake. We made it home this past Monday, the 24th, car trouble free! There, that’s about as short as I can make the description of our trip to Nairobi.).

That’s the update for this month!

As always, we covet your prayers, and appreciate your support! In early December my parents will be arriving to stay for a few weeks, and we’re looking forward to their visit BIG TIME!

You can follow us on Facebook at our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1072012219992846/

You can support our work specifically by going to https://www.imb.org/generosity/give-now/, and choosing “missionary or team” under the “Where do you want your give to go?” dropdown. Then type our name in the first box and SSAP for the “affinity or country” option.

There’s also an opportunity to help us fund a trip for Elijah and Judah to go to South Africa for a TCK camp here soon. You can email us at the below address about that.

Finally, send me an email at m28Storeyfam@gmail.com with any other questions!

September 22- ready for rain

/

Hello everyone!

Prayer Requests Up Front:
-School- continues to go apace, and we’re starting to get the hang of things, but Elijah is still having a hard time adjusting to online high-school. Will you pray for him, that he would find a rhythm and build habits to help him succeed? And please pray for Rebekah and I as we try to help him without robbing him of too much independence.
- Ministry- Please pray for the growing home-visit program, and for an upcoming meeting with a large group of government health officials to describe our goals to them for their approval.
- Travel- The whole fam is driving to Kenya this week for a meeting. While we’re there we’ll get caught up on some medical appointments. Please pray for safe roads, no car trouble, and a time of rest and encouragement.

Here’s a montage of random life photos from this month. Descriptions on the photos.
As usual, Rebekah’s comments in italics.

This month was filled with busy life and ministry.
We’ve spent some time at the lake cooling off as we wait for the rain. It should have arrived by now- we anticipate in the next week or so, and then it’ll rain frequently until April-May when it will stop for 5ish months. We’re ready for the rains to come back, cool things off, beat down the dust, and bring on mango season!

This month we said by to our friend Helena as she and her family moved to Dar es Salaam. It was a hard goodbye, but we’re praying the very best for them! (Helena was my first Tanzanian friend. Motherhood and loving the Lord is truly all we have in common, but it never ceases to amaze me how those two things are plenty to create a friendship. She was gracious and patient with us and humbly cleaned up after us as we struggled to learn life here in the sharp learning curve we encountered. I’m convinced our house would have been a giant heap of sand if it hadn’t been for her help. It was a hard departure, but we trust the Lord is leading them to Dar, and will provide for them there as they begin a new life in an entirely different culture and surrounding than they’ve ever known or experienced.)

Ministry continues- the language is also progressing, but slowly.
I(Josh) am out 5ish times a week doing evangelism, home-visits and Bible studies. It’s a wonderful opportunity to sit and talk with people and a great encouragement. One of the great things about Africa is openness to spiritual topics. You can walk up to almost anyone and strike up a spiritual conversation, and even if you come from polar opposite belief-systems, you can still have long and interesting conversations.
We are also trying (trying is the key word) to be active members of our church here, Azimio Baptist Church. It’s a challenge, as “wazungu”(foreigners) are simply treated differently. But we did a workday with the church to dig a septic tank(the last bathroom got vandalized by our Islamic neighbors), are hosting a small group at our house, and are taking part in regular worship. Being a part of a healthy church is something that both Rebekah and I are missing terribly right now. (We recently had a conversation about this and both agree that aside from close friends and family, being a part of a healthy church is what we miss the most about home) We love Azimio, but not speaking the language fluently yet, coupled with the vastly different cultural practices make attending corporate worship on Sunday more chore than joy. We are looking forward to visiting Nairobi for a couple of weeks and taking part in a more familiar style of service, and singing and praying in our heart language! (I’ve warned Josh that I may just cry through the service)
In other news, this week they got the privilege of attending an” Uchumba” service for our worker Isaac and his fiancee Sarah. This is a service where the engagement is officially announced before the church, after the two families have completed negotiations about the union. Isaac and his family killed and roasted a goat this week to share with Sarah’s family. During the meal they finalized negotiations on the marriage. Isaac paid 1.5million shillings in bride price(about 10 months net wages) and saved up to buy a ring. Pictures of the service below. It is a cool custom to see the communal aspect of this relationship and how the church family is included in the celebration, and in keeping these two young people accountable to loving one another in a God-honoring way.

That’s the short September update. Thanks for your encouragement and prayers!

Follow our Facebook group for a little bit more frequent updates(trying to be better about this):

Email us at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com if you want to support us financially. One need we’re raising for right now is the annual MK(missionary kid) camp in South Africa at the end of the year. Let us know if you want to be a part of helping MKs from all over Africa gather together for a time of fellowship and fun. This is a formative time for MKs to meet and get to know other MKs who just “get it”.

Have a great Fall, for those of you in the Northern hemisphere!

August In TZed

/

Habari za mwezi? (“What’s the news of the month?”) We’re excited to be writing to give everyone who actually reads these an update on what’s been going on!(As previously, Rebekah’s peanut-gallery commentary in italics)

Prayer requests up front:

-School: we’re back in the swing of things! Pray for Rebekah as she tries to balance survival and discipling our boys. Pray for the boys that they would develop a love for learning, and be good stewards of the gifts they have. Praise the Lord with us for Jana, who will be helping with the homeschooling this semester! (Also please pray with us for an a sweet college graduate who just interviewed for our “homeschool helper” position. She’s applied to three different jobs within the company, one of those being ours. We’d be delighted if she came here to help!)
-Ministry: we’ve seen a shift in our ministry focus here, and are asking for prayer for wisdom and discernment as we try to be effective workers for the harvest!
-Language: please continue to pray for our language acquisition. The more you learn, the less you know, it seems! (And the more HE learns the less I realize I know. He’s speeding ahead of me in language. I feel like those movies you see of hefty cops chasing after a thief, and the thief is running like a hot rodder and the plump cop has to stop, lean over with his hands on his knees and hack a few times to catch his breath, and then holds one hand up, as if to please, and gasp and cough out, “Wait up! Just give me a sec!” - Pretty sure I’ll never catch up to him, but it’s really fun to watch him excel!)

We’re coming to the end of the dry season here in Kigoma, and it has been a really good month! One big change for us is in the job- I’m transitioning a bit in my focus. I won’t be working in the hospital on a regular basis, but will instead start to work on improving the medical aspect of our team’s home visit program. I’m looking forward to the challenge of using healthcare to meet physical and spiritual needs this way. More to come on what that looks like, as soon as I’ve figured some of it out…

This past month has seen some birthdays, celebrations, baptisms, comings, and goings. We’ve been getting some good time with our team-mates and other friends, as well as some nice time at the lake.
It’s the dry season, which means there’s no rain for 3-4 months! (closer to 6 months, Mr. green-screen meteorologist) We thought this would be miserable, but we’ve really enjoyed the season-(despite the substantial layer of “vumbi”(dust) on LITERALLY everything) it’s much cooler, and we are blessed to be able to turn on a faucet and get water, so we don’t experience the same water insecurity as some. We live fairly simply, but we are continually sobered and humbled by the relative opulence of our station compared to what we see in the village every day.
Owning a vehicle in TZ is kind of like owning a truck in the US- you can quickly become the guy with the truck. Last month we were moving a casket. This month I helped our friend Z move into the recently vacant place next door. It’s a major upgrade for he and his family!

Ministry this month was fairly busy. As I mentioned above our job is changing a little with more focus outside the hospital. We’ve always seen house visits as a great tool for our team, but especially with a bigger team we need someone to step in to organize the process better and try to have a more focused medical aspect. I’m looking forward to the change- one of the biggest benefits of medical strategies in what we do is that it allows you to meet people on their terms/in safe spaces for spiritual discussions. It also allows you to reach people that might otherwise be unreachable due to being bedridden, etc.

We spent a good amount of time in the villages this month, and I’ve included a few pictures. One of my favorites is the one where I’m wearing the red shirt. In that picture you can see that I’m holding a paper while one of our national partners, Masudi, used that paper to illustrate his gospel presentation to the mzee(elder) (pronounce M-zay) sitting next to him. I love this picture because it’s how we see our roles in evangelism. We are blessed to have a lot of local partners who are able to share in much more effective ways that we will ever be able to share, just because of their mastery of the language(s) and culture. Because of this, sometimes I get to just hold a paper and listen!

This month we also said goodbye to our neighbors as they moved away. We were sad to see them go, and in true African fashion, they were delayed in leaving by one thing or another for almost a week! When the truck finally arrived, it was around 7pm, and they started packing it up around 8pm(well into darkness here, because long summer evenings aren’t a thing here. Ever. On account of, life at the equator.). They sealed the truck around 12:15AM and the neighbors were off the next day!
This was a hard time. I’m leaving out the family name because they’re going to a higher security location, but this was a family that we’ve gone through the entire application and training process with, and we all assumed we’d have years of ministry together here in Kigoma. But the Lord had other plans, and so we’re praying all the best for them as they move(again!) to start life in a new location(again!) and with a new ministry(again!).

The boys and I started school on the 15th. I was more organized getting geared up for this school year that I have ever been in the past, but I’m not about to attribute this to some new found ability to be administrative, but rather the sweet, gentle Lord giving me a whole new passion for the education of these boys. I think this is in part from being exposed to the lack of education in the kiddos here, the long term effects of that that we see in the adult population that we are interacting with, and also re-realizing the huge need for intense discipleship in the home. Along with our normal curriculum, we will be working through a couple youth-geared apologetics books this year. Our deep desire is for the boys to bury roots for themselves, to believe what they believe because they’ve come to the conclusion that Christ is worthy, that he IS truth, not just that he’s what we as parents believe in. I want to encourage them to question, even to doubt. Without doubt there can’t be faith. We recognize that homeschooling the boys in a rural African context isn’t probably setting them up to be Ivy League level students, but we are so thankful for the opportunity to be the ones pouring into their lives in very specific ways, the ways we see are the most important. But also, I have to remind myself of all these things when I just want to hide in my bathroom and say, “forget it! I don’t give a rip if he never learns to read well. I’m done!” Lest you think that new little leaf always stays turned over. (Where did that saying come from, anyway?)

The last big event of the month was a medical team that came from the US to run a mobile clinic in Nkungwe (Swahili is, praise the Lord, phonetic. This village, “Nkungwe” is pronounced: n-koong-way), a village about 45 minutes from town. We had a great and busy week last week, seeing something like 1000 patients, giving out a lot of deworming meds, pulling a lot of teeth, and sharing the gospel! Over 130 people professed new faith in Christ, and a new church was born(the previous church in that location having died off a couple years ago)!
One of the challenges was that this village is a Ha village, and many people didn’t speak Swahili, but speak Kiha (pronounced: key-ha with a short vowel sound) instead. I was blessed to work with Afrika, a friend of mine who is a medical student, and also fluent in Kiha.
The team that came up has been doing trips like this all over the world for 29 years, and they were a well oiled machine! They came with the goal of being a draw, and softening hearts, and they certainly accomplished those goals! They have a system that is reproducible in a variety of contexts, including very rural areas like Nkungwe without electricity, plumbing or hard structures. It was fun to work with these servant-hearted folks, some of whom are well into their 60’s!
The last picture in this batch is of the church this weekend- 68 people meeting for the first time in the old building. There are four pastors who have committed to sharing preaching and shepherding this new group until a leader can be brought in or raised up.

Just kidding. That wasn’t the last update of this month.. The last last one is that we submitted our registration for a medical conference coming up in the beginning part of next year. This would be an opportunity for Josh to keep his medical license up to date, and if the Lord wills, for the boys and I to have much needed time for respite, access to counseling resources, solid teaching and fellowship with fellow workers from all over the world. The kids and spouses program is known to be healing in myriad ways to those who are able to attend. Getting to the location of the conference is no small feat, time-wise or financially, but we take great delight in knowing the Lord will provide if his desire is for us to be there. We are excited about that potential opportunity.

That’s the August update. We are ever grateful for your prayers and support. May the Lord bless you and keep you all!

You can get this newsletter in your email if you send me a note at m28storeyfam@gmail.com.

You can give to us and thousands of other cross-cultural missionaries here: www.imb.org/give

July Update

/

Good Sabbath! This is our July update, with the prayer requests up front. As per our recent tradition, Rebekah’s peanut gallery in italics…

PRUF:

-Language and culture: are you seeing a theme to the recurrent requests? We continue to progress, but as learning language and culture to an advanced level is one of our primary goals for our first term(3-4 year), this will remain one of our top requests! Please pray for attentive ears, auditory learning, disciplined minds, and clear eyes for opportunities to learn.
-The boys: our five boys continue to adapt well, but in the next few weeks, our neighbors will be moving away, which will be a blow for all of us, not least the boys, who spend hours many days playing with their neighbor friends.
-School: we plan to start up school in the next couple of weeks again, and need prayer for patience and steadfastness! Also, please pray specifically for Elijah as he starts a new online high-school that we hope will help him feel more confident and prepare him better for the future. (if I were currently wearing boots, I’d be shaking in them - homeschooling is a big task in the states, but it’s a monumental task here, where every day life takes so much more time and effort and planning. A praise is that it does look like we will have a helper with school this year. The details haven’t been all worked out, but we are hopeful! This will take a big chunk of the burden off my shoulders, and I’m hopeful it will mean less nights of tossing and turning realizing I’ve forgotten to do a reading lesson with this boy for a week, or check that boy’s math lessons for days, etc. Please be praying with us that we can get all expectations out on the table, and have healthy communication.

July was a good month- we got some helpful cultural experiences, saw God move in the hearts of people, celebrated some birthdays, and continue to settle into life in this strange and beautiful place.

We celebrated the Fourth of July with a gathering of the missionary community here in Kigoma. There are a couple of dozen missionaries in town, with a variety of ministries. It’s a fairly ecumenical group, and we really enjoy the time together, especially for us newbies to learn from families who have been here serving for 30+ years.

After the 4th we had a birthday party for our two July Birthday Boys. Joel turned 11 on the 12th and Elijah turned 15 on the 13th. We had about 50 people there to celebrate and get to know. It was a great time, with a slip and slide, a fire, and great company! Those of you who know us well know how gifted Rebekah is at hosting, and she was certainly in her element!

Last week I did some minor surgery on Nony (that’s always been spelled with two n’s, darling), our 9 month-old German Shepherd. She had been limping off and on for a while, and I saw a sore on her paw, so we pinned her down, numbed it up, and went looking for a sliver. All we found was sand, but there was a lot of it, so I evacuated all I could and irrigated it a bunch. There’s no veterinarian here in town, so we have to figure some of this out ourselves- thankfully I have a very gracious cousin who is a vet and super helpful!

Finally, this month we said goodbye to Meggie, who left the field early this month to get married and take a year of newlywed life in the USA. She and her husband Abel do plan to return to cross-cultural missions, they just don’t know where that will be.
And tomorrow Carly leaves. Carly is a nurse who was here in a “Journeyman” capacity, a 2 year term for young college-age kids. Her term is up and we will miss her terribly, but are excited as she heads back to the states to get married.

(a separate note here about the pics below - I’m awful and forgot to take a picture of Elijah on his birthday. Also, Joel’s hair has been cut since his birthday pictures, so don’t judge.)

This was a month full of cultural experiences and learning!
We’ve spoken before of the ever-present nature of death here in TZ, and this month was no different. It hit especially close to home when one of our guards lost his father suddenly due to illness. We aren’t sure the cause of death, but likely complications of malaria. Tradition for burial here is to be buried in your home village, which was a few hours away from Kigoma. There is also not a mortuary/hearse type system for transporting bodies over those distances. So our pastor asked if we could drive Isaac’s father home for the funeral and burial. We ended up taking two of the IMB cars and a trailer, managing to fit 23 people and a coffin! It was a 3+ hour drive, and we stayed for the funeral and burial, and then headed home to try to beat the darkness(driving in the dark on dusty African roads is NOT ideal).
It was an exhausting day, but we felt it was important both in our relationship with Isaac and as members of his/our church to serve him and his family. It really was a blessing to be able to help and take part in the funeral.

Rebekah got some more experience this month teaching an evangelism course to a women’s bible study at a nearby church. It was an eye-opening experience and she learned a good bit about teaching and leading here.

Finally, I just got back from a national meeting for the Baptist Church of Tanzania in Dodoma, Tanzania. This is really a whole story/post in and of itself (nag him for it - it’ll be worth your time to read!), but suffice to say it was VERY informative! I made some good connections with pastors and the teachers of the Baptist Seminary here in TZ. The experience ended sooner than anticipated, as the two national partners I brought go to baptist churches that are under another organization, so we had to leave early. While the way they were treated was disappointing, it was nonetheless very informative for me to understand some of the culture and polity issues here.

As I mentioned above, the biggest upcoming change is that our friends, neighbors and partners are leaving. Due to family/school issues they are moving to another city. This has been a very difficult time for them, but they are hopeful that they will see a fruitful ministry in their new location and that their kids will have an easier time of it there. Please keep them in your prayers as they’re scrambling to get a house here packed up and moved across the country in time for school to start there. (and for us as well, as we lose our only western culture neighbors and the boy’s best friends - it’s going to be rough! We’ve been in this process for three solid years with that family, since the med-advance conference in 2019 where we all met and started on our trajectory to get here together, so it’s going to be a bit of a task to change our thinking and let go of all the dreams we had of what life and ministry would look like here for our two families together.)

That’s it for this month! As always, we are thankful for you all, especially those who have suffered through my rambling this far.

Get these posts in your inbox by emailing me at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com

Find us on Facebook at the group: African Storeybook

Support us and thousands of other IMB missionaries here: www.imb.com/give

June Update

/

Prayer requests up front:

Language study
Rebekah and I continue to progress(slowly) in Swahili. We ask people to pray as we try to reach specific goals of going deeper in our relationships with Swahili-only speakers.
Mission in Kigoma
There are some wonderful opportunities to partner in what God is doing in the Kigoma region. We are praying for wisdom and discernment to be involved in the right ways/places.
Praise
When my sister Cara visited this month, she brought great encouragement to us, and two suitcases full of goodies! Thanks to those of you that were so generous and blessed us with so much!

Before William Carey(the father of modern missions) went to India in 1793 he famously told his friend Andrew Fuller, “I will go down into the pits, if you will hold the ropes.” This month we have been reminded how many friends and family we have holding the ropes for us through their prayers, communications and gifts. We are encourage to know that we aren’t alone here in Kigoma!

Life is good here in the dry season. It’s the coolest part of the year, usually topping out around 80 degrees in the day, and dipping as low as the 60s at night! (not going to lie here - we definitely chuckled when we started noticing in the clothes markets that they were hanging all the sweaters and puffy coats and snow beanies. While I still think it’s funny that they bundle so much, I’ve found myself under a sheet, linen bedspread and then adding another heavier blanket at night. We are growing into lily livers. Hope we never feel the need to wear a puffy coat or beanie here, but even after just being here for a year, we’d freeze our extremities off if we were dropped into a northern winter!)

Ministry is consistent, though it feels slow at times. I(Josh) started help leading a Bible study weekly with some new believers in Ujiji, and have been working in the Urgent Care section of the hospital. Rebekah is working with some of our team members to do cake-baking classes (which gives us a great crowd for hearing about the sweetness of Christ) using the charcoal stoves that are the primary cooking implement here.

We had a visitor this month! Cara, my sister(#5/7 kids in our family) came for a couple of months in the beginning of June. It was a wonderful visit! She had some trouble getting here, as the first day she showed up to the airport she found out she was missing a COVID test, because the flight was “transiting” Rwanda. She was able to get on a flight a couple days later. Getting here takes 3 days(2 to travel to Dar es Salaam, and another to get from Dar to Kigoma), and is NOT a trip for the faint of heart. Thankfully, Cara is an experienced traveller and handled the trip with all its snafus very graciously.

While she was here we had lots of game time, hiking, kayaking, lake time, and cliff-jumping. We made a trip 6 hours south by car to Katavi National Park and stayed at a very African hotel. We got to see hundreds of hippos, dozens of elephants, and many other beautiful animals. Later in her stay we(just Cara, Bek and I) took a boat up north to Gombe National Park to see wild chimpanzees. Gombe is where Jane Goodall did her chimp research starting in the 1960’s. Today it is one of the few places where you can see wild chimps(there are only about 1500 left in the world).

Overall it was a blessed time. Just having her here was itself really encouraging and sweet, and she and the boys bonded beautifully. We look forward to more visits from friends and family in the future.

We also picked up another member of our menagerie this month- Louise the kitten. She was abandoned by her mother in the field next-door, so we took her in. She’s been a lot of fun to have around, and is serving as an excellent source of therapy for Rebekah and the boys. I’m sure Bek will have more to add…(Indeed I do. We think she couldn’t have been more than about four weeks when we got her. She was still a little alien looking, bow legged, scrawny, and very clumsy in her attempts to be a terrifying huntress. The first few days we wrapped her in a washcloth to feed her milk from a dropper so she wouldn’t shred or bite us. It took us a while to settle on a name, but “Louise” just seemed to fit. She really is a delight . She’s getting ample attention, is fattening up nicely and is much more coordinated in her running streaks, stare jumping, curtain and couch climbing and ankle attacking bursts of tiny kitten rage. She goes into shred mode and one had better watch their ankles, but on the flip side she’s incredibly social, affectionate and talkative. She has been such a sweet treat and I only sort of crack jokes about her being my therapy animal, because mostly I’m not joking.)

In other animal news, we were driving up towards Burundi to hike, and saw a couple of BIG snakes in the road. We stopped to push them to the shoulder, and Joel asked if we couple pick them up later. On the way back they were still there, so we (literally) threw them on top of the truck and brought them down the mountain. Once we were back we asked my favorite Facebook group to help us ID the snakes and learned they were both Puff Adders. These are a highly venomous snake (and also have the ability to poison well after they’ve died, so it’s a good thing sticks were used to carry them!) found throughout most of Africa, and because of their prevalence, they are responsible for more deaths that any other snake on the continent.
I chopped the heads off with a machete(much harder than I expected), and because we were leaving for Katavi, we put the carcasses in the fridge until we got back. Later in the week Joel and I skinned them (now now. Lets not forget that you put them in the bottom drawer in a semi transparent trash bag, and when we were preparing for dinner one night I reached down to open the bag because I’d forgotten about them and thought perhaps THAT is where I put my newly harvested sweet potatoes. After a squeal, a jump, frantic clapping and whimpering my way out of hysteria, I put my hands in my face and demanded that you remove those nasty danger noodles and deal with them!) and now just have to find some rubbing alcohol to cure them. Then we have to decide what to make from them. They are about 4 feet long and 8 inches wide. Open to suggestions.

Life in Africa continues apace. We DO feel like we are getting the hang of some of the routines, while others still baffle us (like, seriously. How many things can go wrong with our routine/house in one day?! We are being sanctified into being more flexible - I mean, we thought we were flexible before….it’s laughable. Sometimes. The times it’s not laughable right away are when our toilet has created it’s very own geyser, or the water main right outside our bathroom starts watering the sky, or the kitchen faucet launches itself off it’s post, and the pipes under our kitchen sink STILL leak, after being “fixed” now 6 times in 8 months. I laugh about those things shortly after they happen, but it’s more of a nervous laughter, with maybe just a bit of an eye twitch. For anyone that has seen “What about Bob” - “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful…”).
Below is a hodgepodge of pictures of our experiences in the past month.
We have to sift all our flour here, for a variety of reasons, but the pic of the weevils I got from our whole-wheat flour is one of those reasons. (they don’t even gross me out anymore. In fact, I saw one in the pot this evening when I put popcorn in the oil I was heating up. I looked at it for a few seconds, put the lid on and just waited for the popcorn to pop. Not sure how many bugs we’ve eaten at this point. *insert shrug emoji. It’s just bugs.)
We went to our first African wedding, and part of the tradition is for married couples to get outfits specific to the wedding(all using the SAME fabric). (I was told I would have a dress made that was “like that one you like that one Sunday that the pastors wife was wearing”. Except, I remember loving the fabric, not necessarily the dress itself with it’s long sleeves in heat and humidity. I panicked, looked around the church and pointed to the ONLY woman wearing a short sleeve dress that day - one with a cupcake ruffle top. That was the dress I chose to have made for me, so I wouldn’t have to wear long sleeves in the heat. When we all got our dresses, every single one of them had short sleeves, and then there was mine, with poofy poofy ruffles.)
Rebekah, Kari, and Catherine are working on teaching cake-baking classes as a way to develop relationships. See pics of the progress below.
One other bit of excitement to explain the last picture- our wonderful big stove that we love doesn’t have an automatic light for the oven- you have to light the lower and upper burners with a lighter or match. Rebekah thought she lit both, but must have missed the bottom, so the oven filled up with gas until it reached the top burner(which HAD been lit) and ignited. The resultant explosion was quite alarming, especially since most of the family was in the kitchen to experience the percussive shock!

(Josh forgot this - Judah climbed a tree and rode a Tarzan rope straight into a rock. With his front tooth. Which meant Judah and I took a trip to Dar es Salaam to get his broken tooth repaired. That pic you see down there is Judah and I very excited for our fun food we found at a REALY LIVE GROCERY STORE, that we bought to go along with our pb&j’s that we’d brought from home. I got to wear JEANS, and we both felt very civilized for about 48 hours and we PUSHED SHOPPING CARTS, saw big city buildings and ate sushi right on the ocean. Sadly it was too dark to see the water and tide was out, but we could still smell it!)

That’s it for June. Next month will be a little less eventful, we think. May the Lord bless and keep you all. Thanks for holding the rope!

As always, if you’d like to be on our email list, let me know at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com

If you’d like to support our work, and the work of thousands of IMB missionaries around the world, go to www.imb.org/give.

May Update

/

PRUF:
-Please pray the short-term teams visiting this month. Pray that their time would be well spent both to bring the hope and healing of Christ to the area, and to grow personally.

-Language acquisition and cultural competency will continue to be a prayer request as we try to get to the point of having meaningful conversations in Swahili. This month we should have a couple of weddings to go to (one of which is on our own wedding anniversary), which are a great way to experience the culture.

-Please pray for our team here as there are some big changes coming this summer.

Happy May to everyone! Rebekah’s comments/edits are in italics…

Here on the sunny shores of Lake Tanganyika, life is good (wouldn’t say we are thriving yet, but praise be to the Lord, we don’t feel like we are drowning anymore!)! The rainy season has ended, and we have probably seen the last rain until September(and the last one was a doozy!). That is typical of the weather here. I thought the “dry season” just meant LESS rain, but it does, in fact, mean ZERO rain! I anticipate the next few months will be full of frequent trips to the lake to cool off (Even though technically it’s their winter season here, and the local clothing dukes are bringing out all their sweaters and coats. All the locals say the cold is coming and one of our guards frequently shows up for his night shifts in a thigh length puffy coat with a fur collar :) )!

Speaking of the lake, last month we had to take a couple days off of swimming, because a HIPPO WAS SPOTTED AT THE BEACH. Not terribly uncommon here, and it only lasted a few days until the local prison guards shot him. Then they butchered him up and gave away the meat. We went down to try to get some without luck. Maybe next time! For a great hippo recipe, check here.

I(Josh) spent a lot of time this month working with Kelly, one of our team-mates. Kelly and his wife have been here in Africa for nearly 20 years, and it’s been great to be discipled by him “on the job”. There are a couple pictures of our time out visiting patients, bringing buckets of medical supplies and sharing the gospel below.

We feel like we’re starting to figure out how to live here. I’m learning to check our water tank daily so we don’t run out unexpectedly, we are learning where to buy the popcorn that has less bugs (we don’t mind eating bugs, but it just doesn’t pop as well with a weevil in the kernel) (but for reals, “it’s just bugs” is something it took many months for us to be able to say about the food we were ingesting, knowing full well we were getting extra nutrients we didn’t pay for), we now have non-loaner beds for everyone, we got a clothesline put up, and I have the woodshed up and running to make some of the stuff we need to function. There are still a lot of frustrations, but we’re SLOWLY learning to address the ones we can and embrace the ones we can’t (while continuing to frequently be tackled by “AWA” days - African wins again). )Sometimes those days include a black eye for a kiddo, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, behind an older brother who was whirling a giant bamboo pole around like a helicopter for the dogs to chase. It laid that boy out FLAT on the grass! Picture below)

We’ve been exploring in the kayaks around the lake, and found a water locked pebble beach, and some sweet little cliffs to jump off of. Bek and I even got the chance for a sunrise kayak (and coffee) cruise, which was a really sweet time together, and might (might? For reals. Let’s rephrase that. It WILL become a tradition if I have any say in the matter! Which I do, of course!) have to become a tradition.

This month we caught one regular rat, one Nile monitor lizard, and one Giant Pouched Rat(the dogs killed this dude last night). Joel, our most unashamedly morbid child (he happened upon morbidity accidentally a few years back, but is now fully embracing it, haha!), asked if we could skin and cure the lizard skin. He actually did a good bit of the work, and the hide is now waiting in our freezer for the local pharmacy to get isopropyl alcohol back in stock so we can tan it(anyone who knows a better recipe for tanning reptile skin than glycerin+isopropanol, I’m open to suggestions). Those are just the big animals- we have a constant parade of rhinoceros beetles, geckos, moths, and millipedes(which Zeke affectionately refers to as his “babies” and carries all over the house (and even just today asked me where his “baby” was, and when I told him I think Joel put it outside he said, “hmmmm…nope! Hiding in mama’s bed!” I wouldn’t put it past this kid!)(picture below).

I started this newsletter a few days ago, but am finishing it today on the 24th. Today was an AWA day(Africa Wins Again), as we ran out of water, have a leaky water return valve causing our pressure pump to fail, had power issues, had internet issues and Rebekah spent the whole day at the hospital with a friend whose special needs toddler son got beat up by his grandmother(child abuse is tragically common here). It’s one of those days where we collapse onto the couch at 8pm feeling like we’ve accomplished nothing. But God is gracious to remind us that we are where He wants us, and He is working even in the details.

I think that’s it for my piece of the update, except I did want to comment on the big Baptist news from the past couple of days. Yesterday I woke up to the SBC being on the front page of my news aggregator. The findings from the outside investigation of the SBC Executive Committee were damning, to say the least. If you want to read about it, there’s a lot of articles, but suffice to say that I’m thankful the SBC churches pushed to have Guidestone complete this investigation, and I hope the upcoming meeting in June will be utilized to enact many of the recommendations.

We pray this update finds all of you well. Thanks for praying for us and encouraging us in many other ways(including those of you who are sending gifts with my sister next month). We are SO thankful for a network of family and friends all over the world who love us so well.