Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Life in Mbeya’ Category

Although churches are numerous in Mbeya, Tanzania, the sizes of the congregations usually don’t surpass double digits in count… on Sunday morning. Tonight, we went to our first Sunday evening service since about 2006. The church tonight was Northside Baptist in Charlotte, the same place whom has so graciously put us up in their missions house for the duration of our furlough. Northside has a large sanctuary that can seat over 1000 people. Tonight, there were about 150 people. In that space, the crowd looked small and in that regard, I became slightly somber.

Then, I remembered the land, the culture from where I just came. A gathering of believers this size was an extremely infrequent thing. As a matter of fact, there was not a single time over the 2 year span we spent in Tanzania at which we sat among a group this size who all spoke English as their native language.

So, was this really a somber event in that there was a small group in church tonight? No. There was a big group there tonight… and it was really, really nice.

In Mbeya when we left, the sun was fully set by 7pm. I mean dark all the way. We landed in NC within a day or two of the longest of the year, not dark until well after 9pm. Couple that with the same sun effect in London (was still light when we reached our hotel at 10:30pm) and you’ve got whackey people!
Eyes say to body, “Why are you so tired?”

I don’t know what this kind is technically called but my vote is Tanzanian Tiger Moth.

One of the flowers in our garden in Mbeya. The normal colors are a rich red and a stark white.

An evening moon over Mbeya.

Lots and lots of stuff. We are truly American!  To be sure we’ll be able to drive the car to Dar with all of our stuff, we did a -Will it fit?- dry run of packing up the car.  All of it fit… after four different attempts.  The main purpose of these photos isn’t to show you what it looked like but for me to remember how I got it all in.  Here’s a list of what you see:

UofM large duffle bag
Large red garment bag
Large green duffle bag
Stroller
Infant car seat
Smaller gray carry-on
Small brown carry-on
Very large burgundy suitcase
Large Red suitcase
Two large purple Rubbermaid containers
Large gray plastic container

(Not pictured; still left to fit into the small spaces)
Toddler car seat
My laptop bookbag
Dana’s laptop shoulder bag
Asher’s backpack
Diaper bag
Dana’s purse
Camera bag
Traveling food
Jonathan
Dana
Asher

Floor to ceiling.

Closer look from the rear.

Closer look from the rear.

Left rear passenger door view.

The luggage hole for Asher’s car seat.

Barbed wire and posts that eventually heightened our home security.