Richard and I pulled out of Oilcom a few minutes past dawn and after topping off with diesel.  The 2-hour ride to Makambako was uneventful although we were able to listen to two John Piper sermons using my media player.  Our stop in Makambako was necessary to pick up Mchungaji (pastor) Mbogela.  His home was [...]

So I hit the wall of people many cars before I am able to see the dogs.  No choice.  Gotta go.  Long legs help a lot in stepping over people… and their children… and their bags… and a little of everything else they seem to be traveling with by train.
It took me about 15 minutes [...]

Heavy Luggage
I’ll pick up the rest of Mazoezi ya Treni later.  I wanted to show you a shot of what we traveled with to Tanzania.  This is a fully loaded Isuzu Rodeo.  The only space on the inside was a sliver of seat in the back middle for Dana, Asher’s car seat mounted next to [...]

Okay, so I meant the day after the day after tomorrow in my last post. Let’s continue…
There were two guys, one younger one older, in the cargo ‘office’ when I appeared in the doorway. Time to kick in the Swahili memory because Theo and Teddy’s existence may very well depend on it! [...]

Train Exercises
Time to quit unpacking all waken hours of the day and sit down to blog for a minute. Too many cool things happening for me to let them go untyped.
This past Monday morning, we awoke just before 5am to begin loading the taxi bus with our mound ‘o luggage. Out of all [...]

Okay, coming in behind having to leave friends and family when heading back to the mission field, the next worse thing is dealing with packing/luggage.  This is what is traveling onboard with us from Charlotte to Dar es Salaam:
Checked items:
3 suitcases - 68 lbs, 62 lbs, 57 lbs
3 RubberMaid 18 gallon containers - 50 lbs, [...]

Tomorrow morning I’m heading to Waxhaw. That’s where JAARS is located. They’ve got a great shipping department for we Wycliffe folks. When we came back, we didn’t expect to have to send over a pallet-load of baby stuff. We’ve gotten that much. So much actually that the Isuzu Rodeo I’m [...]

Dana and Asher both had doctor appointments today.  Dana and Asher both were found to be in  GREAT health!
Then, about 15 minutes after we got home from the doctors, the doorbell rang.  I answered it and was handed a Priority Mail envelope from our mailman.  It was Asher’s passport!  We applied for it 15 calendar [...]

Most everywhere I’ve traveled in Tanzania over the past 4 1/2 months I’ve had my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx turned on to record my path. I’ve selected all of the best tracks and waypoints and loaded them into a Garmin database which you can download from this link:
www.jonathananddana.com/gps/TZ.gdb
Here are some of the things you’ll find [...]

After being told by KLM/NWA that we needed to handle our problem with Continental and Continental telling us they couldn’t help us and we should take it up with KLM/NWA, drastic measures had to be taken. Hopped on the wireless internet (the only good thing about Newark Int’l Airport so far) and bought us [...]