My last night in Africa

Here's the side of a preschool just down from Cory & Kim's house. You may have to click to enlarge and see the problem. But in fairness, they don't have a lot of them in Tanzania.

Cory and I will leave the house at 6:45 a.m. tomorrow and drive to the airport here in Mbeya for my 9:00 a.m. flight to Dar es Salaam, 90 minutes away. My flight to Amsterdam leaves at 11:05 p.m.
Yeah, I'll spend over 12 hours in that small airport doing I-don't-know-what. Oh well. I could take a cab and go into the city, but I've been told Dar traffic is horrible and going anywhere would cost me $50 in cab fare. So hanging out at the airport is my preferred option.

Once I do the 10-hour flight to Amsterdam I'll have a 2 1/2 hour layover and then my 11 hour flight to Portland where, once I've been through customs, Pam will meet me at baggage carousel #10.
YES!!

So, before I turn in for the night some pictures:

Here's an interior of the church from last night's post. Cory took this and emailed it to me today. When the church has enough money they'll brick all the way to the roof and enlarge the wall openings and put glass in them.
No time soon. It's a very poor church.








We ran some errands this morning, including a stop at "the market." It's mostly vegetables, but also has some woven baskets and pottery for sale.

Cory got some fruit and vegetables (that's him leaning against the fender) while I wandered around and vendors tried to sell me stuff.

On the road behind the market were some shops, including one that sold shirts. I'm building a collection as I travel - a shirt and hat from each country. I got this soccer jersey and shorts for $10. At that price they don't have to be very good, tho they seem like decent quality.


Back to the pastors' conference. I did two topics for the conference, leading off each morning with a session on dispensational theology for 90 minutes. After that they did the standard TZ tea time, which is about a 30-minute break for sweetened tea and a plain roll. Then Pastor Jeff Seekins from Tipp City, OH did a session on eschatology, followed immediately by my look at leadership in the local church. Then lunch (that's a post in itself), after which Jeff did a session on Ephesians.

Note: All meals here are preceded by hand washing. Someone, usually a woman, pours water from a pitcher over your hands as you rub them together, the water falling into a bowl she holds underneath your hands. 

In one of the leadership sessions I talked about what it means to be a servant-leader. That's an issue here in TZ where most who hold a leadership position see themselves as superior and worthy of preferential treatment, the opposite of how the Bible calls leaders to see themselves. Since this session preceded lunch I had Pastor Jeff and I do the hand washing bit out on the steps. It's a big deal for two white guys to come from America to teach - they are treated with great respect - so this was an effort to model servanthood.

You'll notice that the water is going into a flower pot instead of a bowl.
I don't know if this exercise had the desired effect, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The most fun was washing the hands of the adorable little kids who came with their mothers.

I'd had my hands washed like this many times over the course of the earlier seminar in Mbeya, after the service at church that Sunday, and on previous days here at the seminar. But after doing it in this way I decided not to have my hands washed anymore. Not because I have a problem with the custom, but because for the first time I got a look inside the bucket with the water. You can see it in the picture here on the left side of the page. Note the very brown color of the water. With 2" left in the bottom of that bucket it was so dirty I couldn't see the bottom of that bucket. Yeah, nothing on my hands was dirtier than that water.