Kusini Congregation 2009

Here is a recently taken picture of our congregation just shortly before the departure of our beloved local missionaries Scott and July Freedlun. Behind you can see the extendable kingdom hall in all its glory.

We hope to bring you coverage of the dedication of the kingdom hall before long.

Since we’ve been in Arusha Kusini we’ve seen spectacular growth. In November 2006 shortly before we joined their ranks there were just 38 publishers, but recently the figure rose as high as 75, with many new publishers from the field swelling our numbers.

Goodbye Charles and Sonya

Charles and Sonya have been with us for nearly two years during two stints with us here in Arusha. We were very sad to say goodbye to them in July – indeed, the whole congregation was sorry to see them go.

Both Sonya and Charles worked hard with the Swahili language during their time here, and both of them conducted many bible studies with interested people. Charles was very busy too in the congregation – after Scott and July Freedlun left for California in March, Charles began serving as the coordinator of Kusini’s body of elders.

But more than these things we became very close to them as friends, especially when they moved into Kusini congregation and into a house not far from ours. They showed warm hospitality and gave me a lot of training as an elder. We had some marvellous conversations about spiritual things.

We’ll miss your pizza and your bolognese, and your smiles.

We hope dearly that you’ll be invited to Gilead school before long and that perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll be assigned here to Arusha!

Missionary Home Progress

Perhaps you were aware that our extendable kingdom hall was on a plot rather larger than the hall itself.

The Governing Body decided some time ago that the space was to be used to construct a home for Arusha’s missionaries. Since the spring Tony and Ann Porter, our friends from South Africa, as well as two couples from Wales, Glen and Jo Cole and Dan and Kim Bath, have been with us helping with the construction work.

The work has been moving on apace. When we left in May for Blighty the foundations were nearly complete. When we returned the walls were nearly complete.

Now the roof is complete, the walls have been drylined and painted and they’ve started first-fix electrical installation and tiling. The house is straightforward in its design but built to a very high standard. Each missionary couple will have a room about six metres square which includes an en suite bathroom and a walk-in wardrobe. There’s a laundry, a large open plan public area used as a dining room and living room, with the kitchen facilities at one end. There’s a large generator for power outages and water storage facilities for when the water gets cut off.

Tony, project overseer, shows the Muxlows what they’ll be missing out on since they were reassigned to Moshi

The unfinished kitchen

 

Tiffany Karshnick keeps a low profile

‘Choncho’

There’s also been some changes to the missionary team. Our circuit overseer Rick Stringer and his wife Malin have completed two years with our circuit now and they are staying for the moment. Mika and Hanna Santikko are still here, our Finnish friends who graduated from a recent Gilead class. Last month they were joined by Todd and Michelle Hodgins, whose acquaintances we renewed at the English Special Assembly Day.

Angela Wendy Dowds 1943-2009

Angela Wendy Dowds, my dear mother, died yesterday evening (November 5) in her home. Feel free to email the family with any messages of condolence.

Pioneer School 2009

The Karshnick Family: all four invited to pioneer school; youngest, Kevin, only 14, already pioneering over 2 years.

Public transport witnessing – special training!

Lickle birdy wants spiritual food, but turned away due to dress code

Avril and I were thrilled to be invited to pioneer school in English in Dar es Salaam in the month of September. I only qualified on Avril’s coat-tails – I wouldn’t have qualified to attend a second time officially for another year, but there’s a special dispensation for married couples.

Eighteen pioneers were present, including ones from eleven different nations, all working hard in the ministry here in Tanzania. Most of them are based in Dar, with the exception of two Danish girls Helle and Charlotte, who are based in Moshi, 70 miles or so from Arusha.

The school was a very special opportunity to refresh ourselves, and attend a pioneer school that catered for the very special territory here in Tanzania, whilst also being able to follow in English. Such classes have been held only once before in Tanzania, so it was a really special privilege.

The two instructors are both circuit overseers here, both Gilead-trained missionaries serving in Dar with their wives. So it was quite inspiring to benefit from their experience of ministry here.

We managed to have fun too though! It wasn’t all serious. We had a ‘pioneer school beach day’ in the middle weekend, and stayed in the branch for a couple of nights also. At the end of the school Avril and I went to a quiet beach resort and set up our tent, camping for a couple of nights before returning home. There’s no beach in Arusha, 500 miles from the coast, so we have to seize the day!

Tarengire Safari 2009

With Graham White visiting us for a couple of weeks, our social lives have undergone a bit of a renaissance. Naturally he was keen to go on safari, and we were able to negotiate a special price since we send so much business in the companies’ direction, so we too went along.

Tarengire is said to be especially good after long periods of drought, because the animals group together wherever water is still available.

I posted a few of our photographs for you. We were particularly fortunate to witness a female lion making a kill. It’s rare enough, but you’ll see from our photos that the lioness was pregnant, and opted to smother the poor wildebeest rather than going for the jugular. It took some time, and was obviously rather draining for the lion. (Come to think of it, it was very draining indeed for the wildebeest.)

Elephants have been actually eating the bark of this tree.

a Dik-dik

1 Peter 5:8 – can you spot her?

There she goes!

Ouch!

Carrying her young.

Hackfall

Whilst in the UK John and Monica Moonie (the in-laws) and Avril and I had a smashing day out to Hackfall. We had a lovely walk in the countryside and spend some time together.

READY

May’s last minute photos

Yeah, we’re off to England in just a few days now – we’ll be in Blighty by first thing on Friday morning. And we’re looking forward to it now too.

In the meantime, please enjoy the following pictures. I apologise for the poor quality – my phone has a poor camera in it, but I always have it with me, you see.

Progress on the missionary home site

Yeah, our friendly build team have broken ground a few weeks ago. Concrete has been poured for the footing, which is pretty deep and very solid looking, reinforced with pre-fab box sections of re-bar. Now the foundation is being build up using breeze blocks. I suppose by the time we get back to Tanzania it’s possible that the walls will be erected as high as the ring beam over the windows.

Rick Stringer, our CO and local missionary brother

Yeah, Rick and Malin Stringer’s visit finished yesterday. Rick is an experienced missionary with 26 years of missionary service behind him. Rick went to Gilead as a single brother, one of the last bachelors to be invited. Just a few short years ago, whilst in his assignment here in Tanzania, he met Malin, a Swedish need-greater, and they got married.

The visit was a great success, with plenty of support for the field ministry. 102 people attended the public talk, and we heard that our congregation has reached 72 publishers, including 7 completely new publishers since the last visit in November. Our publishers average over 14 hours in the field service, and on average conduct 1.5 studies each – not including the pioneers. (The regular pioneers’ average is nearly 8 studies.)

Avril taking her life in her hands

This was a snap from our field ministry. You may imagine that we were in the ‘rurals’ here, but no, this really is quite an urban location, ten minutes’ walk from the Kingdom Hall. Avril and I were preaching together during the circuit visit last week.

Jofrey Joshua

Jofrey is nearest the centre of the picture, holding the small child.

On previous occasions I have written about my student Joshua, and mentioned his 18-year-old son Jofrey. Joshua, as some readers may remember, was attending nearly all the meetings and becoming quite keen to publish himself, but finally gave in to opposition from his wife and has now returned to finding new ways to feed his 6 children. Life is hard, but I still feel sad that he couldn’t find a way to put the kingdom first.

Just as this was happening, Avril noticed that his eldest son Jofrey was becoming interested, and it took her a while to convince me that he was worth studying with. Finally, on her advice, we began the study together. One difficulty in particular is that, like many young people here, he studies at school six days a week, and the only day free is Sunday – prime time for bible studies with many in our territory.

His progress became manifest, and though he doesn’t often make it to Thursday meetings, I was thrilled when Jofrey was accepted as a congregation publisher. So he is now one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, with the privilege of bearing His name and talking to people himself about the good news of the kingdom, as all Christians are meant to do.

I double-booked myself with Joffrey and my other publisher student on Sunday, and so Lucas assisted with Joffrey’s study, then Joffrey assisted with Lucas’. We did the studies at the kingdom hall, as is my custom on Sundays. We had a good laugh, then the three of us went to look for two other students out in the field.

Avril and I are happy about this for a personal reason too. After a couple of years struggling with the language and the culture, we feel we are both beginning to make an impact in our territory (with a lot of help from the local brothers and sisters.) Jofrey is the first study that we’ve started ourselves that has taken the step of preaching. A rewarding morale booster for both of us.

Culcha, init!

It’s funny the things you miss when you’re far from home. Often, you don’t even notice them until you get them once more.

Avril and I have long had a fondness for music, and especially live music, of practically any kind. Though I lost any taste I once had for rowdy rock concerts, a little bit of real live musical entertainment is a treat.

There isn’t really anything like that around these parts, that we know of. Few people take the time to learn to play an instrument – certainly, it would be the preserve only of the rich and the determined.

Our team of builders includes two British brothers, along with their wives, and both of the brothers are rather talented musicians. Glenn Cole plays the guitar and sings, while Dan Bath plays drums. Though there isn’t a proper drum kit available, Dan makes do with a few little drums.

Valerie and Glen Corey dance to one number

Claire joins in with her flute

On Tuesday night Charles and Sonya invited us round to their house, where the build team is staying, and we all appreciated their renditions of our favourite numbers from Blighty. Claire Salvage, a sister involved in the kingdom hall build projects and who travels throughout Africa with her husband Mark, joined in with her flute.

We haven’t had a treat like that for some time, and we enjoyed it more than we expected. The concert went on until fairly late in the evening, but we were sad when we went our separate ways that evening. We hope we’ll be able to do it again before too long.

Things we miss from Blighty

Yeah, our trip home is now only two weeks away, and we’re looking forward to it quite a lot. Avril was home in June last year, but I haven’t been home since Dad died in August 2007 – nearly two years.

There aren’t too many things that you can’t buy here, but some staple items you would buy in the UK we can’t afford here. Butter is about £2.50/lb here, though milk is not expensive. Yes, we’re working on preparing our own! Cheese is another thing. Cheddar is available, as well as a slightly out of the ordinary locally prepared Gouda. Neither are particularly nice or cheap. We certainly can’t afford the brie, camembert, stilton, or roquefort that we so enjoy.

Another complaint is that crisps (potato chips) just aren’t the same here. Pringles are available and not too expensive, but for some reason any other kind tends to be a bit soggy when you get them. We’ve perfected the art of home-made salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps, but we’re looking forward to crinkle cut, Discos, Doritos and other flavours too.

Avril says she misses fruity yoghurts. She makes yoghurt every week from fresh local milk – bought still warm from the farmer. But it’s just not the same somehow. (She likes that ‘factory’ taste, I suppose.)

The chocolate here, some of which actually bears the Cadbury’s logo, is grainy and lacks chocolaty-ness, defeating the purpose somewhat. One of the major items brought to us from Britain by guests has been chocolate, as well as good ground coffee. It surprises many to hear that. You see, Starbucks buys all the best coffee from here and we can’t afford it. Mars bars, Bournville, Lindt dark chocolate and so on are amongst ‘most missed items’ too.

The beer here is good, though it has nearly doubled in price in the nearly three years we’ve been here. Local varieties are called Kilimanjaro, Safari and Castle, and there’s a Guinness franchise as well. Tastes nothing, nothing like Guinness back home but I still love it. It tastes of marmite. We’ll still be queuing in Tesco’s with San Miguel, Guinness and maybe even Scotch.

Number one, though, on the missed list, is undoubtedly Red Wine. We only buy red wine once every six weeks or so, and save it for special occasions. We sometimes make a bottle last three nights. It’s usually from South Africa and is not too bad, though it beats me why no one takes advantage of the ideal climate here to grow wine grapes.

So if any of you, our readers, sees us in Tesco over the month of June, you’ll no doubt predict the bizarre combination of items that’ll be in our baskets!

English Lessons

As we mentioned, our newly-secured visas stipulate that we actually do some volunteer work, and I’ve found myself teaching an elementary level English class.

The class has up to fifteen students in it, and they’re all adults. The average attendance is about ten, and consists mainly of workers who are associated in some way to the work of the charity. There’s a pastor in the class from a local church. The lady who runs the charity for whom the class is held gave him a dressing down one day. She’s one of Avril’s bible students, though she herself is a Muslim. Overhearing the pastor trying to give doctrinal advice to someone there at her office, she interrupted, saying, ‘If you’re really going to give advice about the bible, you need to sit down at the feet of one of Jehovah’s Witnesses first and learn!’ Though of Islamic persuasion, she was keenly aware of the inaccuracy of his ‘Christian’ teaching. In many vocations, including the clergy, people are not as qualified even as they might be in the UK. I have no doubt that there are clergymen here that have never received any structured vocational tuition at all.

In each of the two weekly one-hour lessons I teach I try to keep the students involved. So we play games, do involving exercises, and work in pairs. This helps to make sure that shrinking violets in the class receive less practice than others. A game some may remember from their childhood, ‘Simon Says’ is ideal for teaching verbs, and is endlessly expandable. We play bingo to help with numbers. The students prepare their own flashcards to help them remember nouns. The hour always seems very short. I am also instructed to give the students plenty of homework, and I am happy to oblige with this. Two hours’ language tuition is not really enough without zealous private study and practise.