Some Pictures!

Hello friends and family, here are some pictures from our trip so far. Now that we have internet in the city, I will be uploading new pictures about every two weeks. Take a look:

Sir Issack Newton using one of the cameras I brought. They have been using the cameras to document everything.

We call him Dr. Issack because he is going to be a doctor one day in the future. His knowledge of Biology is amazing.

David Focas recovering from Malaria. He had a particularly bad case and had to be hospitalized for nine days.

Students fetching water from the river. Those buckets are so heavy.

Juma doing his morning chores at Shamba.

Group picture of all of the students and teachers and staff at Shamba. I had to stand precariously on a ladder made with nails and 2x4's to take this picture.

Students working on batik- a very popular craft similar to tie-dye.

Mbeck, one of the smallest at Shamba, during class.

The students love to sing and worship every day.

This crazy bird lives at Shamba and has a tail twice the length of its body. It sings beautiful songs, though.

Thank you for your love and prayers!

Until next time,
Scott!

Yes, we are alive AND well.

Hello friends and family.

We are halfway. (as of Friday)

I must apologise for the loss of contact. We've been out at the shamba for two weeks now. The last time we were in the city we were unable to get an internet connection anywhere.

Tanzania is good. Crazy, but good. There have been many changes at Shamba in the past few weeks, but that's what happens when you're trying to develop a secondary school in a third-world country.

There have been a number of volunteers coming in. The peak wazungu (American) count was 16- way more than we could accomodate. It was tough, but we made it through. A group of high-schoolers from Gainesville (super-short-term-youth-missions) came through for 6 days. Way too short in my opinion, but they fell in love with the place and the students of Hananasif fell in love with them.

Hope Runs has started their running program, which has really surprised me. The girl students especially have really taken to the program, and the volunteers are kind, upbeat, and humble about the conditions. The guest house is pretty much finished. All the remains a bit of touch up paint and some windows.

Life here is completely different than the US, but the fellowship here is amazing. I can certainly see myself working at a place like this some time in the future. There is an atmosphere of learning always, and I have so many people to pray with and talk to. Mr. Pig, one of the teachers, has taken a fire to teaching me Swahili, which has been reletively successful. I can hold conversations, handle my own in the market, and make jokes. It's been pretty incredible.

Chris is doing wonderfully, as always. He killed a snake on Friday- a viper, very poisonous. He has been pressing some pretty remarkable flowers, also. He is at Shamba now while I am in the city to type and print the students' term examinations.

Thank you for the love and patience and prayers. We love you all and cannot wait to see you again.

Love love love,
Scott

(PS- the first place I'm going when I get home is Satchel's. I hope you can join me.)

Paul and Lee are Back!

Paul and I made it back to America. We flew out of Dar at 11:00pm last Thursday and flew into Miami on Friday night. I slept well on the plane, Paul wasn't quite as lucky. Erin and Goat drove us to Gainesville that night and we arrived at about 3am. The cookies and milk was a wonderful snack, thanks Mrs. Benton. I want to thank all of you who came to the welcome home party. It was so excited to see all your faces and here about what is going on on this side of the earth.
I am definitely going to miss Tanzania. I can't wait to get another opportunity to serve over there again. All the kids are amazing. They have a heart full of faith, love, discipline and hope. It was incredible hearing the stories and lives of my new friends. One of my friends, Dennis, took me aside the day before I left to tell me his heart wrenching story, and afterwards he told me not to forget him. I don't think I could forget him or any of them for that matter. Each one of them made such a huge impact on me that I really don't know how to express my thanks.
They are "watoto wa Mungu" (Children of God). They lived it out like no one I have ever seen. It was so beautiful and genuine. I couldn't help but see that God sees me as His child and cares for me as much as he cares for all of his children. God used the my friends in Tanzania to show me what my relationship with God was supposed to look like. So incredibly awesome. It is kind of hard to explain, you really just have to experience it to know what I am talking about.
Let me recap what we did while we were there. After we got acclimated to the time change, culture, schedule of the day, we planned out what we wanted to do and what the next steps were for the Center. We came up with some objectives and goals for our time. Hezekia has such a huge vision for this place and there is so many things that need to happen. It was fun trying to figure out what would work and what was reasonable.
While we were in the city our goals were to:
-Teach the staff computer programs
-Quicken: to keep the budget and finances in order (Joan and Ima now use it)
-CD label and design: for the new CDs and DVDs that they are producing (Ima is theman)
-and basic how to use a computer efficiently
-Interact with the kids to improve their English: we taught them songs and played
games and just hung out with them. awesome!
-teach some of the students computer skills (Kasimu and Omary know how to type
-Share ideas with the staff and students
-build bunks for the new compound (2 were built, more still needed)
-tables for new compound (2 were built, more still needed)
while at the shamba:
-Teach math class
-Teach English class (we focused a lot on writing and grammar)
-work in the garden
-learn to cook Chapate and mandazi
-Teach informally outside of class by just talking in English.
-Teach guitar
-find and purchase and transport material to Shamba
-teachers cottage
-plaster(finished)
-flooring (we filled it with sand and the flooring will go in soon)
-ceiling board (we have the material but not enough time)
-Painting (didn't get that far)
-build bunk beds(2 were complete and 6 more almost ready for assembly)
-classrooms
-electrical wiring put in (complete)
-ceiling board frames (complete)
-ceiling board (we have the material but not enough time)
-Guest house (two bedroom/two bathroom)
-foundation (complete)
-walls (complete)
-roof (complete)
-plaster (complete)
-flooring (we filled it with sand and the cement was to be put in soon after we left)

It was so incredible. Working, studying, and just hanging out with the kids was by far my favorite part of my time there. I want to thank you all for you help in supporting this kids.
We are raising money for the irrigation system through these shirts that rosaloves.com designed and is now selling. So if you want a sweet shirt for an awesome cause go to their website.
Love you guys,

Lee

Beginnings and Endings.

Hello again friends and family.

Scott from Tanzania here. The past week has been wonderful. We've been at the shamba and the weather has been, dare I say it, cool at times. I woke up with a chill on at least two different mornings. The shamba is doing amazing. The guest house is going up so quickly. It may be done in the next two weeks- we'll see. Everyone has been healthy save for the few stomach-aches. Getting used to the oily food here has been difficult for me.

However, the one delicacy that I have come to love is Passionfruit juice, which can be bought by the glass for 30 cents at a bar about two minutes from the city center. It comes cool and bright orange in a tall glass mug with a plastic bendy-straw. I've only had it twice, but I savor it each time. So refreshing. You can feel it resting in your stomach and cooling your innards for at least an hour after consumption. Nothing quite like it.

Sadly, Lee and Paul are leaving for the States tonight. Their flight is at 10:50pm. Everyone is really sad to have them leave, including me. They've had an amazing time here in Tanzania, and it's really cool to see how much they have come to know the students and teachers here. On Tusesday morning at the Shamba, the students gave them a royal farewell complete with songs, speeches, and special prayers. It was very heartfelt.

Evy and Alex from Orlando (UCF) arrived safely in Dar last week and will be working hard on the art program for the next four weeks. We're going to do batik and tie-dye with the students at the shamba.

Chris and I are returning to the Shamba tomorrow. On Saturday I will start filming the drama that the students have created. I'm used to droll high school dramas in the USA, but this one is amazing. They get reallly into it. Hopefully I'll be able to load a preview in the next few weeks, we'll see.

I want to thank everyone for your prayers and kind thoughts. I am out of time on the computer, so I'll update in a week or two.

Love love love,
Scott!

Tumeja! We have arrived.

Chris and I arrived on Thursday night and have been in the city since then. We missed our connecting flight in Zurich and had to stay in the city for a day. Things here are very different than the US. Food and medicine are super cheap, but books cost $40-50. Very backwards from the USA. The first whole day we had here, Chris accidentally drank some kerosene (it was put into an empty water bottle to be used while staining wood.) We had to take him to he hospital where he laid in a room on an IV drip for 1.5 hours, flushing the chemical out of his system. The whole hospital visit and everything cost about $30- at a nice hospital. He was back up on his feet the next day, so all is fine. Thank you for your prayers.

Yesterday we went on a Safari in Mikumi National Park. We saw elephants, baboons, starlings, giraffes, zebra, hippos, and water buffalo. It was pretty amazing. Our friend Noah was our guide; he is in school to become a Safar guide, but so far as I'm concerned, he already is. Instead of paying for a Safari truck, we took a taxi from Morogoro (about an hour from the park) and drove around in that- all five of us (Chris, Paul, Lee, Noah, and I) crammed in tight. It was so much fun.

In about an hour we are going out to the Shamba center. We spent the morning gathering supplies for building bunk beds and desks. We will be working on those for the next 9 days before Paul and Lee take their leave for the USA. The kids are very excited about me filming a drama that they have prepared. The kids are amazed at Chris' arm muscles and insist on arm-wrestling him, ten against one. It is a hilarious sight.

I'm out of time at the Internet Cafe, so no time to load pictures. Talk to you all later.

Love love love,

Scott

Here are some pictures from the first few weeks of our trip.....
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2005785&l=c6946&id=1096920053
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2005692&l=218ea&id=1096920053

Greetings from Dar es Salaam!  We're about halfway through our trip and it has been unreal so far.....
This week has been great. I feel much better thanks to some great antibiotics. :) Thanks for all the prayers from back home. Lee has stayed perfectly healthy, and except for a few days last week, so have I. That has been great.
I've had some time this week to step back and examine where I am. We've been spending most of our time at a big farm on 300 acres about 30 miles outside the city.  We call it the Shamba.  There are about 70 kids there, 5 teachers, me and Lee - and the whole place runs on $90/day.  Crazy.  Hezekiah is trying to make the place entirely self-sustainable.  He has huge dreams.....and man it's so awesome to be a part of them.  God is at work here, no doubt.  He has already blessed this orphanage and grown it out of nothing.  Now there are two centers (the shamba and one in the city), two students are studying in USA w/ host families, there is an agriculture program that is set to generate income, a poultry-prouction program in the works, and Lee and I are working on the 4th and 5th buildings at the farm.  All this from the only secondary school in Tanzania that doesn't charge tuition.....
Lee and I have been working with Keyando installing more frames in the classrooms and ceiling boards in some of the verandas this week. We are still waiting for an electrician to finish his work in the classrooms so we can finish putting the rest of the ceiling boards in. It is a lot of fun working with Keyando. He is a great carpenter. He is amazed at how tall Lee is. Keyando has to climb halfway up a ladder to put nails into the frames, but Lee only has to stand on his toes. It's pretty funny to watch the two working together.
Lee and I worked with Hezekiah on a loose schedule for the remainder of our time at Hananasif. We have a lot we still want to get done, and not a lot of time to do it....please pray that we will manage our time well and work quickly! This week construction has begun on a new guest house. The foundation is already complete and the bricks are drying for the weekend. We've been working on the teacher's cottage with our friend Gabby. It is also coming along quickly.
It has been raining a lot over the last couple of weeks, which makes work and transportation slower. We'll keep working through it, but we are hoping for a good stretch of sunny days soon....
I'm in Dar this week to help move the kids into a new compound a little down the road.  It's bigger than the church we are sharing space with now.  It's also a safer location, and we found a donor who is willing to pay all the costs for the place!  So we're stoked for that.  The kids in the city are younger than the ones at the farm, and most of them don't speak English - but it's so much fun hanging out with them, having arm-wrestling tournaments, playing tag in the middle of a church service, spinning them around in the air by their arms (that's their favorite), and trying to speak Swahili with them.  
We are so amped for Chris and Scott's arrival in just a few days....we can't wait to see them and we're excited to see how God will use them over the next 3 months. Lee and I have been telling the kids about our American friends, and they are excited to meet them too. Can't wait.

faith. hope. love.

-paul

philippians 1:9-11

A Verse and Preparations.

     Hello good friends and family! Christopher Kirchman pointed me to a verse that he described as perfect for our trip. It fits the impact and truth of our mission nearly head on. I think he found the one verse that we will see lived out while in Tanzania. Here it is:

Live under the protection of God Most High

and stay in the shadow of God All-Powerful.

Then you will say to the Lord,

"You are my fortress, my place of safety,

you are my God, and I trust You."

The Lord will keep you safe

from secret traps and deadly diseases.

He will spread his wings over you

and keep you secure.

His faithfulness is like a shield or city wall.

You will not be worried about dangers at night

or arrows during the day.

And you won't fear diseases that strike in the dark

or sudden disaster at noon.

You will not be harmed, though thousands fall around you.

And with your own eyes you will see

the punishment of the wicked

by the Lord Most High, He is your fortress.

Run to Him for safety,

and no terrible disasters will strike you

or your home.

God will command his angels 

to protect you wherever you go.

They will carry you in their arms,

and you won't hurt your feet on the stones.

You will overpower the strongest lions

and the most deadly snakes.

The Lord will say,

"If you love me and truly know who I am,

I will rescue you and keep you safe.

When you are in trouble, call out to me.

I will answer and be there

to protect and honor you.

You will live a long life

and see my saving power."

- Psalm 91

     Lee and Paul are now at the Shamba site with a refreshed stock of building supplies. They are happily busying themselves with installing ceilings in the teacher quarters and classrooms. Lee unfortunately had his wallet snatched while riding the daladala (a small bus usually packed to the brink with people). Luckily he was smart to keep his important documents and belongings in a safer location. Lee and Paul have been teaching Form 1 and Form 2 and doing an awesome job. They will likely be at the Shamba for the next two weeks and therefore will not have a chance to update the blog. I will be in contact with them and keep everyone promptly updated here.

     Chris Kirchman and I are gearing up to leave for Tanzania on May 6th- just 11 short days. We would like to thank everyone for your awesome support. We will be having one more garage sale on Saturday, May 3rd to raise some more support for Hananasif. If you have anything lying about your house that you would like to donate to our garage sale, please call me (Scott) at 352.278.9276. We are so excited to be joining Lee and Paul so soon and we will have a complimentary hug delivery service for anyone who is interested. On a more serious note, if you would like Chris and I to deliver letters to Lee and/or Paul, we would love to make that happen. Just get in touch with us. Thank you again.

Best Regards,

Scott Robertson

4-19-08

This week has been pretty encouraging. Definitely has not gone as expected, but things are going well. We came into the city for a few things and it ended up taking much longer then we expected. We are trying to locate this huge shipment that we sent from America over two months ago and there was some mistake that made the computer say our items are in Bangladesh. But we finally got it resolved and we know where are items are, we just have to get to them now. Pray that that goes smooth.

We got back to the Shamba after a very crowed bus ride from the city to the river. We had a very pleasant 10 kilometer walk through the savannah to the school. The stars were spectacular and the crazy noises we heard were far enough away from us. One of my friends and I switched off carrying 3 gallons of petroleum on our head. That was fun.

Paul and I did some teaching in both form one and form two classes. It is so amazing how eager these kids are to learn. It is like they see something in knowledge that hardly anyone in our high school did. It is definitely a pleaser teaching them.

We were able to plaster for a day. We helped gather the sand from this huge hole, rocks from a pile that they have, and bags of cement from the class room. After mixing it all together, we through it on the wall and spread it out even. It sounds fairly easy. It is so not. There is like a swooping motion that you have to get down before the cement will stick properly. I got lots of cement on my face and I pretty much changed my blue shirt to grey, thanks to the splattering. Exciting.

Thursday afternoon Paul started feeling sick. He went to bed, but that night he wasn’t getting better. Hezekiah decided it would be important to get him to a doctor so that they can treat whatever he has before it gets worse. That’s sounds good and all, but remember, we are out at the shamba and it is night time. The teachers and Hezekia did some calling around and got a motorcycle to come pick us up and take us to the river, then one of the kids paddled us across, then Hezekia met us at the village with a big land rover. After about an hour and a half of very bumpy roads, we got to the doctor and they said it is not malaria. Thank you Jesus. But it is an infection that needs some antibiotics to help fight. So now, Paul is looking much better and feeling close to normal. God is so good. Thank you for your prayers.

So we are at the city center until Monday and it has been cool seeing how God uses us here. We have been able to show some of the staff here a few programs on the computer that will help them tremendously. We have been hanging out with some of the littler kids and they have been teaching us Swahili and we have been teaching them English. We have also gotten the chance to teach them some of our favorite worship songs.

We have a lot to do at the Shamba and we are ready to do it. It has been awesome talking to Hezekia about his dreams for this place. It will definitely take a lot of faith and time, but with God, it is so possible.

Thank you so much for your support and prayers.

We love you all and can’t wait to see you when we return.

Child of God

This week has been amazing. We have done some construction (we are now waiting on more supplies that are coming this weekend), a lot of teaching (mainly math and English), and a whole lot of learning. It is so much fun constantly being in a learning environment. Whether it is learning new swahili words, how to cook the food, or just what needs to be done on a farm everyday, it has been very exciting.
However, one of the biggest things I have learned cam from this song I was learning. It starts out with:

"We praise our God and our Father for blessings us and for giving us the name: Children of God."

I have heard that all my life. We are God’s children. God is our Father. However, it never really clicked for me until earlier this week. One of my new friends was teaching me a song that they sing all the time and we were translating it to English. We kept on saying thank you God for giving us the good name: Children of God. And it really made me think about it. What does that mean? I am a child of God. What dies that entail? That means that God is my Father. That means that God is looking out for me. That means that God is constantly thinking about me and how He can show his strength in my weakness. It means that He has everything I need and He sees me as a whole, complete person. I am complete in Him. When I have the mind set that God has every part of my life, I look at life completely different. These children here seem to have caught that vision. They are constantly looking to God for strength, health, and encouragement. Every morning and every evening they sing their hearts out to Him. Thanking him for giving them the name: Children of God. It is awesome what God uses to reveal His glory to us.
After it clicked in my head and I felt a physical change in how I would handle myself. I was very excited about everything that God had in store for me. It seemed like God opened my eyes to all the encouraging things that happen around me. I know that God has 100% of me. I am a Child of God. Woohooo! Super exciting.

4/11/2008

Let me try to explain the worship. It is 7 pm and it just got dark. There are lots of clouds in the sky and there are no city lights to fight the darkness. Everyone is in the class room standing at their desk, but you can't really see anyone, you just know they are there. So...60 kids standing quiet but not for long. All of a sudden...someone leads out with some awesome sounding song (I have no idea what they are saying I can only pick out Jesus, father, and God, that is about it) and sings solo for about 20 seconds at the top of his/her lungs. Then everyone else joins in and usually echoing the leader. The lead singer has heart, but when the rest of the 59 kids join in it is like a climax of a music concert except there are no fancy lights...wait no lights at all, and no crowd rallying them on, they are the band. I wish we could do something like that in America. They don't care if their voices may not hit the right tune. It is all about the worship of our Father Jesus Christ.

There are a bunch of projects that are on out priorities list: Putting in ceiling board, finishing the teachers quarters, putting up a guest house, and building a new temporary kitchen. Now getting the supplies for these projects is a project in its self. So we went to town on Saturday and did some price checking and comparing. After finding the best prices we purchased timbers, ceiling board, cement, nails, door knobs, and floor toilets. That wasn't that bad, it only took a day. To gather the supplies we hired a truck. We left on Tuesday night to head to the Shamba, we got most of the way there then we got stuck in the river. We tried for about 7.5 hours to get it unstuck and we almost got it, then the engine died. So after heading back to the city in a taxi we left the next morning via three buses. It rained most of the day and all the roads were cluttered with deep puddles. Once we got off the last bus we walk a mile or so to the river, where they finally got the truck out, but they had to unload all of the supplies and the next semi-dry road was about 400 yards down the road. So the boys, Paul and I carried all the supplies through the mud. Oh yeah. We only got stuck about 2 more times in the sand. So as the sun was setting we pulled up to the Shamba. It was amazing. So far we have two rooms framed and ready for ceiling board. The battery powered power tools we brought have helped so much. Thank you guys for pitching in so that we can bring those along.

Some exciting news. Ummm....Form 1 beat Form 2 in a soccer match today. The first time in history. You should have seen these kids in their excitement. It was raining like crazy and the ball was slipping all over the place, but no on ever gave less then 100%. We love playing with them.


-Lee

Week 1

Hello Friends!

We are writing to you from the office of Hananasif Orphanage Center, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania!
We arrived late Sunday night. Everything with the airlines went very well. No problems there ~

We have spent most of our week at the Shamba Center, about 55 Km outside Dar es Salaam. We have been teaching English, math, guitar, and science.

A typical day:
We wake up around 5A.M. and start the day by watching the beauitful sunrise while we collect sand for plaster. We have worship and then we begin classes. There are two class levels, form 1 and Form 2. After about 2 hours of class, we take a break for breakfast, and then classes resume. After classes are over, we have lunch and then free time. This is when we teach guitar (the kids are very excited about it - thanks to all who donated instruments!) and play football. The kids teach us Swahili during this time as well. At 4:00, we have irrigation. We collect water from teh river and irrigate the garden. The river is about 100 yards away. Then we have more worship and eat dinner. The generator turns on at about 8 and powers the lights. We study with the kids, giving special one on one time to students who want help. At about 12:30 we go to bed and rest for the next day!

The worship is incredible. All the kids gather in a classroom and sing their hearts out for 45 minutes. They all have beautiful voices. One student will start a song in Swahili, and all of the others will quickly join in. It is very beautiful.

Our diet consists of a LOT of Ugali and beans :) It is very filling, we have not been hungry yet.

The Shamba is a beautiful place. There are about 70 students there in secondary school.

We have been healthy all week. Last night we returned to the center in Dar, but got caught in a horrible traffic jam. It rained very hard during the day, which turned the dirt road into a mud road. We ended up stopped in traffic for about 3 hours, which included a good stop for a dead batttery. The entire trip took a little over 5 hours!

We will spend the weekend here in the city gathering supplies for construction. Then we will return to the Shamba and begin work.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Pray especially for: Dennis ( the headmaster of the shool ). His baby son just passed away from pneumonia. Dietrich - may be suffering from malaria. Work with the government, that we could get things up and running and licensed as soon as possible.

And if anyone has a spare $20,000 for solar power....it would be greatly appreciated. yo.

-paul and lee

Here we go.....

Lee and I are sitting in the Orlando International Airport, awaiting our 12 hour flight to Amsterdam which is supposed to board at 8:05. We'll have a 24 hour layover (in the snow?.....crazy!) And from there, we will connect for another 12 hour flight to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 

We're really going. It's insane.

Emotions are running crazy for me right now. I hate to leave everyone I love, but I am so ready to go. It's going to be a crazy couple of months. 

Please keep us in your prayers. Things have run so smoothly so far, and we're praying that will continue. 

We're going to be updating our blog  whenever we get internet access and a few minutes to write. Hopefully some pictures will be up there before too long.  So stay tuned!

We are so appreciative of the love and support we have gotten from all of you over the last weeks and months. It makes leaving difficult - but knowing we are supported every step of the way is invaluable. 

Mungubariki Friends! Kwa heri.




-paul

Preparations

Hello friends and family! Welcome to the weblog for the Hananasif 2008 Mission teams. Here we will keep you updated with our progress and goings on in Tanzania.

Lee Gordon and Paul Benton are just 8 short days from leaving for Hananasif. They got their immunizations last week and are getting their packing lists together. We are very excited! They will fly to Amsterdam, wait 24 hours for the next plane, and be in Dar es Salaam by Sunday. They will take over the updates on the blog once they arrive.

Thank you to those of you who have donated guitars for Paul's guitar class at Hananasif. He is looking forward to getting plenty of use out of them and leaving them at Hananasif so the kids can continue to create and enjoy music.

Chris Kirchman and Scott Robertson are leaving for Tanzania on May 6th. They scheduled their immunization appointment for April 1st. Hopefully the clinic won't try to pull any April fool's jokes on them.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for updates from Gainesville and Tanzania. You can subscribe to the blog, also.

God bless!