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