200606
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Meaningful Work—A nd L ot s of it ! ! "$#&%' $()( *+ )#,#- ./" 0#12 435/762/. 8 9;:'< * 9 /1>= @?BABC DEGF.H IKJ LM NPOQN$N/R2L,STSVU WXY BZ;CB[ F \] ^ _` 3 9 =a 9 =b 9;ced $#21 9f " gihkjBJ&M&U0 l;nmo_@7p B",m qrLs$U BG/B/ & p B",m \4ti '12 ;1- _u k/ B.#V12"v$ &1,#./^ w G#V1-nmo !/ ^#T1-# c %k ' /x#T $ /y _`$ (Kt w G1z 0#7_@ B"v ! f 1T $ 12{7/ w " ^1vp!3| #, m$@t w 12 "v $ o }B !1T{ e_ c w (& oe#2 %Q" 12 t.# /1.~ lmo_u7p "Vm^p ¡ u¢r£x¤@ ¥¦¤¨§ª©Y¤;«¨¬ « We often feel tired and stretched thin. Pray that God will give us wisdom and strength to do what He wants us to do. Pray for Betty Challo, the wife of our registrar. She is seven months pregnant with her first and having signs of premature labor. The baby doesn’t have a chance here if it’s premature. Please pray!
The Joy of Teaching
The Joy of Administration
Teaching is a long, painstaking process and a job that is never done. And yet it is a work which begins bearing fruit quickly, and the worker is sometimes granted the privilege of seeing that his work is making a difference.
When we left the USA for Tanzania, we thought we would be working in theological extension training. However, the needs of the TAG pulled us in another direction.
The first week of May, Bob attended the General Presbytery meeting of the Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG). More than eighty leaders of the church assembled in Dodoma on the campus of Assemblies of God Bible College (AGBC) to discuss issues of reforming the constitution and bylaws of the TAG. As a missionary I was part of the group (Jackie didn’t attend). I enjoyed seeing how the TAG worked through the issues before them in a mature and well-ordered way. A more personal joy was noticing how many of the men in that room had already been my students. Of the eighty-seven or so TAG leaders present, about 10% have been students in my classes and nearly 25% have been under our influence in teaching, administration, speaking in chapel, and ministering in the church on the AGBC campus. It was amazing and eye-opening that after only a year of teaching in Tanzania, we have had the privilege of influencing not only future leaders, but many of the current leaders of the church in this nation.
AGBC-Dodoma, the flagship school of the TAG, started a BA program in the mid1990s. By 2005 that program was facing significant challenges. For a variety of reasons, too few of the students who started were finishing with their BA. I (Bob) was asked to step into administration at AGBC as the Academic Dean of the BA program. I have probably worked more hours in that role than as a teacher, even though I teach at least a full load of classes (and usually more) each school term. Administration seems to be within the scope of the gifts and preparation the Lord has given me, and there are some positive results to report. By working with students who had left AGBC without earning their BA diplomas, the number of official BA graduates from AGBC today is triple the number on the day Jackie and I arrived. God helping us, we are expecting that number to triple again by December of this year. We are grateful to God for putting us in a place where we feel needed and useful and able to operate within our gifts. We are also grateful to the churches and individuals who gave and prayed so that our call to minister in Africa could become a reality. Someday soon the TAG will take on all the work we are doing, but not today. In the meantime we hope you will be pleased with what we are doing and continue to support us. Left: Our yard before the rain. See story, page 2.
More Joy to Come Rev. Ranwell Mwenisongole, the General Superintendent of the Tanzania Assemblies of God, announced at the end of last year that the TAG would have an MA program in Bible and Theology operating at AGBCDodoma by 2007. By announcing it publicly, he put a lot of pressure on the TAG Education Department (not to mention the missionaries) to make it happen. This is a challenge, especially to Bob, who will be asked to accept much of the responsibility of preparing for and administering this new program in addition to his other responsibilities. At the same time, it is an opportunity to meet a real need: there is only one evangelical graduate program in Tanzania, operated by Lutherans, and it is not affordable or suitable for TAG pastors. Future instructors in the BA program currently have to leave the country (leaving their families behind) to earn their MA or M.Div. degrees. We are working with Global University and others to make this happen.
And Now the News... This leads to some news. Because of starting the MA program in 2007, Jackie and I will need to extend our time in Tanzania for 6 months, coming home in December rather than June of 2007. Since the plan for getting the MA program started assumes our presence, and we can't realistically start the first classes until October of 2007, coming home in June would really throw a wrench in the works. So although we miss our loved ones and are eager to come home, we are hoping to get the MA up and going before we leave Tanzania.
It Rained! T h ank s f o r P r ay ing ! A starved cow, so thin there was no meat, skinned for the value of the hide. (Picture by AG Missionary Rick Heugel, Feb., 2006).
In a previous e-mail, our prayer request was for rain. The time of the usual rainy season had come and gone without rain. The price of staple One month later: our back yard. foods, especially corn meal, had doubled. Crops and grasses were dead and dry, and cattle were starving to death. People were hungry, and because the time of the rains had passed, without hope. Yet we had hope, and even faith, that God was going to send rain. Sometimes God gives us supernatural faith, and this was my experience. I asked for prayer from back home, then led prayer for rain at the AGBC chapel. A few days later I stood in the rain and let it hit me in the face like kisses from heaven.
Above: A rainstorm sweeping across the Serengeti.
There are still areas that need more rain, but in our area (the Serengeti and south) our prayers have been answered and God has helped us. Thanks for standing with us in prayer!
Teaching in Africa Both Bob and Jackie have had the joy, this school term, of opening the world to our students. The Tanzania school system is built on the British model. There is a comprehensive test after primary school and only those who score well have the opportunity to study at the secondary level. Those who do study at the secondary level are allowed to choose four subjects which they will study in depth, and mostly ignore any other subjects. As a result they have no high-school level exposure at all to some of the subjects we take for granted in the USA, including some which are part of the general education requirements for the BA in Bible and Theology here at AGBC-Dodoma. Our students are very intelligent--the outstanding candidates from all over Tanzania--but sometimes they are completely in the dark about technical subjects or aspects of life outside Tanzania. Photos: 1st year degree students
Jackie is currently teaching 4 classes: Old Testament Survey, Foundations of Health, Studies in Physical Science, and Introduction to Missions. In Physical Science she faces the challenge of giving a general college-level overview of Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, and Meteorology, in 9 weeks, to students who mostly avoided all these subjects in high school. The downside of this in terms of potential frustration is obvious, but the joy of it is that Jackie gets to be the one to explain how things work to students who never understood it before. She gets to see the wonder in their faces when she talks about the size of the universe and the distance to the nearest star, or why living at the equator as we do is different from living in other parts of the globe. Earlier this week, one student asked, "Is it true that there are places where the sun never comes up for more than a month?" He had been exposed to this idea in a literature class, through a story set in the Yukon, and wouldn't believe it until Jackie explained it to him in terms of the tilt of the earth's axis. This school term, Bob is teaching Fundamentals of Music, Church Administration, Communicating Christ CrossCulturally, and Intro to Computers. Bob redesigned the Intro to Computers course to fit the reality of Africa. Students don't have their own computers, but they have access to inexpensive Internet Cafe computers in any major town in the country. Also they don't have money for books, so they mostly borrow books during their studies and then leave school without a personal library of Bible and Theology materials to draw on. The new version of the computer course introduces students to a small library they can take with them on CD and use at any Internet Cafe computer. It also shows them how to use the many resources on the Internet to make up for their lack of books. Students are coming alive before our eyes. It's as if they were stranded on an intellectual island and suddenly they've been shown a bridge to the rest of the world. They are awestruck, empowered, and grateful. What a novelty it is to teach students who are grateful! Some have been almost to the point of tears; one student couldn't contain himself and grabbed my hand and kissed it. I wish I could bottle some of their response and send back to my sister who teaches in the USA. [If you know of a file that ought to be added to their CD library, email me!]
Personal News Between last school term and this one, my (Jackie’s) mom and dad (Soderbergs) came out to see us for two weeks—it was great to see them, and I hope we did not wear them out too badly. They were at our house only 2-3 days out of the 2 weeks. We drove to Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, which took a while to drive to and then see. We saw lots of animals though, and saw some great sights. I think it was worth all the driving.
Above: Jackie’s dad riding through the Serengeti (note the zebra out the window); Jackie and her mom in our yard. Center: We saw part of the wildebeest migration. Below: Elephants enjoying the green grass after the rains.
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!
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Meaningful Work—A nd L ot s of it ! ! "$#&%' $()( *+ )#,#- ./" 0#12 435/762/. 8 9;:'< * 9 /1>= @?BABC DEGF.H IKJ LM NPOQN$N/R2L,STSVU WXY BZ;CB[ F \] ^ _` 3 9 =a 9 =b 9;ced $#21 9f " gihkjBJ&M&U0 l;nmo_@7p B",m qrLs$U BG/B/ & p B",m \4ti '12 ;1- _u k/ B.#V12"v$ &1,#./^ w G#V1-nmo !/ ^#T1-# c %k ' /x#T $ /y _`$ (Kt w G1z 0#7_@ B"v ! f 1T $ 12{7/ w " ^1vp!3| #, m$@t w 12 "v $ o }B !1T{ e_ c w (& oe#2 %Q" 12 t.# /1.~ lmo_u7p "Vm^p ¡ u¢r£x¤@ ¥¦¤¨§ª©Y¤;«¨¬ « We often feel tired and stretched thin. Pray that God will give us wisdom and strength to do what He wants us to do. Pray for Betty Challo, the wife of our registrar. She is seven months pregnant with her first and having signs of premature labor. The baby doesn’t have a chance here if it’s premature. Please pray!
The Joy of Teaching
The Joy of Administration
Teaching is a long, painstaking process and a job that is never done. And yet it is a work which begins bearing fruit quickly, and the worker is sometimes granted the privilege of seeing that his work is making a difference.
When we left the USA for Tanzania, we thought we would be working in theological extension training. However, the needs of the TAG pulled us in another direction.
The first week of May, Bob attended the General Presbytery meeting of the Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG). More than eighty leaders of the church assembled in Dodoma on the campus of Assemblies of God Bible College (AGBC) to discuss issues of reforming the constitution and bylaws of the TAG. As a missionary I was part of the group (Jackie didn’t attend). I enjoyed seeing how the TAG worked through the issues before them in a mature and well-ordered way. A more personal joy was noticing how many of the men in that room had already been my students. Of the eighty-seven or so TAG leaders present, about 10% have been students in my classes and nearly 25% have been under our influence in teaching, administration, speaking in chapel, and ministering in the church on the AGBC campus. It was amazing and eye-opening that after only a year of teaching in Tanzania, we have had the privilege of influencing not only future leaders, but many of the current leaders of the church in this nation.
AGBC-Dodoma, the flagship school of the TAG, started a BA program in the mid1990s. By 2005 that program was facing significant challenges. For a variety of reasons, too few of the students who started were finishing with their BA. I (Bob) was asked to step into administration at AGBC as the Academic Dean of the BA program. I have probably worked more hours in that role than as a teacher, even though I teach at least a full load of classes (and usually more) each school term. Administration seems to be within the scope of the gifts and preparation the Lord has given me, and there are some positive results to report. By working with students who had left AGBC without earning their BA diplomas, the number of official BA graduates from AGBC today is triple the number on the day Jackie and I arrived. God helping us, we are expecting that number to triple again by December of this year. We are grateful to God for putting us in a place where we feel needed and useful and able to operate within our gifts. We are also grateful to the churches and individuals who gave and prayed so that our call to minister in Africa could become a reality. Someday soon the TAG will take on all the work we are doing, but not today. In the meantime we hope you will be pleased with what we are doing and continue to support us. Left: Our yard before the rain. See story, page 2.
More Joy to Come Rev. Ranwell Mwenisongole, the General Superintendent of the Tanzania Assemblies of God, announced at the end of last year that the TAG would have an MA program in Bible and Theology operating at AGBCDodoma by 2007. By announcing it publicly, he put a lot of pressure on the TAG Education Department (not to mention the missionaries) to make it happen. This is a challenge, especially to Bob, who will be asked to accept much of the responsibility of preparing for and administering this new program in addition to his other responsibilities. At the same time, it is an opportunity to meet a real need: there is only one evangelical graduate program in Tanzania, operated by Lutherans, and it is not affordable or suitable for TAG pastors. Future instructors in the BA program currently have to leave the country (leaving their families behind) to earn their MA or M.Div. degrees. We are working with Global University and others to make this happen.
And Now the News... This leads to some news. Because of starting the MA program in 2007, Jackie and I will need to extend our time in Tanzania for 6 months, coming home in December rather than June of 2007. Since the plan for getting the MA program started assumes our presence, and we can't realistically start the first classes until October of 2007, coming home in June would really throw a wrench in the works. So although we miss our loved ones and are eager to come home, we are hoping to get the MA up and going before we leave Tanzania.
It Rained! T h ank s f o r P r ay ing ! A starved cow, so thin there was no meat, skinned for the value of the hide. (Picture by AG Missionary Rick Heugel, Feb., 2006).
In a previous e-mail, our prayer request was for rain. The time of the usual rainy season had come and gone without rain. The price of staple One month later: our back yard. foods, especially corn meal, had doubled. Crops and grasses were dead and dry, and cattle were starving to death. People were hungry, and because the time of the rains had passed, without hope. Yet we had hope, and even faith, that God was going to send rain. Sometimes God gives us supernatural faith, and this was my experience. I asked for prayer from back home, then led prayer for rain at the AGBC chapel. A few days later I stood in the rain and let it hit me in the face like kisses from heaven.
Above: A rainstorm sweeping across the Serengeti.
There are still areas that need more rain, but in our area (the Serengeti and south) our prayers have been answered and God has helped us. Thanks for standing with us in prayer!
Teaching in Africa Both Bob and Jackie have had the joy, this school term, of opening the world to our students. The Tanzania school system is built on the British model. There is a comprehensive test after primary school and only those who score well have the opportunity to study at the secondary level. Those who do study at the secondary level are allowed to choose four subjects which they will study in depth, and mostly ignore any other subjects. As a result they have no high-school level exposure at all to some of the subjects we take for granted in the USA, including some which are part of the general education requirements for the BA in Bible and Theology here at AGBC-Dodoma. Our students are very intelligent--the outstanding candidates from all over Tanzania--but sometimes they are completely in the dark about technical subjects or aspects of life outside Tanzania. Photos: 1st year degree students
Jackie is currently teaching 4 classes: Old Testament Survey, Foundations of Health, Studies in Physical Science, and Introduction to Missions. In Physical Science she faces the challenge of giving a general college-level overview of Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, and Meteorology, in 9 weeks, to students who mostly avoided all these subjects in high school. The downside of this in terms of potential frustration is obvious, but the joy of it is that Jackie gets to be the one to explain how things work to students who never understood it before. She gets to see the wonder in their faces when she talks about the size of the universe and the distance to the nearest star, or why living at the equator as we do is different from living in other parts of the globe. Earlier this week, one student asked, "Is it true that there are places where the sun never comes up for more than a month?" He had been exposed to this idea in a literature class, through a story set in the Yukon, and wouldn't believe it until Jackie explained it to him in terms of the tilt of the earth's axis. This school term, Bob is teaching Fundamentals of Music, Church Administration, Communicating Christ CrossCulturally, and Intro to Computers. Bob redesigned the Intro to Computers course to fit the reality of Africa. Students don't have their own computers, but they have access to inexpensive Internet Cafe computers in any major town in the country. Also they don't have money for books, so they mostly borrow books during their studies and then leave school without a personal library of Bible and Theology materials to draw on. The new version of the computer course introduces students to a small library they can take with them on CD and use at any Internet Cafe computer. It also shows them how to use the many resources on the Internet to make up for their lack of books. Students are coming alive before our eyes. It's as if they were stranded on an intellectual island and suddenly they've been shown a bridge to the rest of the world. They are awestruck, empowered, and grateful. What a novelty it is to teach students who are grateful! Some have been almost to the point of tears; one student couldn't contain himself and grabbed my hand and kissed it. I wish I could bottle some of their response and send back to my sister who teaches in the USA. [If you know of a file that ought to be added to their CD library, email me!]
Personal News Between last school term and this one, my (Jackie’s) mom and dad (Soderbergs) came out to see us for two weeks—it was great to see them, and I hope we did not wear them out too badly. They were at our house only 2-3 days out of the 2 weeks. We drove to Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, which took a while to drive to and then see. We saw lots of animals though, and saw some great sights. I think it was worth all the driving.
Above: Jackie’s dad riding through the Serengeti (note the zebra out the window); Jackie and her mom in our yard. Center: We saw part of the wildebeest migration. Below: Elephants enjoying the green grass after the rains.
