Final Week Update

Well, time flies when you're having fun . . .

Seems like we just got here, but then we think back over the year and so much has happened.

This last week will be a blur, I'm sure. The days fly by during test week, monitoring the exam rooms all day and by night grading papers/exams, completing sewing projects for students, and preparing to close the house up for 10 weeks.



In addition to the routine of the day and night, students are coming to the house to give us their personal well-wishes in our travel.






Some too, are coming to work in appreciation for services we've given, either helping them with school fees, providing food, or sewing/mending their uniforms.

















Joanne's garden and flower beds are providing work projects. They are hauling water for the carrots we'll never enjoy eating (they'll be harvested and eaten by students and staff while we are gone), harvesting the shell beans that we will live on this next year, repairing the garden fence, and filling the flower beds out front with stones. Anywhere there is not a plant, the chickens come in and dig a hole for dusting. Without the stones, they'd dig up the plant's roots in the process.


Thank you so much for your prayers and financial support!!! The construction of the 20th classroom and laboratory building is taking place as I type this. The students are hauling timbers to the newest 12 classrooms for the installation of ceiling boards. Cement is in the storeroom for the new classroom flooring and chalkboards.

On the spiritual side, Bible Club is a big draw, with over 30 students attending the last meeting...and they are excited about the study of the subjects they chose: Christian character and church unity. In the process of this study, we've learned that Idigima is different than other TZ secondary schools in that our chapel services combine all students. Other schools (government and private that have chapel), allow the students to worship in small groups of their given denomination. One of our Bible Club students passed me a note telling me that he intends to visit other schools to talk with students and headmasters about bringing unity to the Body of Christ. Pray for this effort! Spirit oppression has been minimal of late, of which we are very thankful . . . and we know it is because of our partnering prayer warriors in the States! Thank you!!!

See you soon, Lord willing, for face-to-face fellowship. Be in prayer for our 5-day journey. We'll leave the campus on Tuesday, bus to Dar on Wednesday, fly to London on Friday, and fly to Chicago on Saturday (23rd).

Christian love and hugs to all,

Gary and Joanne Grenell

Shopping

Here is another audio presentation, a narrative in Gary's own voice, telling a story about shopping.

To play back the audio recording, be sure to first turn on the speakers of your computer, and either scroll down the right side of the blog to reach the "Featured Audio Clip" or click on the "Audio Presentations" tab across the top of the blog to open a new page that will eventually hold the archive of all the audio clips.

Enjoy!

John Williams, Your Hands & Feet blogmaster (for the Grenells)

Flutter, Ouch, & Slither

Form Two WINS!!!

Again this year, a competition was held between Forms to see who would get recognition as the best athletes. Forms One and Two had benches twice as deep as Forms Three and Four, so it was not surprising to see the underclassmen matched up in the finals. The first match ended in a tie of two goals each, and we thought there would be a shoot-out to see who would claim the title, but the sun had set.

Because of some contentions about recalled plays and fouls, they decided to have a rematch instead. We were wondering if this was going to be a fair match,

because the Form Two goalie had visited our house after the first game with pain in his side . . . possible cracked rib. However, Form Two showed their stuff convincingly in the rematch, winning three to zero!

In time for the festivities was and the Regional competition was the latest of Joanne’s sewing accomplishments, an Idigima school flag. It was well-received . . .

and quickly claimed by the Headmaster to hang in his office when not in use at sports events.





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Needed: First Aid supplies

It has fallen to Joanne over the years to tend to the cuts, bruises, and various other ills that befall our students and staff. We’d been thinking they weren’t so frequent during this tour, but in the last couple of months it has picked up, reminding us that our NEEDS LIST this year must include more Band-Aids (large 1 ¾ x 4 and medium), peroxide, cotton balls, Q-tips, medical tape and medium Ace-Wraps.

Ear aches are common, and we usually find that they are packed with dust, oil and soap.

Bikes and motorcycles are the cause of most injuries we’ve seen of late. One of the teachers was on a transport motorcycle that spilled; he was blessed to come out of it with only a sore leg and a scraped forearm.

The more serious injuries have been to passengers on bicycles coming down the rocky mountain road. This boy came to the door with a couple of friends, his white school shirt soaked in blood. Gary did laundry while Joanne cleaned and bandaged his head.

Most recently, we felt like a trauma unit when a half dozen boys brought three of their friends, one being carried. Two boys on a bike had collided with a pedestrian student on their way to school. The bike passenger was sent head-first into the road and bit through his upper lip, breaking some teeth.

Showing signs of head trauma, we sent him to the hospital/dispensary in Iyula-A via motorcycle.

All of the boys had multiple scrapes and gouges on their hands, knees, shins, arms and shoulders.






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EEEEEEK!!! A SNAKE!!!

Just when you start to let down your guard, another one of these things shows up on campus and stirs things up! With a student body that is roughly two girls to every boy, you can imagine the stir this thing raised when it came slithering through campus during evening study time.

The security guard dispatched it quickly…and then brought it to our house to see if we wanted to eat it. (You may recall that at the end of our first tour, teachers brought a big, fat cobra to us, which eight of us enjoyed as an evening snack. The girl teachers would have nothing to do with it, but the boy teachers who participated started calling themselves the “brothers of the cobra.”)

We did not eat this one, but the skin would have been impressive on display, had the guard not done such a thorough job of beating it to death. The nationals are in agreement with the slogan, “the only good snake is a dead snake.” Pity, as many are harmless and would help with the rat population, but so many are poisonous that they’d rather not take the time to distinguish between friend and foe.

Your Hands & Feet in Tanzania,

Gary and Joanne Grenell

Rats

Here is another audio presentation, a narrative in Gary's own voice, telling a story about rats.

To play back the audio recording, be sure to first turn on the speakers of your computer, and either scroll down the right side of the blog to reach the "Featured Audio Clip" or click on the "Audio Presentations" tab across the top of the blog to open a new page that will eventually hold the archive of all the audio clips.

Enjoy!

John Williams, Your Hands & Feet blogmaster (for the Grenells)

Gifts from Ichesa

Dear Brothers, Sisters and Friends in Christ,

Well, three weeks from today, Lord willing, I will be back in this same Mbeya Internet café to report our soon departure on a 13 hour bus ride to Dar-es-Salaam. We leave here (Mbeya) at 6:30 AM on June 20th, stay in Dar until the morning of the 22nd, and fly out of London about noon on the 23rd.

We want you to be in prayer for our travel, especially the first couple of hours by truck over the dirt roads, and maybe especially for the bus ride, which only makes two stops for a bush toilet visit and 15 minutes to grab a lunch-to-go from open-air vendors.

Be in prayer also for our strength in the next three weeks to get all the loose ends tied up; typing 44 Terminal Exams, scoring over 800 exams, packing up the house in storage bins, and saying a thousand “Good-buys.”

That last item has been occupying the afternoons lately, as we visit “one last time” the ghettos of our students.

Pictures speak a thousand words . . . can you imagine your 14-18 year old son or daughter moving away from home to attend high school?

He/she would be living in a small room (maybe 7x7) with his/her clothes hanging from a rope stretched between nails (often eaten by rats),

sleeping on a grass mat, cooking on a charcoal stove once or twice a day . . .

and eating the same meal every day . . . ugali by itself, or with boiled beans or greens, and perhaps some fruit, if it is in season and they have a few cents available for that luxury.

Oh, and they do it with laughs and smiles and warm welcome for you to share their lives.





Now, consider the joys we have in serving these hard-working and desperate-to-succeed students! Most of the VSI schools have much better living conditions available for their teachers, so please pray about God’s call on your life to join us. We need more teachers. Steve talks in his updates about the number of missionary teachers that have come, but the vast majority spend only a few months in the country.

Annually, only 9-12 English teachers come from outside Tanzania. With 22 schools open and a dozen or more in the works…do the math. The Lord needs laborers in His harvest fields.

Oh, great news . . . work is moving forward on the three new schools in the Mbeya Region. There is a meeting today for the work permit for the Ichesa Secondary School. I was there at Easter and reported that they were still enthusiastic. Right now . . . they are bouncing off the walls with excitement that things are moving forward!!! We had a visit from a couple of men just last week, pictured at the top of this update with their gifts to us of wild honey, bananas, peanuts and sponge gourds.

Lord willing, we will see you soon, face to face.

Love and hugs,

Gary and Joanne Grenell