Monday, November 10th - More teaching in Himo

Monday, November 10, 2008

Only two days left at the seminary... This morning we left Moshi after checking our e-mail and crammed into a bus to Himo (as has been our custom). This one was a bit nicer than others that we’ve been in, but it was a bit more expensive also. This one cost us about $0.85 for the ride to Himo. Bruce, if you were only here! We started class at 10:00am and most of the students were there. I had told them that those who were late would get homework to be completed before I left on Tuesday. I had to hand out homework to six of them, but the rest were on time! We studied excommunication and church discipline in the morning and at 12:45 took a 30 minute break.

During the break we are served tea or coffee and peanuts (karanga in Swahili). I really enjoy the peanuts! After the break Russ went through a study on the Catechism until lunch was ready at about 2:45pm. We took a one hour lunch break so everyone could eat. Once again we were given rice with a beef stew gravy along with oranges. Let me tell you – I like the oranges much better than the bananas we had all the time last year!

For the final session in the afternoon we went through a study of the Sabbath and the Biblical proof for why the Sabbath regulations no longer apply after Christ. There are many Seventh Day churches here and the study was very well received.

After our closing prayer and hymn, I told the students that I would take some time to show them how to use the laptop computers we brought for the seminary. A member of one of our congregations has been taking computer classes during the past year and will be able to teach the students how to use them in the coming year. We pray that they will be a real asset to the students in their education in the coming years!

Russ had returned to Moshi earlier in the day, so I returned on the bus by myself, just in time to meet with another man from the Moshi area. He has been working on translating doctrinal materials into Swahili to help with the spread of the Gospel here in Tanzania and we needed to meet before I left back to the states. What a blessing it is to have so many dedicated people eager to preach the truth of God’s Word to others in this part of God’s world!

In Christ

Nathanael