Thursday, October 30, 2008

After our adventure yesterday, it felt good to take a cool shower (not hot) and crawl into bed. I had a good night’s sleep and wok up ready to go today! We are staying at a hotel called the "Eland" - which is a kind of African deer. It is a nice hotel, but compared with other hotels in Africa, I don’t think it is worth what we have to pay here. It is $100 a night for one single and one double room, and although they are bigger rooms than the Southern Blue in Nairobi, they are not as nice. We are glad that we are only going to be here for two nights.

Beautiful Mt. Meru out Russ and Bruce's hotel room window.

Bruce and Russ are sharing a double room on the back side of the hotel and their window looks out on beautiful Mt. Meru. It is quite a spectacular sight! My room is on the front and overlooks the not so spectacular - though often intriguing - sight of the parking lot and highway!

Breakfast was served at 7:00am so we met up to enjoy our now common breakfast of tea and coffee, fruit juice, fresh fruit, sausage and a spanish omelette. It was very good. After breakfast Bruce went to do some blogging while Russ and I went to see if we could exchange some money. We are in Tanzania now, so we need to have Tanzanian schillings instead of Kenya schillings. The exchange rate is very different too. In Kenya the rate is about 78 Ksch to $1; in Tanzania it is 1,280 Tsch to $1! The most common bill that we use in Tsch is 10,000. Imagine carrying around a wallet full of $10,000 bills in the states! I try to exchange small amounts at a time so I don’t have a pile of bills that are unmanageable or awkward to carry around.

We returned to the Eland around 9:00 to meet with Pastor Jeremiah before the start of the conference. He drove us to a Western Union location so we could send some money to Charles. He was still in Kenya and needed some money to pay for the car repair and get across the border. By 10:00 we were back at the Eland and getting prepared for the conference. People began to filter in slowly as we talked. The conference was in a nice big room on the top floor of the hotel. It offered a nice view of Mt. Meru and the surrounding countryside.

There were a total of 12 people who attended our conference. There were pastors, church leaders and Sunday school teachers in attendance. Bruce began with a study on "How to teach Sunday School" in which he described the need for beginning personal study, the outer aim, the inner aim, and the application. He also described the importance of dividing Law and Gospel.
After that I began a short study on the difference between the accounts of Luke 2 (Christmas) and Matthew 2 (Epiphany). I described the characters in the two accounts and pointed out the similarities, but more importantly, the differences that separated these two accounts. The harmonization of these stories by many only reinforces the importance and need for our own personal study of God’s Word in preparation for teaching others.

Arusha conference attendees in the rooftop room in the Eland Hotel.

Finally we broke for a quick lunch and then picked up where we left off. Bruce again presented Biblical Covenant Theology, and when He was finished I presented an overview of the Books of the Old Testament. Charles finally showed up just after we started this study, so we were able to get the handouts out of the trunk of his car and give them to the attendees.

We finished our seminar at around 4:30pm with a short overview of the Lutheran Reformation, which Russ had volunteered to do, and with prayers. After everyone had left we worked on reports for a while and then met up to get some supper. We walked all over Arusha trying to find some a place that offered pizza, but couldn’t find one! We finally settled on a place called the new triangle restaurant. As soon as we had been given the menu, the power went out! The waitress brought a big lamp over for us to finish looking at the menu. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to order anything at this point, but a few minutes later a big generator stared humming and the lights and TV came back on. When we were ready to order we the typical African response to our order: "We don’t have that." I can’t tell you how many times we have ordered something that was on the menu, and the waiter or waitress tells us "I’m sorry we don’t have that"! That’s what we call "living on the edge" since you often have to eat something other than what you really want!

It has been another good day of Biblical instruction and meetings. We thank the Lord for His grace! Our trip is now about half over. Tomorrow it is off again to Moshi where we will be for most of the remainder of our trip.

May the Lord be with you all,

Nathanael