Completion of Zanzibar Projects

Greetings Family and Friends:

We are now back at our hotel in Dar es Salaam. Our time on the island of Zanzibar has come to a close, and we spent part of the day viewing some of the sights before our 2+ hour ferry ride back to the mainland of Tanzania. The time on Zanzibar was amazing, and the team is still absorbing the events of the past week.

Update on the projects:

Medical: Supplied medicine for 600+ patients at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital. Doug Miller was invited by Dr. Ikongo to visit a near by village clinic to assess equipment and patient needs for a future medical mission next year.

Press Conferences: Headlines were made in the local paper after press conferences were held on live TV throughout Tanzania. Kathy represented Crossroads along with Bishop Mgullu and Doug-em as medicines for the Mnazi Mmoja Government Hospital, wheelchairs for the disabled and Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts for the government orphanage were presented to grateful officials from the the Chief Ministers Office and the Minister of Health and Social Welfare. Kathy received a Certificate of Appreciation for Humanitarian Assistance on behalf of Crossroads Bible Church as did Bishop Mgullu on behalf of Christian Mission Fellowship.

Two Nat King Cole fans!
With Msham Khamis, Deputy Principal Secretary
Chief Minister's Office
The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar

Construction: Efforts continued on the new feeding center building for the orphans. Footings were dug and concrete was poured in preparation for the setting of the blocks. These blocks are part of the building foundation. The team had to improvise in making some tools to complete the construction tasks. All of the water required for the mixing of the concrete was drawn from the village well, bucket by bucket, and carried over 300 feet. We worked side-by-side with the local day laborers, many of these were Muslim. We had the opportunity to share our faith with them. We took many photos and made many new friends and hopefully planted a lot of seeds.

VBS: Nearby, VBS attracted over 111 children. We gave the children new shirts (sewn by CBC women) and new shoes (a gift from our team member, Martha). This created much fanfare! The children loved playing games, singing songs, and listening to Bible stories. We made many new friends and at the end of the week, it was difficult to say good-bye.


In addition, the team had the opportunity to hold Women's Health classes for the local village women and also provide a water purification kit to the church planter. Both were well received and will hopefully increase the health and preventative care for the local people.




Today we received a private tour of the island's beaches and wildlife with the government officials of Zanzibar. The resorts on the island were a sharp contrast in comparison to the living condition of the local people. The beaches are really beautiful and we enjoyed seeing the monkeys at the park face-to-face!




TMI...TMI!!! YIKES...


The remaining project to accomplish in Dar es Salaam is the setting up of the computer lab at Bishop Mgullu's church. We will be working on that at 6:30AM tomorrow morning (so we need to get to sleep!). We plan to have 6 computers set up with internet access and the remaining 6 computers used for computer learning classes.

Thank you for the comments. It is wonderful to hear from all of you. When time permits, we will obtain photos from all of the team members to post on the blog. Unfortunately the speed of our connection is very (very) slow, so it takes a while to upload photos. We will try to add as many as possible, time permitting. Overall, the health of the team has remained strong and morale has been high as we do our best to stay flexible to "African Time". The people here have been amazing and will never be forgotten. Thank you for your prayers and continued support!