Missionary News Travels to Tanzania

This is my third year traveling to Africa, and my first time in Tanzania.  Each year has been so different from the last.  My first year, I spent six-weeks traveling through the Masindi-Kitari Diocese, from the town of Masindi all the way to lower Bulisa, four (muddy) hours away to train Lay Pastors. Last year I spent 3-1/2 weeks traveling to the Kiryondongo refugee camp in the Masindi-Kitari Diocese to teach the program “Restore Wholeness” and “Restore Wholeness for Children.”  I was both trainee and apprentice teacher. This year, I traveled to Tanzania with the Christian Renewal Association (and SAMS) to teach children, apprentice teachers, and Sunday School Teachers the “Restore Wholeness for Children” program.  It was a wonderful time of praise and worship.

Based on the book, Emotionally Free, by Rita Bennett, Restore Wholeness is a program designed to help children experience healing from trauma through encounters with Jesus.  It is a program that touches my heart—I work daily with children who have been terribly traumatized by abuse and neglect—so it has been my privilege to teach about Jesus’s power to heal us, and to share the love of Jesus with children whose lives are filled with the trauma of poverty, loss, death, illness, and uncertainty.  Though I am “teacher,” the children and adults I serve teach me, too. They teach me to live joyfully despite circumstances, about gratitude for what they do have rather than despair over what they lack and about loving God greatly in every situation – the SHEMA writ large: love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul.  God is good, all the time. 

Listening to Addie’s sermon Sunday, I was struck by her analogy of her garden, and the good garden God wants to plant in our hearts. One of the Restore Wholeness sessions teaches about God’s garden and how God wants to help us weed the garden in our heart, just as we weed our gardens of flowers and vegetables, so we can make room for good things to grow. Likewise, He wants to transform us. Through this healing ministry, God is slowly shaping my heart in His image.

Serving God in Tanzania and in Uganda has helped the garden in my heart to flourish with gratitude and hope: I am sowing one seed at a time, and sometimes the labor is hard, but it is always rewarding.  The hardships I experience while I am there pale in comparison to the joy of seeing a child receive the Holy Spirit, or the power of witnessing a demon cast out. The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom.

I am always mindful that I come from privilege and abundance.  I travel to a world marked by scarcity and hardship, yet the people there are always welcoming, grateful that we visit, and interested in our stories.  In Africa, your story is your testimony, which is Christ; that is the Gospel that transforms lives. Amen.

Catherine Annand