“Maybe we should just go home next year,” Arthur said to me. It was a question of how we can best use our resources. The money we raise for our family’s living expenses is maybe 90% of the entire national staff budget for TAFES. Nationally, there are about 20 staff. […]
There was a discussion on a TAFES whatsapp group… should we impose fines for those who post irrelevant, off-topic or offensive material? The senior associate who suggested it was aiming at improving the quality of the group’s traffic. The fascinating thing was that the responses all spoke of whether or […]
When you look at how Tanzanians manage money, it’s easy to conclude at first glance that they don’t have savings. To be sure, to have a savings account is still considered somewhat unusual. Even uni graduates and the middle class seem to have cash flow problems. It’s common for a […]
One of the TAFES staff asked for advice on Whatsapp from senior associates about a student’s question: Is married people having one bank account good or not so good? We ask for your view and experiences. What ensued was a fascinating discussion of husband and wife’s roles in marriage, that […]
We’re into week six of sermons about money at church. It turns out our pastor has almost as much to say about money as Jesus did! This week was the third on tithing. The passages were Haggai 1:9-13 and Malachi 3:10, and he did all the things that Aussie evangelicals […]
When we moved to Tanzania I was told that we would need house help. So Mama Velo did our cleaning. (I cooked. I enjoy the creativity of it, and it gives me some headspace – like how some people do their best thinking in the shower.) And she was great, and we kept […]
Have you seen this article doing the rounds? Aside from the assumptions that missions is (a) to unreached people groups and (b) that those unreached peoples are poor, Nik Ripkin raises some super important issues that can be considered beyond the immediate context he is addressing, which is persecuted Christians in […]
Meet Jesus at uni 