This week there was a discussion in my network here in Tanzania about Psalm 51:5: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Did David being conceived ‘in sin’ mean that his mother committed adultery and he was illegitimate? Admittedly the grammar of the […]
My TAFES small group has been meeting on Zoom, and this evening we had a guest speaker, Pentecostal Bishop Dr Professor Glorious Shoo who spoke on being a Christian in challenging times. He took as his text 2 Tim 1:7, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but […]
This weekend I participated in a Zoom Bible study (audio only) with women graduates of TAFES. It was facilitated by an Associate of TAFES who runs a life coaching business. It was about Rebekah, an example of a woman who saw through her plans which succeeded even in a problematic […]
Our church’s sermon series on faith is continuing, with a woman preaching yesterday. Imelda is the wife of Pastor Patrick, and he introduced her before stepping off stage and sitting down to listen. This is the first time we have heard a woman preach, in the year we have been […]
One of Arthur’s colleagues, Eliud is getting married to former TAFES staff member Dorothea next month and he and Arthur have been talking about marriage, specifically, the Christian ideal of unity in marriage. Eliud and Doro have been thinking very carefully about the cultural views they have inherited and whether […]
After my post about mafanikio, another missionary here in Tanzania wrote to me with some questions. In her experience, people who are on the road to becoming successful are torn down by others until they stop striving, so they never reach it. Mediocrity and inertia are what Tanzanian culture produces. […]
What is the message of Good Friday? Until I lived in Tanzania, I would have thought it was fairly straightforward: the focus is the death of Jesus for our sins, in short, the atonement. But at our church yesterday, the atonement was present, but characteristically not the focus. The ‘liturgy’ […]
