Saturday, February 21, 2009

Tanzania, a New African Adventure

In just five days, we will board a plane at PDX on our way to JFK, and Dubai, arriving Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, about 36 hours later. It's a new adventure for us, our first in East Africa. We will travel with a group of six, sponsored by Lahash, a small, highly-effective mission organization based in Portland.

After an overnight stay in Dar Es Salaam, we will board a bus for a day-long ride westbound to the capital city, Dodoma. There we'll be greeted by our good friend, Esther Muhagachi, our guest last August when she visited Lahash, and her family. We go with the certainty that our welcome will be exceedingly warm and generous. After all, it is that compelling sense of community that keeps drawing us back to Africa. What we might contribute is far less consequential than what we will receive of love and respect and shared faith and hope and the marvelous memories and new relationships that we will bring back and keep with us always. Hopefully, we will also leave a few good memories among our new friends of all ages in Dodoma.

On March 12, we will board the bus again, this time for our trip back to Dar Es Salaam and finally Portland. We will arrive home late the evening of March 14.


Our Dodoma Tour Group
Casey and Abbe Schilperoorts, Jim and Annette Anderson, Dan Holcomb
Missing from the photo: 17-month-old Asher Schilperoorts

Dan is a founder and director of Lahash. Casey is media director. On this trip, Dan and Casey will begin filming a feature-length documentary on mission in East Africa, using a new high-definition video camera.

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