Mission:  Mwanza, Tanzania

February work report
The Millers
Mwanza, Tanzania


On, Monday, February 26th, we woke early in order to leave with the sun on our 10-12 hour journey to Nairobi. Immediately we were thinking that this was not going to be the best traveling because Judah was in a horrible mood…choosing either to cry or to sleep. This is very unusual for Judah these days. About two hours in, after he had taken a nap and woke up again to cry some more, we started suspecting he was sick. An hour later we got, uh, confirmation of his sickness. Emily and I were speaking of this after Judah had fallen asleep again, happy that Nairobi was our destination and that we already had various doctor’s appointments made and that those doctors are some of the best in sub-Saharan Africa.

It was about this time, about 4 hours in, that Emily got a text on her phone from a teammate, saying, “Big problem with your house! Call us ASAP! Return to Mwanza immediately.” Now, our team has its share of jokesters, pranksters, and tongue-in-cheeksters, I myself being one. They all knew how much we had been looking forward to this week away, this week to take Judah to the doctor, this week with movie theatres, with restaurants whose food you actually want to pay for, with nothing but family time together. So, it is easy enough to see that we viewed the message with suspicion from the beginning…until we reread who it was from: Susan Guild. To sum it up, Susan is not a jokester, a prankster, or a tongue-in-cheekster…in fact, there was no way she would have sent this message as anything resembling the way we wanted to receive it…as other than truth.

By this time we had pulled off to the side of the road. Once we realized specifically who it was from, I took a heavy breath, tore my eyes away from my wife, and did a u-turn. I’ve done u-turns before. In fact here you end up doing them all the time. I think, though, that this was the first time I had u-turned to return to the place we had come from 4 hours back down the same 2 lane road we had just driven on. For me, this is a particularly cruel version of punishment. For some reason, doing what I have just done again in reverse order…for 4 hours…is about the worst thing I could imagine choosing to do. And yet, here I was, voluntarily turning the car, securing a position on the opposite side of the same mid-line I was already familiar with…beginning to guide our vehicle between the same pot-holes, over the same bridges, past the same landmarks and through the same check-points as we had just passed going the other direction. It reminded me of a scene in a movie I had seen while in high school where an American family visits London and gets stuck in the inner lane of a roundabout…with the father saying every 5-6 seconds, “Look kids…Big Ben.” Every six seconds for an entire day. We ourselves actually passed a landmark of this magnitude on this road, the Serengeti…the Park of Parks in good Hebrew, the biggest park in the world. You’ll find bigger Reserves, but not bigger Parks.

We just drove right past it without comment.

Even worse was the fact that after we turned around we received a phone call from Marisa Bailey, another teammate, explaining the problem a little more: it seemed the local city government had once owned the house we had chosen to rent…something we already knew…and that they wanted the house back, a house which had been bought and paid for and invested in by our landlord.

After that short conversation, we drove into an area where cell phone coverage is non-existent. Some of you, I am sure, are amazed we have coverage at all. The following hour was quite possibly the longest period of time Emily or I can ever remember traversing: the 40 hours traveling here by plane a year ago…mere seconds; the 7 years it took us to arrive on the field in 2006 after deciding in 1999 that this was what we wanted to pursue…a pitiable quarter of an hour; the eternity of entering kindergarten through graduating high school…an extended ping-pong match compared to the myriad lives lived in that hour after the u-turn until my phone finally registered a single bar of reception, a single possibility of news from Mwanza where our home was being invaded by ruffians (or at least in our minds during the myriad lives of that hour it was ruffians, when in reality it was just normal people being helped along by our good friends on our team.)

In any case, over the next three hours return to Mwanza we learned more and more about what had happened in Mwanza, specifically at our house and two others nearby, after we had left. It seemed the government had come that morning shortly after we had left in fact, rang our bell, cut the locks on our house and entered. Our good friend Margaret was there doing some deep cleaning when she looked up and out the window and saw a small army of people milling about amongst the herbs I had planted behind our house. She immediately called our teammates and had them come quickly upon learning what the large number of people’s intention was: to evict us without warning with no legal support. From that point until our return at 3:00 in the afternoon, our teammates stalled as long as possible until they realized we were going to be moved whether they helped or not, at which point they sought out the important items (computers, safes, certain kitchen items, etc.) and transported those themselves to the chosen storage place: the temporary house of our good friends the Lindermans.

To try and help you understand completely, imagine going to work early in the morning, having left dirty dishes on the counter and having left that load of laundry until you return that evening, not thinking twice about making your bed or tidying your shoe pile, and then returning home at 4:00 to find every single item, every paperclip, every sock, every movie, everything in your underwear drawer, everything in the underwear drawer of your spouse, everything in that drawer or cupboard that’s full of all of the personal things which all of use on a daily basis. Then imagine it was someone you know, someone with which you have daily conversations, that opened and emptied and moved one of those drawers. The next time you’re in church, think about turning to the family next to you and asking them to come over and pack up your underwear drawer, your wife’s underwear drawer, the drawer in your bedside table. That’s exactly what happened when our team was forced to help pack up all our belongings in order to insure the safety of said items. Furthermore, and more confusingly, we are actually glad that it was them that packed the majority of items, as opposed to complete strangers.

We are at this time still homeless…by choice. Our landlord got the house back by court order, but we figure if the local city government would go to that trouble once without permission, they’ll do it again: it’s only a matter of time. Furthermore, our landlord now has an ownership case pending in court that could be settled in months but more likely years. Every time we would have left for a weekend, let alone for a week or for months on furlough, we would wonder if it would be during that time that the city government would decide to try their luck again. And that time, whenever it would be, would we be as fortunate as to retain all of our belongings, as worthless as some of it really is. If we didn’t have a team here in Mwanza who was there to make sure all our possessions reached the Linderman’s, all of it would have ended up in the homes of various and sundry people around Mwanza, none of whom we have met. Our computer would have been stolen by one local official, our bed by another, and so on and so on until every single item had been divided out. The unwanted things (which would have been very little but probably the most important to us…family photos, etc.) would have been left on the lawn to have been ruined by the rains which did in fact come that very night.

Some of you, I am sure, are thinking how much better it would have been if we had been present when they arrived, but me I’m not so convinced. If fact, I’m convinced that a different view of European descended people was offered up that day. The normal reaction of a European or American would have been to blow a head gasket in anger and indignance, which, probably to a T, would have been faithfully enacted by yours truly had I been there. But in God’s perfect wisdom, we didn’t arrive until 8 hours later, after which time we were totally calm, having had the numbing balm of 4 hours of sitting and processing in order to accept what was happening. After arriving home and seeing 15 or so city councilmen and women standing in the yard in suits and ties, I walked up to them to greet them in Kiswahili, Kisukuma and Kihaya. They, fully expecting an unkind and possibly even a violent reaction from a person whom they had never met but whom they had just moved out his home, were completely surprised . One even commented exactly to that effect saying he had never seen such a reaction from a Westerner. Keep in mind that this reaction was also coming after 7 or 8 hours of the same such kindness (questioning also too, and frustration, but throughout, kindness) from each and every one of our team mates that work here with us in Mwanza. We choose to believe that God was glorified through the actions and words of our co-workers during those hours when we were not there, and are thankful that the entire city council of Mwanza was present to meet them.

While I talked with the council Emily stayed back and tried to comfort Judah who was still feeling very sick and was upset from all the driving, sickness and general confusion. I went to the Lindermans house to help them move the last of our things in, and at the same time I did that, Emily and Judah went to the clinic to find out that Judah was sick again and in need of medicine. He recovered quickly and, Lord willing, we are intending to get to Nairobi for a pedicatrican appointment at the end of April.

We also believe that God was faithful in having us not there when it happened for Judah’s sake. As it happenend, he was not there, did not see 20 uniformed men taking everything out of our home and all the confusion and arguing that followed. He did not have to be present for that trauma, for which we are grateful. He only knew that he got to go spend the night at the house of our teammates and play with their 3 girls--so he was very happy about the whole change of location!

We wanted to share the events of that day with you, some of you who already knew of it anyway we know, not to highlight the many negative aspects of it, but to show how God was faithful to us during that day and continues to be faithful to us through the days that are following. We have gotten to spend time with the Groens (our teammates) who have blessed us with their hospitality and friendship in allowing us to stay with them up to now. We have gotten to receive the understanding and sympathy from Tanzanians living here, some we already knew and others who are strangers. Suffering any kind of hardship brings a sort of kinship with the average Tanzanian--who many times view us (and Westerners in general) as being above problems like this, or being able to control things because of our relative wealth. We are blessed to be reminded once again that anxiety does not have to be a part of our lives because we know who is ultimately in control and how the day to day things of where we live, what we eat, what we wear--are not things we need to concern ourselves with.

In spite of all this, the work continues. Easter is just around the corner, which here is a weekend long celebration. There will be many area-wide celebrations, all celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ and the meaning those actions have brought for so many here in Sukumaland that were in the past shackled with the burden of a distant God and the necessity to appease family members who had already become part of the spiritual world. In this new life they have received through Christ, the freedom is felt in stark contrast to the spiritual slavery that consumed their lives beforehand.

A leaders’ seminar is scheduled for April 20-21, to focus on church-planting. This is very exciting for us, even though already church plants here rarely happen anymore without the local leadership being involved in some way, most of the time playing a very large part of the process. There is a certain extent to which, however, missionaries are still looked upon as validifiers of proper religious practice, or, even worse, the one who is able to “best” perform religious functions such as baptisms and the like. These are ideas which we battle daily. Despite our flat refusals, in some instances, to perform the baptisms ourselves in instances where mature leadership is already established (much as we find Paul did in his letters), there is still a sense sometimes that although we are a priesthood of all believers, the missionaries are still a cut above. Of course, this is ludicrous and, more problematic, unproductive for a completely effective local leadership. We are praying that this seminar can be the time when the onus of the evangelization of northern Sukumaland is thrust more squarely onto the shoulders of the leaders with the missionaries playing more of a consultant/leadership training role. There is still a majority of young fledgling churches that are in need of guidance concerning theology and church matters, but this smaller group of mature churches is very exciting.

As always, we appreciate your prayers for us and the work here- please feel free to drop us a line (email or snail mail- since we use a P.O. box we can still receive mail as usual)- Also, we apologize for the lack of pictures this month, we currently don’t know where our camera/computer cord is in the midst of all our packed things!

Blessings,
Jason, Emily, and Judah Miller
c/o Kanisa la Kristo
P.O. Box 1371
Mwanza, Tanzania, East Africa