My sincerest apologies for the lateness of this letter! Somehow May slipped right past me, and in my mind, I had already written a March/April letter. So, I am combining March through May to make up for it.
Ministry
We’ve added a lot of ministries since you last heard from us. On March 6, the church nursery was started. This is the first time in over 10 years that Faith Baptist Church has had a designated area for the little kids during the services! Kellie is the nursery director. The weekly attendance is around 20 children; this includes Wednesday night as well. There are 8 ladies, Kellie included, who rotate every Sunday and help with the kids. This has been such a blessing to Pastor Wyatt and to the moms. Landon fits right in with the Tanzanian children. The exposure that he gets by being around the kids will help him learn Swahili faster.
I also started a discipleship class for the teens in my Sunday school class. I am using Foundations of My Faith, published by Grace to Grow Publications. Pastor Wyatt has been preaching since the beginning of the year about the importance of helping other Christians to grow through discipleship. One young man in my class was even able to lead a fellow classmate to Christ!
The first Tuesday in April, I started teaching piano lessons to 30 children, in groups of 10. I’ve been playing the piano since I was a young child, but I never saw myself teaching. My lessons are going well, and I can see the kids put the pieces together when something makes sense to them. It’s rewarding as a teacher to see my students get excited about the piano.
We held a Teen Camp in April that combined our Swahili teens with our English teens. This was the first time that we have really joined the two worlds together. Our English teens are primarily Tanzanian and speak some Swahili, but they are considered upper-class here. They have a very “first world” life. Some of our Swahili teens literally live in red brick homes with no modern conveniences. We were worried how the two classes would blend, but everyone got along so well! This has helped unite our two youth groups. We even had a visiting youth group from Des Moines, Iowa, fly over and help with our camp. They were such a blessing!
The last day of camp ended on Easter Sunday. We held our annual early morning English service, and we had around 150 people in attendance! We had a great Resurrection Sunday. We even had a husband and wife get baptized and join the church during the second service! Praise the Lord for a growing church!
For my Bible Club, I really wanted to have the Gospel presented to my village kids. We meet every Saturday, so the day before Easter, I talked about the meaning of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Praise God that 9 of my kids were saved that day! My Bible Club also now holds the record for the most kids in attendance! Our record is 71!!
Around Mother’s Day, we always hold a big ladies’ meeting. We played games (that Kellie organized), sang songs, had a lesson, presented the Gospel, and gave a gift bag to every lady in attendance. The gift bags consisted of candy, a John & Romans, a kanga (fabric to make a shirt/skirt), and jewelry. The jewelry belonged to my late maternal grandmother. After she passed, my mom collected her pieces, organized them, and placed them in totes and boxes to go in our container. We gave out over 300 pieces that day, plus bagged another 150 pieces for Mother’s Day, and we still have a box left over! The ladies LOVE the jewelry and were proudly showing it off. I see ladies wearing my grandmother’s pieces every Sunday. I like to think she’s smiling down from Heaven, watching these ladies treasure what she loved.
On May 20, Pastor Wyatt, Andrew, and I traveled to a village in the northwest corner of Tanzania to help with a new church plant! This is the fourth church that has been started by one of our trained men. We had a busy, but productive trip. Pastor Wyatt was able to baptize a new convert in Lake Tanganyika! That was an awesome experience to witness. Thank you, Pastor Wyatt, for including me on this trip!
Landon
On March 29, our boy turned two!! We had a small birthday dinner with the Wyatts to celebrate Landon. He has such a sweet personality and is just growing up way too fast!
In Remembrance
May 23, 2016, is the day that God called my Grandpa, Pastor Ron Morrow, Home to be with Him. He was so proud that I surrendered as a teenage boy to be a missionary. Grandpa’s belief and faith in me has helped to keep me anchored to my calling. My ordination Bible is one from his personal collection. He never saw Kellie and I get married. He never saw us start and finish deputation. He never saw Kellie, Landon, and me arrive on the mission field, but I do believe that he knows and that God has allowed him to see us working in the ministry here at Faith Baptist Church. I pray that part of his legacy lives on in me, that I can bring honor to Ronald Morrow’s name, and by doing so, I can bring honor and glory to God’s name.
Your missionaries to Tanzania,
Montana, Kellie, and Landon Morrow
My grandpa, Pastor Ron Morrow, and I
