Greetings from Tanzania. We pray that your Thanksgiving went well and that you all enjoyed yourselves together with family and friends. We know that Christmas is just around the corner. We know that many of you have already had your Christmas plays, musicals, parties, etc.; and we hope that everything was a success. It’s a great time to bring the church together with these special activities to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. Here in Tanzania, we are doing well. We have a few special things planned on Christmas. We will have some skits and special music, we will have a couple get married, and we will have a full meal after the service as well. We are looking forward to that day.
Thank you to all who have prayed for our visa situation. Whenever we have to renew our visas, there are always new rules, new paperwork, and even new people who have to approve new things; so this time is no different, except for the fact that they rejected our visa. The president is trying to crack down on corruption; but, unfortunately, innocent people get trapped in the process. We have an opportunity to appeal, which we have taken full advantage of, so now we are waiting. We have some great promises but nothing actually official as of yet, so please continue to pray that God would guide the heart of the person or persons looking at our paperwork.
We had two bus routes combined on one bus for a while. We told the folks that if they wanted their own bus, they needed to grow their route. We told them to go and invite people and pray that God would bless their efforts. Well, they did. The place is called Central, and they grew the route to where the bus they have is almost full already. The area is near a twine plantation, so many folks work in the fields there. It is encouraging to see people “getting it” and coming and sticking with it.
We also had another Soul-Winning Seminar to encourage the new Christians and reboot the old ones. Soul winning still works! The son of our neighbor, Mama Neema, was bitten by our dog some time ago. Even though her son started the confrontation with our dog, we took full responsibility for it, including taking care of all of the medical bills and the daily nurse checkups. Fast forward—now the boy is fine; his brothers and sisters come over quite often. We asked them if they could start coming to church. They came and are still coming. We got to know the mom because of this dog-bite situation. She came to church, got saved and baptized, and joined the church. What started out as a terrible “ice breaker” has worked out for God’s glory.
Again, we always want you all to know how grateful we are for your love and support for us and the folks here in Tanzania. We love and appreciate you all very much. As a reminder, our letters go out every other month. If it has been awhile since you received our letter, please let us know. A lot of times, people change their email and forget to tell us, so we always want to keep our email list current. We want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year.
Your missionary friends,
Mshama, Martha, Esther, & Benjamin Kinyonga
