Simple Chain of Love

On this festive season, the Orwa family through Africa Harvest of Hope and Rancho del Rey Church renew their vow in the field to make Jesus known throughout the world - preaching His peace, His love and His mercy, giving hope to those that have lost it, making a commitment to teach true Biblical doctrines.

Just like any other country, Tanzania faces a lot of problems which are religion related. This is because a lot of people who are born into a “Christian family” assume Christianity from birth hence they make no attempt to live right with God as their faith is “family inherited.” As Africa Harvest of Hope/ Rancho Del Rey, we give a different approach towards this issue as we work diligently to raise funds to build an orphanage where we plan to teach children Christianity as a way of life in an attempt to make a difference.

Over the past month and as we continue, we go back to the Bible, the first letter of John, discussing the authenticity of our faith, true fellowship and practical approach to Christianity. Basic Christianity as we find is simple.  The problem is that we humans complicate it.  For example, the two Commandments by our Lord Jesus: love your neighbor as you love yourselves and love the lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. This past week, we raised questions such us who are our neighbors? The person living close to us? The people we meet on the road? And etc.

Considering the two commandments, as we tackle the first commandment we find that it is becoming increasingly more common for neighbors not to know each other or even say hello to each other. Therefore how can you love people you don’t know? How can you fellowship with people to whom you don’t even say hello?  As Christians it is our shot to be the first to give love, extend our hands to one another and reach out to people in our surroundings and build up fellowship.  This is the first step to loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. It is that simple.

Therefore, we Africa Harvest of Hope want to challenge you this festive season - invite a neighbor for a cup of tea or coffee.  You don’t have to read a scripture for them.   Just introduce yourselves and start one long chain of love!

1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

The Aunthencity of our Faith

In our discipleship class/ Sunday Service our big question was, what is the authenticity of our faith? What is our faith based on as Christians? Are we Christians because our parents are Christians? Are we Christians because we are not Muslims? In this generation a lot of us profess Christianity. There are millions of Christian faithful all over the world yet the world is heading down the ditch every single day. If we are Christians why are things not going on right? Why is the economy so bad? Why is there a lot of poverty? Why are there a lot of beggars in the street? Why are there a lot of orphans and widows suffering? More so why is the world so corrupt? It is either our Christianity is corrupted or our faith is not authentic. It is a prototype, not original. It is not based on biblical doctrine. It is baseless and it has been rated as just mere empty religion.

Another issue that arose was that we could be “hearer Christians” and not “doers,” as Christianity being a way of life- living right with God. No one is practicing or a few are practicing while a lot of people are just bus riding. Christianity is not a religion-religion is man-made. Many Christians have forgotten this fact and have turned Christianity to be just like other religions. Also, as the world becomes knowledgeable, people have become more and more corrupted with knowledge and they start questioning the source of knowledge-God; and the more they go astray and refuse to repent, such people brings about the doctrine of ‘Jesus was just being a good man’, and ‘God is not there” kind of stuff.

That is why we started our discipleship class with the first letter of John. We will be going word by word, checking on the application in our life and making sure that we bring our Christian living to the right path, and the authenticity of our faith be based on the Word - who was there in the beginning with God and was God, and in the word was life- the life we both live and abuse - most part of it having no fellowship with the giver of life.

As we read the first chapter we come across a lot of simple things like, Christianity existed from the beginning - one thing that a lot of us don’t know. If Christianity is based on the Word (Christ) or to be Christ- like and He was there from the beginning, then Christianity was there since the beginning. A fact many scholars deny as they state that Christianity just began 2000 years ago. The only way to be a Christian is to have a personal relationship with Christ (1 John 1. Whom we have heard and we have seen with our own eyes). This shows the extent we should be personal with Christ which the authenticity of our faith should be based on. Many people say they are Christians yet they have no personal relationship with the Lord.

As we go through this book, God is blessing us and we are finding a lot of things that will make us be better Christians for a better world. Pray with us so that God does great things. There was a huge turn out today - both men and women came to hear the word of God. We found out that it is not how big the church is or our good our worship band is, but if our faith is authentic-based on Christ, then we will make it.
So what is the authenticity of your faith??!!!

Am Not Kneeling

Down the road from my humble house I walk pass the gates, stare up towards a baring of North East, just to have a glimpse of, as they say the 'most beautiful mountain in the world'-no luck due to the mountain being too discrete. Disappointed, get over it and tell myself, maybe tomorrow.

Mount Kilimanjaro is the only mountain that will be so near but as usual will spend most of her time sleeping in the clouds. You can stay in Moshi but as the name suggest it will be too 'moshi' to see the mountain, what make me so sad is that it is never too 'moshi for this kids shouting 'Shikamoo'.

Each time I walk down the street, I have to count how many Shikamo I get on a day. The more Shikamoo you get the more Marahaba you have to give, a quite person, they will keep you talking all the way long, trust me this kids never give up, pretend you have not heard them and they will shout louder. Like you know back in eighties when they introduced the Auto rewind system-automatically they rewind. You might think I passed that one ,only to here a louder SHIKAMOOO. I love and appreciate their effort but I pity them.

Since you have never been in the foot hills of Mount Kilimanjaro, you might wonder why am speaking in 'jibrish'. Shikamoo is away of greeting that every child born in this country Tanganyika must say when they meet any person who might appear older than them. The older person must speak 'jibrish' too and so he or she will say Marahaba. So you have to walk fully armed with more than 20 marahabas because you never know.

Sometimes back I took my time and did a little research to find out what Shikamo means, and guess what I found! Shikamo is a two word married-Shika and Mo. Shika is a simple Swahili word meaning to hold or to touch, Mo in the other words means knee or below your feet. And there we have our word-'am kneeling below your feet or am bowing down to your knees'. You might as well wonder what Marahaba means. Simple, I ACCEPT!!!!

Get 20 shikamo, and you have 20 kids bowing down for you. Unlike Uganda where ladies literally bow down for men, this kids are tought to bow down for elders not like their ladies cousins from year one. Sad that they have been told it is a way of respect. But it is tedious routine to put a kid on too. Others might disagree but, I agree cos I tried it the other day. Saying shikamo to any older person I met on the way, by evening I had a crack on my lips, got my Marahabas but fully dehydrated, That is why I have a kind of go slow,  swear that I won't be 'kneeling' any more, still in respect of the elders today, respect of the elders tomorrow and respect of the elders forever, but no kneeling please!! May be we should teach this kids to pass, sometimes tell them that if they pass one or two times it is not a crime, we will still love them. All my Shikamo funs I love you!

If any case you happen to visit Tanzania, don't be surprised and chill out you will be sure to get your potion of Shikamo, I there for advised you to start banking your Marahabas since it is give and take-give and accept sought of.

Warning! Never follow the writers advice, he is Kenyan and in Kenya they don't say Shikamo!!

Blogger Forgoten!

Each time I check any social media page, the only thing I see is how so and so has blog this and that, others twit and other spend time on Facebook. I beg forgiveness, as am one of those who steal a moment or so to show my face on Facebook, of late the Face of my little boy Eli Evenings has taken over my Facebook page- lets whine about this but who cares. His smiles make my day, even so he is more cute than I am so his little face is God given right to take over the Facebook page. And that is when I remember that I have a blogger too, sometimes back then I saw how my beautiful wife had dedicated her life to blog, each and every days she reports on what had gone right in her life, what had gone wrong and what was going on whatever, and I thought, is it too much- but she was just good at it-so if you can't beat them join them and that is how George aka Baba Eli created his blog 'The stories from Tanzania', there are a lot of stories from this country but poor George had forgotten about blogging and so a lot has been missed out.The best way to please the public is to apologize and so I take this time to ask forgiveness, if Tiger Woods get forgiven I thought why not George when he has failed to blog about Tanzania and let people down???!!

OK my dear readers as we are in Moshi, at the foot hills of Mt. Kilimanjaro, I thought and said there should be blogging to day, blogging tomorrow and blogging forever, promising that every day I shall do my best to keep you in touch with stories from Tanzania. This is because Tanzania is worth knowing-it is that country unlike other countries in Africa where you will write an official letter in English and someone will tell you to translate it in Kiswahili-this people are kuku about Kiswahili. This is a big problem to me-a 'Luopean' who knows that everything official must be in English or vocabulary if you like. But still I 'kaka' everything as kaka , dada, baba and mama are the names of addressing each other. To tell you the whole story, then I must 'kakaout' and continue.....keep on checking Stories From Tanzania and I promise you will 'kaka yourselves soon as the blogger will not be forgotten any more!!!

Tanzania

Time us come to let go our desires what we want to be. What we think we were ment to be..and choose a calling a noble calling. Leave people we love, our home and head straight to the land God will show us. When I read about Abraham I think..was it right? The answer is not there..as I look besides me and I see one Stacie Larsen. One Lady who left her American dream..to live a most better life as we call it in the slums of Africa..where I was born and raised up. She did it because of The gospel...the gospel we both despite..the gospel we are trying to prove to be true...the gospel human wisdom is reffuting to be true...but the proof awaits us both at the other end. So I give it all. For Christ..encouraged by a woman of faith..one Stacie Larsen