More car trouble

Thursday 14th May
This was another busy day here in Arusha. Allen and I had thought that we had a study first up at 10 a.m. This turned out to be wrong. We were to study with Justin who works here at the apartments. We were to study with him on his ½ day, but he had the afternoon off, not the morning. This worked out well though as it meant that Allen and I had time to just talk, reflect and plan. The work has been so busy that we are feeling that we are just caught in a wave, it was nice to take stock.

Our first study was with Shardack’s family. We set off from here in good time, but that is not always enough time here in Tanzania. The traffic police had set up a random check stop and we were stoped! The car I am hiring did not have third party insurance. It had to be paid there and then. Well, I was not going to pay so I first called the owner, no answer. I then called Mazoea, the owner of the apartments (he arranged the hire of the car). He said he would fix it. After a while, his sister, Nancy, came and swapped cars with us. She would wait until the owner came. This meant that we were late to our study and Shadrack had gone off to do some work. We had a good study with the ladies of the family (and friends) on the parable of the Sower. When Shadrack came back I had the ladies teach him what they had learnt. We finished the session off with tea and peanuts for lunch.

We had a 1 o’clock study with Eugene at his stall. During the study 2 preachers stopped and after us encouraging them they came and sat down. We were studying “what is the gospel?” These men were very interested. It turns out they preach for 2 different pericostal churches. They asked us to come and study with them tomorrow, so a time was set and we said our goodbyes.

In the afternoon we went to see our old friend, Negengia. We had a good study at her work place and she introduced us to her workmates. She is now working at a new wood supply store; it is bigger and better paid for her.

Our last study for the day was with Justin who is the chef at the apartments. He met us on the highway and showed me were to drive the car. We had not gone too far when it became clear that this road was not made for little Mitsubishi vans. I backed down to where I could turn around and we ended up walking. We had a good study and agreed to study next week.