Wasa at Last

One of our highlites is our trip to Wasa. This is the sister congregation to Fish Lake Lutheran. Most rural churches have a small building and then 5 or so "preaching points" in the surrounding small towns. Our Wasa church is a new (2009) building with 6 preaching points surrounding the central church. 3 of the preaching points have actual church buildings and the other 3 worship in someone's house -- usually the evangelist. The evangelist is trained by the local pastors to perform church services and spread the gospel. Some of the preaching points are small with 20 or so members. Some are as large as the central church. We headed out over the countryside for a 3 hour trip to Wasa. Once there, the pastor's family served us lunch. We headed off to visit two of the preaching points for Wasa: Imogoro??? and Ikungwa. We visited Ikungwe last trip and celebrated worship with them. This time we just stopped at the church and headed back to Wasa for dinner. After dinner we went to the Catholic Church across the road and found rooms for all of the folks.The Father and Nuns were incredibly hospitable and were so glad we were able to stay there. We stressed their accomodations a little but we all bedded down by about 8:30 PM

Just a short note about daylight. The sun rises about 6:20 AM and sets about 6:30 PM -- every day. We are used to hunkering down at sunset. Here they are still active and working until about 9 or 10. They light the working areas and keep going. The little workshops in the Catholic Church compound were still active at 9:30 PM. There is no commercial power at Wasa so the Catholic compound has a generator that provides AC power until about 9:30 AM. After that there are only a few battery powered lights outside and in the hallways. They have really two electrical systems in their buildings: one connected to the 220 VAC generator and one connected to 12 VDC for overnight lights.

We awoke to the bell of the Catholic service and made our way the few hundred yards to the Lutheran pastor's house for "tea": potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, tea and coffee. We then headed to the Wasa Lutheran Church for the service. The service ran 3 and 1/2 hours with the annual report, introduction of the visitors (with details on our family structures), 3 choir anthems, presentation of the quilts for each of the preaching points and communion. We made two offerings: one for the church and one for communion. Each of the preaching point representatives stood in front of the church and members of that particular preaching point put their offering in that person's offering box.

We did present quilts for each of the preaching points to accompany the quilt that LaDonna Olson's mother made for Wasa. For most of these alters, the quilt will be the only decoration except for maybe a wooden cross. After the service we gathered around the entry way for the traditional auction of donated items. We bid on two bottles of Sprite, oranges and onions. We won nothing. Interestingly, just as we stepped out of the church a small dust tornado passed across the soccer field. We spotted a full dust tornado in Ruaha but it moved so fast we couldn't get a picture. Here is our tornado picture from Tanzania.

Following the Wasa service, the pastor invited all of the congregation to his house for dinner. We brought 110 pounds of rice the day before and I am sure that most of that was used to feed the congregation that gathered around the pastor's house after we had lunch.

Back on the road again for 3 hours back to Iringa. Most of us were pretty wiped out so we had dinner at the apartment. Some went to Pastor Ilomo's house in the hills. Pastor Ilomo spent 6 months last year at Luther Seminary in St. Paul teaching. We had him up to Fish Lake one of the weekends of the spring to preach and get acquainted. He was a most gracious host and the folks that returned were raving about the food.

Monday Dale and I will return to Tumaini to try to get our actual teaching schedules. We know what courses we will teach and how many students, just not what days and in what room. The rest of the group will be headed to Ilula Hospital and Image Secondary School (sponsored by the Lutheran Diocese here).