Preaching in the Schools

Yesterday Warren and myself were asked to preach in church at a local secondary boarding school where they have a weekly church service for the approximate 180 kids. I would estimate that maybe 100 students were present along with a handful of the teachers and staff. Warren and I talked things over and decided that Warren would preach and that I would open with a word of encouragement and greeting. As it turned out, I spoke about 15 minutes on the differences between believing in Jesus and having faith in Jesus. Then, Warren got up and preached about how we can only be saved if we have faith in Jesus, and nothing else. He also spent time encouraging the students to actively share their faith with others. He concluded with a call for anyone who wanted to put there faith in Jesus and there were many students, maybe around 20 to 30, who made a commitment. The exciting thing for me was that I noticed the headmaster of the school raised his hand to accept Jesus. He had seemed rather disinterested in our visit when we arrived, but once the service was over his whole demeanor had changed. He was smiling ear to ear and even told Warren and I we could return anytime we wanted, no advanced notice needed. He told us to just walk right in if we ever were in the area. It was interesting to see and I believe his was a genuine profession of faith that he made that day.

Tomorrow we being a long 17 hour road trip across the country of Tanzania to the mountains outside of Mbeya. We will be spending 4 days visiting village churches there and conducting interviews with the local people. Andre, Warren, and I will be traveling with Paul* and David, two of our brothers from Tanzania who are helping to translate for us. We are also taking Jackson with us, who is the head trainer in Mbeya and had been attending the training sessions with us in Mlendizi. Altogether there are 7 of us making the trip together.

*name changed for security reasons