A
BISHOP’S VISION
Graham
Wattley
When
Rose and I went on holiday to Rome this year we, like most tourists, absorbed
the sights and scenes, visited the art galleries and museums, shopped, sat in
its squares, drank coffee and watched the people go by.
From our hotel window, we could see an intriguing variety of people’s
homes; but as on most holidays, there was no chance of meeting a Roman family
and being invited into one of them. In
Tanzania, of all places, where I went recently with my son, we were taken deep
into the bush and there, in the village of Uhambingeto, the Pastor invited us
into his home, first to take tea on our arrival; and later, after attending the
service in the village church, to lunch. And
this was just the first of many such invitations.
To get to the village, we were driven along a red
mud road. It was
well built, cambered, and had ditches on each side to carry away the rainwater.
Nevertheless there were formidable ruts in places.
The road was busy, not with vehicles, but with people: walking mostly
although some had bicycles.
The men were dressed usually in clean white shirts
and with long trousers; the women in brightly coloured printed cotton,
and the children dressed like children anywhere.
Much of the walking was to fetch water or wood or to
trade something. Subsistence
farming is what life is about for most people living in the bush.
They grow enough on their shamba (a plantation) for the family to live on
and they trade with any surpluses.
People walking on the road would wave to us as we
drove by and we waved back.
But it was embarrassing because we left them in a haze of red dust thrown
up by the wheels of our vehicle.
As we approached Uhambingeto village we could see
people on their shambas clearing the ground ready for planting maize when the
rains come, which is usually at the end of November.
Their homes were spread out over a wide area among the trees and the hard
red soil. We drove
up to the church, which had mud walls and a thin thatched roof, and we noted the
church bell (a wheel hub) hanging in a nearby tree.
We walked along a track leading to the Pastor’s house, which like all
the other houses in the village, had mud walls and a thatched roof.
It consisted of a group of huts around a small courtyard.
We were there because my son’s church is one of
the churches supporting the Anglican church in Tanzania and the Bishop had
invited him to see for himself how his – the Bishop’s – vision for
bringing God’s love in Christ to the people of Tanzania is working out.
This vision has four main thrusts:
to build and staff clinics in remote areas to offer health care;
to build and staff schools to provide Christian education;
and more generally to bring help, for example by improving water supplies
to the villages. Finally,
and essential to the vision, to build and staff new churches.
We worshipped in small mud-built churches, but beside them large brick
churches were under construction.
In the Amani Bible College in Iringa, the Pastors and Evangelists are
trained. Despite
there being many suitable men and women wanting to take the training however,
the College needs help to fund the courses.
St.
Paul’s Church in Sketty, Swansea is raising money to support the Bishop’s
vision and I would like to say a big thank you to this year’s Flames
of Fire for their generous gift of £1850 which has been
put towards the £4000 required by the Bishop to provide two of the clinics with
their initial supply of drugs and medicines.