A report from the field

The following was written by Charles Masanja after four Tanzania Rising teachers led in 2 separate four-day Bible Conferences in March 2026.

APPRECIATION FROM TANZANIA

Dear brother Mark,

Greetings.

The title above is a cover of both, our sincere thanks and feedback, based on your recent missionary trip results in Tanzania a week ago. Frankly speaking, four of you did a great job to educate us many things we did not understand from the Bible. Every one of you had a unique charisma of teaching the Word of God from the Bible. It is interesting to inform you that The Jesus Film equipment you gave us, brought 13 lost souls to Jesus when you were still on your flight back to Michigan! This is just a general statement, but we need to go in detail of everyone and everything as much as we can remember. But also to explain the views of both your audience and our top church leaders of Tabora Baptist Association.

Now, four of you had a unique and wonderful ministry to us...!!!

STACY VANDER ZWAAG.

Stacy showed her family care open heart to women and children she met in the church during the conference. She did not spare her Christian love to the African women and children. Though it happened unexpectedly that some of the children were scared and afraid to come closer to her because of the light skin...!!! However, Stacy was doing her best to make sure she extends her Christian love to all people despite the skin color differences. In so doing, Stacy was practically cementing the absolute truth that all people, in this case (Americans and Africans) are made in the image of God. This is the message Stacy was delivering to us, we felt good indeed to have Stacy with us. Not only that, but she also ministered together with pastor Ryan in a marriage topic dialogue. A unique experience of teaching we never had before.

RYAN VANDER ZWAAG.

Pastor Ryan expounded the New Testament survey and marriage topics in the way we understood clearly how things are supposed to be, rather than how we used to do! Almost in every topic, pastor Ryan started with the over view of the Old Testament as the foundation of the NT. The marriage topic was hot and a challenge to our cultural influences, but pastor Ryan did his best to teach us what the bible speaks about husband and wife. We still need this particular topic in Africa. We have realized that we do not know the concept of marriage in the biblical perspective.

ANTHONY PETERSON.

Brother Antony expounded the book of Philippians, he taught us verse by verse about everything that was taking place in the ministry of Paul and Silas until they were jailed! It was a wonderful session, as we learned how a servant of the gospel message is subjected to persecution. But ultimately God fulfills His redemption Mission.

Pst MARK LOOMAN.

This missionary father played a major role almost in all sessions by his remarkable inputs to the topics.

He specifically taught about Bibliology and The life led by the Spirit of Christ (The Holy Spirit) This was/is a strong topic in Christianity lifestyle because the subject hold up all other promises, instructions, commands, and rewards God has revealed in His Word-The Bible.

In Igunga district pastor Mark has a specific marriage sermon on March 28, the day Noah and Pendo declared their vows as husband and wife. It was a unique and colorful wedding in the history of Igunga town, in fact the wedding sermon corresponded to the conference marriage topic.

Well, all these are just a brief of the most pastor Mark and his team did for eight days in Nzega and Igunga. On the other side of the missionary team, were the intended audience listening and watching careful. In turn the audience expressed their views about the conference.

1.Pastor Joseph Silibeth (chairman of the Tabora Baptist churches association) stood up and said  "On behalf of the Baptist Churches of Tabora, I thank pastor Mark and his team for their initiative mission trip to Tanzania, particularly in our region. I believe the Holy Spirit led them to come this way and teach our church leaders. We have learned a lot of things concerning the Bible, I am prompted to ask them to remain with us for a little while but this is impossible"

This top leader did not end up there, he continued to say,  "Although these teachers are going back to America it is my sincere request that they;

*Keep on praying for us to have the same momentum in applying for all things they have taught us.

*Pray for our church planting and more discipleship training programs in our region because we are lacking sound teaching to our church leaders, hence the church at large.

*Pray for us to have the permanent church buildings, since the majority of our believers gather in primitive and dangerous mud huts, especially when it comes the rain season

*Keep on coming to teach us as many times as possible, because our church leaders have no access to theological seminaries.

2. John (the van driver) "I count myself to be a privileged person to have these servants of God from America in my car. But what I like most, I have learned that they use the same Bible we are using but the way they study it is quite different to what we used to read the bible. Their Bible study methodology is good and easy to understand the scriptures! I have learned a better method, a better translation of scriptures, a better meditation skills. I wish they come again"

3.Pastor Ruben of Hope Baptist Church said "I was very much impressed by pastor Ryan's Sunday sermon as he was teaching about the importance of the cross from the book of Colossians and said Christian faith has power and authenticity from the cross.

4. Pastor Gerald "I am very interested with the study books pastor Mark was talking about, the concordance and other Bible study books.  It is my request that the books may be translated into Swahili so that we can also study smoothly"

5.Pastor Andrew (General Secretary of Tabora Baptist churches association) said "The vision of building a Theological Training Center in Tabora will be a great advantage to the region, because the center will be used to train church leaders while focusing to plant churches in 1500 villages which has no any church! We pray for this vision which will speedup evangelism, discipleship, and church planting."

That is a summary of the March 2026 conference in Tabora Tanzania.

Your sincerely sons, Ruben and Charles.