The Church in Mwanzugi
DURING THE COURSE OF THE FEB 2025 CONFERENCE we learned that Pastor Ruben had help establish 6 daughter churches. The closest of these was in Mwanzugi which was only 7 miles away from where we were holding our conference. We preached there on our last Sunday in Igunga.
This picture is the first thing we saw when we arrived. On the right is a look at the interior and below that we have a video of a portion of their praise service. This structure was on borrowed land but they had the beginning of a structure 200’ away. The walls were about 4’ high. The people are so impoverished! They said that it would be decades before they would be able to have a permanent building. Andy and I decided to leave them a few hundred dollars (750,000 Tsh) and they used this to ‘grow’ the walls another 5’.
The church in Mwanzugi as we first found it.
It was mid-summer in Michigan when Andy said to me, ‘I will give this much and if you give that much we can get the remainer of the walls built. That’s what happened. Then Andy and his wife posted a picture of the sorry-looking hut church on their Facebook page and asked if anyone ‘out there’ felt led to help this congregation move into a more-permanent home. In two weeks time over $8000 came in and we proceeded to get the church built. The man in the blue shirt in the upper right picture is Charles Masanja. He has very good English skills but just as important, he has much experience in building buildings (what a wonderful Providence!). The trusses and metal roofing was installed; the gable ends were bricked up to the peak; doors and windows were fabricated; and electricity was brought into the building; and clay mixed with gravel was brought in to make a temporary floor. They held their dedication service at the end of August. (Charles is a force to be reckoned with… he doesn’t mess around and he knows what he is doing!)
A few weeks later Andy said to me, “I am starting to think that the LORD is calling us to do more of this kind of thing. We will need lots of people to help us and we will need a mission board to help direct the work.” It was an electrifying moment. I am more of a teacher but Andy is more of a visionary. There was the ‘snap’ of Holy Spirit electricity there and we both knew that an important mission had been assigned to us.
Andy then said, “I think we would need a board of 5 people. I have experience with this kind of thing and if you agree, I would be willing to be President. You are the director. Your job now is to figure out who could join us on the board. (You can click on the ‘About’ section of this website and see the pictures of the ones who said, “yes” and read their bios). Andy contacted a lawyer to begin the work of becoming incorporated and obtain a 501 (c) 3 non profit status. The 4 people I recruited were ones who I judged to be Spirit-led people with a heart for international missions. We scheduled our first board meeting for the end of October. In order to become incorporated we had to elect officers and adopt a mission statement. We did those things and “Tanzania Rising” was officially launched.
All of this started with a Sunday morning visit to Mwanzugi!