Twenty years is a long time to keep a promise to a place.
That's how long Highlands Fellowship has been partnering with the people of Tanzania. Long enough that some of the leaders we work with there now were kids when this started. Long enough that it isn't really a mission trip anymore. It's a friendship with a plane ride in the middle.
This summer our team traveled across four regions, Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Mwanza, and Arusha, with one purpose: to share the gospel at every opportunity. That took a lot of forms. Some days it was door to door in a village. Some days it was standing in front of a classroom. There were children's crusades, medical outreach, hygiene education, clean water work, and discipleship gatherings where people sat down and asked real questions.
God moved.
More than 100 children and students made the decision to follow Jesus. Around 1,000 students heard the gospel in their local schools. 500 women and girls took part in gospel-centered hygiene lessons, the kind of practical help that opens a door to a much bigger conversation. Families were pointed toward local churches so they'd have people around them long after our team's flight home.
That last part matters more than anything. Our long-time ministry partners, Pastors Godwin and Clement, are the ones who carry this work the other fifty weeks of the year. Together we strengthened local churches, invested in the next generation, and made sure leaders had what they needed to keep making disciples without us.
So thank you, Highlands Fellowship, for praying, for giving, and for sending. This is what your generosity built this summer. This is the mission in motion: helping people experience life with Jesus, making disciples, loving our communities, and changing the world.
See the full photo album: https://flickr.com/gp/highlandsfellowship/Mv51Mv9z79
A few questions worth sitting with
- What's something you've stuck with for twenty years, and what did the staying part teach you?
- Is there a place or a person you've given up on too early?
- If you can't get on a plane, what's the version of this you could actually do from here?