Mission to Tanzania 2nd Letter

Mission to Tanzania — July 9, 2006

We've arrived!

After 20 hours of air travel, 12 pieces of "misplaced" luggage, 4 airports, 2 sunrises (and sunsets) and 1 exciting excursion to London's Windsor Castle, we are now on African soil. Two highlights so far:

flying into Tanzania this morning at 17,000 feet, we were above the clouds but below the tip of Mt. Kilimanjaro. In a word, stunning.
We were met at the airport by Thomas Ratsim, the tour manager at JM Tours who has planned our upcoming safari as well as most of our ground transportation. Thomas spent the morning and early afternoon with us answering a myriad of questions about Tanzania. His laughter is contagious. On the 45-minute bus ride from the airport to Arusha, while discussing the our common Lutheran background, Thomas was quick to point out that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is older than the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As we passed through the wonderful green hills outside of Arusha, Thomas went on to explain to our group the various ecclesiastical mergers than led the formation of the ELCA. Maybe it's just me, but a Tanzanian national explaining American church history to a group of jetlagged Californians while driving on the left side of the road in Africa with a kamakazie driver who loves to honk the horn — in a word, priceless!

Before we reached our hotel, Thomas stopped at a change bureau and we all changed our US dollars into Tanzanian Shillings. You will be happy to know that $300 US dollars equals roughly 38,000 TZS. And lunch today cost 44700! It's a whole new world!

The local time is just past 7:00pm and folks in Tanzania are looking forward with great anticipation to the World Cup Final in a few hours. My straw poll indicates that most of Tanzania is rooting for Italy.

We have been promised that 11 of our 12 pieces of "misplaced luggage" will be delivered to our hotel tomorrow morning. Then we leave for a 3 day, 2 night safari (swahiili for journey). We will be entering the portion of our trip that can rightly be described as resembling a National Geographic "best of" issue. However, we will be exchanging internet service for elephant sightings, so you won't hear from us until Wednesday evening (that's Wednesday morning for you folks in California).

So far — things are going great. Please pray for safe travel tomorrow and many hours of sleep tonight.

Peace,

Rick Sherrill, for the Mission to Tanzania Team

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Last updated January 15, 2008