Going Back
By: Dave Burgess, President - UboraTZ
“ We know you love us because you keep coming back.”
Community development work is fraught with setbacks, and the mission field is scattered with projects, programs, and plans that missed their mark for any number of reasons: training that isn’t in tune with culture; education practices that are difficult to understand; funding that gets delayed; or, someone who might unintentionally offend by being unable to stomach a serving of goat tongue. Along the way, we have indeed experienced such minor setbacks – but ultimately our Tanzanian friends give us grace, and as Pastor said, “We know you love us because you keep coming back.”
So, why do we go back? Of course, we love visiting our sponsor children, working with the teachers, helping medical workers, and all the other fulfilling things we get to do – but what fuels us through the challenges of getting to the other side of the world and pushing through the many obstacles that inevitably occur along the way? I am sure that if not for the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to have gone back enough on our own power to accomplish all that’s happened in the Siha District over the past 18 years. We go back because we are propelled by the love of Jesus.
The Ubora Project Child sponsorship program is core to our community’s commitment to go back. When we go back in multiple ways–via our letters, emails, video calls, and Ubora Mission trips–these acts of love and and gifts of our time show our sponsor children that we truly know and love them. To the sponsor children’s parents and family, your gifts serve as a daily reminder that they have a partner in Christ who helps them feed, clothe, educate, and love their child. We hope you enjoy the upcoming sponsorship updates and seeing how going back in these ways changes lives.
We also hope you enjoy the updates from our Education Pillar, where going back over many years has given us the ability to invest deeply in the lives of the children of Karansi – from Kindergarten through early adulthood. You’ll see how God’s love for his people as image bearers has instilled excellence throughout our school. You’ll come to understand why, after starting the primary school, that we were compelled to begin offering assistance for secondary school – and then to provide scholarships for post-secondary school…and now to begin construction on the primary school expansion that will double the number of children we serve and pave a path toward long-term community sustainability.
In our Medical Pillar, we’d like to first thank the Ubora community for rallying around the Medical container effort, which because of you, is set to deliver $2.5 million of life-saving medicine and medical supplies to the region! This amazing project will absolutely change the face of healthcare in the Siha District. Stay tuned for an exciting project update later this year, once the containers arrive in the district. Medical screening teams, who have been going back faithfully over the years, will return to a vastly improved situation because of these shipments. Finally, we look forward to sharing more about our partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, which will enable us to “go back” virtually at first – and then later in person – to conduct vital training for approximately 120 community healthcare workers.
We hope you enjoy reading about the Stewart family, who have been going back since Ubora’s first days when Jim and Kathy helped to start the widows ministry. In the latest chapter of this family’s Ubora story, their son Griffin has played a key role in helping to build food silos at five public schools, and an additional silo for the widows. These silos will be critical in alleviating food insecurity caused by droughts, floods, and recent disruptions in supply chains as a result of the global pandemic.
Many of you have been asking about the possibility of going back on mission trips–stay tuned for an update soon as the “Covid-19 clouds” begin to part. And, since mission trips don’t always involve getting on a plane, look for some exciting news in the Business Pillar regarding the distance mentoring program that helps our graduates make the transition from school to work while following Jesus.
While going back to Tanzania is temporarily on pause for now, our love for the people of Karansi continues to shine brightly year-round because of you. It has been absolutely amazing to see God working through our Ubora community to accomplish so much, if only from afar and by way of Zoom calls. Just imagine how joyful it will be when we finally do get to go back and celebrate all that God is doing with our Tanzanian brothers and sisters – a celebration so sweet that we might even relish that serving of goat tongue!
God is so good.