Thousands expected for VBS 2023
A group of students from the Siha District who attended VBS from the 2022 sessions!
Did you know that 63 people will be traveling to the village of Karansi over the summer to serve on Ubora Mission Trips? Of the 63, more than half will be making their first visit to Karansi! All of Ubora’s impact programs will be operating at high capacity, providing people, resources and valuable connections to our friends in Tanzania. Here are a few highlights we’d like to share…
Health
Ubora’s Health Impact team will kick things off with health screenings for children in the village. Led by our partners from Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies, this team will include first-time professors and nursing students! During these screenings, we will be rolling out a new IT healthcare solution to log and safely track confidential patient data. Special thanks to our IT lead, Louis Strydom, for his invaluable work in sourcing the hardware required and getting the system HIPAA compliant, and up and running!
Community: Vacation Bible School
Over 2,500 children from throughout the village and district will be learning about the love of Christ through two weeks of Vacation Bible School. This year’s theme, Njoo Uone, “Come and See”, (Psalm 66:5) promises to touch many young lives…some may never have heard the message of redemptive love through Jesus Christ! Many hands and hearts have been busy preparing lessons, materials and teams for this week, including Pastor Godfrey Seuya, former headmaster of SLS and Carter Rhea, Ubora Community Impact lead.
How can you help? We are in need of supplies! Click here for our Amazon wishlist for VBS.
Week of June 19th
VBS Week One will take place on the campus of Siha Leadership School. Twenty-three Ubora team members will be traveling to Karansi to help serve in VBS, along with teachers and leadership from SLS and Pastor Wariaeli’s church. We are expecting 400 to 500 kids each day! The morning will start off with jubilant worship, followed by fun crafts and other hands-on activities that will teach about Jesus. The morning sessions will conclude with lunch.
During this week, we will be hosting our first ever sports camp for children in the afternoon! Our partners from Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA)—led by Daniel Lazier—will be onsite to use sports activities as a bridge to teach children about the love of Jesus. The afternoon VBS activities will begin with lunch, a devotion, and sports camp featuring different sports.
Our Business Impact team will also be on the ground that week, with two business team members exploring new opportunities for job creation and identifying potential business partners in the village.
Week of June 26th
We will be taking the message of “Njoo Uone” to six different churches in the Siha District during VBS Week 2. VBS will be taught by eleven Ubora members from the U.S., along with staff and leadership from SLS, and Pastor Godfrey and Daniel Mollel. Activities will include worship, crafts and lunch. We are expecting to reach 1,500+ children total during this week.
Other non-VBS activities taking place this week include a visit to the new land for expansion of SLS, time for men to spend with the babas, a visit to Kilimanjaro Recovery Home and local Rotary clubs, and a chance to mentor SLS staff.
Closing this section with a word from Pastor Godfrey, from a report he wrote at the conclusion of last year’s VBS…
A New Home for Suzana
Suzana and her grandchildren, and others from the community, join in the blessing of her new SHARE home.
The widows of Karansi have always had our hearts ❤️.
One of our donor families visited the village for the first time in 2022. Their hearts were moved by many things, but especially the widows. It wasn’t long before we learned of this family’s desire to fund additional housing for widows in the village…Bwana asifiwe (Praise the Lord!) Soon thereafter, the SHARE program was born.
After months of planning, praying, hard work and collaboration, the first SHARE home is now complete! Ubora Board member and widows lead Cindy James shared the news…
“The blessing ceremony of Widow Suzana Mardadi’s new SHARE program home is now complete! No longer is her grandson sleeping in a goat pen, or the other five grandchildren sharing a bed with her. The malnourished twins in her care are receiving appropriate food and treatment. Bwana asifiwe!! 🙏🏻
“Five additional projects are in the queue for the program. Prayers and thanks for this new program as it develops and serves God’s purpose to meet the needs of the most desperate of widows and their grandchildren.”
Thank you to our donor family funding these homes, Cindy, Kathy and Jim Stewart, our team at SHEFO and Pastor Wariaeli’s church and the PEFA Widows Committee for an exceptional collaborative effort to make this beautiful home a reality for Suzana and her grandchildren. Now on to the next one…
Welcome Emily Weaver to Ubora
Meet the newest addition to the Ubora team
Welcome Emily Weaver to Ubora! Emily will be serving many roles as Operations Impact Manager, including leading all mission trips to Tanzania, procuring important data and stats related to our work, helping with social media and events and much more. Since joining the team in mid-July, Emily has hit the ground running, with a first assignment to Karansi, Tanzania. As you can see, it was love at first sight as she met the children of Karansi and had a chance to see first-hand the work of our ministry. We are absolutely thrilled to have Emily on the team. Say 'hello' to Emily or leave a word of encouragement...emilyweaver@uboratz.org
Imaginations Unleashed...The Magadini Village Library is Open!
Tom Apson, the Honorable District Commissioner of Siha, was one of the guests speakers at the grand opening of the Magadini Village Library.
On February 25th, in true Tanzanian fashion with ceremony and fanfare, Ubora’s second village public library was dedicated for the people of Magadini. Students from nearby schools joined in the celebration. Music played as local government dignitaries arrived including the Honorable Tom Apson, District Commissioner of Siha.
The speeches were heartwarming and full of gratitude. The tour of the library was inspiring and exciting. The food was plentiful and everyone rejoiced over this new resource which will serve three primary schools and two secondary schools. But before all of the festivities could take place there were countless hours of phone calls, emails, book selection, box packing, pallet loading, and praying. The Ubora family rallied with necessary funding to pay for some of the books, along with transportation, taxes and fees to Tanzania.
Wendy Williams, one of Ubora’s volunteer teacher mentors, led the charge to get this container from Savannah, Georgia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She organized efforts for book selection with Books4Cause and other partners. She coordinated volunteers to pack pallets at Books for Africa. Then she traveled to Tanzania and, alongside Mary Ann Taylor, one of our partners in Tanzania, and SHEFO interns and volunteers, they unpacked the container and oversaw a team of people to organize and stock the shelves of the beautiful new library.
In addition to books, the container held precious resources and manipulatives for science and math, as well as medical textbooks. In God’s providence and plan, there were so many learning tools and books that we were able to share with other schools and even help the Siha District Hospital stock their first ever medical library!
Thank you to Wendy, Mary Ann, Books for Africa, Books4Cause, the SHEFO staff and interns and to all of you who gave so generously to make it possible for Magadini to dream!
“The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream…” – Eric Ripert
Reading Transforms Lives…A few scenes from Magadini
