More than Meets the Eye | The first Trip to Toloha
Why is it that people go on mission trips? Some might say that it is because they want to experience another culture so that they can develop a more realistic understanding of how the rest of the world lives. Others may say their main purpose is to assist our fellow man in his struggles and eventually religiously convert him. I have struggled with this question for a while now and have mulled it over every summer for the past three years. I was raised with a heart to serve and believe that as a follower of Jesus, I am called to serve others for my whole life. Prior to my trip to Tanzania this past June, I thought that I had a basic idea of how most mission trips work. I thought that a good group of Christians would travel to wherever, whether down the street or across the world, and that they would partner with another good group of Christians and help to aid them in whatever way possible. The group might minister to people in their village or provide them with resources they were incapable of obtaining. That kind of mission work really is the most common and well known to me, and I perceived it was what the majority of mission work entailed. I knew that this was not the only way mission work was done, but the other way seemed fairly far-fetched to me and pretty obsolete, at least at the time.
This other way was the kind of missions you would only hear about at large conferences and on television. It was someone, or group of people, targeting a primarily unreached people group in order to aid them in some way and eventually convert them to Christ. Prior to this trip, I had been to the Dominican Republic a couple of times and had participated in numerous service projects in the United States, so I assumed that I had a pretty good feel for the mission field as I had seen many different scenarios play out in different kinds of situations. Before this trip our knowledge about Toloha village was pretty minimal. We had one real source of information on life in the village and, therefore, had very little to base our preconceptions of the conditions in which we were about to be immersed. Consequently, as I prepared, I fell back on previous experience to guide my preconception and didn’t think much of it.
But, despite the hundreds of examples of physical thirst that I saw, their thirst for something more than water was what struck me like those machetes hacking up the pipes. I saw a thirst for someone to care about them when adults and children alike would constantly barrage me with their stories of anything from their last trip to the market to their dream of obtaining an education and making it to America. I saw a thirst for knowledge, when person after person, young and old, would approach us and ask about the surveying technology, how it worked and what it did. Finally, I saw a thirst for a purpose. These people want a reason to live; many of them spend all of their time trying to find a way to make any kind of money so they can provide for their family while others, most of the women and girls, simply worked and worried day after day to get “clean-enough”water. They are stuck in a continuous generational and circumstantial cycle of living just to get by, and they yearn for more than that, much more.
The villagers knew that we, the Americans, may be able to quench their physical thirsts, but they were unsure whether or not we could satisfy their thirst for the other intangible things. They seemed to pursue the answer to that question but came up short. Unfortunately, the other team members and I could not sit down and listen to every story, show every eager villager how we worked the GPS system, or provide those with the deepest thirst a purpose to live. This lack of provision on our part hurt me deeply because I knew that no matter how long we stayed and how much time or effort we gave, the end result of the problem would always churn out the same solution, disappointment.
The situation is dire and is more than meets the eye. I went on this mission trip expecting to return with the same feeling that I had upon returning from every other mission trip. Instead, I have experienced a real problem that I did not perceive before but one that needs to be addressed collectively and passionately by the people involved in the church and in the Toloha Partnership. We need not take this lightly because there is no passing it on to the next guy. I believe we have been chosen by God to aid these people and that their eternal lives may rest in our willingness to be obedient to God’s cry for His people in Toloha.
Josh serves as our Team Videographer and also assists in the engineering and planning aspects of our water project. He graduated from Arendell Parrott Academy in 2013 and will be pursuing a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University starting this Fall. His mother, Diane, is one of the first Toloha Partnership team members to share in Daniel’s vision for Toloha.
Back in the USA!
It has been an amazing month for the Toloha Partnership! We had our first team trip to Toloha and everyone will be back in the states this week. Our Assessment team came back at the end of June and Daniel comes back today! We also had our first fund-raising and awareness initiative in partnership with the Erasing the Lines (ETL) annual event in Kinston! (Read about ETL here.) Plus, we have t-shirts!
We have so much exciting news and we will be blogging about it all right here. There’s so much to share that we almost don’t know where to start, so this is a little teaser of what’s to come.
There is a lot of teamwork going on right now! Currently our engineering team is getting bids for the pipeline that will be used to distribute our water source, and they are organizing all of the research and information from their trip to get a finalized design for the clean water project. Our fundraising team is planning an exciting fundraising and awareness events for this Fall and Spring in Kinston and Greenville. We also have Tanzanian-made merchandise to sell along with our very own Toloha Partnership t-shirts that made their debut at ETL. Photos coming soon!
We will need lots of volunteers for fundraising events, so if you are interested, please contact us here.
I am putting together a very informative e-newsletter with all of the details for our clean water project and prayer requests. So if you haven’t yet, please sign up for the e-newsletter here.
In the meantime, here are some images from the team trip to Toloha taken by our Team Videographer, Joshua Spear and some images I took from Erasing the Lines. There are soooo many more photos that we will be sharing along with some blog posts from our Assessment team so make sure to check back soon!
Thank you so much for your support! God is doing amazing things in Toloha and here in the USA to show us his love in miraculous ways.
Toloha, Tanzania
Erasing the Lines, Kinston, NC, USA
We Walk So They Won’t Have To
Students carry the water back to Rochelle Middle School (2.4 miles) where the camp is based.
Assessment Team Update!
Perry and Josh on board the flight headed for Istanbul, Turkey |
- Strong relationships with the community leaders/members
- Relationships with the local church in Toloha
- Water project logistics (surveying, water tests, water committees)
- For Jesus to shine brightly through the team members as they interact with the locals
- Energy and health
It’s GO Time!
I think these words from Daniel truly sum up our team’s sentiments:
“Oh my Lord, it is real now! I did not believe if someday this would happen. A hope for getting clean water to my people in the village — I will always adore You (God) and testify to Your power before Your people wherever I go and you will always be my God.”
The Lord has been so sweet and so very present throughout this past year. I would love to share all the ways we’ve seen the Lord and how He has truly led us step by step to get us to this point (maybe in a future blog post)! A year ago we thought we’d drill a couple of boreholes and the village would have clean water within the year. Now we are looking at repairing a mountain spring gravity feed system which is an extensive undertaking but one we know the Lord will see to the end.
There have been many times that it would have been easiest to give up, throw in the towel and believe it couldn’t be done. But, the Lord keeps showing up — over and over and over again. There is no denying that He has been the one leading this adventure and we can’t wait to see where He leads next.
Will you be praying for our team as they travel? Here are a few specific things you can be praying for over the next two weeks:
- Safe travels, on-time flights, checked baggage to make it to TZ, accommodations and travel while in country
- Productive meetings/favor with government officials, non-governmental organizations (similar to non profits here in the USA), village leaders and village committees
- Health, good rest and energy
- Opportunities to share Jesus/encourage the church
- God’s leading/wisdom/discernment
We hope to post multiple times over the coming weeks as we hear news from the team in Tanzania! Please please please be praying!
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21
Real Thirst
As my mom and I were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner tonight I said:
“I have got to have some water…I’m about to die of thirst.”
I immediately stopped. I couldn’t believe I had said that. My thoughts instantly ventured to Toloha, Tanzania, where my friends are walking 12 to 16 kilometers (~7.5 to 10 miles) to get a bucket of dirty water.
Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about how often I use water – when I wash my face, take a shower, brush my teeth, cook, flush the toilet, wash the car, water the lawn, or need to quench my thirst.
There are so many things I do each and every day that involve water and yet I take it for granted and say things like, “I am about to die of thirst.” A statement that I used to say as a figure of speech but is now something that I can hardly speak without tears welling up in my eyes. The reality is that there are people that really are dying of thirst.
In 2009 in Toloha, Daniel’s father died as a result of the lack of water. How many in Toloha will die this week from the lack of clean water? How many will die this month or this year from water related diseases? This is a problem that I must do something about; this is a problem that can be solved.
Please consider joining us in bringing clean water and hope to a village that is desperately in need of both.
~ Katie ~
Photos by Daniel Makoko