Tanzania/Liberia March 2-21, 2020

February 28, 2020

Dear friends,

I am busily preparing for a three-week trip to Tanzania and Liberia.

Please pray for my time in Tanzania. I am traveling with an experienced TLI missionary and we will be finalizing our agreement to train and set up a school for Tanzanian pastors/leaders/elders. The site has great potential for the kingdom. These leaders have little or no training and the group we are working with oversees the ministry of 1000 churches! Our first class will be for English speakers, and if all things go well we will begin training with translators in Swahili in 2021!

After a week in Tanzania I will return to Liberia for two weeks. The first week I will teach principles of interpreting epistles from 2 Timothy. On Saturday of that week we will graduate our first cohort of approximately 75 students. The following Monday we will begin the second cohort and teach course one of our nine course curriculum.

Here is the description from the teacher’s manual:

Course 1 introduces God, Scripture, and the role God has defined for leaders within his church, laying a foundation for Christ’s global church to mature for God’s glory. That foundation is the relational, devotional, expositional study, preaching, and teaching of Scripture. Course 1 has this aim: Know God intimately, speak God’s Word rightly,
and train others to do likewise.

Please pray for the students. Most of what we teach is new to them. They need to read the Bible differently than they are accustomed to – reading to understand the author’s intent – what the Holy Spirit and the writers wanted us to know about God and the gospel.

Pray also for me. This will be a long trip – 11 separate flights, 50 hours in the air, approximately 21,000 miles, plus layovers. I remember the last three-week trip I took and I was very happy to be home at the end. Pray for good intestinal fortitude – bad food resulting in traveler’s diarrhea makes for long days! Pray for Tanzania and the school – I am slated to be the site coordinator and this means constant contact with our national partner, recruiting trainers, setting up logistics, translations, and everything else necessary to make for a successful training site.

And, one last second addition… I’m planning on a 3 week trip; however, with all the new developments surrounding the Coronavirus I’m preparing as best I can for a longer stay. Pray that Africa will remain largely unaffected.

Thanks again for reading and praying and giving,

Bob