What a rewarding challenge it has been to teach at the local Bible college lately! It has also proved to be exhausting and a TON of work! My expectations for how much time and energy it would take to prepare for a one-hour lecture in Swahili were far short of what has played out in reality. But I wouldn’t trade the great experience, which is an opportunity to study “how to study” the Bible, be pressured into A LOT of Swahili practice, and to interact with a motivated group of students who are committed to studying God’s word and sharing it with others through their churches and various ministries. I’ve been blessed and impressed by their desire to see real truth taught from the Bible in the appropriate context and in ways that people can understand.
However, I’m saddened by the many challenges and disadvantages these students have. There are the everyday challenges of caring for their families (most of them are married and have children), and there are the costs of dedicating to a life of ministry in Tanzania. Just in the past week I have heard how one student’s family is suffering from typhoid and amoeba. Another student asked for shoes because all he has to wear to church is a worn out pair of sandals. On Sunday evening I received a text from one of my students after storms had moved through the area. He was asking for prayer because the roof of his church back home had been completely blown off in the storm. He was obviously distraught, and it was clear that the church family was trying to figure out what to do.
More heartbreaking still, though, is the lack of resources available to these students for studying the Bible. I’ve become so accustomed to the many resources I have access too. But these guys in my class have next to nothing. One of them asked me yesterday for a Swahili Bible. Nothing more, just a Bible. I’ve explored their school library, and was astonished at what I found. There are a fair number of English books for the more advanced students who know English, but when I asked to see the Swahili resources I was taken over to a bottom shelf that had just a handful of small books in Swahili. Swahili is undoubtedly the dominant language used in Tanzanian churches, and there are plenty of resources published in Swahili, but access to them is poor. It is circumstances like these that motivate me but also leave me wishing that I could do just a little bit more.
Andrew
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