Jim & Julie in Africa - together at last!

Yes, Jim and I are finally together in Africa.  Jim left San Francisco on a Saturday and arrived in Kigoma on the next Tuesday, with 24 hours of actual flying time.  I was able to surprise Jim at the DAR airport, not because I planned it in advance, but because Coni needed an emergency

Ethel (Julie) & Lucy (Coni)

appendectomy.  We ended up flying to DAR for
her surgery after the doctor made a house call.
He told me I needed to get Coni to a hospital,
so two hours later we were on a plane, and by
late afternoon, she was checked into the hospital
for tests, with surgery the following morning.
Here we are laughing in the hospital bed.  The
staff had to tell us several times to be QUIET - not a word either of us know the meaning of!  We felt like we were in a MASH episode, with the rows of iron beds.  It may have looked like a WWII hospital, but the surgeon was great and the surgery was successful!

Unfortunately, Jim picked up a bug on the plane, so he was down for the first 4-5 days with a fever and a hacking cough. The cough is still lingering, but he is doing much better.  We are settling into our house, and Jim is right in the thick of "the 3 guys" (Harold, Sylvester & Jim, who have been friends for years).  He's also had a chance to begin making new friendships with staff he had not met before.  He and Shukuru will be working together on the boat as well as all of the facilities and operations of the ministry. who with me will take care all the facilities that Hope of the Nations.

Sunset over Lake Tanganyika

Yesterday he had a chance to go to the port and see the boat in the water.   He can't wait to get out and use it for ministry. Harold, Jim, Moses and some others will be going south down the lake so that Moses can do some training for Kid's Club leaders. They will also have a chance to stop by some of the smaller villages on the way back and introduce themselves and see if we can do future outreaches there that will include preaching, kid’s club, door-to-door evangelism and medical.




Last Saturday night was the third Hope of the Nations Bible College graduation.  This year there were 4 graduates, and it was exciting to hear each of them speak about what God had taught them and how they wanted to use their education to teach and preach in their home villages.  It was the first graduation Jim has been to, and it was a great celebration, with preaching, singing, fellowship and food.

Pastors & Missionaries praying over graduates!

Jim got his first indoctrination into shopping in Kigoma -- he and Shukuru went to buy some plumbing supplies.  This is not like going to Lowe's or Home Depot where you can be in and out in 10 minutes.  No, this was 10 items in 1-1/2 hours!  The pace is slow but the smiles are quick!  Plus we are finding a real hunger to know God.  At our staff meeting following graduation, the comments weren't about taking a break now that school was over - no, it was when can we head out to the villages on outreach?!

 Just to close, we're adding a couple of pictures of our house.  This is definitely not what we were anticipating here in Africa.  Yes, as you can see, we're suffering for Jesus!  Seriously though, we are blessed to have found a place at all to rent, and then to have it be such a nice place - totally unexpected. One of the great things about it is the large garden, which has already been started.  We are hoping to grow enough to share with other staff to help reduce costs.  The best thing, however, is that we have TWO guest rooms, so our door is open for visitors!  Karibu sana Kigoma!!

Time to Leave

It's hard to believe, but this is the last blog posting I will write from the states! I (Julie) am leaving in two weeks, and Jim will follow at the end of May. All of the planning and preparation is nearly complete. The last thing to do is complete the paperwork for the final container shipment. I must say I will be extremely happy when the containers are all on their way. By the way, Jim's motorcycle made it into the 2nd container, and all of the items that were so generously donated to Hope of the Nations are in the containers! The final container will be packed and ready for shipping on Saturday.

For those who might not know, Jim's jaw surgery was on March 26th and our prayers for quick healing were answered! When we went back on Monday for the 1-week checkup, the doctor was amazed at the progress and said "I never do this, but if it's alright with you, I'll cut the wires off today!" Jim's orthodontist was equally surprised, and we're now praying they will be able to complete all the treatment before he leaves. I wrote on Facebook that Dr. Desai is a good surgeon, but we were under the care of the Great Physician, Jesus! Jim has moved from liquids only to soft foods, and should be able to "chew lightly" in early May.

What a great Sunday this will be -- celebrating the resurrection of Jesus! We are so happy to be able to celebrate our last Easter in California with our combined family at iF/SVCC. This will be the last opportunity for me to say goodbye to our SVCC friends, and then my last service at Incarnate Faith will be on the 15th. I hope to see many of you at church, but if not, we want to say how blessed we have been to learn and grow and serve together. One of the things we are so grateful for is that each of us grew up with pastors who are wonderful, godly men. I grew up learning under Wayne Thomas, and Jim under Bryce Jessup. Since we got married 35 years ago, God has continued to bless us with godly teachers, in Bryce, Don Hinkle, Eric Smith, Mike Zukowski and Isaac Serrano. We go out with boldness knowing God is faithful and will use all others have invested in our lives for His purposes! (so I just read over this and it sounds like an Academy Award speech, but we really wanted to honor publicly a few people who mean so much to us.)

PLEASE keep in touch with us. Home, family and friends will be far away, so we look forward to emails, letters, facebook, skype, etc. Thank you so much for the continued prayers. We are praying for you, too. Our adventure with God continues in Tanzania. We're looking forward to sharing our next post from our new home in Kigoma!

Email: jimjulh@gmail.com
Skype: jimjulh
Address: Box 841, Kigoma, Tanzania, East Africa

Almost there

What a crazy last 6 weeks it has been!  In that time, we made a two week trip up to Oregon & Washington to visit family, hosted the Hope of the Nations team at their Gilroy stop, packed up our house, moved in with Jenni, Jaron & the girls, sold the house, travelled to Central California to visit 2 of Jim's sisters and preach at Scott & Janet's church, and organized and packed our 40' shipping container.  To say the least, we are exhausted!  It was physically, mentally and emotionally draining, but in the midst of it all, we felt the strength and power that only comes from God.  Truly, His grace is sufficient.

Our time visiting family was very special.  You've heard people say you can choose your friends but you're stuck with your family?  Well, we are blessed to be STUCK!  We have an amazing family, on both sides, who love Jesus and love each other.  We got to share all about the work we'll be doing, we prayed together, we were prayed over and we laughed a lot too!  The difficulty in saying goodbye was knowing the goodbye could be for a long time.  Thank you Jesus for technology -- internet, skype, facetime, magic jack -- all these will help us keep family and friends close.

As we said above, our house has sold and it was sold to a very special couple to us, our pastor and his wife!  It's their first home and they love it's quirkiness just like we did.  Isn't it great to see how God works out all the details?  Our loss (being a short sale) was their gain and we couldn't be happier.  If we didn't have family in the area, we might have to camp out in our old house when we come back to visit!

Container Empty

Container FULL

Probably the biggest, craziest and most difficult thing we have done is get the container shipped out.  Jim's parents very graciously allowed us to store all of our belongings in their barn for the last few months, making it easy to load everything in one place.  You might think you can just load it up and ship it out, but no, it is a time-consuming, grueling process.  Every single item that goes in has to be listed on an inventory sheet, categorized and then valued.  Then comes the fun part in trying to stuff everything in.  It's like a giant puzzle where things have to go in just so in order to fit it all in.  Once again, our Incarnate Faith family showed up and with Jim leading the charge, we got it all packed in just two days!  Sadly, the motorcycle you see being suspended from the container ceiling had to be removed.  Jim bought it to use there, but we have not received the title from DMV and it cannot ship without the original title in hand.  Please pray that we receive the title so it can ship in the container going from Sonora, and keep the whole shipping process in prayer.  There are a LOT of requirements for getting it cleared in Dar Es Salaam.

God continues to lead us in His path, opening all the doors at just the right time.  We finally got word that Jim's jaw surgery is scheduled for March 26th.  He had to have this done before we left, as he has been going through the process leading up to surgery for over 3 years.  There is a very short recovery time, but return checkups required at 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks and 8 weeks.  This required us to make changes in our travel plans, so we cancelled and rebooked tickets yesterday.  Unfortunately, ticket prices have increased significantly.  Anyway, I am now leaving on April 20th and Jim will follow on May 26th.  The really good news is that we have a house to rent over there as of today!  It's only a 10 minute walk to the office and Bible College and just a few minutes drive for Jim to the marina.  It is so nice to know we have a place ready and will be able to move right in.

Finally, we are almost at our support goal!  We are only $185 per month short of our need, and we're very excited at how God has provided.  We also have a few days open on our prayer calendar, so if you like to choose a day, we would love to add you.  The purpose of our prayer calendar is so we know that someone is praying specifically for us each day of the month, and in turn, we pray specifically for that day's prayer partner.  We will have a wall in the house with the calendar posted, along with pictures of our prayer partners.

We are blessed daily by so many who have loved, prayed, supported, called or encouraged us.  While we are excited to go, we face the difficult time ahead of leaving family and friends.  Will you pray for us and especially for our kids and grandkids?  We have lived near Jenni, Jaron, Avery and Riley for 10 years now, and have had the privilege of being intimately involved in their lives.  We are trying to savor every moment we have together, but at the back of our minds we know time is flying by.

Praise & Prayer:
1.  Pray for the container's safe arrival and quick customs clearing (due to arrive in DAR in late May)
2.  Pray that we receive the title for Jim's motorcycle SOON!
3.  Praise that Jim's surgery is scheduled.
4.  Praise that we are so close to our financial goal.
5.  Pray for us and our family as the date of our leaving is fast approaching.

New Year, New Life

Hard to believe that it's mid January already!  So much has happened since the last posting:  Jim is officially retired, as of December 29th, our house is in the final stages of approval for the short sale, we have begun sorting through everything to determine what we take with us, what we give away and what we need to store.  We ordered 50 2'-cube boxes for our container and have filled 12 of them so far.  We didn't realize when we ordered the boxes how big a 2' cube is -- you can certainly get a lot of stuff in one box!

One of our biggest blessing has been our Incarnate Faith Church family.  In the past, at Christmastime, we have participated in Advent Conspiracy, a great ministry that encourages people to spend less and give more, and focuses on providing wells for clean water in countries around the world.  Well, this year, iF surprised us by taking our supply list and making ornaments of each item, placing them on the church Christmas tree and then having our members take the ornaments and purchase one or more items.  We were overwhelmed by the generosity of this amazing group of people who love Jesus.  The tree was overflowing with all kinds of things, from peanut butter, to batteries, to gas cans, tuna fish, staples (thank you Cullen!) and so much more.  It is very humbling to be the recipient of so much love and support and we are so blessed to be going out to Africa with our family at iF right with us.

Hansen Clan
Kari, Dave, Julie, Jim, Riley, Jenni, Avery, Jaron

Before we leave, we planned to take a vacation with our immediate family, and since Jenni is in Nursing School and Kari is a professor at Galludet University, January was the only time we could all get together, during their winter break.  We took off on January 7th for 4 days at Disneyland and had such a wonderful time being together.  God blessed us with perfect weather, upper 70s every day!  And, because most schools were already back in session, the parks were fairly empty on Monday and Tuesday.  Sunday was the final day of the Christmas decorations, so we got to enjoy those, as well as the final night of Fantasmic.  And a bonus, at the end of Fantasmic, they had giant snow making machines going!  We were completely covered in snow, but without the cold.  Our grandkids loved going on all the rides, and would you believe it -- their favorite was Tower of Terror!  An extra special time was getting to have brunch with our niece Lacey and her husband Brandon, and then having dinner with Jim's cousin, the original Julie Hansen, and her husband Scott.

We've got a few more trips planned to visit family before we go:  We leave on January 25th for 10 days, visiting Jim's cousins in Central Point, my family in Lebanon, and Jim's family in the Seattle area. We know we won't see family too often, so it's wonderful to have this time to spend together.  Next month, we plan to visit 2 of Jim's sisters in Santa Maria and Arroyo Grande.

We continue to see daily God's provision for us in so many ways.  We've connected with old friends via facebook, had people donate items unexpectedly, had items we needed to purchase go on sale at just the right time, and so much more.  As we mentioned at the top, our short sale on the house is going through in record time, and just yesterday, Jim was able to connect with Kaiser about the jaw surgery he needs before he goes.  It looks like they will be able to do it in March.  We'd really appreciate prayer that it happens at the beginning of the month so he has a couple of weeks to recuperate before he leaves for Africa on April 2nd.  Yes, we did get our airline tickets, which just happened to go on sale.  I will fly out on May 26th, after Jenni's school year ends.  I'm really looking forward to having this special time with Jenni, Jaron & the girls before we leave.  Another blessing is that in September, my sister will be flying out to stay with us for a month.  She will be doing some teaching seminars, art workshops and training people in Oral Bible Story telling.  Isn't God great?!

The Hope of the Nations team that is in the states right now, will be here in Gilroy February 11-15th, so we are excited to have time together sharing and planning for doing ministry together.  If you live in the south bay area and want to hear them speak, they will be at Central Christian Church in San Jose on February 5th, and then South Valley Community Church on February 12th (a.m.) and Incarnate Faith in Gilroy on February 12th (p.m.).  We'd love to see you too!

Prayer & Praises:
1.  We are thankful to have gotten airline tickets at a great price.
2.  Thanks again to our family at iF for showering us in goods!
3.  Pray for the finalization of our short sale.
4.  Pray for Jim's surgery to take place in early March.
5. Pray for our financial support to come in.

Thankfulness

Here you go, Matt!  A new blog update!!

How can we not think about being thankful after just celebrating Thanksgiving?  We have so much to be grateful for, and it was encouraging to see so many express their thanks on Facebook.  I quoted I Peter 1:3-4, and I think that pretty well says it all:

"Thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade."

We've got a lot more to be grateful for and so we just wanted to make a list and share it with you:

• Our families -- they have loved, supported, prayed, encouraged, laughed and cried with us.  Our parents have been Godly examples and modeled for us a Christ-filled life.  Our kids have brought us joy from the day they were born and it's exciting to see the women they've become.  Avery and Riley are the two most beautiful granddaughters and we are blessed every day to be their gramma and grampa.  God also gave us an amazing extended family that seems to grow each year!
• Our church -- we pray you are as blessed as we are with our church family.  Incarnate Faith began 3 years ago with a small group of people who wanted to do church differently.  We wanted to share the love of Jesus to the community we live in.  We have been stretched and challenged and have grown and we share a real bond of love.
• Friends!  - there are so many of you out there that have touched our lives in many ways.  Some have been for a season and others have been there for many, many years.  Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Each friend has had a part in shaping our lives into the people God wants us to be.

We could go on and on with things to be thankful for, but wanted to just list the highlights.  I think it's good to put your list in writing and then share it.  We've each got a few daily devotionals that we read and naturally, most of them have been about gratitude this week.  One especially caught my eye, because it was about those who are going through really tough times and the difficulty in feeling thankful.  So many of us are surrounded by family and friends and look forward with great anticipation to the holiday season, but there are others around us who are struggling with loss, loneliness, disappointment, job loss, financial struggles, and the list goes on.  If you're dealing with any of these issues, I want to encourage you with the list from "Strength for the Journey."  You can be thankful

If you have Jesus and His strong presence in your life . . .

If you have His Word to comfort and assure you that all is not lost and your disappointments are the fertile ground where God often works to bring about good and gain to His glory and your benefit. . .

If you believe that this is not the only world you have and that He has paid the entry price for you to go to a world that is forever far better . . .

If you believe that crying lasts for the night but joy comes in the morning . . 

If you can still pray . . .

If you can give help to someone else in need . . .

If you can’t ever lose the stuff that really counts in your life . . .

Yes, I can be thankful for every one of those things!  Happy Thanksgiving and as we enter into the Christmas season, we pray you will enjoy every moment and be thankful for the gift of Jesus, the greatest gift ever given!

The Great Adventure Begins

Jim and I have always loved the song "The Great Adventure" by Steven Curtis Chapman, so we're borrowing it as our theme! From the moment the opportunity to serve in Tanzania opened, we feel like we're on an amazing ride, holding onto God's coattails. It seems like every day, He opens a new door, prepares the way ahead of us or provides exactly what we need before we know we need it!

Let's start at the beginning, August 30, 2011. We received a prayer request from Harold & Coni (the Kneppers, who founded Hope of the Nations, the mission that we are going to be working with)regarding the boat ministry, that the government informed them they would need a licensed boat captain in order to use the boat. Of course, we started praying that God would provide exactly what was needed so the boat ministry could continue. A couple of days later, Jim came to me and said that as he had been praying, he felt God telling him that he (Jim) was the answer to that prayer -- he should be the boat captain. We wrote back to the Kneppers, telling them how God was speaking to us and asking them to pray with us, specifically that if this was His will, He would make it abundantly clear. The Hope of the Nations (HOTN) staff began to pray as did others whose counsel we sought. All of the answers confirmed where we felt God was leading -- Kigoma, Tanzania.

Our next step was to figure out the timing of his retirement. We knew that we needed to be in Kigoma in early June as that is when most visiting teams begin arriving, and the boat would be in constant use. We originally thought that he would retire at the end of February, giving us about three months to get everything ready. God obviously had other things in mind, however, and in a number of ways, lead us to change that date to December 30th. We found out that if we wanted to send a shipping container of supplies, we should plan on a ship date of no later than March 30. This will give us about 3 months to plan, purchase and then pack the container. We also need to sell our house, our cars and most of our belongings. We figured that would take several months to do as well. Crazy us -- did we forget that we'd prayed and asked God to be over all of our preparations? In a matter of a few weeks after telling family, friends and our church of our plans, we have someone that wants to buy our house, and almost all of our belongings have been spoken for, as well as one of our cars, all without any advertising!

Our home church, Incarnate Faith, has agreed to be our sending church. Even greater, since we recently did a church merge with two other churches (becoming one church with 3 campuses), the whole church has asked us to be their missionaries, the first that would be sent out. We are so humbled and overwhelmed by their love, support and encouragement, and are excited to be the first missionaries from South Valley Community Church. We are looking forward to our partnership and know that God has great things in store for all of us. November is Global Compasssion month at all 3 campuses and we will be at each campus during the month. In addition, we will be speaking at Jim's parents' church on November 13.

We will be updating the blog monthly while we're still in the states, and more often once we're in Kigoma. We plan to include preparation updates, ministry stories, pictures, prayer requests and more.

Listed below are our first prayer requests:

1. Spiritual health -- that we would be diligent in our prayer and study time.
2. Wisdom in our planning and preparation for our shipping container.
3. Financial provision -- that God will provide for our required HOTN support funds.
4. That our house in Gilroy will go through with our potential buyers, as it is a short sale and needs bank approval.
5. Housing in Kigoma
6. God's provision for a good car (land cruiser) for us to purchase in Africa.