Article Asking for Your Support

Below is an article that will hopefully be published in some form in my home diocese requesting additional support for projects here at Msalato. Feel free to distribute this as you wish.

Greetings from Tanzania,
I have been in Africa for eight months and will be here for another six months. I am serving as a computer technician and teacher at Msalato Theological College, which is located about ten kilometers outside of Dodoma, Tanzania.

Tanzania is located in east Africa and is directly south of Kenya and is on the Indian Ocean. To the west of Tanzania is Uganda (northwest) and Rwanda. This country was once part of the British Empire; therefore, the Anglican Church has a very large presence here. According to official figures the Diocese of Central Tanganyika (DCT), which includes Dodoma, has approximately 500,000 members and that is just one of more than a dozen dioceses in the Anglican Church of Tanzania.

Msalato Theological College is a diocesan school that trains pastors and other church leaders for DCT and other dioceses. Students come from around the country and several come from neighboring Kenya. There are three main academic programs at Msalato: Diploma in Ministry, Diploma in Applied Theology and Degree in Theology. The Diploma in Ministry program is the only one with instruction in Swahili (the official language of Tanzania) and lasts two years. The other diploma program is similar, but instruction lasts three years and is only in English. The diploma programs are designed for students with educations varying from Standard 7 to Form 4. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. I was not familiar with the British school system, which Tanzania uses, until I came here. Standard 7 is comparable to completing some of middle school and Form 4 is similar to a high school diploma. The final and newest program at Msalato is the degree program and is three years of English instruction and for students who have already completed a theology diploma program.

This past semester I taught two academic classes for students in the Diploma in Applied Theology program. I taught first year students about medieval Christianity and the Reformation. For second year students, I taught them modern church history (although I only got to World War II). I also taught two computer skills classes and an introduction to the Bible course for pre-diploma students.

I am here in Dodoma as part of the Young Adult Service Corps missionary program of the Episcopal Church. As part of that program I was required to raise $10,000 to support my work here. With the help of the people of the Diocese of West Virginia and St. Mark’s in Silver Spring, Maryland nearly $15,000 was raised. The funds over the required $10,000 have been used to support Msalato and the work I am doing here directly. However, all of this money has been used. The largest single item was $1,200, which was used to purchase the parts for a new server that will provide a local email system at Msalato. Other money was used to buy an oven and refrigerator for the duplex I live in, which will be left for the use of future missionaries. More money was used to improve the plumbing in my duplex, which will be of great benefit to future occupants. I was also able to purchase new keyboards, mice and power supplies for the computers here. Those items need replacement quite often here.

As I look forward to the remaining months that I will be here I am aware of numerous other needs that exist here. There is a desperate need for spare parts for the computers here – especially power supplies and keyboards. The electrical system in Tanzania is in very poor condition and although we use a very expensive voltage regulator on all of our computers there are still many power supplies that need replacement on a regular basis. The two computer labs are only a year old and more than ten power supplies have needed to be replaced. At least fifteen keyboards have needed replacement in my seven months here. There are also two classrooms and several offices that need to have network wiring so that students and staff can access the computer network and the Internet. The main server here also needs a spare hard drive, which costs at least $350 and is hard to find. For all these reasons and more I would appreciate your continued support.

If you feel called and able to support the ministry I am doing here, you can donate by writing a check to the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia and sending it to PO Box 5400, Charleston, WV, 25361. Be sure to mention my name or Tanzania in the memo line. Feel free to keep up to date with my activities by visiting my blog at www.daysdaze.org or you can contact me directly at stephend79@gmail.com.

Yours in Christ,
Stephen Day

This entry was posted on June 20, 2008 at 10:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.