On the same theme, there is another man named Moses in our church. I married him and his wife 1½ years ago. Apparently, he had circumvented the normal procedures for getting married and did not fully pay the bride price. He told me that he did. The father of the bride even gave written permission for them to be officially married. But in the past few months the father who has many cows and therefore very rich has run into some huge problems. His cows wandered into someone’s field and destroyed many of the crops. He is being held directly responsible for the damage his cows did. The judgment against him is nine million shillings. That’s about eight thousand dollars. The average income of a family here in Tanzania is about $600 a year. He owes about 14 years worth of income. Now, the father is calling in all the debts that are owed to him so that he can pay this fine. Remember how this Moses has not fully paid his dowry? Well, he still cannot pay the 2 cows he owes and he has no money at all. So, the father-in-law has taken back his daughter and her kids until the dowry is paid. I don’t think he intends to marry her again to someone else but you never know. I think he is just trying to get Moses to pay him his two cows.

One other item that needed my attention this trip was the oversight of the church plant in Kingereka. I arrived at our church for the Thursday afternoon prayer meeting. When I left we didn’t have a Thursday afternoon prayer meeting. Well, we use to but then we discovered that the market day was on Thursday so we moved it to Tuesday but there was a different village that had their market day on Tuesday so we moved it to Wednesday and then no one came. Ha! Needless to say I was really surprised that the people started their own prayer meeting and that when I arrived there was at least 50% of our Sunday crowd in attendance. We had a good time of prayer and a Bible challenge by one of the men in the church.

When Greg and I left for furlough, we left 3 men “in charge” of the services. Greg wrote enough sermon outlines to last until the end of January and left them with these 3 men. The plan was for them to rotate the preaching responsibility. The end of January has come and gone and while these 3 guys are capable men they are not preachers yet nor quite ready to write their own sermons. I have written more sermons and have made arrangements for people to preach the extra 4 months my family will be gone. Pray for the whole church. They are doing very well and seem to be genuinely growing in grace and truth.

Thank-you for your prayers for me as I travel to Tanzania. When I left Washington DC the plane experienced very heavy turbulence. There were times when all the passengers cried out in fear as the plane shook violently. I have a suspicion that the turbulence caused a problem to appear with a hydraulic pump. As soon as we landed in Rome Italy for fuel, they began to work on the pump trying to fix it. After sitting in the plane for 6 hours the airline decided they would let us wait inside the airport while they continued to work on the problem. We eventually made it to a local hotel until they fixed the problem. We finally left Rome after a 24-hour delay and have safely arrived in Ethiopia… only to find out that the connecting flight to Tanzania is delayed too. I hope to arrive in Tanzania soon, maybe before the end of the month. Ha!

I have always thought that traveling is not very enjoyable. I like to visit new place very much I just hate the process of getting there. However, on this trip I have had some really great opportunities to talk with many people about the Lord. There was one man named John who I talked to for at least an hour. Towards the end of the conversation he admitted to me that he did not believe that Jesus was neither God’s Son nor God himself. I very bluntly explained to him what was in store for all who reject Jesus. He wasn’t thrilled about that news but we parted ways agreeing to disagree. I am fairly certain I will never see John again or the others I was able to witness to but I know that the good seed of the gospel was planted today.

Thank you again for your prayers for my family and me.

The doctor told us that it would be very dangerous for Cathy to have another C-section so we are praying for a safe delivery of the new baby. It will also be a whole new experience raising a new baby in a 3rd world country so we would appreciate your prayers for the baby's health as well. The baby is due the end of March 2010.

Speaking of health, the whole entire Schultz family has been hit hard with colds, allergies and various forms of whatever is being passed around. I am really surprised at how much we have been ill lately. Please pray for us.

We have been busy preaching and giving a report of our work in Tanzania every Sunday at our supporting churches. However, this weekend we not be traveling but will instead be taking part in a huge teen outreach called "Harvest Fest". We are expecting 1100 or more teens and are praying that many will be saved.

This weekend will be the last weekend "off" until Christmas. The whole month of October will be extremely busy for me as I fly to LA twice, CO once and then drive to Ontario Canada for a mission conference. Please pray for me as I travel and for the rest of the family as the hectic schedule tends to wear everyone down a little.

Thanks so much for your prayers!
Printable Version

As I write, we are in full swing of our furlough. We have a very full schedule and will not see our home church for a Sunday service until December. I have tried to fit as many of our 55 churches into the six months time that we will be home.

Pray for us as we travel the many miles to visit our churches. The vehicle I am using does not have cruise control. I rely heavily on cruise control to help me maintain a consistent and legal speed. It’s not that I like to go fast it is just that I am not very good at paying attention to my speed. Unfortunately, police officers are not allowed to make exceptions based on this technicality.

Over the next 2 months I am going to try and raise some extra money to ship some John and Romans booklets to Tanzania and if we are able to afford it, ship some personal items as well. Pray for this project.

Many have asked so I will post my state side contact info here. It is only good until the end of 2009.

BJ & Cathy Schultz
BIMI
PO Box 9215
Chattanooga TN 37412

mobile 810_813_6213

I'll write more after I get some rest.

Thank you so much for praying.

My hope is to arrive at the border and if needed try to convince the boss to forgive me for my forgetfulness in renewing my visa. Please pray that God will give us favor and that we will be able to exit Tanzania properly and without paying a ton of money.

Also this past week we had some thieves break into our church. They used a post to break open a window and tear it out of the building. They then entered in and stole a plastic 50 gal drum. That was it. The drum was donated by a friend who works at a Pepsi plant. Repairing the window cost me about $30. Everyone who heard about it thought it was hard to believe that someone would steal from God. I pray that God will be glorified through it all.

On Sunday, I preached at the Bible Baptist church in Arusha. We had a wonderful time even though all of us had colds of some degree. I had a cough and a stuffy head but the Lord gave me strength during the message. I am thankful that a few people came forward to pray.

We have just a little more than 2 weeks before we leave for furlough. We are getting very excited even though we still have a ton of work to do.

Thank you for praying for my work on my Sunday School lessons. I was able to prepare the last few lessons and make final edits of all the lessons for the rest of the year. I am so thankful Bro. Greg took the time to translate these 90 lessons. All I had to do is understand the Swahili so that I knew what I was teaching. Just reading through each lesson takes me 45 minutes or more. I can’t imagine how much time it would have taken me if I had to do the original translating into Swahili.

Please pray for our van to sell according to God’s will. I have had several people call to inquire about it but it appears that it is just too expensive. Tuesday, I am going to meet with the salesman who originally sold it to me to discuss some options. We really want to sell this van and buy a truck that is more rugged. The Tanzanian roads and my bad driving are just too much for this van to handle. I need a vehicle that is already pre-scratched and can leap a pot-hole without hesitation.

As I look at the calendar I get a well of butterflies in my throat. We have only 3 more weeks until we leave East Africa for our first furlough. There is a ton of things that need to be done and at times it feels debilitating. Pray for guideance and strength to get it all done. I have never left my home for 7 months. There are a lot of things to consider when doing so. I am sure I will miss something without God’s help.

Please pray:
Rain for the farmers
Our van to sell
That we successfully get everything done on time.

Speaking of rain, a few of you have been wondering about Mama John and her house. I was really surprised when several people were led of God to help this lady. It is a huge testimony of the ability of God. We were given gifts of money that exceeded my estimation of $300 to finish her roof. It is always a good thing to have more than you need, especially in this case. By the time we got done with everything the total bill was a little more than $600.

Mama John is lacking one small piece of roofing and a door, but please do not send any more money for this project. It is an difficult situation to be in. If we help her too much it actually does more harm than good. Especially for the others that are in the church. Envy is one of the worst sins in this country.

Here is a video of Mama John saying thank-you.

My translation is very loose but basically she says: Thank you, I am thankful for the good gift to help build my house. It is going well. Thank you to all of the churches who love Tanzania. I only need help in buying a door so that I can move into the house. Thank you so much.

If you missed the opportunity to give to this cause you can still get in on other blessings. We have a new church to build, property to buy, and many other people we could help. One woman in our church who is a widow and new Christian, asked me if I could loan her the money to buy 20 liters of cooking oil. She thinks she could re-sell it at the market in a matter of 1-2 days and make a weeks worth of profit from it. I love helping someone who is not looking for a free ride but is willing to do the work. There is a little risk that she may decide to never pay me back the $26 for the oil.

I think we are beginning to fall into our niches here on the mission field. Cathy has been teaching two young women some basic baking skills at our house. It began as one of those “this might be a good idea” discussions and has begun to grow.

We decided to send Anna, our part time house worker, to English school while we are gone for our 7 month furlough. She is in her 2nd week of classes and was struggling a little. Recently, Cathy went to the adult school in town where they are teaching the English class and while the class waited for the teacher to wander back from his 2 ½ hour lunch was able to help many of the students understand their lesson better. They all asked Anna where Cathy lived so they could come and get some more English lessons at our house. Thankfully, Anna declined to give out that information.

Please pray
I have been busy preparing Sunday School lessons to leave behind during our absence. Pray that I would have the energy to complete them all.

I would like to sell my van so that I can afford to buy a truck when we return next year.

Pray for us as we pack up to leave for fourlough, only 3 ½ weeks away.

Please pray that God leads us to a good house to rent in Michigan. I made some errors in my budget and it has left us homeless because I can’t afford the rent for a house I had planned on using.

I spent the better part of a day helping Filimoni fill up the baptistry tank. We have no running water on our property so we had to take our 8, 20-liter containers about 1/4 mile down the road to the place where they sell water. We made this trip 8 times and spent about 5 hours in the process.

While no one was saved this morning, I was able to baptize two people. One was a young man named Filimoni. I led him to salvation in January after his second visit to our church. He had just moved back to his mother’s house after working at the Tanzanite mines for a time. It was about a year ago when the same mine collapsed killing more than 70 people. If I understand the story correctly, Filimoni was hurt in that accident but not severely. I can’t help but to paint a mental picture of the millions of people teetering on the edge of life not knowing that perhaps their next breath will be their last.

The second person I baptized was Mama Faibi. I would guess that she is between 50-60 years old. She has been a faithful attendee for the past several months.

A funny thing happened when it was her turn to be baptized. I explained to her that I would cover her mouth with a cloth and then dunk her in the water. Well, my Swahili is not real clear and she obviously didn’t understand me because she began to dunk herself. I interrupted her before she got too far and made quick work of her baptism. I am a Baptist but being dunked more than once is just a little overkill. Ha!

Thank you for your prayers on our behalf.
Please pray for our van to sell. I would love to sell this van and get a vehicle that can take the abuse of the roads and my rough driving.

March has come and gone in a hurry. I enjoyed the 3 Sundays in a row where I was flying solo. Usually, Greg Wagoner runs the morning service, including the singing, offering and preaching while I run the adult Sunday School hour. I still get tripped up in the song service. Many of the Swahili hymns we sing have the same melody as their English counterparts but the timing of the wording messes me up occasionally. While I am finishing the sentence the congregation is still in the middle. Add to that, the fact that I am not a great singer and you have a recipe for a disastrous song service. We made it through however and the people received the messages from Colossians readily.

It is raining today and that is a welcomed blessing. It has been very hot and dry here since August. Now it is hot and humid and the people are very happy because the rains will cause their crops to grow. Many people ask me every rainy season if I am going to plant corn or another crop. They just can’t believe that I am not going to plant something. In this society so much relies on agriculture. If there is an open area of ground they will plant on it. In fact, our dirt road to our church has been planted on. I mean the road is not there anymore. They have ploughed it over and have planted corn in its place. We are still waiting for the local government to officially mark where the road will pass. It is a trying time fighting the mud and navigating around people’s crops and houses.

Please pray as I seek God’s will concerning our next church plant. I have a really good idea of what I would like to do next but I am waiting for God to confirm that. One missionary essentially said that you could throw a dart at the map of Tanzania and where it landed would be a good place to start a church. I agree. Take a look at this Google map of the city of Moshi.

View Larger Map

Consider that in this town of about 165,000 people there are many cults, many Muslim mosques, and many churches that teach a false doctrine of salvation. When people ask and I tell them what denomination I am, they respond by saying that they have never heard of the Baptist denomination.

Please pray for:
Our next church plant
Our soon departure for furlough. There are many details to work out before leaving
Our baptismal and Easter services next week.

Sunday evening we were able to participate in a missions conference in Ohio. We used our computer and Skype to make the phone call. The church was able to use their web cam to show us a view of the church service making it feel like we were actually there. I was a little worried at first because our internet service kept cutting in and out and we had a lot of difficulty making the connection. But in the end it all worked out well.
By the way, if you would like to contact us via Skype you can use our id: cathybeej As long as we have electricity and internet service you should be able to phone us. Just remember we are 8 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone.

As we were heading to bed our security guard came to the window and quietly told us that there were some thieves next-door stealing tires from a vehicle. He then asked me what to do. I did a 3-second pause to think of my options: There is no 911 number to call, and if there were there are no police available to answer the call, and if there were police, they would not have a vehicle to get to our place, but if they did it would take them hours to get gas and organize themselves, but if they were prepared already and could get to our house quickly, they wouldn’t know how to get to our house because we have no street name and no address, but if we did and they could find us they would probably just take a cut of the profit from the thieves and let them go. Believe it or not it took me a whole 3 seconds to think that through. I then told the guard to make some noise and try to scare the thieves away. It worked. He blew his whistle and shined a flashlight at them while I tried to get the dogs riled up and barking. We would not see the last of them however. They returned at 3am and tried to finish the job. Again our guard scared them off. And again they returned a while later. This time they had 6 guys and a vehicle parked down the street. Our guard was too frightened to sleep on duty for once so he was easily able to hear the thieves return and scare them away. He was frightened for good reason. Many times the first duty of a thief is to kill the night guard using their machete.

We slept lightly but we did sleep in peace knowing God is in control and is our sword and shield.

When we awoke this morning we noticed that a terrible transformation had occurred in the middle of the night. Our oldest son Jay became an official teen-ager. 13 years old! Wow! When he was a toddler, I never thought he would live long enough to become a teen. I believe all of Jay’s former nursery workers would all agree. But by God’s grace and great mercy, he has arrived.

Happy birthday Jay!
Today we will brave the busy and dangerous roads and head to Arusha to celebrate at a nice restaurant of his choosing.

Please pray:
Always pray for our safety and well-being.
Pray as I continue to preach in Swahili. I feel a lot like Moses did, slow of speech.
Pray as we figure out the logistics of scheduling furlough, finishing the kids home-school and packing up to leave for 7 months beginning in June.