Personal Glimpses into our Life and Ministry in Tanzania

By:  Beth Calmes

Jesus first proclaimed his public ministry in the synagogue of his insignificant hometown of Nazareth.  The words he chose from Isaiah could be considered kind of anticlimactic for someone who was beginning a new ministry as Messiah– “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor…”  I often think of Jesus’ humble start in his humble town to the humblest of his people and liken it a little to our ministry in the Muslim ghetto in Dar es Salaam where we opened a feeding center many years ago.  That ghetto is our “Nazareth.” Ministry there has been challenging, the opposite of our other church plant in Dar, in the more “respectable” and prosperous part of town.  That ministry took far less time to achieve and thrive under national leadership.  Our “Nazareth” ministry is slower.

Honestly, I’ve struggled in our “Nazareth,” aka, Temeke, an impoverished, over populated, under developed part of Dar.  It’s a place where crime is rampant, witchcraft is a daily habit, jealousy, immorality and distrust rule. At times, I’ve questioned God as to why he sent us there, and, each time he’s graciously reminded me of the above passage in Luke. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor…”  Contemptible Nazareth is where Mary received the announcement of Christ’s birth.  It’s where Jesus announced his own ministry and the people to whom he had come…the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the blind.  I would have launched my own ministry among the educated, the successful, the capable.  Our sovereign God doesn’t work the way we humans do.  He uses the weak things of our world to confound the mighty things.  Just as Jesus came to preach to the disenfranchised of his day so he sends many of us to continue what he began there in Nazareth.  The Lord delights in doing his work through the weaknesses of humans.

Two Sundays ago, I counseled a destitute widow and believer in our Temeke church who begs for a living. She’d heard of an employment opportunity in Dubai, but when she asked about it they told her it was only for young women, so she decided to send her daughter. Thank God she told me!!! This “opportunity” is part of a human trafficking scheme.  I begged her not to allow her daughter to go.  It was God’s mercy that she chose to share the story with me so I could warn her.  This past Sunday I prayed with a mother of four who recently trusted Christ as Savior.  The father of her youngest two children is a Muslim; he beats her regularly for coming to church. Recently he threatened her before their neighbors that he is going to make her two oldest daughters (from another man) his 2^nd and 3^rd wives (they are both young teenagers) …  I always feel completely helpless when I listen to these tragic stories. Yet, as I listen, God reminds me of his desire to preach the Gospel to the poor.   I can’t fully comprehend their reality, but God does, and he preaches his word through Mitch, through me, and through those in Temeke that are now serving him.  I’ve accepted that the ravages of sin on this earth are overwhelming, but I also trust that the all-powerful message of the gospel transforms even the most destitute of lives.