Dennis Tongoi, leader of Samaritan Strategy Africa, and his associate, Karobia Njogu, recently traveled to Morogoro, Tanzania on behalf of Samaritan Strategy Africa. The purpose of the trip was to launch a Tanzania team and introduce a Kiswahili training guide.
Samaritan Strategy Tanzania now has a leadership team and 20 trainers to independently facilitate Vision conferences in Kiswahili. Each has been to at least three vision conferences and have implemented seed projects in their communities. They each had very inspiring stories of obedience to Christ in loving their neighbour.
Dennis reports that one of those stories is that of Stephen Mbithi, a Kenyan missionary based in Arusha.
Stephen was at the very first vision conference held in Moshi in 2007. He has been to every vision conference since and has completed the TOT.
In his community the deaf and dumb are avoided and scorned as cursed. Following a vision conference he chose to start a church for the deaf and dumb. He now has a congregation of 50. Last month one of them lost a child and because the local community scorns them, nobody was willing to participate in the burial. Stephen and his church chose to take full responsibility of the burial – securing a coffin, feeding the family and neighbours during the mourning period, and burying the child. Members of the community were amazed at this demonstration of God’s love for the deaf. As a result six community members have begun to attend church on Sundays in Stephen’s Church.
Dennis says the need now is to visit the various seed projects and document the stories for the encouragement of others.
