On this page Called-to-Serve's two permanent missionaries who are living full-time on the mission field, Elton and Barbara Cooke will post "journal entries." 

The entries will be as current as possible, and their will be gaps, but by reading this you can get a idea of the evolution of their missionary journey.

February 2008-  This past few months includes a year of blessings and testing. We have made Arusha our home and even though you cannot get through town, from one place to another without almost killing someone or being killed – I mean from traffic and crazy drivers and people walking along the road sides and children and babies and dogs and burrows and holes, big holes! in the roads and ruts and debris and goats and chickens and dust, huge clouds of dust that roll over everything – and all of this in the heat, with the sun bearing down and even though all of this is a daily occurrence –



it is a blessing to be here!

 
And even though it breaks our hearts to see how these people live – to walk through crowds of people that look angry and frown as you pass – and then you smile or nod your head or say “jambo, habari !” – and suddenly the frowns are gone, huge, bright smiles cover their faces, their eyes light up – they are warm, beautiful and friendly.

it is a blessing to be here!

And then there are days when your husband gets arrested and both of us get detained and held all day and spoken to rudely and Elton gets pushed around--

It is a blessing to be here.



And I, the woman, get insulted over and over – and threats are made that we may be deported out of Tanzania – all just because we want to change the status of our work/residence permits. And you are kept a long time in the heat and you are charged huge amounts of cash in order to move forward with the opportunity to stay and work here (for free!) and do what you can to help these people. And you are made to wait….and wait……..and wait………and …………six weeks later, loads of paperwork later, seven trips to Moshi later….we still wait. We have not yet received the permits--

It is a blessing to be here.

Students from Mt. Meru University and pastors and young men that we have worked with – all have shown up at our gate during these last weeks to see us, to pray with us, to encourage us and to offer help. There is no help to be had. We just wait. Yet, God’s love pours out over us through the beautiful spirits of these Tanzanian men.

It is a blessing to be here.

November 2006-        We are thirty-two days from departure of Arusha, Tanzania.  We are to fly out of Richmond, VA on Monday, December 18 and will arrive at 8:50 pm on Tuesday night, December 19.

We are waiting for our work permit. It is being processed by Mount Meru University and once we get it, we will get the Tanzanian Visas, and it will assure the allowing of our furniture into Tanzania.  Be in prayer that all of that will work smoothly. The necessary paperwork was begun last Tuesday, November 7.

The first week in July, our home was sold. The last week in August, we went to Arusha, Tanzania ad rented a house. It is ideal for teams and one is schedule to come the last week of March, 2007. A potential missionary from the Middle District Baptist Association is planning to come to live with us for a time and learn first and what it is like to be in the mission field. Upon meeting the Mount Meru University staff, interest was expressed in our working with the student body to partner with them in the formulation of mission volunteer teams.

We cannot get an email address until we arrive, but the person from whom we are renting has arranged for an Internet hook-up. She is a doctor, Dr. Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho. She works with WHO (World Health Organization), live in Geneva and has expressed interest on the phone and on email of our working with her in helps with the AIDS pandemic in Africa.  We begin learning to teach Wilderness First Aid Thursday, November 16, and we will devote the remaining Saturdays to becoming certified first aid teachers.  I begin teaching Old Testament at Mount Meru on January, 9, and Barbara begins to teach keyboard church music the same day.

The calendar is completely full, but that will help the time to pass. For the next month we will be saying “good-byes’ and closing out life on this side of the ocean.

We are learning that it is more difficult than we realized, so we seriously covet your prayers.

February, 2006-        Another team of five went with the plan in the hearts of two to imagine what it would be like to live in Tanzania.

The last night in Mount Moriah Hotel, the five mission volunteers were eating, and the two nationals were waiting. There was plenty of food, so I asked if what the five of us were enjoying could be shared with Dickson and Ambilikili. We met the owner and the manager of Mount Moriah and learned he was also a teacher at Mount Meru University. I will never forget what I said to him, “Ezeka, you are just the man I want to talk to.” After that conversation he said, “Brother, Pastor send us an application.”

God has blessed. Mount Meru University supplies us tithe he credentials to live on a work permit in Arusha, Tanzania. Even though Mount Meru will supply no salary for us to teach for them.

It is exciting to think we will be there, being the contact on the other side of the ocean for mission teams, for personalities interested in being missionaries, of being available for the students of Mount Meru and numerous contacts in the USA to bring teams,.

And to think, it began in Tanzania. Who knows what God will do with it?

January, 2005-     A team of 10 went back to Kyela.

  
2002                     The first trip.

Click <here> to see, "Genesis", the story at the Beginning