Called-to-Serve
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 – November 2006- We are thirty-two days from departure of We are waiting for our work permit. It is being processed by The first week in July, our home was sold. The last week in August, we went to 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 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 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 God has blessed. 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 January, 2005- A team of 10 went back to Kyela.
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.
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 we have seen people terribly frightened of water go into rivers, streams, baptismal pools and mud puddles – in order to receive Jesus Christ and to show others that, for them, it is important enough for their life and their soul - to risk standing in the water--
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
It is a blessing to be here.
Students from
It is a blessing to be here.
2002 The first trip.
Click <here> to see, "Genesis", the story at the Beginning