Bucket List
“Bucket List”
How many of you have a “bucket list,” or a list of things you would like to do before your one life on this earth ends? For those of you who don’t know, my amazingly faithful mother-in-law has bringing all of her grandkids to Tanzania on her bucket list… so we’re all going. You see, my in-laws have a long history of volunteering as coordinators for the Bega Kwa Bega program and now help support other ministries in the Iringa Diocese. They have wanted to introduce their grandkids to all the Tanzanian friends they have made and share in the sights, sounds, and foods of the beautiful country. July 12-26th we’ll be enjoying this precious time together… in Tanzania.
While in Tanzania, my family and I will get to experience a lot of what a typical Easter Lutheran Church group would experience—learning about the Iringa Diocese, visiting Radio Furaha, Boma History Center, the market, University of Iringa, Iringa Hope Micro Finance, Ilula Hospital, Image Secondary School, and even spending time at the Huruma Center Orphanage. We will also get to experience a program my in-law’s help coordinate titled “Day of Grace” where Tanzanian pastors and evangelists are brought to Iringa for a retreat featuring health check-ups, worship and learning together, and much more.
We will also get to go my in-law’s home congregation’s partner parish in Ugesa. We’ll lead a children’s message where my children and their cousins will hand out 80 friendship bracelets as a reminder to the Ugesa children that they have friends in the United States and to pray for them. Our children will remember their friends in Ugesa and pray for them, too. My father-in-law and I will likely do a skit or two and preach together.
Our trip to Tanzania ends with a safari experience in Ruaha National Park.
It will be a full trip and I’ll admit I’m nervous about our children tolerating the long flights and drives. It will be worth it. No, not because of all the busyness and all the projects that will be completed (we will complete very little). It will be worth it because of the relationships. The gift that this trip is to my mother-in-law and each of us getting to spend this time together. The gift of re-connecting with some of our own friends in Tanzania (Pr. Mponzi from Nyanzwa and Pr. Msigwa, former BKB Iringa Director), and the gift of forming new relationships.
Easter’s Director of Outreach Rhonda Doran, myself, and Bega Kwa Bega staff continue to emphasize that the partner parish program is not only about projects. The main priority is relationships—relationships centered in Christian faith around prayer for one another and time together. While the projects are indeed helpful, a building that is constructed in Tanzania today might last forty years before the rain and winds weaken the structure such that it must come down. Projects come and go, serving a wonderful purpose in the meantime. But relationships? The love, trust, support, and care that is forged through time, prayer, and meals together… relationships last forever. I would even go on record as saying the love shared in Christian faith is eternal.
So perhaps you have a bucket list. Perhaps you just decided to start one. I hope on that list you have something more than measurables (trip to this place, see this thing, do this or that). I hope you’ll also prioritize relationships. I have yet to meet someone who, in their last breaths, wished they had spent more time at work or had earned more achievements. It always comes down to relationships—with family, friends, and with God.
Mungu akubariki (“God bless you” in Swahili),
Pr. Brandon