Shannon and Collin's trip to Tanzania-Maisome Island

After the long day of travel by a mechanically unstable bus and a leaky boat, the idea of a nice bed sounded pretty good. We approached the guest house by flashlight and were shown to our individual rooms. Yes, that's right, we each had our very own room, or so it seemed. My room consisted of a twin sized bed , with sheets. There was no pillow. The room was just big enough to fit the bed lengthwise and about two feet wider than the bed. It was very dark because it was an inside room with no windows. Even during the day I had to use a flashlight to find things in my luggage. We all went to bed and I slept fairly well until about 2AM when I woke up ready to go with nowhere to go. As I lay there I could hear heavy breathing under my floor. The floor was made up of boards with spaces between them. I lay there wondering what could be under there. Was it people? With all of the witchcraft on the island could it be something demonic? I tried shining my flashlight between the boards but couldn't see enough. As it began to get light outside and the light shone from underneath the building I could see that my heavy breathing friends were pigs. Other members of the team reported bats in thier rooms and one night Collin had a rat fall from the rafters in his room onto his bed right next to his head. He wrote in his journal that he "didn't sleep well the rest of the night."

It was immediately obvious that the village we were in was a fishing village as all of the island villages are. They would catch thousands of minnows and spread them on the ground to dry, then rake them up to send to market. The beach was covered with small wooden fishing boats. There is no electricity on the island except for when they use generators. Of course they didn't run those much due to the cost of fuel. Fuel over there costs around $7-8 per gallon. And we thought we were paying too much here in the U.S.

We were on the island at the invitation of Pastor Jams. Pastor James is a former witch doctor who came from a line of witch doctors. The stories he shared were incredible. Ultimately the most important thing of his testimony, in my opinion, is that even the bad guys know God's power. That witch doctors themselves admit to being unable to overcome the protection that surrounds a true Christian. I know Christine wrote a post about Pastor James on September 14th if you want to read more about him.

We spent the next 3 days doing pastoral teachings in the mornings and open-air crusades in the late afternoons. While we were on the island there were 440 salvations and 70 Christians filled with the Holy Spirit(Acts 1:8). There were also many healings-eyes, ears, and stomache pain.

Although we enjoyed our time ministering to the people of Maisome Island, I think it is fair to say that when we saw the ferry coming toward the island to pick us up, we were ready to go back to Mwanza. And, boy did that ferry look like a heavenly ride compared to the boat we had been on to get there but we didn't know yet what was to come with that either. Let's just say that we were all very surprised when the ferry let down its gate to let us on.