Dec. 3 - The local Tanzanian pastors nicknamed Bishop Arlene as the Moses of Tanzania and Alfred was tagged as Joshua.

 

 Ministry Partners,

I do not think I was prepared for the level, that the Tanzanian pastors have, for the vision they have for IRM and me. I was not prepared for the huge amount of respect that they verbalized for this wonderful ministry God has called me to. They have said so many grand things to me and then nicknamed me, Bishop Arlene as the Moses of Tanzania and Alfred was nicknamed as Joshua. 

Just to realize that foreign interventions in the areas of faith have been stopped by the government from coming here and yet God brought the IRM team here! I had no idea what a really big deal our coming was.

It was special that after our meeting Alfred read Dec. 3 of the Advent devotional and Aaron translated so all five of us could celebrate the Christmas season.

Arlene

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Alfred wrote today's blog. 

Our breakfast today was at 8:30 am with Bishop Daudi, Bishop Arlene, Pastor Aaron and Pastor Alfred.

All through the breakfast time, Bishop Daudi, kept sharing his very positive feelings about IRM's mission to Tanzania.

First, he was grateful to God that he was able to meet us face to face after a few months of chatting via WhatsApp and Zoom.

Second, he was able to share with us how he got a vision about this very meeting in 1995. Ever since he has been seeking partnership with different people/organizations but Tanzania, as a country, has gone through a lot of changes in terms of welcoming missionaries in the country. At one point, missionary’s trips to Tanzania were stopped by the government. 

Some foreigners came into the country and were promoting the LGBTQI agenda and when the government discovered them, this became the basis for the government to put a halt on any foreign interventions in the areas of faith and evangelism was stopped. Inadvertently, Muslims took the advantage of funding mosque planting and recruitment making Tanzania a predominately Muslim country. Following the wrangles in the matters of faith, joint local arrangements were made to create harmony and thus an interdenominational organization was set up to bring all faiths together and agree to stop the fights, allowing each faith to operate in their frame of reference.  

Third, he was joined by two other pastors who are the local pastors in Bukoba (Pastor Moris John Kayitaba- Calvary Assemblies of God and Pastor Leopard Domencian – Pentecostal Tanzania - KLPT). 

Rev. Aaron, Bishop Arlene and Rev. Alfred

with 3 Tanzanian Pastors 

Fourth, Bishop Daudi shared about the Islamic faith in Tanzania (Muslims are planting mosques in every corner of the country. The rationale is, they start with one follower and because they have better structures, eventually people end up joining their faith on that basis. Muslims also capitalize on festival days and provide food in form of beef, mutton and goats, and because of the provision of free meat the people are lured into the Muslim faith. On the contrary, non-Muslim ministries are having temporary churches with minimal structures and resources and as a result, they do not last long.

Fifth, the three Pastor’s we met with had the following requests:

• 1.    Prayer, so that local pastors may remain encouraged and serving 
• 2  That they would find favor before God, to get the right partners who are willing to support salvation ministry
• 3.   That Tanzanian Government would allow International Evangelists to come into the country.
  

Sixth, the local pastors made a request to use the IRM Discipleship Booklet and have it approved at the national level so that each prison can have several copies shared in their prison libraries.

The pastors are convinced that this is just the beginning of an even bigger work for Bishop Arlene. She has gone through a long process to consider Tanzania beginning in 2022 with one Bishop from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and now through Bishop Godfrey from Mwanza and Bishop Daudi from Musoma, who is the overseer of ministries across Tanzania

 The Pastors have scheduled IRM to hold crusades in 19 prisons and the entire eligibility process was through a network of local pastors In Butoba where we have two support pastors and each additional center will have two local pastors as our host support.

All three Tanzanian pastors agree that, IRM has come to reawaken their responsibility of doing the ministry God has called them to do in prisons. The plan is that they will organize a conference after the ministry leaves Tanzania and gives an overall feedback to IRM on how they will be progressing while doing follow up in the prisons.

Bishop Arlene shared a brief overview of how the ministry we do has four phases but also how the booklets have the contacts of the local pastors and how the inmates, who will be released, will need support from the respective local pastors.  

Ultimately, the local pastors nicknamed Bishop Arlene as the Moses of Tanzania and Alfred was nicknamed as Joshua.

 Alfred

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Please continue to pray for the salvation of the prisoners and for a fresh anointing and strength for the IRM team. We visit 2 prisons here tomorrow.

Arlene