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A Late 50th Birthday

Posted by Steven Hendrix on

Since going to Tanzania, this is my first birthday I have spent at home.  Typically I don’t celebrate my birthday in Tanzania as it really is not a big deal for most people there.  Last year as things at my previous site were starting to come apart, I choose to hide my birthday on Facebook because I did not want to go through all the “Happy Birthday” posts when I was not feeling very happy.  That was my 50th birthday which should have been a big deal to me but wasn’t because of everything else going on.  This year I am home and I have decided to celebrate my 50th Birthday a year late.  I had hoped to have a party, but that is not in the cards.  So I have been promoting “Virtual Mission Trips” this year I thought I might try a “Virtual Birthday Party.   I am having a Birthday fundraiser like the ones you see on Facebook but just through my blog to raise money for the operating budget of Tumaini Evangelistic Pre and Primary English Medium School in Kiruani, Tanzania.  I hope we can raise enough money to feed the students and pay the cooks salary for the rest of this school year which is $800.  You can contribute by mailing a check to  Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc., PO Box 2016, Fremont, NC 27830 and just mark your check “school bday” and we will know what to do with it.  You can donate online by clicking on the donate button below which uses PayPal to process credit cards.  When you select PayPal or Credit card they add a block to the page for you to add a note to your donation.  Simply put in “school bday” and we will know it is for school operations.  Feel free to mark yours as a recurring gift as well, we don’t mind.

You may want to know more about the school and what your money is going to but did not make it to one of my presentations.  I have included the online presentation though it is not nearly as much fun as a live presentation when I go off on tangents or relate specific stories.

We also produced a tri-fold brochure with more specific information which you can download at Tumaini B2BU brochure
Another great way you can participate is an idea first proposed during the MUMC missions committee meeting.  It started as a simple idea to read stories to the kids at school on video and then I show them to the kids via TVs.  That idea has grown significantly since that meeting just a month ago.  I am wanting folks here in the USA to record themselves reading children’s illustrated books or anything they feel they want to share with the kids.  For example if you are big into science, record a short experiment for the kids to see.  If you are into horses do an informational post about what horses are and then some video of you riding.  If you are big into crafts and I can find the materials for the kids to follow along, then record an instructional video.  If you play an instrument, talk about the instrument on the video and how it works then play them a song.

I have done a short video of me reading a book I got from Kohl’s charity program called “I Know a Rhino” by Charles Fuge.  This was done in the most raw format I could, simply by myself using my phone.  You can take pictures of the pages and insert them in the video instead of flipping the book.  


An example of something you could do as a science experiment would the following I found on YouTube but I hope to get folks I know to do these and record it for our kids.  Remember to make it fun.

So break out your creativity and go on a mission trip even if you can’t go on a mission trip.  


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