It has been a very busy time at Tumaini Evangelistic Pre & Primary School since I returned in September. At the end of September (I mean the very end and late that night) a group from St. Mark UMC in Greenwood, SC arrived at the Kilimanjaro airport to start 9 great days of Bible School (I don’t use Vacation because most people here don’t really understand that concept), Safari, Fellowship, Fun and yeah some shopping.

The beginning of their trip was not the best. Customs decided they must pay import taxes on all the VBS supplies they were bringing in. Yes, before you ask, there is a method for getting an exemption for donated/charity items. It is a long process and requires the requesting group be registered as a charity NGO which most groups including our school did not because it is too difficult in their opinion so just get it approved as a regular NGO and worry about the consequences later. It is also a daunting and long process if you are registered as a charity and most people associated with our school don’t seem to understand how. So after some negotiations we paid our tax at the bank just outside and got our bags through customs. Fortunately that was the only real problem for the week.

I should back up a little and explain that the week before I built two different structures for the Bible story station which I will be calling Station 1. The first and more daunting was the inside of a whale’s stomach for Jonah and the Whale. It needed to be big enough for 40 kids to sit down, and some curve to it since stomachs are not cubes.

The second item was some type of frame they could hang backdrop images on since the frame they had would not fit into the suitcases. It needed to hold a 5’x7′ as well as an 8’x10′ backdrop. Now I misunderstood and thought it needed to be clipped on at least 3 sides to hang properly, but it turns out it only needed to clipped on the top and let hang down. So made movable rope sides for the different sizes with notches in the wood 7 and 10 feet apart. But it worked so no issues.

It all worked and I think the kids enjoyed the Bible story time a lot. Sharon, who led this station, put a lot of effort into her station. We had an activity where the kids stretched out a plastic table cover and put ping pong balls inside as their “worries” and then when the storm hit they would bounce them off to signal their inability to control them in rough times.