Photo of the Week: Tanzania

Local ambulance: A Kilimanjaro porter pushes a mobile stretcher used to take seriously ill or injured people off the mountain. (Photo by Gary Fallesen, Mission: Kilimanjaro 2011)

Caring for the lost on Kilimanjaro

The roots of Climbing For Christ are found in East Africa on Mount Kilimanjaro. This is where God planted the seeds of HIS ministry in 1998 and where He has led us to carry out eight missions (2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013, two in 2014, and 2015)

On the inaugural Evangelic Expedition, C4C team members delivered duffels of gear to the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project in Moshi. We were asked by the American director of this organization if we would like to meet a Lutheran pastor. We said we would and a meeting was arranged. It was a divine appointment.

“We are extremely excited as Pastor (Winford) Mosha has just recently come up with some ideas as to how the church can help the situation of the porters,” we were told by our friend with the Porters Assistance Project. “So it will be perfect timing for your group to provide encouragement for his doing so. The only way change can be effected here is by the Tanzanian people themselves. You will be helping the situation tremendously.”

We traveled to Marangu to meet Pastor Mosha at the Lyasongoro Lutheran Church. Pastor Mosha shared what God had put on his heart: to put someone at the Marangu Gate, one of the busiest entrances to Kilimanjaro National Park and the tourist route up the mountain. This person would pray with the porters before and after their climbs. They would also talk about HIV with the hundreds of porters and guides who pass this way each day.

As God would have it, it was also our desire to plant a missionary around Kilimanjaro to work with the guides and porters. Our goal was evangelism training so the members of the Kilimanjaro Chapter could reach non-Christians who work and trek on Africa’s tallest mountain.

We realized this God dream in 2014 when, in March, C4C extended a call to Damson Samson to become our missionary to East Africa. Climbing For Christ has supported Damson through college in Lilongwe after having met him in 2010 when our team first visited Pastor Duncan Nyozani’s Searchlight Ministries in southern Malawi. Damson has served with Pastor Duncan, caring for orphans who are sponsored by C4C’s Project 1:27.

Damson joined us on Mission: Kilimanjaro 2014 in late July and early August. This was his introduction to Tanzania. He returned in November 2014 to co-lead a two-day mini-conference on evangelism with 30 guides, porters and cooks. He has carried on the work of discipling immature believers and teaching evangelism through visits to northern Tanzania in March, May, July, and October.

CLICK HERE for the October 2015 “Mission Moments” from Kilimanjaro.