Church Builder Gary Engel
Visits Zion Lutheran
Bearing Tanzanian Gifts


     Baldwin native son Gary Engel, now of Peach Tree City, Georgia, visited Silverhill's Zion Lutheran Church to report on his recent building adventure in East Africa.




    
Church builder Gary Engel (l) presents a Maasai tribal elder scepter to his father Ed Engel (r) while mother Eva enjoys the presentation event at Silverhill's Zion Lutheran Church on Sunday, August 6, 2006.



     "We were in northern Tanzania about 70 miles west of Mount Kilimanjaro," he said, "about four hours from Arusha, and about 50 miles south of Kenya."


     The construction of the actual church lay 200 miles south of the equator! "We were building the church, part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, up on Mount Ketumbeine about 8 miles from Ketumbeine village," Engel added. They lived and worked in the bush with the Maasai Tribe. The tribal elders have decided that it is okay to become "Christian." Large numbers, especially of young people, are being baptized.


     "God is doing great things there," Engel said. Gary, one of a team of thirteen from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Ohio, Montana, and California, spent June 16 until July 16 on this church-building mission.


     At the conclusion of Zion's Sunday morning worship after his brief report, Gary invited his father Ed Engel and mother Eva to come forward to receive unique gifts. The church elders at the church in Mount Ketumbeine had asked Gary to convey a message of prayer support and a gift to a church supporting his work. An "elder to elder" gift, a hand-beaded scepter with bangles, perhaps similar to our culture's gavel, was presented to Ed Engel as an elder member of Zion.

     Gary Engel also presented a Tanzanian flag to Ernie Burnett, one of our Zion Museum curators, as a reminder of the Tanzanian church and its prayers for this American church which had been praying for the Engel mission. Ed Engel asked that the scepter be given and displayed in the Zion Lutheran Church Museum along with the Tanzanian flag. More about Zion's Museum can be found here.






    

     Ernie and Henri Burnett, Museum curators at Zion Lutheran Church, stand in the doorway to the museum ready to welcome visitors to view the collection of historical items. The banner over the door reads "Swedish Lutheran Zion Church", which was the original name given to the church at its beginning in 1906 by its founding members.