"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.