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Sunday, September 19, was Tanzania Day at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Mountain
Top.
The event began with a special program for children and adults at 9:45 a.m. Jean
Marie Warpus, a member of St. Peter Lutheran Church, Scranton, and an RN, showed
slides and shared personal experiences from her trip to our companion synod,
the South Central Diocese of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Tanzania. Ms.
Warpus was one of the participants in a delegation from the Northeastern Pennsylvania
Synod led by Bishop David Strobel that visited the diocese in September 2003.
During the event participants had the opportunity to purchase handmade arts and
crafts from Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit program of the Mennonite Central
Committee that provides vital, fair income to Third World people by marketing
their handicrafts.
Persons attending Tanzania Day were invited to bring school supplies for the children
in Tanzania. “Many, many boxes of supplies were gathered,” said the
Rev. Michele Kaufman, pastor of St. Paul’s. “Youth from our congregation
took the notebooks that were contributed and wrote messages to the children in
Tanzania.”
The theme of worship was “Weaving a World Tapestry.” Pastor Kaufman
noted that the service used Tanzanian tunes and music by the popular group Dakota
Road.
Following the worship service, members and friends gathered for a Tanzanian dinner
of pineapple curried chicken with sweet cinnamon rice, followed by a variety
of pumpkin and pineapple desserts.
Over $500 was raised through the sale of merchandise from Ten Thousand Villages
and donations for the dinner. These monies will be matched by the Luzerne County
chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. The funds will be used to send a
child to school (a cost of $30 per year per child) and to purchase a motorbike
for a pastor in the Tanzanian diocese. Pastors travel many miles, often by foot,
to small village churches in the mountainous region.
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