Preparations Continue

July 12, 2007 by Stephen Day.

It has been a busy week.  I have been working to get a lot of little things accomplished so that I can leave by the end of August.  Last Monday I met with the vestry of my home parish, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Saint Albans, West Virginia.  I met with them to discuss the missionary work I will be doing and to ask for their support.  They voted to provide a great deal of support for this work.

Yesterday I sent off all of my VISA application materials to another missionary who is serving in Dodoma right now.  She will get the sponsoring agency’s part completed and submit the application.  The process made me long for the easy process of getting a tourist VISA.  I am applying for a resident VISA since I will be living in the country and Tanzania requires a lot of paperwork.  My father did point out that it’s not exactly hard for anyone to get a Green Card for the United States, so that made me realize that the paperwork Tanzania required is not that much after all.

Next week I will be getting the two immunizations I still need to get – Yellow Fever and Meningitis.  I still need to figure out a way to get anti-malaria medications.  My HMO coverage from seminary isn’t really helpful when your six hours away from your coverage area.  Oh well…

I have started to experiment with the Linux distribution used by the college in Dodoma.  In case you are wondering, the distribution is Edubuntu, which is actually a slightly revised version of Ubuntu that is designed for use in educational environments.  Also, I have been reading a great deal about the work of network administration.  It has been quite a learning process.  I am very eager to get over to Tanzania.

My fundraising is moving along.  I have only met with my home parish’s vestry at this point, but I was able to get a great deal of support from them.  I hope to meet with a few other parishes in the next few weeks and also hope that the letters that were sent throughout the diocese prove fruitful.

I have ordered some materials to help learn some basic Swahili – namely the previously mentioned Rosetta Stone program.  In the next few weeks I hope to get a digital SLR camera so that I can get familiar with it before leaving for Tanzania.  The camera will be essential to document my time in Africa and the work of the Anglican Church of Tanzania.  I do love photography!!

Have a great day!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »