Thursday 20 March 2014

SEW - what did you do this week?


Today is the day Jack returned to us having been away for the week on a SEW trip! Service Emphasis Week (SEW),  is a complete week off school timetable when the whole of Secondary serves in the community around Tanzania. 


Over the last few years Jack and Harry have served the kids of Sala Sala in a week long kids club, taught science to primary children from a local school, built shelving and dug a fire pit at the Nuru Centre and decorated and put mosquito screening up at 'Williams Nursery'.


                                       This year Harry went everyday to 'Changamoto' (Challenge), a Christian project run by Spanish missionaries that work to rehabilitate drug and alcohol addicts. The men that come to their project are helped to rebuild their lives through the power of the Gospel and learning carpentry skills. Harry and his team painted walls and sanded furniture for the first 2 days. The following day, despite a raging head cold and feeling exhausted, Harry returned to paint, sand and cut grass. Cutting grass is done with a panga, a long metal blade with a 'foot' at the end, which is swung back and forth to slice the grass. Harry insisted you didn't feel tired doing it - until you stopped! His hands however bore the scars of his labour, several burst blisters and stinging palms made him realise how hard ours guards work cutting our grass at home.


Jack was given the opportunity to go on a residential as he is now in grade 9. He went to help the Danish Mission, Soma Biblia (Read the Bible). A 7am Saturday morning start from the school car park was a bit of a shock to the system for Jack but he had to travel about 4 hours to the Morogoro area. Here he gave out tracts (Christian literature), at the local market, visited some local schools to give out Bibles and on Sunday at church  they sold Bibles and other Christian literature. Sunday afternoon he returned to Dar to the headquarters of Soma Biblia. There it was packing and stacking boxes of Bibles to later distribute on the streets of downtown Dar.



Services Emphasis Week is a time when the pupils of HOPAC Secondary school get the chance to really learn about service. It's not about what they do, although all the projects they serve at benefit enormously, but it is what they learn that makes the difference. They learn to serve others, they learn to humble themselves by putting others first and most importantly, they learn the joy of service.

In the book of Matthew Ch22 it says:  37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’[e] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’