Hope for Tanzania

Pastor Deo's Missionary Work in Singida

Background

We first met Pastor Deo in 2011 in Mwanza and have met him on many occasions since. He is a godly man of integrity and great humility besides being talented, resourceful and forward thinking. He is a trained pastor from a Tanzanian bible college who has been pastoring a Marantha Ministries church in Mwanza for the last 10 years. His wife is also a trained pastor and she has now taken over leadership of the church. The Mwanza church is quite extraordinary as he has been successful in training members to such an extent that he has effectively done himself out of a job. Not that this bothers him as it has released him to pursue his real passion which is cross-cultural mission. Deo has trained himself in cross-cultural mission although he readily appreciates that he should learn more in this area.

Mission

Deo's passion is Singida, which is an administrative area to the south west of Arusha. The area is populated by people who are animists, Muslims, nominal Christians and people of no religion. Witchcraft is commonplace.

Deo moved to Singida in early 2015 and established a base from which he visits villages and builds friendships. He lives humbly and rents a house which is furnished with basic items. We visited him in October 2015 and can confirm that he is fulfilling the call of God on his life. He and the local church have seen many people become followers of Jesus. Deo has trained up believers from ten churches to assist him in his missionary work. The church is growing steadily and there is a thirst for the good news that Jesus has saved people from their sins and that they can have peace with Him. One of the church communities has grown so much that they are wanting to construct a much bigger building. But they are generally quite poor and need financial help from us.

We want Deo to become financially independent of us and so have assisted him with start-up funds in a road building business that he has set-up. He has successfully completed his first contract and is tendering for the next one. The first contract was away from his base and allowed him to further take the gospel to new villages. He is a most unusual Tanzanian pastor as he wants to put himself in discomfort so as to further the spread of the gospel.

Deo is providing us with short reports of his work, some of which have been added to the News items on the Home page. Now that he is established in Singida he welcomes us to visit him there to see how the work is progressing. We will continue to support his work until such time he is financially independent and back him up with prayer. Many of the local believers are very poor and without work so the church is seeking to build up a microfinance loan fund for start-up capital as well as providing training in entrepreneurship.

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