What Do ELCA Regional Representatives Do?

Below is a list of a few of our highlights from 2014:

• Mid-January–Mid-March: Swahili Language Training in Morogoro, Tanzania (see photo above).
• April: Deborah visited Madagascar with Dr. Mary Marete of ELCA World Hunger to evaluate ELCA-sponsored agricultural projects and theological schools.
• May: Joe traveled to Uganda to visit the Adjumani Refugee Camp, which is run by Lutheran World Relief for refugees from South Sudan. In addition, he visited the ELCA-sponsored malaria project in Uganda. We represented ELCA at Lutheran World Relief meetings in Nairobi, focusing on helping refugees in South Sudan and Kenya.
• June: We organized the visit of ELCA East and Southern Africa Area Program Director Rev. Benyam Kassahun to meet ELCA personnel here.
• August: Elizabeth Hendrickson, a new ELCA missionary arrived in Nairobi. We helped provide her some orientation to East Africa; Deborah represented ELCA at Lutheran Communion of Central and East Africa meeting in Nairobi.

• September: Attended the dedication of the ELCT’s newest diocese: Lake Tanganyika, and the consecration of its first bishop, (see photo above); visit to the Iringa Diocese, including Bega Kwa Bega and Iringa University.
• October: Hosted ELCA Global Campaign visit to Tanzania; attended partner meetings in Kenya (JMCK) and Tanzania (LMC Roundtable); attended Pare Diocese’s 100th Anniversary; Visited ELCA volunteer teachers Rev. Mary Jo Maass and Michelle Mercado.

• November: Joe assisted with the installation of a new well in Mlenga Parish in Dodoma Diocese; Deborah visited Mwangaza Education Project with Rebecca Duerst of World Hunger. Thanksgiving with East Africa personnel (see above photo).
• December: Joe visited water projects near Iringa with Water to Thrive and St Paul Partners.

Thank you for your prayers and support all year long!

Joe and Deborah Troester

East Africa Regional Representatives for the ELCA

P.O. Box 1770, Arusha, Tanzania

Photo Captions

1. Joe drinks coffee and enjoys a break from his Swahili studies at the Morogoro Junior Seminary. A big “Asante!” (Thank you!) to all our teachers there!:
2. Faustina Nillan, head of the national women’s program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, and Deborah at the dedication of the new Lake Tanganyika Diocese.
3. Joe (in blue shirt), together with colleagues Stu Smith of Ohio and Naftal Mandi of Tanzania, prepare a pump test for a new well in Mlenga Parish of Dodoma Diocese.

Joe and Deborah are ELCA missionaries in Arusha, Tanzania, where they are the East Africa Regional Representatives for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Their daughter, Christa, is a senior at Rain Forest International School in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Christmas Greetings from Tanzania!

Christmas greetings from warm and sunny Arusha, Tanzania! After completing our service in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013, we received a new call as ELCA’s East Africa Regional Representatives, based in Arusha. While both Tanzania and CAR are in Africa, there are some differences: Tanzania has a population of 49 million, while CAR has only 4 million. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania has over 6 million members, bigger than the ELCA! It’s wonderful to see how God is working in Tanzania. The ELCT is one of the fastest growing Lutheran churches in the world! Our job as ELCA East Africa Regional Representatives involves developing relationships with both the Tanzanian and Kenyan Evangelical Lutheran Churches, relationships with their companion ELCA synods, representing the ELCA at regional meetings and events, and supporting our ELCA missionaries and volunteers in whatever ways we can.

There are currently 25 ELCA personnel serving in East Africa: 14 full-time missionaries and 11 volunteers. That’s not including the nine missionary kids living here in East Africa, ranging in age from 2 to 21! Our daughter Christa (age 18) is one of these. She is completing her senior year of high school at Rainforest International School in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Next year she hopes to join us here in Tanzania for a “gap year” before heading off to the U.S. for university.

Thank you for your prayers and support. They mean a lot to us. We wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and many blessings in 2015!

Prayer requests

•  For a peaceful election year in Tanzania: 2015 will see a Constitutional Referendum in April and Presidential and Parliamentary elections in October.
• For an end to violence and terrorist attacks in Kenya so that our missionaries and church partners there may do their work in safety and all may live in peace.
• For peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims in East Africa and throughout the world.
•  For safe travels during Christmas/New Year’s vacation for our daughter Christa and for many of our ELCA colleagues who are traveling.
• Praise and thanks for God’s blessings in 2014!

Joe and Deborah Troester

East Africa Regional Representatives for the ELCA

P.O. Box 1770, Arusha, Tanzania

Photo Credit: Deborah, Joe, and Christa visiting some friendly horses near Arusha, Tanzania

Joe and Deborah are ELCA missionaries in Arusha, Tanzania, where they are the East Africa Regional Representatives for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Their daughter, Christa, is a senior at Rain Forest International School in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Hatari!

We apologize that you haven't heard from us in sometime, but now that we have "gotten our feet on the ground" here in Tanzania, we hope to be writing more often to let you know about what we are doing here, and, more importantly, what the church is doing in East Africa. Recently we saw the 1962 movie Hatari! starring John Wayne as the safari leader on the northern Tanzanian plains capturing animals to send to zoos. I saw this film when I was a kid, and I still remember the exciting rhinoceros chase sequences.

 

Part of the film takes place in the town of Arusha, our new home in Tanzania. If you are not sure where Arusha is located, the famous clock tower (in the middle of the photo above) is located half-way on the road from Cairo to Cape Town. It is amazing how we can recognize certain local landmarks in the film more than fifty years later: the clock tower, just 50 yards from our office in the Lutheran Center, and, a few blocks from there, the Lutheran Cathedral, which looks brand-new in the film, but hasn't substantially changed since that time.

 

Our new calling as East Africa Regional Representatives involves a lot more than water projects and theological schools, which were our main focus in the Central African Republic. We still miss the CAR and the students, friends and colleagues we left behind there—but we are happy to be serving in a different role here in Arusha, and throughout the region. We are responsible for representing the ELCA in four countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan, although we haven't yet had the chance to visit South Sudan due to the conflict that has been ravaging the country for almost a year.

 

So what do Regional Representatives do? We visit projects supported by the ELCA, read reports, proposals and budgets from these projects, visit with local church leaders, encourage our local ELCA missionaries and volunteers, and represent the ELCA at local and regional church meetings. Often I hear someone from one of our partner churches say, "We know that the ELCA cares about what is happening here because you always send someone to our meetings!" Perhaps letting people in East Africa know that the ELCA cares about what is happening here—in their country, in their church—is the most important thing that we do.

 

And, of course, we want all of you to know what the ELCA is doing in East Africa—a huge area with well over 6 million Lutherans just in the four countries Joe and I work in. That's twice the number of Lutherans in the ELCA! So there is a lot going on here and we hope to share some of it on this blog.

 

Joe and Deborah Troester

East Africa Regional Representatives for the ELCA

P.O. Box 1770, Arusha, Tanzania

 

Photo Credit: Clip from the movie Hatari! The movie starred John Wayne and filmed in Tanzania. The shot is taken looking south on Boma Road toward the clock tower. Our office is behind the tree. The baby elephant is headed for the Safari Hotel, which has now been replaced by the New Safari Hotel.

 

Joe and Deborah are ELCA missionaries in Arusha, Tanzania, where they are the East Africa Regional Representatives for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Their daughter, Christa, is a senior at Rain Forest International School in Yaoundé, Cameroon.