A Week in Morogoro

This week we traveled to Morogoro, Tanzania. It is about 8-10 hours away from us and about 2 hours from Dar Salaam. Two missionary couples are working together through the donation of a wealthy Christian man from the states to start a camp. It is called Camp Highlands. This past week was camp training. So Brad and Tricia brought 5 of their best young adults to Morogoro. There were all together about 150 Tanzanians there.
When we got there I had this overwhelming feeling of, what am i going to do all week?? The week consisted of meetings, worship services, more meetings, training, and more things that required sitting for long periods of time listening to Swahili. I felt like i was going to be totally useless the whole week. So I asked Tricia if there was anyway i could help around the camp. So we went and talked to one of the missionaries.
The next day my week of serivce began in the kitchen. There were about five Tanzanians in there working on the food. And Tricia brought me back there and asked if I could help out. So i peeled abour 100 potatoes, cut peppers, washed and dried plates, cups, pots, and spoons. But the most interesting thing i did was with coconut. They had me sit in this little tiny chair thing, on the side of it was something that looked like a spearhead with spikes on it. They used that to shave the inside of the coconut into a basket. It was really really hard, but they make it look so easy! I did three of them in the amount of time it took him to do 6! :) but it was definitely an experience that I enjoyed.
I was also able to help out by watching some of the missionaries' children throughout the week. Two missionary couples live on the camp campus, but a bunch more came to support the camp and their young people. Altogether there were.. five missionary couples, one man, and two single lady missionaries there from the surrounding ares probably within a 10 hours traveling distance. It was really cool to talk to them all. Most have been in the country for at least 10 years, with the exception of Brad and Tricia. I was able to talk for awhile with the camp manager and his wife and just ask them questions about their strategy for getting young people to come to camp. One of the missionary couples have started an orphanage in Dar Salaam.
I really enjoyed the week in Morogoro, even though I didn't get the same thing out of it as everyone else. I was able to serve and help out as i could.