Brooke Seekins - Missionary to Tanzania

[0:00] And in Tanzania now for several years, you can tell you how many. It's been our privilege to have had some small part in helping underwrite her support and her ministry there.

[0:10] We feel that it is some of the finest money that we have invested. And you'll have an opportunity to make an additional and an ongoing investment. And she will tell you about some prayer cards and pictures and things that are available back there.

[0:26] But mainly we're just looking forward to hearing from her. So you come right ahead. Thank you for being here, Brooke. All right. Can you hear me now? We're all worked up here. Along with all the computers and technology that weren't in the Bible, they do help us, though, I have to say, Pastor.

[0:45] But they always come with our glitches, that's for sure. Before I begin, Pastor, can I have you come back up here for a minute? You guys, like you said, you are one of my faithfully supporting churches.

[0:59] And I have a gift for you. And I'll have Pastor receive it. And this is kind of cool. It's made by a local artist in Tanzania.

[1:12] I don't know if you can see that. It's called a batik. It's a wax painting. You cannot wash it. If you want to clean it, you need to iron it with a damp cloth, ladies. What it is is a local artist in the city where I live makes this all by hand.

[1:28] He covers it all and then dyes one color with wax, takes it off, covers it with wax, and dyes the other color, covers it with wax. So it took him quite a while, and I helped him design.

[1:38] And it walks through all of the Sunday school stories that you might possibly want to have from creation all the way until the rapture at the end. So this is just a thank you for you guys.

[1:50] Well, thank you. Thank you. If you get stuck on some of them, you can email me and ask, hey, what's number 17 again? Most of them, I think, are quite self-explanatory.

[2:01] So I just want to say thank you to you guys for being faithful and for your prayers and things like that. And so, yeah, you're welcome. Now, the next thing I get to hold up, in case you haven't, you know, just in case you forgot, I hold it up.

[2:17] And I did not steal this, by the way. I think when I was here two years ago, I stayed with a police officer. And it was a conference, and I didn't speak until the end. And he kept seeing the yield sign.

[2:28] He said, how could this missionary girl be stealing signs? It really bothered him until I explained that somebody went to the Michigan Road Department and got it from them. So I'm not, you know, promoting stealing road signs by any means.

[2:43] But this is the logo of my ministry. It stands for Youth Instructed in Evangelism, Leadership, and Development. And that's what I do. And for you, when you see these on the road signs, they really are this big or bigger.

[2:57] I've looked for a smaller one that would fit in a suitcase. I don't really have that many. But when you see one, please pray. Let it be a reminder that you would pray. And they're all over. Anytime you get on and off an interstate, especially when you get back on, there's a yield sign.

[3:10] And I don't know if you guys have any roundabouts around here, but there are yield signs all over. So when you see one, little kids are actually the best at remembering, hey, there's a yield sign. We've got to pray for Brooke in Tanzania.

[3:21] And so please let that be a reminder to you to pray for the ministry there. Brooke Seekins is my name.

[3:33] And how many of you are going to Cedarville tonight? You're actually going to see another Seekins on the program. My little brother's in the orchestra. It's a trumpet section. So his name might be in there.

[3:44] And I'll be there tonight, too. I might see some of you guys there. But I work with Grace Ministries International. And I have been in Tanzania now for 11 years.

[3:56] Since 9-11, I was actually on my way. I was in London on 9-11, on my way the first time I went to Africa. So that was even a God thing. Because had I been scheduled to fly out on 9-11, I'd been stuck in the States for quite a while.

[4:08] But because we were already in Europe, we were able to make our way all the way to Tanzania. And like I said, YIELD is the logo of my ministry. And please let that be a reminder to you, for sure.

[4:21] I have lots to say. But before I get into it, you can read this with me on the board. If you want to open your Bibles, you can. But it's kind of dark back there, and that's okay. But I would like us all to read this verse together.

[4:31] It's from 1 Corinthians 1-18. You ready? Do you believe that?

[4:49] The message of the cross is powerful. The word of God is powerful. And when you read that entire passage there in 1 Corinthians, you find that it talks about man's wisdom.

[5:00] And how God, even God's foolishness is more wise than man's wisdom, in a way. And if God could be foolish. And how all the ways that he just shares the gospel with just simple people, and yet he confounds the wise.

[5:16] And what we're going to do, and what we do in Tanzania, is not through our power. It's through the power of God. And you're going to see a lot of things, and some of you guys are like, I don't see how you can do it.

[5:27] Well, I can't do it. It's only through the power of God that I can do any of these things. It's only through the power of God that people are being saved. It's through the word of God and its power that changes people.

[5:38] And I really believe that. And when I get frustrated, and I think, well, how come they're not getting it? They just aren't getting this. Why is it taking so long? And then I have to remind myself that the word of God is what changes.

[5:51] It can't be me. It can't be... I can't just say something and expect it to happen overnight, unfortunately. I wish it could. We could change the world that way. Couldn't we if we had an idea and it happened overnight?

[6:01] But it doesn't. It takes time, and it takes the word of God working in people's hearts and lives to change people. And so all of what you're going to see is all about the power of God. And it really is kind of cool.

[6:13] That's dynamite. And in Greek, the word power. It's called dynamo.

[6:26] Dynamo or dynamite. That's where we get the Greek word power. Did you catch that blast? I can hit replay here. We are blasting. We just blasted this year. It was moving pieces of rock the size of Volkswagen Bugs.

[6:46] And we stood quite a ways away to take that video. That's actually on the campus where I live. I live on the Bible College campus there. And they were blasting to make way for a hydroelectric plant. So that was exciting for us.

[6:58] During the month of April, there were several dynamite blasts. And it really illustrates to me power. I mean, you saw those rocks flying through the air. I mean, some of them are huge. And we were back at least a half a mile, you know, zooming in on the video camera to watch that explosion.

[7:14] And there were several over the course of a couple weeks as they made way for water pipes. Because they can't go up. They always have to be going down. To put a hydroelectric plant in. And we're excited about that.

[7:25] Right now, the Bible College has been running with a generator maybe 10 hours of electricity a week. So with the hydro plant, we're running right now. I got an email. They're running at four hours a day.

[7:36] And then once it rains. The rains are picking up right now. As the rains start more. There will be times where we'll have 24-hour electricity. Can you imagine? 24-hour electricity. That would be so cool. Right now, there's certain things that you only do in certain hours in the evening.

[7:49] Because that's when the electricity is on. Otherwise, we just have a small solar panel that can charge a computer and phone. But not do all the other things. So I have a list of things like, you know what? I'm going to bring a hand mixer back this time.

[8:00] Because I can, you know, make some rain. Or, you know, there's certain things that we're excited about. But we know that we get rain for about four or five months out of the year. And then for six months, it never rains a drop.

[8:12] From May until October, it will never rain. And so we know that part of that time, in order not to dry out the river that we're using, we'll use it for only a few hours in the evening.

[8:22] But that's still exciting to us. To be able to have electricity. So that's what that dynamite blast was all about. But it illustrates the power of God. And what you're about to see is all the ministries going on over there.

[8:34] And it's not just me, also. I want to introduce you to the people. Because often I'm going to say we. And it's going to be these people here. I work with Tanzanian pastors overseeing youth ministries in 70 Grace churches in Tanzania.

[8:48] Now, it is a department of the national church, like a denomination over there. And there is a head of the department. Up until a couple months ago, it was this man, Pastor Albert Simuonza. Now, I'm going to quiz you on these names.

[8:59] So start. Pastor Albert, that's an easy one. I've been working with him for five to six years in youth ministries. And he was just asked to be an accountant in the church.

[9:09] And to move to a different position. And it was sad. And we were in transition for a long time. But it's exciting. As God changes things and moves. And he will do a really good job.

[9:19] And the job he's going to as well. So now they've replaced him with a new guy named Pascal in Wendipole. And I'm excited to work with him. I've had him as a marriage camp counselor for many years. And he's worked with some of my coworkers there.

[9:32] But unfortunately, right before I left to come here, I only got to have one meeting with him. One meeting. And then I left and came to America.

[9:46] And so he's there. And I'm praying that he can continue and start to build it. But what is he going to do? Well, Pastor Albert will be able to call him. And they'll be able to use. Everybody has cell phones. Even though they don't have electricity, they have cell phones.

[9:58] Isn't that crazy? Everybody in the village has. One guy runs a business. He starts a generator at night. You bring your cell phone. And he'll charge your cell phone for you. So they can call and they can communicate.

[10:09] He also is working with this guy. His name is Jericho Peter. He's studying to be pastor right now. He's been in youth ministry for a long time. In fact, the region that he oversees, he's probably 90% success rate in having youth groups in every single church.

[10:23] Whereas other regions are just kind of the guys in leadership are duds. They don't really do it. But he works hard. He'll rent a bicycle if he has to, to drive a bike five hours away, stay in a church and explain to the pastors and elders what needs to happen in their church to have a youth group.

[10:39] And he's just a faithful servant of God. I'm excited because he's studying to be a pastor. And I know he's going to be a great pastor. He's the secretary of our youth ministries right now. So he'll be able to help Pascali right now do some things.

[10:50] And also we have Pastor Uzi El-Marchelela. He's a treasurer of our department as well as he's my former camp director. I worked with him for years doing camp ministries.

[11:02] Right now he's training pastors. He's at the Bible school training pastors. And unfortunately they're in class at the same time we run camp. So I have somebody else as a director now. But those two guys will be able to help Pastor Pascali get used to what's going on.

[11:17] And when I get back, I go back in February to Tanzania. And that will be just in time to get ready for camps and some of the bigger events of our scheduled year. But it's exciting.

[11:29] It's new. It's, you know, sometimes you worry who's going to be in power. And when they were saying they're going to have to elect a new guy, I was just praying that God would put a godly man who's honest.

[11:39] And I'm thankful because this guy really is an honest and a godly man in his life. So I work specifically with these four men or three men doing and planning and having meetings and speaking and visiting churches.

[11:56] And so when we say we, it's them. When we do camps, I have Tanzanian counselors now for all of the camps. And then we bring in kids from America who can teach workshops. When you bring somebody from the States, they can't speak Swahili.

[12:09] I don't know if you guys speak Swahili, but nobody speaks Swahili. I think you know some. Hakuna Matara. You know that one? Girls, what does it mean?

[12:25] Yeah, no worries. You're right. That is Swahili, actually. That movie, The Lion King, is full of Swahili words and names and stuff. But along with all of the Americans that we come in, we always have to find translators.

[12:37] So we get kids from our churches who know English. They've gone through high school. And they're personal translators for all the people that come over. So I have a team of Americans and Tanzanians and Tanzanian leaders and Tanzanian counselors and translators all working together.

[12:52] I also work with a great group of missionaries. I'm one of seven families in Tanzania. And I'm just blessed to have a great support family of missionaries there.

[13:04] And we really help each other. And it's kind of funny because some of these kids, I've known them since they were eight years old. Now they're just off in college this year. A couple of the missionary kids that grew up there got married, you know, and I got to visit them in Michigan and go see their house.

[13:18] But they all call me Aunt Brooke over there because they're not near their aunts and uncles all the time, grandmas and grandpas. And so all of the other missionaries become aunt and uncle to the other kids. And we just have a really neat family of people to work with.

[13:31] Now each of us are involved in totally different ministries. They overlap a little bit, but there's one guy there. He leads vocational schools. Another guy is children's ministry. Another guy is doing business training.

[13:42] Another guy there is doing evangelism. Another guy is doing church planting. Another guy is a doctor setting up a clinic eight hours from the nearest hospital. There's another guy overseeing pastoral Bible college.

[13:53] We had for a year we had an engineer and his wife setting up that hydroelectric dam. So there's a lot of different ministries. And it's exciting and encouraging. And yet we all get together like last weekend they were all together, those that were there in Tanzania for Thanksgiving.

[14:07] And they'll probably do something for New Year's together. Super Bowl parties we'll do together. Fourth of July we do together. Birthday parties, things like that. So it's a really neat family. And I'm just thankful that God has brought us all together to work there in Tanzania.

[14:22] Now here in America, youth, we tend to think of high school, college-age kids. Well, over there, it's a little different. They have about four words in their vocabulary, baby, child, youth, and old person.

[14:35] So I'm sorry for those of you that don't fall in the youth category, you're an old person. But that's just their vocabulary. And it really threw me for a loop when they said, well, you do youth ministries.

[14:45] Because you saw, how old was that? 13 to 35. I mean, some of these ladies that are 35 years old got married when they were 15, 16 years old.

[14:56] They're grandmothers already, and they're 35. But what I found out is they usually weed themselves out of youth Bible studies when they get married. And it's usually the single kids or just kids that are newlyweds, kind of like college-age kids here.

[15:11] But the older ones tend not to involve themselves in like a youth Bible study. They might come to a conference or something, but they're already involved in the women's ministries of the church and the men's ministries and things like that.

[15:22] But it does throw a monkey wrench sometimes. We have to put age limits on things because we don't want a 35-year-old lady that has her baby trying to play capture-the-flag at camp. It just doesn't work very well.

[15:33] So we limit camp to 25 and under, and we find that that works great. They still have a lot of energy, still ready to play games. They're not old enough that they're stumping the counselors with hard theological questions and things like that.

[15:47] And then the older youth, we can use them for counselors and bring them to marriage camp and things like that. So that's who I usually work with now. Seventy churches, that's a lot of churches. But it's amazing.

[16:00] One of our main ministries that we do is camps every summer in the month of June and July. And I'm excited to tell you that in 2002, we ran a test camp in English just for kids that went to high school.

[16:11] Let's try camp. Let's just see what it would look like. We tried it. But it was all English, a few Bible studies. And then in 2003, we ran our first camp where we invited church kids to come. We invited kids that were leaders in their youth groups to come.

[16:24] And this year, we celebrated our 10th year of camp in Tanzania. So that's really exciting for me because when we were doing this 2002 one, it was just for English.

[16:36] It really wasn't a church camp. But somebody said, you know, you really got to try this. You really got to try this. I said, I don't know if they can do it without me. And they said, even if they can't do it without you, it's invaluable to train counselors and to work with these kids and to give them a fun environment where they get to study the Word of God.

[16:52] And it's just really cool. And it is amazing. I've met so many kids through, you know, 10 years of camp. That's a lot of kids. And I've gone now, I go to weddings of kids that I've had as campers in the past.

[17:05] And you've got to see them, you know, through the good and the bad. And I've got to know all of these different kids in all of our churches in Tanzania. And they've come to respect me. And now I can go visit them and advise them in their lives because we see them year in and year out.

[17:20] So it's really exciting for us. We do bring in kids from America. They're not counselors anymore. In the beginning, they were the counselors. Now they just teach workshops like how to share the gospel, health classes.

[17:30] And now for the older people, we've done some marriage camps where we bring couples in and make them play games more geared to couples. But it's not quite as, you know, running around as youth camp.

[17:41] It's a little bit more relaxed. But it's a way that so many of them didn't get married in the church and they didn't have premarital counseling. And so through marriage camps, it's a way to build in foundations of how to live, you know, as a godly husband and a godly wife.

[17:57] Now I want you to just watch this video because it explains so much of camp that I can't explain. We sing over and over and over again.

[18:11] And they don't sit still like we do. I think when we get to heaven and get to sing, we're going to sing a lot more like babies.

[18:32] Full of energy and excitement. Beautiful harmony. And of course, no camp can be camp without games. We even teach them skills out when they're using regular D batteries to light a light bulb that can work in their house.

[18:49] We don't really have a bell. We only use a whistle at game. If we want them to gather, we just start singing and they all come from wherever they are. One, two, three.

[19:02] This is the first time these people have ever thrown a Frisbee. Last year we were blessed to study the Word of God and the Gideons teamed up with us and handed out New Testaments to all of the kids at camp.

[19:19] One of the things we make sure is that we teach them the Gospel. We also teach them how to share the Gospel with their friends. For those in Sunday school, that kid in the blue is Friday.

[19:35] We do a lot of health classes. We do AIDS education or first aid classes. And if there's only one sport in the world, it would be soccer.

[19:46] And so this year we had a kid who played soccer in college. And he came out and did workshops with the boys and they were thrilled. And this is the 2012 staff, 10 years later.

[20:04] And I have to say, you guys, when I was here last year, was that two years ago maybe, three years ago? When I left, somebody said, hey, we've got a bunch of extra T-shirts. You want the T-shirts? And so I took these T-shirts.

[20:15] They're from, I think, the Creation Museum. Is that right? And they said, what did they say? I'm not ashamed of the Gospel. What you didn't know is that happened to be our theme verse for camp that year.

[20:26] And so I brought them to a printer in Troy and they printed just the title in Swahili on the back of the shirts. And those were our staff shirts three years ago, three summers ago. So I just want to say thank you to you guys.

[20:38] Because it was, I didn't even look at the T-shirts really when you gave them to me. And I got home and I said, wait a minute, this is the theme. We're doing this verse at camp. So that's totally, God is good that way, isn't he? You gave me some T-shirts because you had extras.

[20:50] You didn't know that was my theme. I didn't know it was my theme. And it happened to be the theme. So thank you to you guys very much for that. Another project we've been working on recently, you heard them sing.

[21:01] They sing beautifully, don't they? They've never seen a note of music in their life. They've learned to sing all by ear. What you didn't hear is that they also have a lot of choirs.

[21:12] And the thing to do now, just like you guys, the thing to do is to sometimes have guitars or whatever. They want to have the drums or the old-fashioned way. They play drums wonderfully there, but it's kind of the old-fashioned way.

[21:26] So they want electric guitars, bass guitars, and keyboards. They play kind of Jamaican-style music, not rock, but like Jamaican-style. And they start by buying these homemade ones, and they run them off a car battery for electricity because they don't have electricity in the village.

[21:42] And then pretty quick they build up, and they buy little generators and bigger sound systems and stuff. And this is what they do. And those choirs use them for evangelism over and over and over again.

[21:53] And they just kind of teach each other, well, some guys are just talented, and other ones kind of get it. And what I'm finding is that it's becoming a show.

[22:03] Our choir is bigger than your choir. But we get together for conferences. The church I go to has five choirs every Sunday. We sing very little congregational singing because it's choir after choir after choir.

[22:15] And they find that worshiping just as much because they know the songs. Every choir writes their own songs. They find it to be almost a sin to steal somebody else's songs.

[22:26] That's how they think of it. So little kids will sing songs that everybody knows. They'll sing choruses that everybody knows. But a choir's songs are written by somebody in their choir. So imagine Christmas is coming up.

[22:37] We have 70 churches. Most of them have one to two choirs. We're looking at about 100, 150 new songs just this Christmas in our church. Isn't that cool? It's amazing.

[22:49] One of my goals is to help them to use their music and their songs to help them to make sure that it's glorifying to God. And that they don't become the pride.

[23:00] Our choir is bigger than your pride. Your choir and all that stuff. And to teach them how to read and write music. Not to change their music. That's their music and that's okay.

[23:12] But to write down their music. All those songs they're writing for Christmas, not a single one of them will be written down. And once some of those choir members move on or whatever, the songs will be lost. So many songs are not written and they're lost.

[23:24] Maybe somebody has the words but no music. And so we want them to be able to preserve some of their songs. I want to make a chorus book of some of the top songs that our choirs are writing that would be just great for the congregation to sing.

[23:35] Just to write the melody line down and the words so that it would be preserved for long term. We are teaching them, you know, they're playing the guitar and they're just using cheap bar chords, power chords.

[23:45] They don't even know what key they're playing in most of the time. Somebody just says, yeah, I moved to the, well, they call them rooms but they're frets. You know, go to the 18th fret. Or, you know, they don't know what they're playing. And so, you know what, that's the key of C.

[23:57] And that means you're going to play an F and a G with it. An A minor. Oh, what's a minor? And they sing minor but they never knew how to play it. And so, we're just teaching them within their own type of music how to improve their music.

[24:10] Teaching them things that, you know what, while they're singing a congregational song is not the time to tune your guitar. With the volume on. You know, little things like that they just didn't know.

[24:21] And as they're learning, the guys that are really gifted in it are passing it on. And I've seen a difference. Now when we go to conferences, instead of saying our choir has better instruments than your choir, they're like, hey, let's not travel with eight speakers.

[24:34] Let's just travel with four. And we can share guitars. Why don't you guys bring your guitar? We'll bring our bass. And they're getting along better. They're appreciating better. And the guys that are really good go along and they coach the guys that are learning better.

[24:46] And it's a blessing to me to see minute changes. Some things, you know, may not change for a long time. But I'm seeing changes. I'm hearing guys write music that they're throwing minors in there because they know what it is.

[24:58] And they never knew that. And it's like, wow, that's really cool. And so I'm excited to see where that's going. What we're doing is we're doing a seminar. And that's our goal is to teach them how to use that music in their church.

[25:09] And we're not changing it. Every once in a while we'll teach them a new song or two. But to teach them just to read and write. And this year I was blessed. I had a girl live with me for eight months who had just graduated from Grace Bible College with a worship arts degree.

[25:22] And she's a vocalist. And then we also brought a couple other vocalists out and some other musicians out. And we did a lot of sight reading and vocal training this year, which I haven't had strengths in the teachers before.

[25:34] But you can see these guys are top musicians. They got to a point where their heads were full. One guy, he'd never been to a worship seminar before. And he told me, he said, you know, my brain is so full I think it's going to start popping out of the back of my skull.

[25:51] Because music is another language. Any of you that know about music and girls, you did a great job. Your harmony was beautiful. Thank you for playing piano. It was so wonderful to see you guys doing that.

[26:03] But it's a language. You can't just go pick up the piano and play. I can play piano and I can't play hymns as well as she did this morning. It takes a while to learn a language.

[26:15] You guys use, you know, I'm fluent now in Swahili. I noticed that you guys were speaking in tongues this morning. I didn't know you believed in that, Pastor. I believe the word hallelujah is Hebrew.

[26:26] Is that true? It's true, isn't it? It means praise the Lord. And there was something, what was it? Oh, there was another name. I can't remember what it is right now.

[26:36] There was another word I was going to write down. But we use languages all the time. We don't realize it. But music is a language. And so to have an intense four-day class on a language, that's hard.

[26:50] Four days, all day studying a language. Your brain would be popping out of the bag of your skull too, I think. And these guys, they get a little tired, but they're excited to learn. And they're excited.

[27:00] Oh, we can sing. And one thing that I've noticed is they always sing from their nose and their throats. And they never knew how to use their diaphragms. And they can sing so much more powerfully if they knew.

[27:12] And so we were able to teach them some of that this year because I had the girls that were gifted in it. And it's funny. Like this man here, his name is Tom. And he's really good. And now he's able to help teach some of the classes to the beginners.

[27:23] And the teacher can teach the more advanced students. And he can go help teach the beginners. We're getting there. But I want you to hear them sing together. It's the first time they've put together notes written.

[27:35] They're following music for the first time.

[27:56] And then I wrote some music on the chalkboard. So try and follow this music on the chalkboard. Do you know this song? It's Jesus loves me.

[28:07] They've never heard the song before, ever. It's in their hymn books. I have a yellow hymn book on the back. It's just in words. So we wrote the melody line on the chalkboard. We said, okay, you've got that down. Now read this in your hymn book.

[28:19] It's the first time they've ever sang Jesus loves me. You can tell they're concentrating trying to figure out how to follow music.

[28:41] Isn't that cool? We all got goosebumps when we heard them singing. We were the teachers because they were starting to understand. It was so exciting. And like I said, we had some kids look at his face.

[28:54] It's like, yes, we got it. Wow. Because in the first couple of years, we would teach them notes and note names and some of that. And they were like, uh, okay. And they didn't really understand.

[29:05] But this year, we were able to take it to a higher level and put them in music. And they said, oh, there's a reason for these notes. And we even took a handful of guys that were really more gifted and had been there several years and pulled them into a different class this year.

[29:18] And we said, you know what? Try and write this chorus down. You guys are ready for grade two. And they started to write just a one-sentence chorus. And they got, I don't even think they finished it.

[29:29] But they realized, you know, okay, we still have a ways to go yet. Because they were getting, oh, we know that already. You know, like, no, no, no. You don't know. There's music. You could study it for a lifetime and still not know it all.

[29:40] But they're getting there. And some of those guys will go home and practice. And I expect in a couple years some of them to say, hey, look it, I wrote this song. And it's not going to be perfect.

[29:50] It's not going to have all the meter correct. It's not going to have every note correct. But I'm going to be able to take it on the piano and play it. And wow, he could write his own song down. And they're excited about it.

[30:01] So that's one of the goals that we have. It's really hard to prepare this because, like I said, it's another language. And I'm already working in another language. So it's like three languages all at once. And it needs definitely help from the states because we break them into workshops.

[30:14] So I need guitar leaders and bass guitar leaders and keyboards and choir leaders all at the same time. So I need people to come help lead the worship seminar for sure. But it is exciting.

[30:26] Now, we're teaching true love weights. We incorporate that into a lot of the things that we do because AIDS is really prominent. In Africa. And mostly because of the sexual activity over there.

[30:37] So we're really working on the kids in the church to know this is not God's plan. And through that, we've had a lot more kids being able to get married through church weddings. And some of you guys that were in Sunday school, there's Sam Welly again getting married.

[30:50] And it's exciting to see these kids taking a stand for the Lord, getting married. And I travel to every wedding that I can get to. And because of that, we actually have a wedding dress ministry.

[31:01] In my house, I have about 15 wedding dresses. We rent them out for about $10 a wedding to the brides. They were already trying to wear white dresses, but they were not really nice. And I had some people in the states donate really nice dresses from the states.

[31:15] We've hemmed them all up and put sleeves on them. And because they walk through the dirt, they can't have the long train and things. But it's a blessing. Mama Steewati is a lady that I work with.

[31:26] And she travels. She maintains all the dresses and travels and helps the brides get ready. And then she also just is my traveling companion. When we go on road trips for five hours, then I have another lady with me in the car and things like that.

[31:37] But it's really exciting for us to go to all these weddings and to see them. And, you know, this is witness. And I've had her in camp for two or three years and her sister is before her. And we got to go to a wedding.

[31:48] And I got to go to her house. And she was the first one in her family to have a church wedding. And it's exciting. Another program that we have is called PASCRACAL.

[31:59] It's an acronym which represents the Bible clubs that we have in high schools and colleges. And it's really exciting for us because the Tanzanian government actually allows a religious time during school.

[32:13] Can you imagine? Government schools are required to have a religious time. And so in the high schools and the vocational schools, usually it's Friday afternoon. The Muslims will then go to the mosque and worship.

[32:26] And then different Christian organizations can have Bible studies in different classrooms. They get a teacher to sponsor and to bring pastors in. And our kids were starting to go to different clubs of evangelical churches.

[32:36] And some of our pastors said, you know, we need our own club. And they started a club in one school. Well, now we have clubs in about six or seven schools. And the students become a family. Most of the kids are going to high school.

[32:47] It's rare to go to high school. Most of them go in a boarding school situation. They're away from home. And what happens when you get sick? Oh, the teacher kind of has to make sure you get treatment.

[32:59] But sometimes you're just living in a village, renting a room and going to school. You know, it's not quite the dormitory situation. But what you find is your Bible club is your family. They make sure that all the kids in their Bible club are taken care of health-wise.

[33:12] They make sure that, you know, they're going to church. If a funeral happens and they need to go home for a funeral, they pitch in money so somebody can get home to grandpa's funeral or something like that. They become a community.

[33:24] But they also, every week, do a Bible study. They'll have a choir that will travel and visit local churches. And what we're doing now is hoping over every Easter break, we can bring all the club members together from all the schools to one place and do a conference with them and teach them.

[33:38] We did it this year, and it was exciting. The kids have always wanted to get together. Another thing they do is that for all the kids that are graduating from their club, they throw an all-day party for them.

[33:49] Oh, you're in our club. All these kids are graduating. We're going to throw an all-day party. I mean, they send invitations. People pay a little bit of money to come eat a feast, and they'll get choirs to come in and sing and dance and praise God.

[34:01] And then we come in, and we're guest speakers. We have certificates. We bring cap and gowns in. And they throw a whole party for the Bible club kids that are going to graduate. And so I also get to go to a lot of those graduation parties, speak and encourage the kids.

[34:15] But it's exciting to see them. And we want them to be in the Word when they're in high school. Unfortunately, most of our pastors did not go to high school. Some have gone after the fact. We've invested money to train them in high school.

[34:28] But a lot of the kids that get to go to high school think that being a pastor is a low-level job, but they're getting educated, and they would never be able to be a pastor. Isn't that weird? And so we're trying to teach them that, you know what, we need pastors that are educated too.

[34:43] But many of them are going to be an elementary school teacher somewhere, a high school teacher somewhere. And wherever they go, they will be leaders because of their education. They're going to be the elders in the church because they have more education.

[34:55] They have more training in that way. So we want to make sure that they have the Bible study behind it. And we're working on writing a curriculum so that after four years through high school, they would have gone through the whole Bible, hitting key doctrines, but also just have a whole picture of the whole Bible to know Old Testament characters and things like that so they would be grounded in their faith.

[35:17] So it's an exciting program for us. It has potential to go so much more. Unfortunately, there's not enough time for us as leaders, but it's exciting. Now, when you see a yield sign, you're going to pray, right?

[35:29] Here's my prayer list. Pray for wisdom for myself and the Tanzanian leaders that I work with. We're kind of busy. We do a lot of events. We have a lot of decisions.

[35:40] Where's camp going to be this year? Because it travels every single year. We go to different places each week, a different village. We need to decide who is qualified to be a counselor and who not.

[35:50] How are we going to train these better? How are we going to have these meetings? So a lot of ways just to do all of these ministries better. There's a lot of meetings and decisions to be made. Pray that God will raise up leaders.

[36:02] We need people to be youth leaders in churches, and that's really hard. Some churches are lacking qualified people just to teach a Sunday school class to the youth. So pray that God will continue to raise up strong leaders.

[36:16] Pray for the youth themselves. Everywhere youth have problems. They have temptations over there. Many of them are from unsaved families. There's a lot of witchcraft in their family traditions and things like that.

[36:28] So just pray for the youth. Pray that the Lord would help me raise the help that I need for all the camps and worship seminars and things. And pray for safety and health. I'm praising God.

[36:38] I've been back in the States since August. I just finished nine weeks in the West Coast traveling around doing conferences. I've been back in Ohio for almost two weeks. And I'll be in the area mostly through Christmas and things.

[36:52] And then I'll be on the road just weekends, not as much. But pray for safety even in the States and travel, health. But also in Tanzania. All of these events, they don't happen at my house. Hardly any of them.

[37:02] So I need to go to different villages all the time. And they're just rough roads and there's people and cows and stuff all over the road. So just pray for safety and all of that. And you can volunteer.

[37:14] I need help. I'm recruiting you. If you can't come, I'm asking you to recruit on my behalf. But don't say, I just can't go to Africa.

[37:25] Sorry, that doesn't work. I just tried that once too. You can make it. Most of you are more than capable. Every summer, I need kids that are going into their senior year of high school or college-age kids to come rough it out.

[37:39] We sleep in the village. We eat village food for about six weeks. The trip is because it's four days one way just to get there. And we have three and a half weeks of ministry.

[37:50] It's a wonderful time. You end up working alongside Tanzanians, having a translator, teaching workshops. I pray that God would raise up help every summer. The worship seminar, I need musicians to come over and help.

[38:02] That's going to be every other summer. So it will be like 2014 in the summer. We're going to have a worship seminar again. So I just pray for that. Pray for marriage camps.

[38:13] We actually in the past two years haven't had marriage camps because I'm lacking help in planning curriculum. I need couples like you to come over. This wouldn't be near as rough as youth camp.

[38:24] Youth camp's rough. Marriage camp, you'd come over and you could stay at my house and eat normal American food. But what you would do is you would do a seminar and train pastors and their wives. And those pastors and their wives would then go to the villages and run the camps at different times.

[38:39] So you would actually be just training leaders. It wouldn't be as bad. You live in a missionary house with maybe 24 hours of electricity or something like that. But just pray that God would raise up help to do this.

[38:51] I'm not married. I can't lead the whole marriage camp. I can organize it all. But part of the curriculum, it's not even right that I prepare it. So I need people to come over and prepare that.

[39:02] We're also recruiting something I didn't put up there. But I also need people that are like electricians and handymen right now. Because of the hydroelectric that you saw, we found out that part of the campus that I live on is not wired properly.

[39:17] For instance, my attic has places where wires are connected by duct tape. There are dormitories that have lights without any light switches. Because before, the generator would turn on at 7, turn off at 9.

[39:29] That's what you need a light switch for. But with the potential of having 24-hour electricity, there are shorts and things that are fire hazards in many of the buildings.

[39:39] That's missionary houses. Houses for pastors who are teaching at the Bible college. Classrooms, offices, dormitories. There's a lot of things. And so there will be probably two or three different teams coming over in the next year or two to work on these projects.

[39:56] So if you know somebody that's interested, you don't even have to be the electrician. If we have an electrician, he's going to need three or four grunt guys with him. As long as he knows how to work it, most of you guys know how to trim a wire and hold stuff for the guy.

[40:10] So just pray that God would raise up that as well. Support level, you guys are faithful monthly support. With the economy and Obamacare going in, that affects even missionary support and health care and things like that.

[40:24] I'm also raising money for new truck tires. I've had this truck for two years on its factory tires. And when you drive around in the mud, you need more grip. And my tires are getting pretty balbed.

[40:35] I think it is about $1,200 to get a new set of tires for the truck. And new wiring for my house. My house alone, to bring a new wire of electricity there, it's about 300 yards of heavy wire plus internal fixes.

[40:51] It would be about $1,500 to $2,000 just from my house. And then there's still dormitories and classrooms beyond and above all of that. And then if you want to just sponsor a camp counselor, every summer I have Tanzanians that are counselors.

[41:07] It costs about $60 for a Tanzanian for me to give them like the camp t-shirts that we do and to feed them for a week and a half. And to transport them, to get them from their house to training back to their house and then to camp and back.

[41:22] And to give them a very small thank you gift for the ministry they did. It's about $60 for every person. Last year I had 28 counselors or 30, something like that. So that's an expense that's needed every year.

[41:34] So those are different ways that you can help. And like I said, when you see a yield sign, will you pray? Do you have any questions? Your brains are full and popular.

[41:49] God's amazing, isn't he? He does a lot of great work. Thank you guys for being a part of the team. And I think I can close in prayer. Is that right? Or do you have more?

[42:03] Thank you. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to have a part in what we have seen and heard here.

[42:37] It's remarkable work that's going on there. Thank you, Brooke, for being here. We appreciate it so much. And in the event that someone would like to give but you're not prepared to support Brooke's ministry this morning, we just want to advise you that if you come next week, if you want to bring a check or a gift next week, just designate it for Brooke's Seekin Ministry.

[43:04] Put it in the offering box and we'll see to it that it's channeled to her. And that also goes for anything else. There are needs here in our own community.

[43:15] The bulletin mentioned this morning Loretta was talking a little bit about. And if you have a little surplus that you would like to invest in that area for some of these single mothers with multiple children, there's some needs there.

[43:35] And if you would like to just designate Christmas needs and put that in the offering box as well, I will see to it that that gets to the right place as well. Sure has been nice having you here this morning, Brooke.

[43:48] Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for coming. If you'll stand, we'll be dismissed with a word of prayer. Loving Father, we're grateful for what we have seen and heard this morning.

[44:01] Thank you for enabling us to have a small part in what's taking place there in Africa. We are grateful for the evangelization of the gospel and for it knowing no boundaries and no borders.

[44:14] We thank you that the power of God is sufficient unto salvation. For everyone who believes regardless of their race, nationality, color, ethnicity.

[44:25] It's a gospel of grace. It's available to all humanity. And we bless you and thank you for it. For each one here this morning, we trust that as we go forth from this place, we will do so with a new sense of enlightenment about the needs of others in other parts of the world.

[44:40] Thank you for the morning in Christ's name. Amen.