Life In Tanzania | Debra Story
While she was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the School of Nursing’s rigorous academic program at the University of Mobile, Debra Story also was pursuing her calling.
“After spending every summer during college either overseas or working with refugees in the states, God kept confirming His calling on my life that at some point I would be overseas. After graduating and getting a few years of nursing experience in Mobile and then in Nashville, I started looking into how I could get to the mission field overseas. Fast forward, and now I have been in Tanzania for almost three years,” she says.
First, she learned Swahili and cared for premature babies on the pediatric ward of the local hospital. Now she serves in nearby lake villages, using community health as an entryway to build relationships with women and their families. In her newsletters, Debra shares the joys and challenges of daily life on mission to Tanzania. Here are excerpts.
Our First Road Trip Adventure
“A teammate and I got to go on our first Tanzanian road trip to help with a women’s health teaching in a Maasai village. We were in an extremely dry bush village for a week, doing this teaching, with a group of 30 incredible Maasai women. I did not really have many expectations for this week and was just going to go and be open and flexible to help out in any way I could. From my experience with women in the rural town I live in, I did not expect these Maasai women to be super engaged or want to really participate, but they proved me wrong! They welcomed us in with open arms and trusted us with sensitive topics.
It truly encouraged my heart and has me excited and motivated to bring what I learned in this village back to my area! We also saw giraffes and zebras every day on our drive out to the village, so that was pretty awesome!”
Prayer Request: To keep my focus on Christ and His call that brought me to Tanzania, even when things around me seem to always be changing.
Answered Prayers
“Since the beginning of October, a teammate and I plus 11 national partners, give or take each week, have been taking a boat out to a lake village called Kigalye. This village is primarily Muslim and mainly consists of fishermen and their families. At the center of the village is a mosque and right beside the mosque is the health clinic. Every other week, we have been teaching a health lesson at the clinic to the women of Kigalye and telling a Bible story at the beginning of the lesson.”
Prayer Request: That I will abide in Christ every day.
God is With Us
“This week we have started going by foot to the lake villages of Kigalye and Kagongo twice a week. With the blessing of the local doctor and the Muslim village leaders, we are allowed to visit the homes of the pregnant women and newborns. We are praying this will give us the opportunity to build relationships with the women and their families, as that was really hard to do when we were doing the health teachings at the clinic. After just one week, we can see this is going to be challenging and hard, but we have hope and we know that God is with us through it all.”
Praises: The blessing from village leaders to continue working in Kigalye and Kagongo.
Patience and Perseverance
“This has been a very slow process, but the Lord is teaching us what it looks like to persevere and be patient. Within the past couple of months, though, we are beginning to see little bits of interest to the Gospel, and one lady in Kagongo received Christ! She is now meeting weekly with two of her neighbors and a couple of the girls on our team, learning how to read her Bible and studying through the commands of Christ. Our team has even been able to show the Jesus Film in both Kagongo and Kigalye recently, which has initiated a lot of Gospel conversations.”
Praises: For the Tanzanian youth who hike out to the lake villages every week to share the gospel. For their health and safety, and that they will abide in Christ and be obedient to what God has called them to. That their churches would come alongside them to encourage, pray and support them.
To Hear and Respond
“A teammate and I and a team of national partners are continuing to hike to the lake villages of Kagongo and Kigalye. Twice a week we start our mornings by making the rounds to pick up the team, then we drive out to another village where we park our car. As we set out on our hikes, we make sure everyone has water, say a prayer, and then we begin our journey down to the village. There are two different paths that we use depending on which village we are going to that day, so the hike is anywhere from 25 minutes to 1 hour. During our hike we either review and practice sharing the Gospel or our testimonies, learn a Bible story, or as of lately, we have been learning the stories in the book of John when
Jesus says, “I Am,” or we discuss commonly asked questions like, “Is Jesus God?” Once we reach the bottom of the mountain, we divide into smaller groups and go door-to-door with the Gospel, Bible stories, and a few of us continue doing women and children home health visits. Then on our hike out of the village, we take the time to pray by name for those whom we had the opportunity to meet.”
Praises: It has been so fun being able to see those on our team learn and grow in their knowledge of God’s Word and grow in their love for their Tanzanian brothers and sisters to have the opportunity to hear and respond to the true Gospel.
ABOUT DEBRA’S MISSION
Based out of a small rural town in Tanzania, on the shore of one of the largest and deepest lakes in the world, the Lake Tanganyika Basin Team uses a variety of strategies to share the gospel and make disciples, including home visits, hospital and clinic-based medical care, evangelistic film showings, healthy church trainings and community health evangelism. We partner with the local church to reach unreached people groups up and down Lake
Tanganyika, as well as nearby towns. Like much of Africa, Islam heavily permeates our region along with animism/spirit worship, the prosperity gospel and nominal/cultural “Christianity.” Our people are small-scale farmers, small business owners and fishermen, many of whom make only enough to live day to day. Most families are large, with an average of seven to eight children. Diseases caused by unclean water, as well as malaria and malnutrition, cause significant issues in many families.
– International Mission Board
Kathy Dean uses her passion for storytelling and “playing with words” to share the stories of people, place and purpose that make the University of Mobile unique. As associate vice president for university communications, she manages media relations, edits the TorchLight alumni magazine, and oversees university communications. A former award-winning journalist, she is a two-time recipient of the Baptist Communicators Association grand prize for feature writing. Kathy and her husband, Chuck, live with three extremely loud miniature schnauzers.
