In my blogs on November 7, 2019, (Erik’s Desire); March 28, 2024, (The Least of These); February 6, 2025 (God’s Amazing Ways), I told you about Erick and later, Debora, the two children in Tanzania that we sponsor with Compassion International. I said that Erick begs us to come visit him in almost every letter he sends us and that we were hoping to visit both our sponsored children in October, 2025, with a woman who had been a missionary in that country for many years.

I began filling out the reams of paperwork Compassion requires for this trip. Soon we discovered we wouldn’t be able to go to Tanzania in October—just the first of many roadblocks. Tanzania has an election at that time, and the Center is closed because of the possibility of violence.

We were disappointed but gave Kirsten, our Compassion staff member, many other dates in 2026 that would work for us all. As I continued to complete paperwork, we soon were given the date of January 14, 2026, for our visit with Erick and Debora. Our missionary friend said we could stay at the guesthouse at the seminary (now a university) where she had worked.

The university is in Arusha (northern Tanzania) while the Center the children attend is in the southern area, but with the optimism of travelers in America, we assumed we could easily make the trip. Kirsten told us that we wouldn’t be able to go outside the city limits while staying in Mtwara because it’s too dangerous; in fact, Compassion didn’t allow sponsors to visit there in the past but apparently conditions had improved somewhat. Not too encouraging!

Since we weren’t going with a Compassion group, we were on our own to arrange for transportation both inside and outside Tanzania. We soon discovered that even travel by plane would take up to a grueling 48 hours one way to Mtwara, and there were only a few flights a week, which would mean we’d have to stay in that area for probably a week, even though our visit was only for one day.

We looked at every option for transportation to Mtwara and decided that we simply couldn’t do it. As I told Kirsten, Donn and I aren’t young and our missionary friend is 80 years old. Once again, it looked like this trip to Tanzania wasn’t going to happen.  

However, Kirsten responded by asking if we would be open to Compassion’s Tanzania team meeting us somewhere else with Erick and Debora. We hadn’t expected them to offer to do this but agreed that we would be open to that, even though we knew it would cost more. We are responsible not only for all our costs for the trip, but also for all the costs of the children and the Compassion staff for travel, housing, food and all related costs of the visit.

Arrangements were soon made for us to meet Erick and Debora in Dar es Salaam which had much better plane options and a hotel near the airport that had shuttle service. We also decided that it wouldn’t be necessary for our missionary friend to accompany us to Dar since that would add to the cost and Compassion would provide translators.

Since I was the point person in our group, it was up to me to make sure Donn and our missionary friend had all the information they needed and that Compassion had all their information. I told Donn I wished I had kept track of all the time I’ve spent working on all of this.

Our friend didn’t seem to be accessing her emails, and Donn and I made frequent trips to her house to get the information that we needed for Compassion. We were on our own about things we had thought our missionary friend would know from her past trips to Tanzania—like what vaccines were needed, what kind of visa, whether a person could change dollars for shillings at the airport in Tanzania.  

But God continued to make a way. When Donn called AAA to find out if we could get traveler’s checks there, they said, “No, but we can get shillings for you!” We were amazed! Who knew! On the Internet and at Cricket, I got a lot of help on what would be needed to get on What’sApp (needed to talk to the Compassion Tanzanian team and the only way we’d be able to speak as opposed to text) and an e-sim card! It’s like speaking a foreign language! We found an organization called Passport Health that helped us determine and provided which vaccines, etc. were needed in Tanzania—for a healthy fee, of course!

  A few weeks ago, we were contacted by our missionary friend’s relatives who were very concerned about her making this trip. She had decided she wanted to stay longer than we were staying and would be traveling home alone. We were concerned too, but hadn’t known any of her family members to contact. Decisions were made by those family members with which we were in agreement that we would be going alone to Tanzania. We also discovered that no one at the university knew anything about our trip. Our missionary friend did give us the personal email of the vice chancellor of the university and we found another one online.

We sent emails to both the email addresses but the vice chancellor didn’t respond. One night when I couldn’t sleep and was going to ask God to have the vc respond, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps there was a reason he wasn’t responding. I began to pray for wisdom about how to pray!

To Be Continued

Thank you, Father, that your Word says, If any lack wisdom, let them ask of God and He will give it gladly without finding fault. (James 1:5) Amen.