Stirring Chai

I'm inspired to see people in their village churches taking action against climate change in any way they can. The ELCT has a coordinated effort targeting several districts on local conservation and livelihoods programs that educate people on how to live better while preserving the environment. The program is in place in 14 districts of Tanzania. Ultimately, the people who are most affected by climate change are the ones who are already marginalized. That’s why I’m proud of the church for taking action at the village level.

I had opportunities to visit some dioceses in September, as part of an effort to get familiar with our companion dioceses. In fact, Mwanga is a new diocese, split from the Pare Diocese in 2016, and as such it does not have an ELCA companion synod. But we still want to be together with them on the journey of accompaniment. In Pare, I met with Bishop Charles Mjema and General Secretary Chambua Tumaini. They are both educators, and the diocese is intentional about focusing on youth and education as key parts of its core evangelism and mission activities. Our meeting place had many young people, as hundreds of them would gather for the following several days for a diocese youth conference. We got to know each other over fresh juice from their hostel. In Mwanga, I met with Bishop Chediel Sendoro and his leadership team. His is a small diocese geographically, and they estimate 24,000 church members. They estimate 80 percent of the diocese area is Muslim, and the place is very dry with a