School is in session!
On October 15, 2019, with joy and celebration Ebenezer Secondary School opened in Morogoro, Tanzania.
This school has been a project that the Morogoro Diocese, one of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod’s Global Mission Companions, has been working on for over 10 years. Ebenezer is a boarding school which provides a safe, focused, and Lutheran environment for students to learn through a wholistic approach to education.
Bishop Jacob Mameo of the Morogoro Diocese brought the members of the May 2019 AR-OK Women’s Delegation to the almost completed school. The Ebenezer school administers asked the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod to help finish the school’s dining hall which would also serve as worship space and gathering room. Finishing this hall would make it possible for the school to open. When the delegates returned they prayerfully considered all opportunities for ministry with our partners in Tanzania and completing the dining hall was the most achievable task with the greatest impact. That’s when they turned to you, the AR-OK Synod.
In September 2019, a flash drive to raise $5,000 to complete the dining hall was started. Thanks to each contribution, from creating a matching grant to a $.50 worth of cookies at a bake sale, we met and exceed the goal by October 1. This flash drive is an amazing testimony to God’s Abundance within our synod and the commitment to loving our global neighbor. Thank you, each of you, for the love you have shown through your support of this drive.
A classroom of students at Ebenezer Secondary School on the First Day of School.
The Ebenezer Secondary School has one open dorm, home to forty students, and are working to open another dorm and teacher housing which will allow them to double the number of students to eighty. The school has developed ways to be self-sustaining with projects like their mango grove and chicken coops which will provide food for the school and the extra sold to help fund the school. The school leadership is still working to find new and innovative ways to fund student education.
God’s work may have started over a decade ago and been continued through the hands of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod, but it not over as we await to see what God will do with the students as they learn and grow along with our relationship with the diocese.