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For the fifth time, Zion will send travelers on a lifechanging visit to Kirangare Lutheran Parish in northeastern Tanzania. On Sunday, September 1, Zion will bless and send seven travelers with our love.

  • Connor Essary
  • Wendy Essary
  • Emily Grady
  • Julie Kalkwarf
  • Pastor Clark Olson-Smith
  • Joseph Obleton
  • Mary Schnack

Joseph and Pastor Clark are returning for their third visits. Wendy, Julie, and Mary for their second. Connor and Emily are traveling for their first time. They will depart on Monday, September 2 and return Thursday, September 12.

Expect to learn about the trip throughout the trip on Zion’s website and on the Sundays immediately after the travelers return: September 15 and 22.

In 2001, Zion and Kirangare Lutheran Parish covenanted together to be companions. For the sake of the mission of God in Jesus Christ, we agreed to:

  1. “pray for each other at every opportunity”
  2. foster person-to-person relationships
  3. learn more about each other’s congregations, places, and nations
  4. share with each other about our congregations, places, and nations
  5. “invite mutual participation in each other's future faith community activities”
  6. visit each other

Since Pastor Simon Fue sent Christmas greetings to Zion from Kirangare Lutheran Parish in 2021, we have renewed our commitment to this companionship. Even before this, it was evident to me, brand new to Zion, that your relationship with the people of Kirangare Lutheran Parish has shaped your character and the character of this congregation. “In Christ, you are a new creation,” Paul wrote. And in this companionship, Christ has recreated us and continues to recreate us. Yes, for the travelers and also for you and this whole congregation.

I know “Imani Moja, One Faith” is the mission statement, so to speak, of our companionship. But if I were to sum it up in one word—what the experience of the companionship is, the visits, the way Christ recreates us—it would be Love.

It’s a new dimension of love we are given to know in the people of Kirangare Lutheran Parish, and it took a people and a nation halfway across the world to show it to us. As if God created human diversity for just this reason, that we might have love and have love abundantly.

As Zion visits Kirangare this September, pray. Fulfill that first promise we made 23 years ago. Use Wendy’s prompts for daily two to five minute prayer, if you like. (Available here and in the narthex.) At its heart, prayer is a simple moment of love, giving and receiving. Pray for each other at every opportunity. Let this promise heal you.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith

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