Who will help when your whole life goes up in flames?

A few weeks back there was an ‘incident’ just a few doors away from the FMI office. A couple had gone to their small holding to tend their crops, leaving their teenage daughter to mind her younger sister and cook some food. While doing this, she managed to set fire to the grass roof of the outside toilet. This soon caught hold of the roof of the house, and before long the whole building was alight. I neighbour rushed into the burning property and managed to rescue the younger child just seconds before the burning roof collapsed!

Imagine returning home to this! Thankfully, the two children were safe with neighbours. But everything else [apart from a few burned bricked that could be salvaged] was gone.

Thankfully FMI was able to help by providing initially some basic supplies such as bedding, food and cooking implements. Later as the house was being repaired, they were also able to provide tarpaulin to create a temporary roof while wood and other materials could be sourced.

Without your support and donations, none of that would have been possible.

If you wish to donate then the easiest way is via our CAF Donate page at www.cafdonate.cafonline.org/11331

God blesses our small endeavours!!

You may remember from our last post that we were having an event. We did and it was a nice sunny day and several of our friends from Bunyan Baptist Church attended in the nicely refurbished building. However, on the day it felt a little bit quiet and we wondered whether all the effort had been worthwhile. BUT – when we eventually counted up the donations and sales from the event we were amazed to find that we had raised nearly £1000!!! Plus, though we hadn’t sold a great deal of the items collected for the sale, we were able to donate it to our local charity shops in the town. Staff at one of the shops not far from us were over the moon with the bags full that we were able to pass on, as their donations had begun to dry up. So they felt exceptionally blessed as well.

With donations like this FMI have been able to purchase life-saving food which will be carefully stored away ready for the day when food prices in Tabora become too great for our clients to be able to afford even the basics.

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What else to report?

Well I have recently completed our annual report for the year ending 31st March 2022 and submitted our annual return to the Charity Commission.

You can read it here or download a copy to read using a pdf reader.

We are pleased once again [and are thankful to God and His people and other donors], to be able to report that despite having sent just over £16,ooo to Tanzania, we still had just over £18,000 in the bank account [£420.41 more than we spent!] at the end of that financial year. And that was in another year when Covid-19 made opportunities for fund-raising very difficult.

Since then we have made two more grants to FMI and have sent them another £19,500 in this financial year. As the price of food, fuel, and materials continues to rise, so the need increases.

Your kindness in giving like you do is restoring the lives of those who would probably almost certainly either starve to death, die of simple illnesses and infections or have no quality of life. Such is the mission of the people of God as expressed to Abraham all those centuries ago.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12 v 1-3