Kigoma, Tanzania Crusade News – July 8th-12th, 2015

Kigoma is a wonderful community nested on the shore of beautiful lake Tanganyika in Africa.

The people were extremely hospitable,  very humble and it was wonderful to get to know them more closely during our five day crusade in Kigoma. From Dar Es Salaam which is the capital of Tanzania, it is a three hour flight to Kigoma, with a stop in Tabora where the runway is mostly a dirt runway.

By the grace of God the crusade in Kigoma, Tanzania was great. We were able to experience the mighty hand of God and hundreds of lives were touched. And for me it was a life changing experience.

• Crusade was from July 8^th-12^th
• Around 10,000 people turned out for the crusades daily and 40,000 people on last day
• More than 1500 accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior
• Many received healing, and many demon possessed were delivered

Pastor Joseph Samuel, Br. Aby Paul and myself reached Kigoma on 8^th after a long multi stop flight which took almost 24 hours [RDU-> Amsterdam->New York->Dar Es Salaam-> Kigoma].

We received a very warm welcome from the people of God in Kigoma, amazing people who thirst and hunger for the Lord. Tanzania is 45% Christians(mostly Catholics) and 55% Muslims. In Kigoma the primary occupation is fishing, with some businesses.

God is using Pastor Joseph amazingly for crusades around the world and this was the 5^th crusade he had organized in Kigoma. In Kigoma Bishop Mulenda Omary and pastors from around 30 other local churches had done all the planning and arrangements including permits, and advertising the crusade in Kigoma area.

The crusade was in an open soccer ground, where they had setup a stage with speaker systems etc. And we had also invited one of the prominent Christian singers in Tanzania; Martha Baraka

The crusade meetings were held daily from July 8^th-12^th in evening from 4:00 – 7:30 pm.

• The crusade was inaugurated by the Regional Secretary of Kigoma [similar to Governer of state], and he happened to be a Muslim
• The crusade had lots of media coverage and portions were broadcast in National TV, since Presidential nominations were in progress the political scenario was tense.

  

• Crusade meeting would start with music and dance in Swahili by the local churches followed by dance and worship by Martha and her team. It was wonderful to experience the worship and dance with lot of the audience participating
• This would be followed by salvation message by Br Aby, myself and Pastor Joseph
• Meeting would end with an alter call for salivation, and prayer for sick
• It was amazing to see more than 10,000 turn out for the crusade each day with a massive 40,000 people turnout on the last day
• It was very touching to see so many people come forward during alter call with around 200-300 accepting Christ as their savior daily and the last day around 400 were saved
• Many people were healed and many demon possessed were delivered during the meeting

We also had a Pastors & Leaders conference on Saturday, July 11^th where three of us shared on leadership and church growth.

For the Sunday worship each of us went to three different churches to share the word. It was again great to see the freedom of worship and move of the Holy Spirit via the praises and worship dances.

In summary “it changed my perspective”. An amazing experience that I will never forget and extremely thankful to Pastor Joseph and Aby for including me. And thanks to Bishop Omary and the all the church leaders who did the planning and all the arrangements and gave us a warm welcome and made our stay comfortable. And most importantly all glory be to God, who made all things happen and for using us as an instrument in his hands for the work in in Kigoma.

Glory be to Lord God Almighty.

Here is link to one of the songs from Martha Baraka in YouTube. She was a great blessing with her passion to bring the crowd to a mode of worship and dance for the Lord. May the Lord continue to bless her worship ministry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoS9vJi0x9Q