Buckle Up One week. Two villages. Nine lives changed.

Ashlinn, from Texas, serves on Tanzania's southern coast. Recently, she embarked on a one-week outreach to two villages so small, you'd be hard-pressed to find them on a map. Yet God knows each adult and child there. And He wants them to know Him, too. Follow along with Ashlinn in this edition of Inlander as she shares how God is working in these villages.

Buckle up, let's go!

We piled our supplies and ourselves into two cars, two motorcycles, and one trailer. After a flat tire, lunch stop, another stop to make sure we didn't lose anybody, baboon sightings, and dodging elephant poop on the dirt roads, we arrived in the first village. The church in this village was planted by one of the villages we went to for outreach last year, and the church building is pictured below.

This village was one of the smallest (by population) I've been to, with less than ten children milling about. That didn't stop our games and Bible stories! The challenge was finding out the younger children only spoke their tribal language of Kisukuma, not Swahili. I am grateful for the books of Bible story pictures I received from a teammate, as the kids were engaged in looking through pictures. I still read to them and asked questions, and the older girl who spoke Swahili remembered all of the stories by the end of our time together.

Despite the small number of people, I was encouraged to see women engaged in reading the Bible and taking notes from what was shared by the pastors. One woman, who does not have a Bible of her own, took the time to copy Scripture in her notebook so she could have it to reread.

During our reading glasses clinic, I was asked to join a woman leader and some of the pastors to visit another woman and her family. We piled onto motorcycles and drove on dirt trails, dodging low trees, bushes, and cows as we made our way to her house.

This woman accepted Jesus, and wanted us to assist her in burning the charms she had. We prayed together, started the fire, dumped the charms into it, and sang worship songs until the charms were nothing but ash. While singing, I cried and looked around in amazement. For my Tanzanian brothers and sisters, this is a very common experience. I have seen many videos and pictures from Madagascar and Tanzania of witchcraft charms burned by people who have turned to Jesus, but I have never been a part of it. It was one of those quiet, powerful moments when God reminds me, "This is why you're here." We find a freedom in Jesus that I pray I never lose amazement for. I am still grateful for the opportunity to be a witness to this woman's faith and declaration of her freedom in Jesus.

On the fourth day, we hit the road again for the second village. We stopped on the way to pick up some people, fix tarps and ties holding down our supplies, and watch a herd of gazelles. The next village was much bigger with way more children. The church there is also newly planted, and it was a blessing to arrive and encourage the believers already living there.