Weekly Photo Challenge: Reward (London Olympics)

A submission to this week’s photo challenge Reward. Taken at the Olympic Park in Stratford in 2012. We visited on the first Thursday of the games, which was the day when the Gold Rush started for Great Britain. We had a fabulous day in the park even though we were never able to secure tickets to the event.

On that day we visited the coca cola exhibit. Whist there they had a policy of issuing a collectors edition bottle every time GB won a medal and whilst we were inside Chris Hoy won his Gold. At the top of the exhibit we had the opportunity to be photographed with the Olympic Torch.

 

 

NCLC

After six months here we have settled into church and attend NCLC which meets just up the road at Isamilo Lodge Hotel. The church is a plant of Newcastle  Christian Life Centre. This church is part of Hillsong family of churches worldwide,and the Assemblies of God locally, here in Tanzania.

The other church plants are based in the North East of England (Teeside, Newcastle and Newcastle North), so Mwanza is a a little off the beaten track!

Isamilo Lodge / NCLC

The Pastor and his family are from the UK, and founded the plant back in 2011. This followed more informal links between NCLC and Mwanza for a number of year.

It was the first church we visited back in September and having tried another church for a few months we started going to NCLC regularly in November. We have felt very welcome there and enjoy the services week by week. Anita has joined the women’s group which meets fortnightly and my daughter has just started helping out with Kids Church. We are open to see in what ways be can be of service in the months and years ahead.

It is good to be part of a fellowship again, having left St Mary’s in the UK, our spiritual home for 0ver 20 years ( in my case 26 years to be precise).

The church consists of about 40 people with many children, there are a good mix of expatriates from UK, US, Canada, Kenya and Ethiopia as well as local Tanzanians.

The worship is lively and the sermons are always thought provoking and challenging ( in a good way). For those who know, is is similar to

Initially there was just one weekly service, jointly in English and Kiswahili, but recently the church has split it’s morning services so that one service is in English (at 9:45am) and the other in Kiswahili (at 11:15am).  For us, although it was good to worship in both languages, it is certainly easier to follow a sermon in English solely without the obvious pause for the translation.

Between the services there is Chai (Tea) and a chance to meet the other congregation. In addition once a month there is a joint Baptismal service in which the swimming pool is utilised as a Baptismal pool. Each month there has always been someone who has wanted to be baptised.

We are very happy to be part of this church and look forward to being so for our time in Mwanza.