11/23/25
By Margaret Slattery
This is a pilgrimage, not a mission trip.
From every conversation about our 17-day trip to East Africa, that’s been clear. It’s about Relationship. Spirituality. Being Present. Release and Embrace.
A year ago, I sat in the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan in Knoxville, Tennessee, listening to the bishop of Kondoa, Given Gaula, and his equally talented wife and priest Lilian talk about their home in Tanzania. Their diocese covers a wide span of remote villages; think of it as the Appalachia of Africa. They spoke of spreading Christianity in a predominantly Muslim part of the world. Their focus always on love.
Sitting in my comfortable pew, I had a strong sense I was supposed to go. I didn’t know why. Now sitting cramped in the back of a Land Rover, driving 6 hours a day on bumpy dirt roads that Google maps doesn’t even recognize, I question, “Why am I here?”
My name is Margaret, and I’m a storyteller. I believe everyone has a story worth telling, and it’s been my pleasure to build a career telling other people’s stories. Why do they do what they do? Giving people a voice can be emotional and empowering—for them who may have never shared their story before and for those who are meant to hear it.
So, here I am on a pilgrimage, a sacred journey to a holy place, with four other faithful women. Ingrid, a Lutheran pastor. Anna, a college dean. Elizabeth, a retired pharmaceutical rep. Sherry, a cancer support advocate, and me, a writer. Through prayer and reflection, we’re each seeking some level of personal transformation and a deeper connection to our Christian faith.
Strong Women’s Testimonies
“Is this the first trip you’ve had all women come to Kondoa?” I ask the bishop, who we all call Baba (father). “Yes, first time. You are special and you are strong. Your testimonies in the village bring them close to God. When they hear you and see your strong faces, it’s a way to learn. You have brought good news to the people.”
Each day we travel to a different church with Baba and Mama–singing, speaking, and baptizing. At six services, Ingrid conducts one wedding and baptizes 237 Christians of all ages. We sprinkle their livestock of cows, goats, donkeys, and chickens with water blessed in an orange 5-gallon bucket.
That water is precious and not to be taken for granted as we discover in the village of Wizjabe. Primarily women spend the entire day finding water. They walk up to 25 miles to fetch only 4 gallons for an entire family’s needs. From June to November, they don’t even wash their bodies to conserve water. The little water they get is very dirty and sometimes it’s not safe to drink. It’s caused various diseases among the children. Water hasn’t always been in short supply here, but climate change has more recently affected this village. And yet, they are some of the happiest people we meet in Africa. As we sing and dance and share our stories with Christians and Muslims alike under an incredible tree we call Nature’s Cathedral, we experience immense joy.
“It’s one of those thin places for sure,” says Anna, feeling a close connection to the divine here.
In every village we’re treated like honored guests and fed their most prized delicacy: beef liver. As in the states, the bishop only visits a congregation once a year. And to bring guests from America…we fall somewhere between aliens and royalty.
Baba explains, “By you coming to Kondoa, we are growing the church. Your presence in these villages has a big impact on them. This was the first time for many of them to see white people. They feel the church is not so small, it’s part of a much larger family. Other people around the WORLD share the same faith!”
Fastest Growing Churches in the Country
Pilgrimages to Kondoa are not one-and-done trips. Each one builds on prior journeys from multiple congregations linking a special relationship between Baba and Father Charles Fels, former priest at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. They were dorm mates in a Virginia seminary 20 years ago. Before that in the 60’s, Charles had served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania. So, returning decades later to bring parishioners from his church was like a homecoming. For 10 years, others have carried on his dream to build this relationship between two dioceses that are so different but at their core, the same.
Though both Given and Lilian come from humble beginnings, where food security and education were a luxury, they have both been educated in the United States and spent several years raising their children in New Zealand. It was tempting to build a life far from their roots, but something brought them back.
“The dust and the bushes all around us, I like; I don’t know why,” confesses Mama. “We came back because the people in Tanzania need us more than people in New Zealand. I needed to help my people, use my education for people in Tanzania.”
Mama continues, “We have seen God’s hand working with us. We asked, ‘God, if you want us to go to Kondoa, send us there. If you are not going with us, don’t send us.’ So, God used several people to tell us to go. The Bible College was started for ministers to get education. Many friends supported us to build more churches. People came and when they saw what we were doing, they supported us. We built many churches in small villages, put in toilets– they didn’t even have toilets.”
To be fair, many still don’t have western-style toilets, but the people have been more important than infrastructure. Over 12 years, they’ve grown exponentially.
- 5,000 to 22,000 parishioners
- 11 to 70 priests
- 17 to 43 parishes
- 70 to 176 congregations
- 2 to 73 buildings
“We have the fastest growing churches in the country right now,” Baba shares with a twinkle in his eye as if to say, ‘we’re just warming up.’
A School for all Religions
Education and workforce development are a huge part of their growth. In 2018, they tapped a young woman named Conjesta to start a primary school called St. Peter & St. Paul. She started with 19 students in one classroom and three staff members; now they have 300 children in 6 classrooms and 15 staff (10 teachers and 5 support). Even through the pandemic, they’ve seen impressive results. In standardized tests, their school finished #3 out of 130 schools.
Conjesta is proud of that, but as a mother preparing her own children’s education, she clearly wants more. “We want to be #1, at the top of the district!”
Their approach of starting to teach English to 4-year-olds compared to the public schools when they’re 12 has made the school a magnet for the community.
“We are happy that we are open to all religions, Christian and Muslim,” Conjesta adds. “We pray together, go to church together, we bring the parents together, and we pray for our children together. They see this is good.”
The classrooms we visit are filled with smart, respectful children oozing with potential. I’m reminded of something we often say in our own schools: talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. The last pilgrimage inspired a Girl Scout on the trip to raise funds to ensure every child had their own books, and I’m hoping the next pilgrimage will bring a robotics kit to give them hands-on, creative engineering skills.
While St. Peter & St. Paul is thriving, their biggest challenge is that most students can’t afford the annual tuition of $400. Two out of three students require some level of scholarship. The other massive challenge Baba and Mama have been working on for years is opening a secondary school in a town a few miles down the road, Chemba. While 80% of students in Tanzania finish primary school, only a third move onto secondary school. Their continuing education will be different because most will live onsite. Having to construct and furnish so many buildings–separate dormitories, a library, and science labs–are all expensive. But the largest obstacle is water.
Mama Lilian shares, “We tried to dig a well using a windmill. It failed. We tried using solar. It failed. Now we are using electricity and it’s working.”
Just like with the primary school, they will likely open Chemba before they have it all figured out. Start with a small group, maybe 40 students, to prove what’s possible. Otherwise, the students rising through St. Peter & St. Paul may have nowhere to go.
Teach them to Fish
Opportunities in East Africa are rarely a direct pipeline of “go to school, get a job”—especially for young girls. Mama Lilian saw that clearly with the wives of priests attending the Bible College.
“When we came to Kondoa, pastors’ wives wouldn’t speak or contribute anything because they couldn’t read. Now I knew I had a very big job. To come here and teach them to read and write, but it’s more than that. We build confidence. Now they can read what their husbands are reading. Now they can preach and read the lessons.”
And that was just the beginning. Mama found that once they could read, women began to explore their own strengths. Women like Anna.
“Anna is Pastor Andrew’s wife,” says Mama. “She’s good at working with other women. Given has put Andrew in certain villages because of Anna. She teaches them to cook chicken; she helps organize a women’s retreat. Anna doesn’t let excuses of not enough money stop her. She gives them what they need to come and experience it.”
Seeing the impact of inspiring the wives led Lilian and Given to establish a 6-month program called Women’s Empowerment to train practical skills like cooking and sewing to more females. When we visit, a room of sewing machines is filled with girls as young as 14 to a mother of four at age 29. The young mothers often rely on their parents to care for their children while they’re learning to make purses out of straw and beads, sewing school uniforms, cooking the traditional rice dish pilau, and one of the most lucrative skills: baking a wedding cake. There’s just one catch. Most don’t have access to an oven.
One young woman describes how they create a make-shift oven out of charcoal, sand, and a large pot with a tight lid. Timing temperature and baking principles is challenging but can pay well. What they will do when they leave here will largely depend on the resources waiting for them back in their villages. Take Iris, a skilled seamstress who lost part of her leg by stepping on an acacia thorn as a child. A sewing machine could truly change her life.
Each graduate also gets to participate in microlending, a concept that starts a snowballing impact on women running their own businesses. A woman is given a small amount of seed money, typically 5,000 shillings worth $2 US dollars. She has three months to return the loan with an additional profit to be given to the next entrepreneur.
Lilian adds with a smile, “It’s like a circle. When you get education, you get confidence, you can be independent. You don’t have to ask the man for money. You have money to buy what you need. You’re no longer helpless.”
Changing Lives One at a Time
One example of this positive cycle of growth is Monica, a woman we meet in the last village we visit. She’s now happily married, but her life began so much differently. When she was very young, her Maasai father arranged to have her marry a man as his third wife. He was much older and only wanted her to do chores like cooking and cleaning. She found the courage to leave her husband and return to her village. When Given and Lilian visited the village and heard Monica’s story, they invited her to come to Women’s Empowerment. When she finished training, Monica moved in with their family and helped them raise their children for five years. In her new role, she was more of teacher.
Over time, a pastor whose wife had died showed interest in Monica. Now their marriage is more of a loving partnership, and she is giving back as a member of the Mothers Union, similar to our Women in the Church. The ones who take care of all the details supporting a church like altar guild and event planning.
“We must look after our families, the church, our husband, and our children,” explain four women in Mothers Union who serve like house moms for our stay. Sarah, Margaret, Salome, and Lois (who goes by Mama Queenie) are perfect for hospitality–strength wrapped in nurturing kindness.
When I ask what advice these moms would give little girls, Mama Queenie responds, “If you get married at a young age, it’s not good. They should be going through Women’s Empowerment program to get skills. You can have both a family and work. God wants us to have education and skills. Then I can support my family.”
I follow that up with, “What do you want to say to people in America, those who you may never meet?” She answers, “Tell them we love them. I know you come here because of love. We love you. And thank you so much for what you are all doing for us. You are fighting for us and supporting us. Asante sana.”
What You Should Know
I’ve had months to process all the thoughts and feelings that welled up during our African pilgrimage. Reading back through my journal, I remember the challenges of maneuvering “African time,” the unreliability of hot showers, enduring hours of bumpy roads giving us an “African massage,” and the infamous, “We are not putting that live goat on our roof!” But we tried to meet each challenge with patience and a sense of humor. Release and Embrace.
Once strangers, Ingrid, Anna, Elizabeth, Sherry, and I are now five friends who are committed to supporting our Christian brothers and sisters in Africa. We each have ideas for using our unique gifts to explore what’s next. Ingrid is already coordinating with the non-profit, Water to Thrive, to dig a $6,000 well in the village of Wizjabe. Elizabeth is exploring her sixth trip to Kondoa with new faces and eager souls. We will pray like Mama and Baba that God be with us in all that we do and to open the doors of opportunity that could change the lives of so many. The next generation of strong women like Conjesta, Iris, Anna, Monica, Margaret, Salome, Sarah, Mama Queenie, and Lilian are counting on us.
I invite you to read perspectives from Ingrid and Elizabeth as well. You can support the Diocese of Kondoa with donations through the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee. You can also purchase hand-made goods from Kondoa in our Sharing and Caring Boutique at Church of the Good Samaritan, Knoxville, during the Sundays of Advent.100% of the proceeds go back to schools and the Women’s Empowerment program in Kondoa.
Future Pilgrimages
While safe travel to Tanzania has been achievable in the previous pilgrimages, the United States State Department has increased the travel advisory for Tanzania from level 2 to level 3 and travel is not advised. The safety and security of our pilgrims is a top priority and we continue to monitor the safety advisories of the State Department in planning the next pilgrimage. Please continue to watch for updates and pilgrimage announcements in the future.
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