We post messages from Mokicco here to keep you informed of their developments.
We thank you God for a new year 2023. We thank him for all his achievements in the fight against our challenges.
December 2022 I had the privilege of visiting Sweden again. The last time I was in Sweden was in 2019. I went to a friend and brother Nils Reuterdahl, who helped me a lot with the work around MOKICCO.
In order to protect the interests of MOKICCO, a working group has been formed consisting of Nils Reuterdahl, Marianne Lidskog, Iwan Giertz, Mattias Wigadt and IT advisor Jesper Stighem. Together we had a meeting at Nils in Sigtuna, where we decided that the administration of the fundraising account will be handled by the association Clara Kyrka. Since then, Clara Kyrka’s board has responded to every request and says it is willing to continue to do so. Now we need to sharpen the details of how this should be done, but with God’s help, everything will be fine.
After the Sigtuna meeting, I had the privilege of visiting a missionary parish Raignhild and Gunnar Greek, they were my teachers at my high school in Tanzania. They were teachers of English, mathematics, physics and chemistry and very popular with the students. Then I visited Clara Church. I was very happy to meet many friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Both many Swedes and Swedish East Africans and we ate Christmas dinner and celebrated the Christmas service together.
One of the blessings in Tanzania in January was a visit by Marion De Koning from the Netherlands. Marion came to volunteer with a computer course at Ashira elementary school, and she stayed with us at MOKICCO. She also helped MOKICCO pay for school lunches at a school with 300 students where parents of 25 students couldn’t afford the food. These children were previously taken apart in one of the classrooms for lunch to avoid, as usual, going outside and begging for food from the school’s neighbors. MOKICCO helped the school with approximately SEK 300 per semester in 2019-2021. Marion will take care of the 25 children this year and promised to find sponsors for those children next year.
Marion also helps find sponsors for two prelingually deaf and hard-to-understand children at a school. In 2018, MOKICCO was asked by a village leader in the neighboring village of Samanga to help with school fees for four of these children. Marion paid the school fees for two of the children this year and promised to find sponsors for them in the Netherlands. In addition, she sponsors two other families, the starting money for a student, support for a woman with a paralyzed hand and a family.
Another joy is that our eldest daughter Jackline Seka Sahlberg also supports MOKICCO. To begin with, she pays the school fees for one of the children with us, Loveness Lomboi, who starts a three-year preschool teacher training in February.
For a long time at MOKICCO we had problems finding someone whotakes care of the finances. Someone who is both knowledgeable and honest. Next month we’ve got a very good treasurer. A retired nunna named Agnes Simbo Lema. She has extensive experience in social work and managing finances. She has worked as a director in a monastery called Ushirika wa Neema. After that she worked as a supervisor in a children’s home. She starts working with us in February.
We try not to take in new children, but also this year we had to take in a little boy, Yasri Akrei, 6 years old. His mother was a maid in a Muslim family and became pregnant with the person where she worked. The man was willing to marry her but ended up in a car accident and died before Yasri’s birth. After Yasri’s birth, the mother left him with his grandmother. Now the grandmother has gone blind and can’t take care of Yasir. The village board asked MOKICCO to take care of him. We, at MOKICCO, welcomed him with an open heart.
Overa Seka Sahlberg
