Vine Trust: Joan’s November Update

Countdown is on! By the time you’re reading this, I will be counting the days until I leave for Mwanza in Tanzania, to join the Jubilee Hope and sail to islands on Lake Victoria.  The Vine Trust charity that I’m going with will be celebrating 40 years next year and in that time they have sent over 4000 volunteers to Peru & Tanzania, building schools, houses and providing medicine and dental services.

These are the groups of islands we will sail to, but we’ll only visit one set for the fortnight – we won’t know which until we reach.  Lake Tanzania is huge – 200 miles wide in places and the world’s largest tropical lake!  Mwanza is circled in red, Tanzania’s 2nd city and with a population of over 900,000.  The boat the Jubilee Hope is not a big boat, an ex Royal Navy tender refitted for its current role.  Marion Malcolm’s Dad was involved with it in the past, and Margaret MacPhee’s brother in law and a friend of my nephew sailed it to Tanzania in 2014, so lot’s of wee connections.

The last while for me has been busy with organising vaccinations, kit and the right clothes for my trip and now as it nears, excitement and trepidation are in equal measure. I must thank so many of you, for your words of encouragement, your messages, Bible passages and hymns that I will take with me in my notebook to read in the evenings and I know I can rely on your continued prayer to uphold us as we carry out this amazing work. 

Before I know it, I’ll be home again, with lots of tales to tell you of my trip to Lake Victoria.

If you’d like to know more about the vine Trust they have a great website at www.vinetrust.org. I have also set up a fundraising page, and all of the money from it goes to the medical expeditions in Tanzania and the link for it is https://www.vinetrust.org/u/fa8fc

Joan MacKintosh