Sept. 11 Luncheon

Ministry Luncheon:

For those of you who are in the greater Knoxville area we would like to invite you to our ministry luncheon where we will be sharing what God has been doing in our ministry in Tanzania and in our lives over the last 3 years.

When: Sunday, September 11th
Where: Two Rivers Church, Lenoir City, TN
What time: 12:30pm in the River Room
 

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Garro Family Jason, Coralee, Luke, Jenna & Sydney

Back in the USA (July 2016)

First 2 Months Back We returned back to the USA safely 2 months ago on May 13th. Our first week back we were able to attend our niece's wedding and all of Coralee's family came into town for the event. It was such a treat to see her whole family right away after our return and on such a special day! Over these last two months we have been able to catch up with family, friends and ministry partners.  We have enjoyed being back and have been really been encouraged by all the visits with everyone. Jason spent last week in Kentucky getting further training to learn more about how to train Tanzanians to share the gospel and start small house churches that are simple and reproducible, simply by obeying the word of God and living out New Testament church principles. It's exciting and challenging thinking about the possibility of ministering to the Musl_ms all around us when we return to Tanzania in January. Over the next three weeks we are going to more training as a family so we can continue to do this ministry in the City of Dar es Salaam when we return. As we continue to move into this new style of ministry we covet your prayers. There is much to learn and we are very aware that we are only as useful as we are mold-able in the Masters hands. In August and September we will continue to meet up with our ministry partners in the Knoxville area as well as catching our family up to speed on Dr and Dentist appointments etc.We will be heading out to Los Angeles in October to reconnect with our other main base of ministry partners and on our way out there we will be going to a missions Debrief and Renewal in Colorado for a week. Originally we were hoping to get 2 months in CA but due to scheduling conflicts with leadership training for Jason in November we will only be in the Los Angeles area for about 3 weeks. While time will be quick we are very much looking forward to connecting with as many of you as possible. We are so grateful to God and overwhelmed by the many amazing relationships he has given us on this journey. The times we have spent with many of you in the last two months have filled our tanks and allowed us to feel reconnected to home again which is an amazing feeling. We are so thankful for this time of being surrounded in community in our home culture.  Thank you for pouring into us through prayer, encouragement and financial support. They are such a blessing to our family in ways we could never explain!  Got to see great friends first day back! We were all in small group together for years. The Dees graciously opened their home to us and our kids love playing together Dee kids enjoyed the matching Tanzania jerseys. Fun visiting Nana & Papa Sydney & Grandma Fireworks on the 4th. Blueberry Picking in July! Prayer Requests: * Safety driving around the country. *Wisdom in parenting during all the traveling. * Reliability of our Dodge Grand Caravan that we purchased in Atlanta, it has had several issues already.

March 2016 Update

March Update

In February Jason got a neat opportunity to co-teach a seminar teaching Africans how to teach from Creation to Christ. It was a good opportunity because he was working under a veteran missionary and learned many good tips on how to improve the presentation and make it more effective. This worked out well as originally Jason was supposed to teach this same seminar at our Church in January but it was postponed until April. Now he is in an even better position to teach 2 seminars in April having had a practice run with a veteran to give tips.

Jason completed the Creation to Christ teaching with the two night guards (Abdala and Stalone) last week. The teaching went really well but he didn't know where either of them were at after the teaching. Tonight Jason sat down and talked with Abdala and asked him some questions to clarify where he was placing his trust. After a long conversation Jason asked him "At the last judgement what would you say to God if he asked you why you should get into heaven?" Abdala said: "I am trusting in the shed blood of Jesus the Savior to forgive me and get me into heaven." We were so incredibly thrilled to hear this! We know that further teaching and discipleship is needed to clarify some things and to encourage him in this new faith. We are in new territory and need prayer on how to encourage him as he is from a completely Muslim family. Please be praying for him and for his family to be saved.

We are moving! Life has gotten pretty crazy around here. Renting a new house is always a huge process with many twists and turns, lots of hard work, time and way more energy then we have. From fixing water leaks, to getting screens put in, to adding shelving to the pantry, getting generator hook ups in place, having welders add proper places for pad locks on the front and back doors, planting grass, painting, putting up curtain rods, hanging clothesline wire and many other details that turn into a mountain of things to do. However we think we are about two thirds done with everything and will be moving into our new house on Wednesday. Please pray for strength, energy in this blazing heat and humidity (yesterday the "feels like temp" was 113 F), safety and for all the little details to fall into place. Also, pray for our kids as Jenna and Luke are very sad to leave the only home they can remember and are having a bit of a hard time processing the move.

Creation to Christ Seminar

Stalone & Abdala

Kids going to Friday sports day.

We have bought our tickets for home assignment! We are excited to be returning to the US May 13th. We will be spending the month of May traveling and visiting family and attending our niece Katelyn's wedding. Then we will be in the Knoxville area for the month of June. We don't have our whole furlough itinerary confirmed yet but we will keep you informed as details fall into place.

Gospel & Training (Nov. 2015)

Above is a picture of the group that went through the DMM Training in Uganda

DMM Training in Uganda Jason spent a week in Uganda, learning about DMM.  DMM stands for Disciple Making Movements.  It is a powerful approach to reaching, disciplining and training new believers to reach unreached people through small group house churches.  It was an amazing time learning about how to do this and being trained as to how to better do evangelism and discipleship.  Please be praying as we seek to implement these evangelism and discipleship strageties here in Dar.  Jason has also been asked by our local church leadership to lead a seminar in January to train the members of our local AIC Church on how to do evangelism and discipleship as well.

Mwanza Trip Jason got to spend a week in Mwanza, Tanzania (near Lake Victoria) visiting villages and towns with his Tanzanian Pastoral Intern friend Pamphili.  The main purpose of the trip was to visit the AIC's Bible School (African Inland Church) in Mwanza and to learn more about how NTM can possibly partner with them to train church planters to reach unreached people groups. It was also a great experience for learning and gaining more understanding of the culture here.

Family Coralee is continuing to serve on the Service Team with hospitality, team care and meetings.  She has also continued to study Swahili a few days a week with her friend Lucy. Our kids are doing well too.  Jenna will be turning 6 on Sun, Nov. 29th.  Luke turned 4 in August.  And Sydney will turn 2 the day after Christmas.  Jenna and Luke continue to go to their Tanzanian Church Preschool and they have been learning a lot of Swahili.  Sydney has been spending time in the mornings with Mama Esta who is the lady that helps with house work, and she seems to be picking up a lot of Swahili as well. Shes got some swinglish going on... its pretty cute. As this is Thanksgiving weekend we are mindful of all of the things that God has done and all the people in our lives that we are thankful for. We are so thankful for the Loving Father who cares for his children in amazing ways. Thank you for being a part of our lives and for the huge encouragement you are to us.  We hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Sharing the Gospel There are two night guards Abdala and Stalone, that Jason has been slowly sharing the Gospel with. Jason started sharing with them in August.  He usually meets with them on Sun. & Wed nights for about an hour.  He just finished teaching through the Old Testament last week and will be starting to share about Jesus' birth this week.  Please be praying for these two men to come to a clear understanding of the gospel and that they and their families would be saved. They are both married and have children.  One of the guys comes from a Muslim background and the other  is Catholic.  Jason hopes to finish presenting the Gospel by Christmas.

Peaceful Elections We are thankful that the Tanzanian National Elections went smoothly and there were no major riots or issues on the mainland, even though many are saying the election was rigged.  Praise God that Tanzania has had peaceful political transitions for over 50 years of it's existence.

New House Please be praying for us as we are preparing to move houses.  We are excited about a new house we have found that we feel would fit our family well. Please pray for us as we are meeting with the owner this weekend to see if we can agree on the rent and the terms.

New Garro Blog @ NTM.ORG

Thank you for following our blog. We will keep everything on this blog available for reference, but will be making all future posts to our new blog. http://blogs.ntm.org/jason-garro/ Thanks for keeping up with us. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or comments. jason_garro@ntm.org

Harvest Party

Jenna had a harvest party at Childcare last week and she had a ball. She had fun dressing up as a little farmer which was quite fitting since she absolute loves animals.

Simple Living

A week ago we finished a class on Simple Living (Living Simply) here at the Missionary Training Center. It was fun but a bit of a challenge. We were only allowed 1 hr of long distance phone calls and emailing a week. We were not allowed to get on the internet or watch TV or movies and we had limited electricity. We had to have our lights out by 9pm and we were not allowed to use any electric appliances except our fridge, stove, washer and dryer. Below is a picture of us playing games without electricity with some staff and students because we didn't finish the game before 9pm.
We also had to make all of our food from scratch using no boxed or pre-made packaged foods/meals. This class is designed to give us a taste of how normal life on the mission field often is. It was a very practical class and we learned many helpful tips for cooking, sewing, building, plumbing...etc

Below are some picture of Jenna helping mommy make homemade oatmeal cookies for snack and she got to help daddy make homemade bread too.

Baby Luke Arrives!!!

We rejoice and thank God for the arrival of baby Luke Nathanael Garro. He was born healthy yesterday, August 2nd, 2011 at 1:12pm. He weighed 7 lbs. 12 oz. and was 20 in. long at birth. We’re so excited and relieved that he’s healthy and that Coralee is doing well.

We arrived at the hospital to be induced on Aug. 2nd at 5:30 am. After starting the induction process Coralee took a nap for an hour. After she woke up she said she felt some pressure. The Doctor came and after 10 min of pushing Luke was out!

Jenna came today to meet her new brother and was so sweet and excited to see him.

Praise God for our Future Home!

While we were in Knoxville we were looking into places were we could stay for 6 to 9 months after training before we head to Africa. We started to pursue looking into apartments and had contacted a friend about some mission housing. Our friend emailed us to let us know that mission housing wasn't available but he would make some calls. So we just continued to pursue researching different apartments in West Knox. We narrowed it down to 4 different apartment complexes. We quickly realized that apartments rented for more then we expected and realized we would only be able to afford a two bedroom. Out of the four apartments one really stood out as our top pick but it was more expensive. The morning we were heading out to look at the apartments we got an email from our friend, telling us that he had made some calls and that the owner of some apartments wanted to rent us a 3 bedroom 2 two bath apartment for just $300 a month. We couldn't believe it. Not only was the rent amazing and affordable but it was at our top pick of apartment complexes. God continues to bless and make us lost for words. Thanks to our friend and the owner of the apartments as they allow the Lord to use them in such amazing ways.

Missionary Field Health Class

One of our first classes this semester was field health. It was very informative and helpful for when we get to Africa. We also had a health lab where we got to practice some practical medical skills. See the pictures below.