Photo of the Week: Tanzania
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Photo of the Week: Porters carrying loads to high camp on 19,341-foot (5,895-meter) Mount Kilimanjaro during Mission: Kilimanjaro 2013 by Gary Fallesen.
Gary Fallesen’s first big mountain was Kilimanjaro. He climbed it in 1998 – only 1½ years after he took up mountaineering (by climbing Mount Rainier in Washington state).
As Gary was running down a road in Rochester, NY, while training to climb Kilimanjaro, God spoke to him and told him to start a Christian climbing organization. From that meeting on a road, Climbing For Christ was born and raised up. [CLICK HERE to watch our video, “C4C: Where it all began.”]
In the original “Mission: Vision,” written in 2004, Kilimanjaro was identified as a “model mission,” where we could serve the hundreds of guides and porters and reach the tens of thousands of trekkers – all of whom are lost.
In 2007, our first short-term team went to Kilimanjaro. As always, God had gone before us and prepared the way. A pastor and a church were waiting to help us do His work in Tanzania. In 2008, we returned and started the Kilimanjaro Chapter. More than 75 guides and porters joined. Our goal: to reach other guides and porters with the life-saving message of Jesus Christ and to be a witness to trekkers who visit from throughout the world. In 2010, a team was sent to teach the guides and porters about evangelism. On this trip we also followed the Lord's leading and ventured south to Malawi, where God used us to rescue an orphanage.
In Malawi, we met a brother in Christ who was caring for the orphans and waiting (for seven years) for the Lord to answer his prayer about going to college. God used us to send Damson Samson to college.
In 2014, after he graduated, we called Damson to serve as C4C’s missionary to East Africa. He accepted and in August 2014 made his first trip to Tanzania. He returned again in November 2014, and in March, May and July 2015. He is scheduled to visit in September and November as well.
Damson is discipling Kilimanjaro Chapter members and working with them on evangelism training.
In August 2016, another short-term team will GO on Mission: Kilimanjaro. But the work of Damson and others will continue before, during and after Mission: Kilimanjaro 2016.
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” – Psalm 121:1-2 (NIV)
Photos of the Week are for sale – 8-by-12-inch prints suitable for framing – for $25 plus shipping. Email your order to info@ClimbingForChrist.org. Your support will help put us in places where we can take more pictures as witnesses of our Triune God.
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