The story begins 2001, 20 years ago.
When YWAM Arusha just began, the first DTS outreach reached out to Matala, those days they were no clear roads to Matala, students had to carry their own machetes to clear their own way. About 300kms from the YWAM Arusha base through Karatu (halfway) on the way to the Ngorongoro Crater then Mang’ola and from Mang’ola 100kms through jungles beside Lake Eyasi to Matala. By then the village offered a piece of land to YWAM.
A Lot of things happened in the last 19 years. Last year 2020 the Lord brought back Matala into our hearts through our base leader Mr. John Mukolwe who was part of the team that visited the very first time. A team of 7 of us from the leadership team and staff decided to take a trip to Matala in June 2020. This trip was a divine appointment!! When we were in Arusha praying and planning for Matala not knowing who we were going to meet… If we would find our land… If someone would remember us after 19 years of silence!! At the same time a young man (who was later given to pastor the church that was planted on our YWAM land by YWAM Arusha on the first DTS outreach in Matala) was also praying remembering when he was young about 10 years old the team visited and he knew the land was given to YWAM Arusha and was wondering where he would find these YWAMers. Then one of us somehow knew someone from Matala and we asked them if we could find a church or any pastor and he connected us to the same pastor without knowing each other.
A long story cut short, but this trip marked a big deal in our mission!
After this first mission trip, we had second outreach trip in October then a third one in January this year.
We later went for a vision and prayer trip (Discovery journey) in March 2021, it is then, when God spoke to us on the “Triangle Outreach” vision.
Matala is a village of over 3000 population and the downtown has 800 people from more than 20 tribes but it has 2 major tribes, the Datogas & the Hadzabes that are majorly unreached. Fishing, farming and salt making from the Lake Eyasi (Salty Lake) are the main economic activities that brings people together, however just after the town we see the two major unreached tribes (the Datogas and the Hadzabes). There are many other but at least these two have no bible in their language yet.
In our March vision and prayer trip we visited three bigger towns that are very important to Matala, the surrounding villages and the tribes around Lake Eyasi.
1) Mang’ola (Centre of education) – They have at least good schools (Secondary schools)
2) Meatu (Centre of Business/Economy) – Where people from these villages go buy things in bulk to sell them in the villages.
3) Hydom (Centre of healthy). – Here they have a big health “Lutheran” facility. Even though the roads from these Lake Eyasi surrounding villages are crocked making hard for many people to reach the hospital easily especially on emergency.
And that’s what makes the Triangle Outreach Ministry.
Our major prayer requests:
1. OBT-Oral Bible Translation. Aiming to get the bible in the language of these UPGs, developing local pastors and church leaders through discipleship training (YWAM DTSes), church planting and frontier missions programs. We need bibles in Swahili (hardcopies) and Audio/oral pieces in Swahili/Hadzabe/Datoga
2. Education. Running both pre & primary school, Secondary school, and vocational training programs for teenagers and youth not gone to high schools. Education has a power to change especially when it is done in God’s way. Assume we have these kids for 16 to 20 years and release them back to their communities.
3. Health programs. Establishing a modeled healthy facility that will offer support to mobile health/medical programs/camps to the interior villages.
4. Water. Lake Eyasi is salty watered and this is the only permanent water source in the area and there are few rivers that are seasonal. Now during the dry season which is the longest season in the year these communities have a big problem of water. Boreholes can be very helpful for the people in this villages.