Steve Quayle News Alerts

My name is Bishop Eliudi Issangya. I am from Tanzania. Now it is my turn to say "Thank you Bozeman" and "Thank you Montana".

I have been coming to Montana from Africa since 1982. It all started back in 1979 when I wold my small two acre farm in Tanzania and came to this country to attend a six-month seminary school in San Diego, California. My father thought I was crazy. I had only a one-way ticket. I left my pregnant wife and three children behind. At the seminary, I found myself sitting next to Helen Johnson of Helena, Montana, and we became good friends.

From my early Helena connections led me to Bozeman where I met Steve and Loretta Quayle and Clarice Wallin. From then on, I began to develop a long and beautiful relationship with these dear friends and with the people of Bozeman and Montana.

God called me into the ministry field in the early 1970s. What He wanted me to do was to start a six-month training/ministerial school in Tanzania, Africa, for young people who could then go out to become pastors and start their own churches.

I am from a very poor country and knew that anyone who wanted to attend the school could not afford to pay tuition. To this day, we still do not charge tuition, even though we provide all students with everything then need: food, housing, health kits and study materials.

It costs $8,500 per month to operate the school, and it was the good people of Montana and several other states that provide me with the funds. Not only do these funds help run the school, but have helped the ministry grow from one acre of land with four small buildings to a fourteen acre campus with other 24 building and a 4,000 capacity seminar hall.

Our first class graduated 20 students and today we graduate over 200 students a years who become teachers, pastors, and evangelists. In 1986, we acquired a small farm where we raise corn and beans to feed our students and faculty. We built a grade school for the first and second grades.

In 1988, we started a trade school to teach young people the skills that they need to earn a living and support a family.

Over the past 23 years, we have trained 4,500 young pastors who have established over 1,200 churches in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, The Republic of Congo and Mozambique. As these churches grow, more and more people learn of the salvation message and the good news of Jesus Christ. We hold annual conferences with over 4,000 people attending. Your generosity has made all this possible.

Over the years, we have had medical teams from Wyoming and other locations come and help to provide our basic medical needs. This year, a team from Helena, Montana, will be coming. But a hospital is badly needed. There is not one adequately equipped medical facility within a radius of 100 miles around the training center, which has a nearby population of over two million people.

God has given me the vision of a 200 bed hospital. I cannot build one, but He can. I could not build the school and provide tuition-free schooling for the young people, but He did.

We are a very poor country with an epidemic of AIDS and other diseases inflamed by the drought and malnutrition, lack of education and very poor medical facilities. Basic medical supplies available in any hospital or clinic in this country, like medicines, laboratory, X-ray machines, we do not have.

It is not that we do not want such facilities; it is because we cannot afford them. It is our prayer that God will continue to bring medical personnel from America to Tanzania and to staff the hospital.