Mashujaa wa Imani: Huu ni ukurasa utakaokuwa ukikuletea taarifa za mashujaa mbalimbali walioitetea imani na kufanya kazi ya Mungu katika nyakati zilizopita. Tunaamini taarifa hizi zitakuimarisha kiroho na kukushawishi kumuomba Mungu katika kipindi hiki cha Uamsho na Matengenezo ili atume moto ule ule uliowaka kwa mashujaa hawa maishani mwako. Ubarikiwe sana.
Petro Kime Risase: 1890 hadi 1982
Petro Kime Risase, ni mpare aliyezaliwa kati ya 1888 na 1891, huko Kihurio, Kusini mwa milima ya Upare nchini Tanzania. Alikuwa Mtanzania wa tatu kuwekewa mikono ya kichungaji katika kanisa la Waadventista Wasabato na alikuwa kiongozi muhimu wa kiroho miongoni mwa Waadventista wa Tanzania, Uganda, na Kenya. Wazazi wake waliishi Kihurio-Mareti, na baba yake alikuwa mtengenezaji wa vitanda katika jamii ya wakati wake iliyokuwa timamu kiuchumi, iliyokuwa kando kando mwa njia ya msafara wa watumwa kwenye tambarare za Milima ya Upare. Wakati Waadventista Wasabato walipofungua misheni kule Kihurio mwaka 1905, kituo cha pili nchini, alikuwa miongoni mwa wanafunzi wa kwanza kuhudhuria shule. Wakati huo huo alitumika kama mfanyakazi wa ndani wa Mmishionari Ernst Kotz, na muda kidogo baadaye akatumika kama msaidizi wake wa lugha na kutafasiri. Risase alibatizwa mwaka 1909 kule Mamba-Giti (Wakati huo ikiitwa Kituo cha Umishionari cha Fredensau, Kituo cha kwanza cha Kiadventista kilichozinduliwa Tanzania mwaka 1903), na dada yake Rebekka akaolewa na Petro Mlungwana, mwongofu mwingine wa awali na kiongozi wa Kanisa la Kipare la kizazi cha kwanza.
Baada ya kufanya kazi kama katibu wa Misheni kwa muda mfupi, Risase akawa mwalimu mwaka 1910. Alifundisha shule za Giti na Vunta zote zikiwa katika eneo la nyumbani kwake la Milima ya Pare kusini. Mwaka 1914, alifanya kazi kama msaidizi wa kudumu wa Ernst Kotz akitafsiri Agano Jipya katika lugha ya Kipare (KIASU) na yeye mwenyewe binafsi akichapa andiko lote la kazi hiyo. Mwaka 1912 alikuwa amemuoa Maria, Binti wa chifu aliyeitwa Kantu. Maria alizaa mtoto wa kike na kumpa jina la Anna, lakini mtoto na mama yake walifariki muda mfupi baada ya kuzaliwa kwa Anna. Wakati wa vita ya pili ya Dunia, Risase na baadhi ya waalimu wenzake walitiwa kizuizini kule Lushoto kwa miezi miwili na baada ya miezi hiyo waliachiliwa na wakaweza kuendelea kulitia moyo kundi lenye Wakristo wapatao 250 katika Pare Kusini. Baada ya vita Risase alitumika kama mwalimu huko Kihurio, Mkomazi, na Bendera. Mwaka 1919 alimuoa Naetwe.
Mwaka 1927, aliitwa kuandamana na mmishionari Spencer Maxwell kwa safari ya kwanza ya umishionari wa kudumu huko Uganda kwenye Misheni ya Nchwanga. Kutoka hapo alipangwa Misheni ya Mityana, iliyopo Uganda pia akiwa na Abrahamu na Raheli Msangi, wamishionari wenzake wa Kipare kutokea 1928 hadi 1931. Watu kumi na tano walibatizwa kama matokeo ya juhudi yao pale. Kuanzia 1931 na kuendelea, alifanyia kazi Kampala na Mmishionari Valdemar Toppenberg. Katika eneo hilo, uinjilisti wa Kiadventista ulifanikiwa sana katika vijiji vilivyokuwa kando kando mwa mji. Mwaka 1934, baada ya kuwekewa mikono kama mchungaji, alifungua Misheni ya kule Changamwe, umbali mdogo kutoka kisiwa cha Mombasa, akiwa na Mmishionari W. C. Raitt. Risase alifungua makundi ya Chonyi, Paziani, na Singwaya na kubatiza watu wengi. Mwaka 1942, airudi Suji lakini maisha katika milima ya baridi yakamwia magumu. Matokeo yake alifanya kazi kwenye eneo la nyumbani kwake la Kihurio, eneo la joto lililo kwenye tambarare inayoangaliana na milima kuanzia 1945 hadi 1949. Alikufa huko Kihurio Desemba 7, 1982 akiacha watoto kumi na moja kati ya watoto wake kumi na tano na mkewe. Pamoja na Waadventista wa Kitanzania wa awali kadhaa waliotumika kama wamishionari katika mikoa mingine ya Tanzania na ng'ambo ya nchi, Petro Risase anawakilisha kizazi cha kwanza cha Viongozi wa kwanza wa Kitanzania na wamishionari wenye nguvu kutoka kwenye makundi ya wakati huo yaliyojaa na vijana ya Pare Kusini.
Chanzo: http://www.dacb.org/stories/tanzania/risase_petro.html
Ernst Kotz
1887 to 1944
Seventh-day Adventist Church Tanzania
Ernst Kotz was born at Strombach near Gummersbach, Germany, on February 11, 1887. He did some theological studies at Friedensau Mission School near Magdeburg, the Seventh-day Adventist college for Central Europe at that time. In preparation for his missionary service in what was then called German East Africa, he studied with Carl Meinhof and Felix von Luschan at the Oriental Seminar in Berlin for one year.
Arriving in Africa in July 1905, he was assigned to the South Pare Mountains where the denomination had one mission station and planned to erect others. Kotz started to work on the Asu (Southern Pare) language immediately after his arrival. Because of his outstanding language abilities that were soon recognized by his colleagues, language work became his special assignment in 1909. From April 1910 on, Kotz served as director of the Pare field.
Among the missionaries, much of the early translation work into Pare was his responsibility. In cooperation with Petro Risase and Anderea Senamwaye, he was instrumental in writing a grammar manual and in translating a primer, a hymnal, the Gospel according to Matthew, an Old Testament story book, and finally the New Testament. In addition, Kotz launched a periodical called Mbirikizi ("Preacher"). Matthew's Gospel, which was issued in 1910, was the first translation of a portion of the Bible ever published by a Seventh-day Adventist. Kotz's language work made a significant impact on the denomination as a whole by stimulating similar activities in other Adventist missions, particularly in Eastern Africa, where Adventists soon participated in Bible translations into Luo, Gusii, Kinyarwanda, and Jita.
On the practical level, Kotz was involved in various lines of missionary work, mainly at Kihurio. Kihurio was the most successful area for Adventist operations before World War I, and the mission administration was also located there. For a considerable time before Christianity was brought there by Seventh-day Adventists, this large village at the southeastern end of the Pare Mountains had been under a variety of influences, including Islam and non-Pare people groups such as the Sambaa, the Zigua, the Maasai, and the Nyamwezi. This may explain why in the pre-war years Kihurio emerged as the largest Adventist congregation with almost 100 members; moreover, half of the teachers came from the place where Kotz was the major missionary personality. After realizing that religious debates with Muslims did not yield any significant outcome in their conversion to Christianity, Kotz's strategy was to prevent as many persons as possible from becoming Muslims by building a "bulwark" of Christianity at Kihurio.
Under Kotz's leadership, the Adventist education network in Pare expanded to twenty-eight teachers and 2,300 pupils among a population of 20,000. After the first baptism in 1908, membership numbers reached 250 in 1914. A peculiar aspect of Adventist missionary operations in Tanzania that should also be mentioned is the acceptance of "spheres of influence." For the sake of orderly educational work, Kotz helped negotiate a partial comity agreement with the neighboring Leipzig Mission.
Kotz was outstanding among the Seventh-day Adventist missionaries of that period in that he was the only one who showed such a deep interest in ethnography, demonstrated in his books on the Pare, Im Banne der Furcht ("Under the ban of fear") and Sklaven ("Slaves"). Although the titles betray his critical view of many elements of traditional culture, his overall perspective of Pare life is realistic and reveals much appreciation for the culture--for example, traditional Pare law and economy. He insisted that the African is capable of being a "philosopher, poet, and thinker" (the title of one chapter in Sklaven) and declared that Europeans could learn a lot for their own parliamentary sessions from the patience and respect governing Pare courts. Moreover, at a time when some degree of racism was common even among missionaries, he declared that Andrea Senamwaye, one of the earliest converts, was a real friend to him. Considering the absence of other anthropological works by Adventist missionaries until more than a generation later, Kotz's sympathetic approach to the Pare must be viewed as exceptional.
At the same time, Kotz was cautious enough not to idealize traditional culture. He attacked the idea that Africans were "happy children of nature" in view of many Pare practices which, according to him, were dictated by fear rather than by harmony with creation. Against what he viewed as the tendency of over-appreciating "folkhood," he warned, "If one tries, as a missionary, to sustain the folk identity of the Pare man, one will, unfortunately, experience again and again that one can take over into Christianity only a very small remainder of his customs and practices because his whole doing and thinking is completely dipped in pagan religious and superstitious ideas." (Im Banne der Furcht, p. 203)
Kotz believed that a time might come when, among the Pare "everything has become new, and still the people will not have lost their identity in language and character. Only the ugly and the mean have had to cede." (Sklaven, p. 182) Thus, he envisioned a transformation of culture through a Christian remnant of converted individuals. By imagining an African Adventist folk church, he went beyond the missionary model within which his denomination often operated--the formation of religious minority communities.
World War I halted the thriving Adventist activities in Pare, and in 1917, Kotz was interned in India and Egypt together with most of his fellow missionaries. His wife, Hilde Kotz, held the semi-official leadership of the whole Pare field in the absence of her husband until she was repatriated with most Germans in 1918-1919. After a short time of studying at a university in Germany in 1920, Kotz climbed the ranks of church hierarchy and became European Foreign Missions Secretary then an Associate Secretary of the General Conference, and finally the Secretary of the General Conference. From this post he resigned in 1933 and left the denomination. Thus, although he had been elected president of the Central European Division in 1933, this call was not implemented. His two sons Hans and Siegfried, however, continued to serve the denomination as missionaries in Africa, and his daughter Ilse also remained a church member.
He died in Berlin on September 27, 1944. Kotz has been justly called "one of the most gifted Africa missionaries that Adventism had brought forth" (D. Heinz).
