Wensel_500
Lena Wensel
Veterinarian
Specialty: Veterinary Medicine
Location: Tanzania
Mission Work

Tanzania is comprised of about 160 People Groups with 130 distinct languages. There are nine Frontier People Groups and 31 Unreached People Groups in Tanzania, according to Joshua Project. Most of these are Islamic groups, but some are ethnic/animistic religions.

Our goal is to share Christ’s love primarily with UPGs in a holistic manner, serving the spiritual, physical, emotional, and social needs of the Tanzanian people. We assist and empower Tanzanian church planters in their efforts to build relationships for Christ primarily in unreached communities.

This includes Community Assessments and Animal Health Assessments as well as follow-up efforts involved in walking alongside the communities to improve their holistic health. A minimum of one Tanzanian Veterinary health professional will be trained in assisting in these efforts from an animal healthcare perspective as a Community Animal Healthcare Worker.

We also aid the community in addressing other needs where possible such as access to clean water, education, nutrition, and health care.

Many of the unreached communities remaining in Tanzania are NOT open to hearing the Gospel and therefore require creative access methods. One of our current goals is to empower newly- trained church planters with creative access skills such as microenterprise development and relational entry into these communities via Community and Animal Health Assessments and training.

We are currently also considering the purchase and development of arable land as a means of ensuring self-sustainability for the ministry.

Training Nationals

We run our own training programs for Tanzanians as Community Assessment Facilitators and Community Animal Healthcare Workers.

We also lead training in preventative herd husbandry practices for communities through church planting pastors.

We support our ministry colleagues in training courses for pastors who seek further skills pertaining to entering unreached, often closed, communities in order to develop relationships for Christ, either through discipling a few or planting a church.