Every year the Rev. John Naumann returns for a visit to Billings, it seems the list of all he is involved with in Tanzania, Africa, grows a little longer.

Naumann, 68, served as rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church for 16 years before he retired in 2005 and moved to Africa to head the Amani Development Center. The center is in Makang'wa, south of Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania.

The seeds for the Episcopal priest's work in Africa actually were sown while he still was in Billings. A pastor from Tanzania came to give a talk at St. Stephen's, and one thing led to another.

First St. Stephen's agreed to help sponsor students who couldn't afford an education and to raise money for deep-water wells and drip irrigation systems. Then Naumann spent a four-week sabbatical in central Tanzania in 2000, and that gave him more of a vision of the work yet to be done there.

Naumann, along with members of St. Stephens and other Billings residents, founded the nonprofit Amani for Africa USA Foundation. Exactly three years ago, when he retired, Naumann moved to Makang'wa and took on his new duties as director of the Amani Development Center.

Now back to visit supporters and share the progress of the center's work, Naumann ticks off the many ways the center touches the lives of people there. The center has developed a vineyard.

It has helped build schools. It has built wells to provide water to villages. It provides water to an AIDS survivor support group for a large drip irrigation garden, which in turn provides the group with better nutrition. And the center has partnered with the local community to support the Igondola Children's Project Center, a ministry to 170 AIDS orphans and children of destitute families.

Naumann also presides over services on weekends wherever he is invited. That takes up most of his weekends.

A key to the mission of the center, Naumann said, is working with local people - not for them.

"We are essentially Christ-centered and community-related," he said. "From the get-go, everything has been the responsibility of the local people, I'm just the facilitator."

The center has nine departments of operation and every department, save one, is led by a local person. There are about 50 people on site every day, and that number can increase for the work that has to be done.

The center is adding seven acres to its vineyard that features six varieties of grapes, a very labor-intensive project. Workers will plant 1,400 vines of table grapes by the end of February.

"We have a saying that we receive money and then we bury it," Naumann said, referring to the planting that's being done.

The grapes are sold to raise money for other projects of the center. But vineyard also serves as a vocational training center.

The Makutupora Grape Research Center, about a 1½-hour drive from the Amani Development Center, provides information and training to vineyard workers, and experts conduct training on site.

For other aspects of its agricultural efforts, Amani also works closely with the Tanzanian Department of Agriculture.

"The Tanzanian government is extremely happy with the method of operation we've developed," Naumann said. "We try to be open and inclusive."

In the past, land was donated to the Amani Development Center for the Mvumi Makulu school and a farm. Income from the farm, which includes banana and papaya trees, helps the school to be self-sustaining and helps parents with school fees.

Now Mvumi Makulu has donated another 100 acres, and that land contained an abandoned well, Naumann said. Often, kids drop rocks down old wells, making it difficult to rehabilitate them.

In this case, bees built a nest in the well - keeping people away. Amani workers were able to repair the well.

"And it's the sweetest water in the world," he said. "It's there for the school and for people who come from up to 10 kilometers away."

Naumann, in the interview, returns often to the idea that helping isn't enough. It's critical for ministries that come into the country such as Tanzania to become part of the communities they help.

"When I was first welcomed, a woman said 'it's because you walk in the village,' " he said. "You have to be part of them and they have to be part of you. It's the only way Christianity becomes authentic in the world."

Naumann, raised on a farm in Australia, said his upbringing makes him comfortable working in the semi-air agricultural setting. And though a minority in the African country, he finds that isn't an issue between him and the people he works with.

"They become colorblind of you, and you become colorblind of them, too," he said. "You just see people, wonderful people."

Water remains the primary need. If $16,000 can be raised, the Amani Center can connect its well to a nearby village using a 2-inch water line. That would deliver water to the village clinic and to a women's medical center Amani helped build. Naumann said.

The cost of a deep-water well is $32,000. That gives an entire village access to water, instead of forcing its residents to walk miles to find water, let alone clean water.

The center also has purchased a 5,000-liter water tank on a strong trailer that will enable it to deliver water to other villages. That will transform lives, Naumann said.

For the Igondola orphans, the Amani center provides for their physical needs, including the maize needed for porridge and sugar to sweeten it. For some children, that midday meal may be the only food they get in a day.

The center also provides a modest salary for the local teachers who instruct the students at the school. Support from Australia is helping pay for one of the teachers to go away and receive training.

"The support for our work has become ecumenical and international," Naumann said.

The tropical fruit orchard that will be planted near the orphanage will produce a source of income that will help that ministry to become self-sustaining.

Now the Amani Development Center is working to create an oilseed processing plant that could turn sunflowers and peanuts into oil. It would benefit local farmers who could turn raw materials into a finished product.

And then there's the children's home the center is developing east of Dodoma, where a village donated 50 acres of land. Orphans of parents who have died, or children whose parents can't afford to care for them, end up on the streets of the country's largest city.

It's a start, Naumann said, but the need is great. It's just one more thing the Amani Development Center is trying to do to partner with the people of Tanzania to make life better.

"God keeps showing us what to do," he said. "It goes back to what he told me when I first went to Tanzania - 'I am planting a tree which will bear fruit.' It sure stretches you, but it's good."

Naumann lives on his pension and Social Security. The money that comes in goes toward the trust. And a recent audit came back clean, which he hopes gives assurance to people who share their money with the trust.

He is thankful for the people in Montana and Australia who have dedicated themselves to raising money for the many projects. He stays busy pretty much from sunup to sundown, directing the work of the center and welcoming people to his home.

He admits the biggest source of stress comes from getting enough money to pay the workers who depend on the Armani Development Center for their wages.

"But you learn the meaning of the Lord's prayer - 'Give us this day our daily bread.'

Contact Susan Olp at 657-1281 or solp@billingsgazette.com.