By Katherine Ullmer
Dayton Daily News

CENTERVILLE... All that was left to do was to sell the car and pack a few boxes for storage. The house already had been sold.

Daniel Smith, 35, a 6-foot-8 former company director, his wife, Cathy, and their daughters, Sarah, 7; Emily, 3; and Grace, 2, were ready to head off on what Cathy has dubbed the "five-year safari" in East Africa.

Centerville neighbor Belinda Mack and her daughter. Brittany, 8, had brought them breakfast and had come to say goodbye.

"They've been wonderful neighbors," Belinda said. "We're going to miss the smiles and their grace."

June 30 was the Smith family's last day in their Centerville home. Minus the usual toys, Emily used several packing boxes on the floor as a set of African drums and the girls flung around keepsake Beanie Babies, given to them by BrittanyÑa green rabbit for Grace, a deer for Emily and a red, white and blue bear for Sarah.

For the next few weeks the Smiths will be living with Cathy Smith's parents in Fort Wayne, Ind. After another several weeks orientation in Chicago, they will fly in early August to Tanzania, home of mlount Kilimanjaro and gateway to the Serengeti Desert, where for five years they will serve as missionaries.

Daniel Smith Will be the financial secretary for the Lutheran Mission Cooperation, which works directly with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, enabling it to work with its 15 northern partners (14 European and one US.) as a single unit.

The family's home church is Shepherd Lutheran Church in Kettering, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .

"He was our organist and Cathy taught Sunday schoo and directed our vacation church school," the Rev. Thomas Prochaska said.

"It's a huge loss for us on the one hand, but it's an opportunity for us to connect with them and understand the world mission. We're setting up e-mails and we want to get our kids connected with them when they get there. And then, dreaming hopefully, in a couple of years, maybe three, we would like to get a (church) group together to go to Tanzania."

Daniel said he sees his role as a behind-the-scenes support for the other missionaries in Tanzania. While he will not be banging on doors and quoting Scripture, he sees himself as Òa role model person who wants to live a Christ:ian life and be an example of what a Christian is."

The family doesn't see its journey as one of sacrifice, though Daniel gave up his job as a company director of bakery and deli for the central region of SuperValu. The job had begun to pull him away from his family, he said, "and I thought there was maybe something else I could do." They considered opening their own business or flnding some sort of more fulfilling work.

Last summer, while at a four-day Global Mission event in Decorah, Iowa, for the ELCA, Daniel attended several sessions led by missionaries and former missionaries to learn how Good Shepherd could increase its mission focus.

Daniel said he didn't think he had the skills necessary for a missionary, since his background is in business and missionaries are usually pastors, teachers, doctors or nurses. With a family to support, he said he couldn't afford to serve as a volunteer, but they told him he could earn a salary paid for by missionary funds from churches willing to support his work.

In January he got a call from ELCA's Global Mission office in Chicago, asking if the family would be willing to move to Arusha Tanzania, where Daniel could heip the church there find better ways of managing its resources.

"I had to check and see where Tanzania was," Daniel said. "I learned it was a long way away and the third poorest country in the world." Arusha, the town where theyÕll be living in a furnished house, has around 300,000 residents. It's a fairly modern city with electricity and indoor plumbing.

It's three degrees south of the equator, but about 4,757 feet above sea level, so it has a temperate climate, he said. While there's little air conditioning, "It does cool down at night," he said. He visited the country for a week last May and made a video for his family.

"The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is very strong there," Daniel said.

Tanzania was a Gernnan colony in 1885 and many Germans brought their Lutheran faith with them. The country is about 40 percent Christian, 30 percent Muslim, and the rest indigenous beliefs, Cathy said.

"The Lutheran church has 2.8 million people in Tanzania," said Linda Tidemann, program director for ELCA's East African Global Mission unit in Chicago. The people chosen as missionaries have to have a strog faith committment, flexibility and an ability to deal with change, as well as a strong family life, she said. She said she was impressed wilh the Smiths and that Òthe girls were incredibly articulate.

The girls will go to an international school in Arusha. English is spoken there and used for government and business, though once there the whole family plans to take a crash course in Swahili, the language of the native people (the Waarusha and Wameru tribe).

For Grace, who was adopted as a baby from China, this will be her second new country. The Smiths decided on her adoption after having their second child "because we felt compelled to have more children and yet didn't want to overpopulate the world," Daniel said. "We knew they had children in China who need a good home." They already had a niece adopted from China, so this just added to the Chinese portion of the family, he said.

ÒThe little ones know we're going to Africa, but they don't know what Africa is all aboutÓ Cathy said.

Sarah, on the other hand, has read up on Africa. She said she has her digital camera ready to take pictures of the animals so she can have them illustrated for a children's book to send back to her Ohio friends.

The adventure has left her "excited, a little sad and a little scared.," she said. "I'm excited at seeing new ani mals and getting to have two dogs, sad 'because I'll be leaving all my friends and scared because there's lotsof lions."

"SheÕs always wanted a dog," Cathy said.

"Now I can let go of my imaginary dogs," Sarah said. She has seven.

Not missing a beat, she ran into her room, fetched her camera and took some pictures of the family and a reporter in lhe box-strewn living, room.

Emily, meanwhile, pointed out the "beautiful Blue's Clues" plastic watch she wore on her wrist and Grace snuggled in her mom's lap under a small blanket she had pulled along Linus-like from another room..

With no job waiting for him when he returns, Daniel said he doesn't know what lies in store at the end of the five years.

I think this will open up opportunities I never even knew existed," he said. "We could continue in a missionary environment or work with the church." They might even wanttt to stay in Africa by then, he said.

They plan to keep in touch with their parents and friends via the Internet and will get to spend two months out of every two years here in the States, sharing their experiences with the congregations supporting them.

Deciding to go to Africa wasnÕt all that difficult, Daniel said. "I didn't want to be sitting in a cubicle 20 years from now wondering what would have happened if I went. When we went on that trip to China to pick up Grace, we really had no idea that the other side of the world could be so different and yet so similar."

The pace is slower in Africa, he said.

"We really want our kids to grow up knowing that there's more to the world than suburban America. It's what God's calling us to do."

"To us it's really a dream come true," Cathy said.