Mtaka yote hukosa yote

Translation: The one who wants everything loses everything (swahili proverb)


**NOTE** Due to either no power or no internet connection all week I have not been able to put up posts…if you want to read in order I suggest scrolling down to start with the Mon Feb 4th entry!!!




Wed February 6th


We had French toast this morning for breakfast :)
I also talked with Pastor Hafermann about his day in the village yesterday…I’m sad that I missed it as it was quite eventful!!!
Class went much better all morning, although it started out a little slow- and at tea time we had white keki (cakey) :) I learned a couple more proverbs including the one mentioned in my title again… I was able to discuss a couple with Godfrey. It’s always interesting to discuss the different viewpoints…

Oh- I also learned that there are 5 different verbs meaning “to wash.” Haha!
*To wash clothes = kufua
*To wash face/hands/feet = kunawa
*To wash oneself = kuoga
*To wash someone else (like a baby) = kuogesha
*To clean (wash) house, car, windows… = kusafisha

The power had come on last night at 10pm (so about 2.5 hrs without) - but the internet wasn’t working so I couldn’t post anything! It must have went out soon after that again because we went almost 24 hrs without electricity (as it did not come back until 6:30pm-Thursday)

After my afternoon class I went to the Ash Wednesday service here at 4pm. It was my first time in the church for the secondary school and it is much bigger than it looks! Goodness did the place get full…there must have been 400 students in there…and then me in the back (the only white person) until Pastor H. enters with another Pastor to lead the service! It had stormed during my afternoon session from2:30-4pm so it was pretty wet and I tried not to sink into the red soil and get stuck walking to church. Church “begins” at 4, but I got there a little after and it was maybe only a quarter full. By about 4:20-4:25 it filled up and the service began. It was the same liturgy as what we do on the weekends in the Maasai villages which I am getting super familiar with and it helped to know the pages we skip around to! It lasted an hour and a half and I don’t know how but these long services just seem to fly by even though I don’t understand very much! I love to sing the Swahili hymns (I’ve mentioned this before!) And even the liturgy, as most of it is indeed sung. But I just LOVE to listen to the students singing! A couple different Forms (remember they have Form 1-6, and a form 1 student is about 12 years old) have choirs and all they use is their voices or maybe a hand drum, which really added to one of the groups!!! I could have sat and listened for another couple of hours! It’s wonderful because if there is no official hymn to sing a choir will just start in. And after the service was over, everyone filed out (front row first, then to the back) and once outside everyone gathered in a large circle until the last people were out. We did not shake hands like in the villages but it was still really neat!!

I then went to dinner and everyone cheered when the electricity came back on (as we were eating with candles!). Then I washed some clothes in my bathroom… gosh it is really tough to wash clothes by hand…I did not get very many done in the hour and a half I spent washing! I did a little writing and studying and went to bed by 10pm!!! I was planning on getting up early to maybe run finally, but it was raining through the night so I knew the ground would be saturated…I definitely enjoyed sleeping until about 6:25am as I needed sleep badly!!




Thursday Feb 7th

This morning I gave the devotion on Jeremiah 18: 1-6 about the potter and his work… how can a pot say to the potter “you did not make me!” just as we can not (should not) say to our Creator “you did not make me!” Jer 18 v. 6 says “ O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declared the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O House of Israel” Sometimes I forget that I am not a product of this world because I deny Christ by the way I life this life given to me…by my actions/thoughts/words. I think that I am the center of my world and I want God to fit into my mold-into my own clay pot (creation)… but God cannot be put into a box or a bag or a clay pot…it’s not about if God is on MY side, but am I on HIS side?? When guilt and bitterness and self-loathing and jealousy are at their worst I am saying to God that He did not make me good enough…or smart enough…or good-looking enough… or talented enough…etc etc etc. I love verse 6 because it humbles me and brings me back to “reality,” or in a sense, a more focused and less idealistic picture. This past Sunday it was put on my heart that I am still just clay and I remembered there was a passage in Jeremiah about that and so I was led to chapter 18. There is a wonderful quote by John Wesley and I do not remember all of it but he says something like “Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, etc…” I easily forget that this quote doesn’t mean (and God doesn’t expect me to) do ALL the good…in ALL places…to ALL people. The emphasis should be on the CAN. That’s why it reads, do all the good you CAN, in all the ways you CAN etc etc…we are not capable to, but God is- and He enables and empowers US to do what we CAN… It is encouragement to my heart that God is continually re-shaping/re-forming/re-molding our lives…we are never completely “perfect.” Learning and growing is a life-long process until the day we see Him face-to-face!! :)

We got started about 8am as usual and an hour and a half into the morning lesson I finished book one!! (30 lessons) After tea we started book two (the last 30 lessons) and there is a lot more vocab and things to put together on the exercises so it definitely takes longer! I enjoyed my lunch as well as the break that followed although I studied the whole 2 hours for my test on lessons 26-30 that I took at 2:30. I was feeling more confident at the end of today as I have finally “caught up” to my other short course friends (the sisters and MeeHa) who are in book two already!

During afternoon tea I was able to chat with Randy and Carol (mostly Randy). He’s very talkative and friendly, although they really do not smile a lot :( Anyway, it was neat to hear more about the work they do as teachers at this University. He’s an organist and choral director but I’m not sure about Carol. He told me how many suitcases they had to carry over of instruments/music books this past summer and how they have taken over and essentially made this Bachelor of Music degree what it is because it only “existed” before they came. There were really no books/materials but it “existed.”

After tea, Godfrey and I went to the road to wait for a dala dala…we talked for about 15 minutes and it still hadn’t come. Finally, a few minutes later (about 5pm) one showed up that was half empty so at least we got a seat! I was able to talk to Godfrey a lot more about his life (presently anyway) and what he wants to do but doesn’t know what God exactly wants him to do… He’s become a very good friend of mine and I am so thankful as I am learning so much about someone my own age from a completely different culture with a completely different background that lives halfway across the world from me- yet we share the same faith. I will continue to learn more as it teaches me more about myself and my culture and my own beliefs! We went to the supermarket as I wanted to get some apples and cookies and then we went back to find a dala dala that would take us back to the seminary. It takes 30 minutes by the time we leave from in town to get back to the seminary and the seminary is one of the first stops! I got back right at 6:30pm and I didn’t know if I would miss Pastor H. or not as we were going to meet eat dinner with a couple missionaries/ELCA workers in town… sometimes it’s hard to know the time. We were all Americans, but we are in Tanzania so does 6:30pm mean 6:30pm or 7ish?!?! Well, I went to start getting dinner and then I hear PH calling my name and I am SO thankful as I wanted to go so bad! So I ate my pineapple slices in the car on the way! Turns out, the missionary family from the school, Randy and Carol and their kids are ELCA missionaries and they were who we were going to eat with and also Barbara!! (from Sunday) and then we met Tom and Sally Roach~ an amazing couple that has been working for the ELCA in the Tanzania headquarters in Arusha! I forget the exact title that Tom told me but they are basically the global representatives and oversee all 20 dioceses in the country! So, basically they travel all around and meet with the missionaries and their families and they take them out to eat and/or participate in the different work people are doing (so they’ve been out with PH to the villages)!! Or if bishops come to town they meet with them. Mr. Roach said that they are really just about personal relationships and it’s talking about the good times as well as the problems that arise! They have been doing this job for the past 4-4.5 years but he will retire in June and then they are both going back to the states (probably for good now) to work on Obama’s campaign.
I had the wonderful privilege of sitting across from Mr. Roach and we talked 1.5 out of the 2 hours we spent at this place. We ate at a tiny hotel: Acropol. It has a nice restaurant and bar and boy was it nice to get away for once. I was just in awe (not only at the cheap prices: 7000 shillings for steak!) at the selection and everything looked good. Again, not used to so much variety to choose from!! I finally settled on mango juice and the breaded (pork) Schnitzel (as I love schnitzel and miss German food sometimes) ~ with rice of course, as I can’t get away from that! :)
It was EXCELLENT! But I was super full afterward as I am not used to eating such big portions! That’s something that has especially changed since being here: my diet and health habits… there’s pros and cons of course! I am definitely losing weight, which in America is a good thing, but I don’t think it’s that healthy as having the same thing every day really can’t seem to be. Although I am taking vitamins I don’t know how nutritious everything is. Also, since we don’t get much in the first place I can’t have large portions…I think that is a good thing as portion control is something that well, we don’t really have to or do care about in the U.S. necessarily. The hard part will be to try and maintain the portion control when I go home to practically endless amounts of varieties of food!!

Back to my conversation with Mr. Roach… I can’t even begin to explain how perfect it was that I met him and that we “happened” to sit at the same ends of the table. It’s one of those things that God had planned… a connection/contact that is just what I needed! He and his wife first lived in India for 2 years doing the Peace Corps, then they lived in Washington D.C. area, then they lived in Bangladesh for 4 years (where 2/4 girls were born) and then they moved to Kenya for about 4.5 years and then they moved back to Washington D.C.. All the years abroad Mr. Roach worked for non-profits like CARE (don’t know this one- I will look it up) and Lutheran World Relief- his wife had a teaching degree and followed him to these countries and worked with different primary schools and volunteer programs, then they lived in Washington D.C. a second time because she felt called to go to seminary. She grew up Catholic and started at a Catholic seminary but while there felt the call to become an ordained pastor so switched to a Lutheran Seminary. Then they were transferred to Oklahoma (where they first grew up) so she could preach. This time he followed her and in these years he worked with a number of homeless organizations- helping homeless get transitional housing and he started a couple non-profits for homelessness. They were asked to apply for the position they have now and have been here in Tanzania for about 4 years now!
That was our conversation in a nutshell!! It was so intriguing listening to the places they’ve been/lived and the organizations he has worked with and the work he has done with them! He also questioned my plans to go to Denver Seminary which I was surprised by at first because people usually ask what you are doing and not why, but it’s good to be questioned because it makes one think again and when we “teach” we learn/understand better- whether that’s learning a language or “solidifying” a calling!
We said good-bye and Barbara also mentioned going to dinner together somewhere again (just us!) so I will have to take her up on that!! We didn’t get back to the school until almost 10pm and I had to do some writing and get some things ready for Friday’s adventure so I didn’t get to sleep until 11:30!

Amani kwa wote! (Peace to all) (This was painted on the back of a dala dala)


still clay,
Alana :)