2009-2010 Staff
Do Hard Things: Our theme for the year
I know I’m a little biased, but aren’t they just beautiful???
“The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.”
I like to be in control. I like to know what’s going to happen and when it will happen and when that is settled I don’t want anything to change.
Never been a spontaneous person. That’s part of my personality. But ultimately, I’ve discovered, I just don’t want to depend on God. What a shocking revelation. But it has to be true.
We have been trying to go on Home Assignment for over 8 months now. We thought that by pushing it back to October, we would be allowing ourselves plenty of time. And even when it looked impossible, Josiah’s adoption was finalized in July. Great! I thought. We’re on schedule. And in control.
Then the judge sat with the adoption order on her desk, ready to be signed, for six weeks. Yep, all it needed was a signature. For six weeks. In faith we bought our plane tickets for October 6th. And we prayed.
Last week, we finally got the signature. I turned right around the next day and put in the application for Josiah’s Tanzanian passport. Sigh of relief. We should be good now, I thought. Back in control.
Knowing I would need to get Josiah a U.S. visa as soon as I get the passport, I wrote an email to the U.S. embassy in Dar, asking them a couple questions in advance. Yesterday I got an email answering those questions, along with the following statement: “You should not feel, however, that a visa is guaranteed.”
Splash of cold water in the face. Of course, I already knew that happy little fact; I just didn’t want to think about it. There is nothing that forces a consular officer to grant a visa to anyone. He is allowed to deny visa applications even on a hunch, if he wants to. Great. Thanks for the reminder that I don’t even have control over whether I (a U.S. citizen) will be allowed to bring my adopted son into the United States.
I am not in control. And I hate that feeling. I want to plan; I want to know; I want to be sure. I want to be in control. So I must come to the conclusion that I don’t want to depend on God. How can I say such a thing? But emotions reveal my true heart.
So what do I do? I talk to myself. I teach myself the same things that lately I have been teaching my sixth graders: The Character of God. “God is everywhere. He knows everything. He is all-powerful. He is perfectly holy and just. He is perfect love. He is Sovereign: He is above all and more powerful than all; He is the highest authority.”
I lay my life on those claims. If I believe they are true, then why do I worry? Even if the worst happens, and the visa is denied, do I still believe He is all-powerful and holy and just and sovereign and love? Yes, I must.
I am writing this here so that you can rejoice with me at God’s provision if we get on that plane on October 6th, and hold me accountable to my belief in His character if we do not.
That’s what it feels like–that we live in a park. Which is great, considering there aren’t any parks around here. Most of the plot is not landscaped, so there is a lot of potential!
Front gate and driveway
The yard. It is surrounded by a wall…waaaay back there. Love, love, love those giant trees. Someone told me they are non-producing fig trees. Maybe? I have no idea.
The house
We started Youth Group a couple of Fridays ago. So, so great to see the kids cavorting all over the place.
So thankful.
I’ve been thinking about pre-school for Grace for a while now. Pre-school in general has never been that big of a deal to me, namely because I taught kindergarten for a couple years and I know what I need to do to prepare her for it. But there’s one thing I can’t teach her: Swahili. And that is a very big deal to me.
My Swahili is pretty limited. I can get by on certain topics; my house worker and various store owners and fix-it men usually seem to know what I am talking about, even though I’m sure I’m butchering the language. The problem is that to become fluent in a language, you need to be immersed in it, and I’m not. HOPAC and all of our ministry is done in English. It’s also the official business language here, and all the secondary schools in Tanzania are taught in English. So anyone who is educated speaks English.
But it still is very much the heart language of Tanzanians. And since Grace is Tanzanian, living in Tanzania, it’s very important to us that she learn it. So, I’ve wanted to put her in a Tanzanian pre-school.
Problem is that most pre-schools around here are in English. Why? Because anyone who is able to afford pre-school wants his children to learn English, not Swahili.
So finally I found out about a Swahili pre-school. A Tanzanian pastor we know, who is the head cleaner at HOPAC, told me that there’s a little pre-school run in his church.
Today Grace and I went to check it out. I knew not to expect much, but well…. Hmmm.
The teacher is a beautiful young woman with a kind heart who obviously is doing this as a ministry. Each child pays 3000 shillings a month. You know how much that is? About $2.00. Per month. Per child.
The children sit in the concrete church building, about a dozen of them ranging in ages from 2-6. The teacher has a flip board up front with letters and pictures and numbers on it. She asks one student to stand. She has him repeat: a-askari, e-eroplane, o-oga, etc. She has him repeat it again. And again. And again. About 15 times. Then she moves on to the next child. All the other children just sit and wait.
And thus it goes. For four hours. The children never get up, never move out of their seats, never go out to play. Just keep repeating the teacher. Again and again and again.
Hmmm. But you know what? Grace liked it. She wasn’t as excited about it as Disneyland, but she liked it and wants to go back. So what do I do? I really want her to learn Swahili.
We’ll see. There’s a HOPAC teacher who has started working with the pre-school teacher and is trying to train her and give her ideas. We only have a month until our Home Assignment, so maybe we’ll try it this month and see how it goes.
Once again, as usual….just another reminder of how totally and completely and utterly blessed I am. The contrast between the opportunities afforded to my children, compared to these other precious little ones, did not escape my notice.
We have lived in 8 different houses during 8 years of marriage. That’s not counting the months we lived with family while on Home Assignment.
Sigh. It was okay before we had kids; then I was fine being a nomad. As soon as motherhood hit, I wanted to stay in one place. Permanently. And never move again. I wanted to put my pictures up on the wall and keep them there.
And I really thought that would be the case with our last house. Well, the last house before the temporary house. The landlord was great, she had no intention of moving back in (which happened to another of our past houses), and I liked everything about that house. I just didn’t anticipate the walls falling down and needing to be rebuilt.
So by now I have given up the notion that I am going to stay in any house for any kind of permanency. (By the way, it’s practically impossible for a foreigner to buy a house in Tanzania).
But you know what? After moping over the fact we had to leave the last house, and complaining to God because we had to leave the temporary house (the perfect one next to the school), and depressed because we had to find another house, yet again….well, after all that, He still gave me a house I don’t deserve. My favorite house, in fact, of all the houses I’ve lived in. It is not a 30 second walk from school like the last one, but it’s only a 10 minute walk (2 minute drive) from school. It’s got a park for a yard. (Really, it’s THAT gigantic.) And it even has a huge laundry room where I can leave my ironing board set up all the time. (Because we know what is really important in life, don’t we, ladies?)
Great location. Great price. Big enough to hold 40 kids on Friday nights. Yard big enough for a soccer field and a basketball court, if we wanted to put them in. Guest room. Two year lease. Not permanent, but not bad either. And we didn’t even have to look for it. It fell in our laps. More than I deserve, indeed. Especially considering all of my fretting.
So you want to see it? Here it is.
Dining Room
Laundry room/Pantry
Toy Room. This is a strange little room connecting the kitchen and the garage. We had the shelves put in and made it a Toy Room. It makes me very happy because for once I am able to keep all the kids’ stuff organized. As you can see, my children are not suffering!
Living Room
Closet in Kids’ Bedroom. All the bedrooms have these kind of closets.
Grace’s bed. The other side of the room has another bed waiting for Josiah when he gets big enough.
Guest room. Come stay with us!
Bathroom
Office nook in our bedroom
Our bedroom
Master bath
Forgot to take outside pictures, so that will be next time!
