Shopping Extravaganza

When Michelle got home from grocery shopping one day, we were talking while unpacking and putting stuff away. After our conversation, I smiled and told her, “I needed to write a blog post of our conversation because it so captures our life here in Tanzania!” 

So, here's how it went:

Michelle: “Hey, I looked for the red grape juice you wanted, but they didn’t have any so I got you white instead. Hope that was okay.”

Me: “Yeah, sure, no problem. I’ll try that flavor this week.”

Michelle: “And I couldn’t find the American Garden brand of peanut butter we usually get, so I grabbed a new kind. It was a little cheaper… maybe it’ll be just as good?”

Me: “Yeah, that’s fine too.”

Michelle: “OH! And, they still had Mini-Wheats!!! I wasn’t sure if they’d have them again, so I went ahead and bought 6 boxes.”

Me: “Awesome! They’re all expired which is why I think they are priced at 7,000 per box ($3.50)! They are so cheap and so good! Soaked in milk you can’t tell they’re expired! I wonder how long they’ll be in stock. Good thinking on getting 6 boxes! We can just store them. Oh, and if they still have them when you go back, feel free to get more!”

Michelle: “Yeah, ok, I will. Hey, remember when we were in the States and we both got sick and ended up spending a boatload on medicine?

Me: “Yeah, why?”

Michelle: “Well, on the way home I stopped in at a duka la dawa (pharmacy) to get an antibiotic to deal with this sinus infection. Guess how much it cost?!

Me: 10,000 shillings ($5.00).

Michelle: No, only 4,000 ($2.00)!!

Me: I can’t believe we just had this conversation! I love that this is our life – being okay with not getting the kind or brand of something we like, stocking up on cereal, and cheap medicine! I’ve got to write a blog about this! No one is going to believe it! Maybe I’ll even post about it as my #TanzaniaTuesday!”

Yep, 6 boxes, and they're even family size!

Celebrating the Risen King in TZ!

Easter was such a great experience for us this year.  We kept traditions and made new ones, visited with friends and family that are in the U.S. and that are here, and got to experience church in Tanzania and at home!

One of our teammates mentioned last year that they spend the hours from 12pm-3pm in quiet and darkness to remember those hours of darkness Jesus hung on the cross.  Megan and I loved making this part of our Easter weekend and found that those hours of reflection helped us to get into the right frame of mind.  Afterwards, we watched The Passion of The Christ, which we've done every Good Friday since deciding to follow Jesus.  It was a great day of remembering the price that was paid.

Saturday we worked hard in the kitchen to prepare some Easter favorites - cheesy potato casserole, baked beans, and fruit salad!  Then that evening we went up to our office to Skype with our awesome nieces and nephews back home to do the resurrection eggs together!  Another sweet tradition we have done for the last 4 years, even with thousands of miles separating us for the past two.  Such great memories made with our favorite kiddos!

Sunday morning we went to our church here - Arusha Vineyard Church.  It was a very memorable service that focused on the power in the fact that He is Risen...He is Risen Indeed!  (And for those of you who don't know, that is a thing.  One person says He is Risen and your response is supposed to be He is Risen Indeed.  Well, Megan and I didn't know that.  In fact, never heard it before.  So when people kept saying He is Risen, we were like, Amen!  Thanks to the sign outside church, we caught on!)

Megan with Flat Stanley at our church here in Tanzania

My favorite part of the service was when we highlighted the global nature of our God and our church.    A person from each nation represented in the congregation stood up and declared that "God is Risen over 'home country'" in their national language, then everyone would respond in English, "He is Risen Indeed!"  IT WAS SO COOL!!  We had people from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria, Canada, America, Mexico, Korea, Philippines, and India!

After church we raced home to get food in the oven and eggs hidden!  Megan and I stuffed and hid 180 plastic easter eggs that our mom sent us in the mail last year.  It was such a blast for the 4 kids on our team and 2 grandchildren of another team member to race around our Center to find the eggs!  Okay, in all honesty, I think it was most fun for Megan and I to hide them all :)  And we hid some so well that an estimated 5 are still MIA.

Sunday evening we came up to the office to access our internet and got to live stream our home church's, WRCC's,  Easter Service!!!  It was so cool!  The first 20 minutes was painful buffering (5 seconds of talking followed by 30 seconds of buffering).  But then we figured out we could rewind and then the rest of the service was flawless!  Coolest part was seeing everyone we know.  For us, our internet usually isn't fast enough for watching anything live, so we need to download sermons, which are usually just audio.  But we got to see our pastor, the worship team, and even the people who gave their lives to Christ!  It was such a great way to end our weekend of celebration!

He is Risen...He is Risen Indeed!!

if home is where the heart is...

If home is where the heart is . . . then I must have a lot of homes!  I became more aware of this fact over the past few months.  As we traveled from place to place in the U.S., visiting with friends and family we love and miss so much, it felt like we left little pieces of our heart everywhere we went.

The paradox is that while in America, we miss our friends and people who have become our family here in Tanzania.  But while here in Tanzania, we miss our friends and family back in America.

Don't get me wrong, life gets busy and quite frankly, being sad isn't an emotion I enjoy having....so I tend to let myself get caught up in the here and now and may not do the best job at communicating how much I miss and love those back home.  (There it is again...that tricky word with so much meaning!)

I love this life and find the most fulfillment in being a missionary in Tanzania right now because I am 100% confident this is exactly where God wants me.  And because I'm right where I'm supposed to be, I am able to experience the fullness of what the Lord has for me.  But it is hard.  It is a heart-wrenching, tear-filled, hollow-feeling sort of experience to say goodbye for 2 years...that's over 100 weeks, over 700 days, over 20,000 waking hours that I'm not physically there to hug you, wrestle you, do airplane with you, color with you, chat in the car with you, play charades with you, watch a movie with you, and simply be with you.

However, I cherish the moments I spent at all my homes while back in the U.S., and I do agree with the idiom that, in fact, home is where the heart is.  And I am privileged to have so many homes, because here is where my heart is:

Pictures of Our Church Planter Training Course

Things have been crazy busy, but amazingly good here in Tanzania!  And trying to keep up with everything God is doing here + blog has been rather challenging :)  So here are some stories through pictures about some different things that have been happening here over these past few months.

Dolls from America

Our group of church planter trainees bring their students
to our Center for the course.  These kids were in for a huge
surprise when two CMF home office visitors brought them dolls!

Each doll was uniquely dressed, had
different hairstyles and facial expressions

Lacey and Ruth Ann brought such joy to our children - they love their dolls!

Children's Teacher Catherine is teaching the children about
health care!  Our lovely patient, Neema, got in an accident, so
Baraka and Brighton are the emergency personnel to
make sure she gets safely to the hosl

 Learning about Health Care

Nurse Julianna, Patient Neema & Doctor Baraka!

Marriage Celebration

After a week of learning about Biblical Marriage and
Family, the couples in our course re-dedicate their
marriage vows during a celebration ceremony!
Some couples 

Our teachers for this week were Lulu and his wife!
Lulu is on our national leadership team

Then everyone's favorite part - feeding each other cake!!

 

Cute Kiddos at Our Center!

Here are some adorable faces of children at our center.  Their parents are in our 3-month church planter training course, all of whom will be going out to plant churches in unreached areas.  Loving the opportunity to hang out with these kiddos!

Holidays

Was this past weekend really Labor Day? Did I just completely miss it? The evidence rings true that it in fact was a holiday weekend with all the Facebook pictures of babies in swimming pools, talk of an extra day off work, and snapshots of delicious food to celebrate the break that Americans took to have some fun in the sun. What is it about living over 8,000 miles away from this that makes us forget to take holidays?!? I feel like over the past year, I have completely missed a few only to realize it after the fact by reading all the posts on Facebook. Memorial Day – yep completely missed that! And I would have missed 4^th of July had we not celebrated together as a team!!

But, the neat thing is to see what kind of holidays they have here in Tanzania. Actually, we just had two that I have to share about. The first was called SABA-SABA. It means the 7^th day of the 7^th month, so July 7^th was a holiday around here. Then, August came and our employee manager informed me that NANE-NANE was coming up and would be a holiday, too. This means the 8^th day of the 8^th month, so again on August 8^th they had another day off. When he told me this, I looked at him in shock. Really? This was a holiday? What for? I thought he was pulling my leg. The best part came when I asked him, “Well, does this mean you’ll also have a holiday on TISA-TISA, meaning the 9^th day of the 9^th month?” He looked at me like I was crazy and laughed telling me of course not, that would just be silly. He was shocked as to why I’d even ask that! Oh, conversations with Tanzanians make me smile so much!

Washing Your Hands - A Message for Your Soul

Weeks ago the committee for our widows project and child sponsorship program decided that we should teach our women and children both physical and spiritual lessons :)  This brought me such joy because the pastors had fallen into a pattern of preaching at the women and children....for hours, and they had agreed as a group that this was a necessary change.  We discussed how Jesus met both physical and spiritual needs in His ministry on Earth and we are called to do the same.

So we started with what some might think are "the basics" but they are SO IMPORTANT!  Our first lesson was this past Saturday and we taught about the importance of washing hands.....and not just with water, which is a common practice, but with soap!  Then the teachers tied in the spiritual lesson about the importance of being cleaned on the inside as well, and the only way we are cleaned on the inside is by the blood of Jesus, which washes those who trust Him with their life.

Megan also helped in a big way by making a suggestion we have been thinking about for a long time (but culturally, we weren't sure the most appropriate way to suggest it).  You see, there are a handful of people who walk with the children to the location of our activity day, but because they aren't "part of the program" they usually just sit there until the lessons are done, eat lunch with us, then leave.  And Megan found a good opportunity to suggest that they too be involved in the lessons, even though they aren't widows in our project, they can still come and learn together with them.  It was especially exciting for me when I was worshipping and praying with the group of adults because there were at least 3 of the women who would normally have waited outside that looked like they had no idea what was going on, in all likelihood they are not believers.  And this might be an opportunity for them to learn about Jesus - not in the traditional way of being preached at, but through learning characteristics of Jesus and how He cares about the whole person - physically and spiritually.

THEN we had LOTS of fun with the kids playing relays with soap!  They had a blast and it was a great tool to reinforce the importance of using soap because the only way to win the game was with the soap!

And then I witnessed one of the most exciting things I've seen here - every single person there (child, widow, guest, and pastor) washed their hands with soap before eating lunch!!  It felt like an amazing breakthrough!

Pastor Luka teaching the children

Neema cutting carrots

Slicing tomatoes with a smile

Neema Christopher chopping onions
only smiles!

Feeding nutritious food to those in our program

Big Kid Relays

Neema running her heart out

Elia is all smiles!

Reminding them about the importance of using soap to wash hands

John washing his hand

Using soap!!

The kids were all smiles!

Elia washing his hands!

Pastor Daniel, who taught the widows,
setting a good example for the adults

Pastor Luka, who taught the children,
setting a good example for them!

And then all the pastors washed theirs!

Megan washing her hands

Megan with our mom's sponsor child, Mary!

Me with our mom's sponsor child, Mary!