A Typical Day is . . .???

I thought it might be interesting to try to describe a typical day in my life and then I realized that there is no typical day. Since I arrived in Musoma almost three months ago, practically every day has held something different for me. I expected that most days would be spent at the office working at my desk, and although I have had a few days like that, most days bring something out of the ordinary.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago I was spending every day at a church participating in a workshop with 30-40 Tanzanians. Once that was over my roommate, Hazel, and I decided to have our house painted and so one of us stayed home each day with the painter. Some days I would be at home, some days at the 0ffice. However one day when I was supposed to be at home, a meeting came up suddenly which I had to attend and so I spent a good part of my day much differently than I had anticipated.

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately I don’t foresee my situation changing anytime soon. I begin teaching at a Bible college next week which will bring countless new and unexpected situations. As well more workshops are quickly heading my way and many preparations need to be completed in the meantime. As I am unsure of what all these preparations will entail, I have no idea what the next few weeks will look like.

A typical day in my life consists of the unexpected and though it may sound scary it is actually quite a bit of fun. It keeps me on my toes and reminds me that I need to constantly trust God. And to my surprise I have found that when everything seems to be spinning out of control it has only spun out of my control into the control of the all-powerful creator.

God's Strength in my Weakness

Just over two weeks ago I was nervously anticipating my first workshop and now I can't believe it's over already. I, along with a group of linguists, spent two weeks teaching speakers of eight different langauges how to read and write their mother tongues. As I look back over the last two weeks I can see how God came through and accomplished what I could not have in my weaknesses.

One of the first areas I was concerned about was my limited Swahili. Although I have studied Swahili for four months I still have much to learn. As well it was particularly challenging to incorporate linguistic terms into my lessons, some of which even the workshop participants were not familiar with. However God gave me the words when I needed them and somehow I communicated all the concepts to the people I was working with.

Before the workshop I was also praying about building strong relationships with the people I would work with. I ended up working with three Ikoma speakers and they were fantastic! They worked hard, caught onto new concepts quickly and were lots of fun to work with.

It was exciting to see these Tanzanians learn how to read and write their mother tongue. They have a passion for seeing the Bible translated into their own language and are very dedicated to that end.