Five months ago I sat in the London Heathrow airport during a layover on my way to Tanzania. After reading a book VSI asked us to read about their philosophy, I journaled, “I get what they’re saying about bonding and being incarnational, being a servant etc. I think it’s great and right, I’m just not sure I’m up for it. I don’t want to be condescending and ethnocentric, I just don’ know if I love these [Tanzanian] people enough to make all of these sacrifices. Am I crazy to be doing this?”

Today I sit here marking tests, beaming at the thought of my students. I didn’t know I could love these kids so much; I didn’t know I could be so proud of them. Granted, yesterday I was ready to pull my hair out in frustration with some of them, yet I can’t help but love them! Ayoub, one of my form 1 English students just came to visit me during his 10-minute break. He brought with him a beautiful picture he had drawn of a bouquet of roses above which he wrote, “Special for Miss Jennifer. Your a good teacher for my self. I have no gift to give you. I think never ever I don’t forget you.” I can think of very few gifts more precious to me right now than this.

It seems that anything worth doing is filled with its fair share of trials. So many times over the past months I’ve journaled stuff like, “Okay, I’m done. I’m ready to go home now.” (Truth be told, my language was often a bit more colorful than that!) As a friend who is teaching in a challenging context in the U.S. put it, “I fantasized about quitting more times than I care to admit.” But here I am, my time in Tanzania coming to a close, and I’m so glad I didn’t give up too soon! It is beyond me how God weaves all of our challenges, shortcomings, and failures together with the joys and successes into a beautiful mosaic which reflects His glory, I’m just glad he does!

It’s funny the things you come to appreciate in Africa. I’ve had, for some time, a Derick Webb podcasts saved on my computer. I never made time to listen to them in the States. But here in Africa, where church is in Swahili, I’ve found myself treating these podcasts as sermons. As my time in Tanzania comes to a close, Webb’s words on seasons of life really resonate in my heart and help me to put my time here in Tanzania into perspective:

“I think the Lord, just as He gives daily bread, I think He gives us new vision and He gives us new eyes to see new things and He puts us in a new place with new opportunities and new resources and if He never gave us anything new, than our dependence on him would certainly be less because we’d still be depending on that initial vision, that initial provision, that initial…kind of manna that was only really intended to get us from “A”  to “B”. And so I don’t feel like I have exactly the same vision that I did when I started, but it did get me to where I am now. And I am, at best, at any moment, just chasing after what I believe to be whatever the Lord has for me to be doing and just honestly trying to trust my instincts…
While it is good to have big ideas and it is good to chase after them and to see them come to light, maybe those things [ideas] are part of a season for us and that that might bring us to a new place to see a new idea and to go a different direction…our life is made up of seasons and those are things that we can look forward to.”