Month: June 2014

Transition

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Going into this trip, my biggest fear was getting into the rhythm of Tanzanian life and making friends in the house. When I wasn’t engrossed in watching yet another movie, I spent a good chunk of my 20 hours in the air wondering what it would be like to meet everyone, to ride back from the airport by myself with the programme manager, to try to fit in with a group of people who have already been here for at least a week.

I cannot think of another way to describe my first couple of days in Arusha except to say that the Lord was here and praise Him, He PROVIDES. It wasn’t even 30 seconds after I had stepped past the line for tourist visas to go look for my luggage when a boy about my age turned to me and exclaimed, “Hey! Work the World!” Side note: for those of you who don’t know, Work the World is the organization I’m volunteering with here – check out their website if you have time (www.worktheworld.com), but all you really need to know for now is that they sent me a cool t-shirt to wear on the plane. My sleep-deprived, half-blind self had just made the decision to take out one of my contacts because it was so dried up from my long travel days and my eye refused to put up with it any longer. Somehow, I managed to pull myself together despite my blurry vision as I met the group of 5 girls and guys that were living at the Arusha house too and had just returned from a weekend trip to Zanzibar. My first 5 minutes in the country was met with God’s immediate provision for my biggest prayer and a humble reminder that He is in control.

Despite not having slept for almost my entire second flight, I decided to jump into the action & went out to dinner with the returning group. The 3 boys – Hash, Ishi, and Hamza – were just finishing up their placements and are starting their climb on Kilimanjaro today. They’re all from Manchester, England and are planning on coming back to work in Arusha for a year after they go home to celebrate Ramadan with their families. One of the girls, Jen is from Florida but works with a different program here. The last girl, Linda, is from Ireland (fun fact – she is Miss Tipperary and competes for Miss Ireland 3 days after she gets home) and will be here for two more weeks. The night ended with them showing me videos from their trip to Zanzibar. I won’t give away too much yet, but a visit there is definitely on my calendar!

I have so much I could write about in just my first two days here, but I’ll end this post with one more story about our adventure on Sunday afternoon. The Swahili language teacher invited all of us to his daughter Joann’s “holy communion” party. I was just as confused as you probably are right now too! It’s a Catholic ritual, but none of the Catholics I’ve known have mentioned it. Some of the other girls from England and Ireland said they were very common there… maybe it’s just more popular on this side of the Atlantic. Here, it’s a custom to throw a big party for the child’s first communion when they’re around 10 years old. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is a Jewish bar/bat mitzvah, which I attended quite a few of back in middle school. We were the only wazungu (white people) there, and it was crazy and exhilarating and fascinating. Lots of people, celebrating, dancing, gift giving, and it all ended with a feast. We weren’t expecting it to be that long but we ended up staying for 4 hours. Thankfully we only came to the afternoon part; most of the people had been there since 9 in the morning! The Tanzanians really know how to celebrate.

I went into this trip wondering if I’d be able to make it 5 whole weeks, and already on day 2 I’m wondering why I didn’t try to convince my parents to let me stay longer. There is so much I want to do here and not enough time to do it all. Tomorrow we go into Arusha to explore, and the next day is our hospital orientation. More stories to come!

 

– Allie

It’s AFRICA DAY!

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As a kid, my favorite holiday was Christmas. Before I really understood the spiritual meaning behind it, I loved the immense excitement that surrounded that one day. A whole month dedicated to shopping for gifts, decorating the house and tree, baking Christmas cookies, and going to countless parties and White Elephant gift exchanges and family reunions to celebrate the “most wonderful time of the year”.  The minute the weather started to get colder in the fall, most of my attention was directed toward the anticipation of Christmas. And yet every year that month goes by faster than all the others and before I know it we’re buying champagne (okay.. sparking grape juice) and ringing in the New Year again. 

The best way I can think of to describe today is like Christmas. Since December 2013 when I spent almost my entire winter break convincing my parents to let me go on (and financially support – thanks ‘rents!) this adventure, I have been waiting for this day. I would even argue to say that this anticipation started on June 21st, 2013 when I returned from my first trip to Tanzania last summer. 2 weeks was a perfect amount of time to get my first exposure to all that is Tanzania… but when I sat in the airport waiting to board my flight home and hoped that it would get cancelled more than I desired to be back on home soil, I knew that just 2 weeks wasn’t enough.

Now, I’m sitting at the dining room table of my temporary home (#kiltzlandia) trying to soak up my last moments here and wondering if I’ve gone just a leetle crazy. 5 weeks is no quick trip; by the time I get back a whole month will have passed, the World Cup will be over, and my 10-month-old niece Talitha will be one week away from her first birthday. But just like the Christmas season, I have a feeling this may be one of the fastest 5 weeks of my life. I have a theory that the best & most exciting seasons of life also happen to pass by the fastest. Even though 5 weeks seems like an eternity from where I’m standing now, one of my biggest prayers is that it will go by so slowly. I hope that I will have enough time to soak in as much as I can of the culture, the people, & the adventures that are waiting for me on the other side of the ocean. 

At this very moment my emotions are battling between nervous anticipation and joy-filled excitement. Amidst all of my anxiety and last-minute jitters, my biggest comfort has come from knowing that the Lord is going to be with me on this entire trip. I pray that each day the hope that He gives me will anchor my soul in Him (Hebrews 6:19). 

SO… here we go. 🙂 My most anticipated adventure of the summer, my dream come true, crossin’ my fingers that it’s God’s plan too. Try to excuse that unintentional rhyme. The next time you hear from me, I’ll be in my Tanzanian home! 

 

– Allie

The art of storytelling

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I’m going to be honest, I feel pretty cheesy right now. As much as I love writing and stories, I’ve never been one to really enjoy sharing my own. In my head, it sounds like a great idea. But then I give it a little more of a realistic thought and realize that I actually hate that idea. Starting a blog means having to sit down and try to discern what’s going through my mind – and then hitting a little button that shares it with the world. Not just one person, anyone who cares to take a few seconds to read it (although right now, I’m pretty sure I’m closer to the ‘one person’ mark).

That thought is already starting to give me butterflies – the anxious, sick-to-your-stomach kind, not the cute fluttery kind. My approval-craving mind is creeping towards how to best compose each post, how to balance serious and poignant thoughts with witty comedic relief, and how I will ever convince myself to actually hit the ‘publish’ button. Already I’ve spent way too much time re-reading my own words and wondering if this whole ‘sharing my story’ thing is really going to be worth it.

Unfortunately, God has other plans. This past semester, He has taught me so much about the power of stories. During one short week in Belize, our mission trip’s most frequent conversation starter became ‘so, what’s your story?’ and that simple phrase pushed me farther out of my comfortable little shell than I’ve ever been pushed before. It may not seem like that big of a deal to some people, but sharing my own story brought back memories of past experiences that I wasn’t very excited to remember, much less share with others. God used that week to show me His incredible sovereignty in every single moment of my life and His ability to use my brokenness for His glory. But more importantly, He revealed so much of Himself through other people’s stories – my small group leaders, my closest friends, a random girl I found myself sitting next to on the bus on the way back to the hotel. That week He began to cultivate in me a desire to hear the stories of others and learn how to share my own.

Sounds like a perfect “mission trip lesson”, right? Pretty and nice and all tied up with a bow? Not quite. This idea of sharing stories is a lot easier to talk about than it is to actually put into practice. The conviction that God placed on my heart was brutally attacked by the world & my own sinful heart, both of which quickly pulled out the big guns like ‘desire for approval’, ‘fear of vulnerability’, ‘waste of time’ and countless other lies about the consequences of storytelling. In just a couple short months, I went from revealing the darkest parts of me to complete strangers on a dock floating in the Caribbean Sea to barely being able to honestly answer the simple question of ‘how are you?’ to some of my closest friends. I had allowed those lies to seep into my mind and convince me that not even a sentence about how I was doing that day was worth sharing.

I wish I could say that the Lord has fully revealed His truth amidst these lies and convicted me of my sin and I can now comfortably share my story with the Trader Joe’s clerk as she rings up my groceries, but that’s not true. He has slowly started to work on that walled-in part of me, but sometimes it takes time for the Lord to chisel away deeply rooted fears and mold my heart to resemble His just a little bit more. So yes, I’m still working on answering ‘how are you?’ with a little more depth than ‘I’m good! How are you?’. But where God begins a good work, He promises to bring it to completion (Ephesians 1:6). Not on my own timeline, and not to full completion until I’m standing face-to-face with Him, but in His own perfect timing.

God has given me this past month to rest, spend more time with Him, and start to get used to this idea of sharing more of myself with others. The days have been slow and the rest has been sweet, but in 8 short days He will be throwing me into an adventure that will require more trust and vulnerability than I’m used to. I’ll be spending 5 weeks across the Atlantic learning more about the country I fell in love with last summer, meeting new people, working in new environments, and hopefully going on a lot of adventures. As incredible as that sounds, I know that He has not given me this opportunity just to have a good time and check “travel back to Tanzania” off my summer bucket list. This trip will give me a chance to hear so many new stories, share my own, and most importantly tell people about His. As comfortable as the inside of my leetle shell is, He’s going to be pushing me very far out of it and I hope to fully embrace the challenge. Just the thought of what’s to come fills me with just about every emotion you can imagine.

I hope to use this blog as a way to share my adventures and stories with whoever cares to read about them. Prepare to read about the good days, the bad days, and everything in between. They will definitely not be formal, organized, and have a perfect balance of insight and wit, I can promise you that. Maybe they’ll make you laugh/smile/cry (doubtful – I’m not one for tears), maybe you’ll enjoy them, maybe they will simply serve as a great way to procrastinate from whatever else you should be doing. Regardless of what leads you to them, I hope that each one reveals a little more about me and a lot more about Jesus. I can’t wait to see what God does with this blog (even if it just acts as my own memory keepsake) and the next 5 weeks!

– Allie