Tanzania Adventure in Missions: Sick of Saying Goodbye

I'm going to try and make a quick update. However, if you go by my previous history in writing blogs, short is not exactly in my writing vocabulary. ;)

On Sunday, for our usual prayer service, our group of missionaries and I had a special goodbye party for three groups/families that were to leave this week. One family has now moved back to the states for good. One family is going home of furlough and will be back after a number of months, and one group is moving to DAR to begin work on a ministry there. We all sang worship songs together and a message was given. Then, we shared a meal of Mexican food and talked a lot. It was a great time of celebration of Jesus' sacrifice and how that has allowed them to be here in Tanazania and how God has done so many great works through them. Though we will miss them, we know that they're all in God's hands and that He will continue to do great things in their lives.

The other big news from the week is that I got a very bad case of a cold or the flu on Wednesday I managed to teach most of my classes in the morning, but had to go home in the afternoon and was stuck in bed with a very high fever. I continued to be sick on Thursday and Friday, but I still managed to teach all of my classes, even though I went home early each day because I was so exhausted. I'm doing much better now and am praising God that I brought some cold/flu medications with me from the states. By Saturday, I was feeling much better and even managed to play frisbee with the other missionaries. And, today I'm feeling pretty much back to normal (maybe just a little bit tired).

The students at school are continuing well. Classes V and VI are doing reading units and Class VII is in full swing test preparation mode. I'm really enjoying the reading unit that we're doing in Classes V and VI. I hope that it's not just challenging the kids in English, but in other areas of their lives as well. I started with shorter books like Little Red Riding Hood, Madeline, and Peter Rabbit. All classic stories with easy plots and I wanted a variety of stories that I hoped kids could relate to.

It was hard to choose a longer, chapter book that I thought would be interesting and relatable for the students. Although we have many books, a lot of them are written from such a western mindset that it's hard for the students to relate to them. Of course it's still good exposure for them to read those things, but I wanted to choose a book that we could do a lot with. After much consideration, I chose a book about the Holocaust called Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. I guess it does seem like a strange topic to teach students in Africa, but there are a lot of very relevant aspects. First of all, the book is historical, so it's easy to teach "this is what happened" and give more background and understanding. Also, I thought they could relate to things like power outages and food shortages. And it's not about America. The kids hear, talk about, read about, think about, etc. America so much. Everyone in Tanzania wants to go to America because it's the place where "all your dreams will come true for FREE!" I want the kids to learn some things about other places in the world too!

But, the biggest thing I want them to get out of this, though, are the great lessons that can be learned from what happened as a result of hatred and those which are the results of love in this story. The main character of the story, Annemarie, and her Christian family go out of their way to protect their Jewish friends from the violence of the German soldiers. I want my students to learn from their actions of bravery and courage. I want them to realize that she was only just their age and that they also have some power. Things between Muslims and Christians hang on a thin line sometimes. Even since I have been here there have been multiple incidents of violence between the two groups (none of them in Morogoro, thankfully). Most recently, as in within the past week, there was a bombing of a Catholic church in Arusha. I want my students to consider the things that have happened in the past as a result of hatred so that they can learn from the mistakes of others. I want them to consider how they can try and live in peace with each other and help each other in the future instead of taking part in the violence. I want them to consider Annemarie's actions of love and bravery and strive to be like her if and when things get tough. I want this to be my final challenge before I go.

Here are some pictures of the reading unit!