BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION IN TANZANIA

What an amazing birthday. I can say it had some firsts involved in it. First of it was my first birthday in Tanzania. I did have to work, but the students made sure that they said "happy birthday" to me every time they saw me. Ali (one of my housemates) and the 4th graders also threw a party for me, before I had them for P.E. class. They had frozen juices, brownies, and popcorn.

Then another first happened in the evening. My housemates and a few other friends came over to enjoy dinner and some games. For the first time ever I had a personal chef come in and cook my birthday dinner. It was amazing. He came into our house and prepared and cooked everything. He made my new favorite food here, which is chips mayai. It is kind of like a french fry omelette. We also had some cabbage and other side dishes. The night was topped off with some cake and ice cream.

Overall I had a great birthday! Thank you to all those that were involved in it :) I am blessed to have great friends here to celebrate with and many friends back home who sent birthday wishes my way :)

THIS IS AFRICA !

Saturday I decided that I needed some time away from home to try to get my newsletter typed up. I decided to go to Wamama Kahawa,a coffee shop, which is about a 25 minute walk from my house. It was a very nice day and I greatly enjoyed my time there. On my way back as I was walking and it hit me... I LIVE IN AFRICA. Yes, you would think by now I would know that, but I still get those moments that it really hits me. So Saturday as I was walking I had one of those moments. I am walking down a dirt road, with big and little houses on both sides. Some of those that I call houses really are more like little mud shacks. There are little stores along the way where if I wanted to I could buy fruits, vegetables, candy, material, or assortment of many other things. I also could stop to eat or get my hair cut. Also as I was walking I literally laughed out loud at all the different sounds I was hearing. There were cows mooing, a prayer coming from a Mosque loud speaker, and some loud music playing that was coming from inside a house. Oh yeah and just at that moment a chicken crossed over the street in front of me. If anyone saw me at that moment they probably wondered why there was a big smile across my face. Here a few pictures that were not taken on that street that I was walking on Saturday, but give you an idea of the stores alongside the road. Also the pictures include some of the foods that you could buy at the restaurants alongside the road. So yes, I do live in AFRICA and these are some of the things that make me smile!

WHERE IS "HOME"?

Where is "Home"?
This is a question that has been buzzing around in my mind recently. I believe we all have a longing for "home" in us, sometimes when we are even at the place that we have called home for years. Why is this?

I recently read a book The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. The book is about the parable of the lost son. "In Jesus's parable the younger brother goes off into a distant country expecting a better life but is disappointed. He begins to long for home, remembering the food in his father's house. So do we all. "Home" exerices a powerful influence over human life. Many of us have fond memories of times, people, and places, where we felt we were truly home. However, if we ever have opportunity to get back to the places we remember so fondly, we are usually disappointed. Home, then is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perphaps find, our true selves."

A couple of weeks ago I went on a trip with the 10th graders for Service Emphasis week. We were gone for about 6 days and although I greatly enjoyed serving with them and getting to know each one of them better, by the end I was tired and ready to go "home". I think it may have been the first time in my mind that I really felt like I was going "home" since living here in Tanzania. I must admit it was mostly for the comforts that I experience at my house here in Tanzania; an air conditioner in my room (that works when there is electricity), a warm shower (again when there is electricity), and a quiet bedroom so that I could sleep. I was excited though to really truly have the feeling that I was going "home".

It is amazing how things can so quickly change in our minds though. After being "home" for a day, I had vistor's come from "home". Wait a minute ! Is this home, is that home, or is it neither? When I lived in Honduras we use to say "home" and "home, home" to distinguish between the place we were living and the place we just came from. I must admit as I have been thinking about this the past few days it has thrown my mind into a bit of a spin. It has especially been interesting for me to prcoss through as I think about the place I just came from. How often is a "home" a house you lived in? Well lets see the house I lived in, in Allentown, can no longer really be "home" because Kristin and Hugo are now married and living there. Oh yeah! and the house I grew up in can no longer be "home" because my parents moved this past summer. I think I may have slept in the new house a total of three nights. Does that mean I am "homeless" when I go "home" this summer? Am I really going "home"?

I think Timothy Keller explains my feelings well in his book. "There seems to be a sense, then, in which we are all like the younger brother. We are all exiles, always longing for home. We are always traveling never arriving. The houses and families we actually inhabit are only inns along the way, but they aren't home. Home continues to evade us. In the beginning of the book of Genesis we learn the reason why all people feel like exiles, like we aren't really home. We are told there that we were created to live in the garden of God. That was the world we were built for, a place in which there was no parting from love, no decay, no disease. It was all these things because it was life before the face of God, in his preence. There we were to adore and serve his infinite majesty, and to know, enjoy, and reflect his infinite beauty. That was our orignal home, the true country we were made for. "

I know on this side of earth I will always have a longing for "home", because I will not really be "home" until that day when I am called to my true HOME. I am so thankful that I have a Savior that died for all of my sins, and rose again so that one day I will be able to live with Him forever and there will be no more death, pain, crying, or grief.

Revelation 21:1-4

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished. And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: "Now God's home is with human beings! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. THe old things have disappeared."

WHAT A WEEK !

As I sit down to rest a bit on this Sunday evening to think about what to blog about I am realizing this has been quite the week. I could say it has been one very difficult week, but that would mostly define the end of the week and not give the whole picture. The dilemma is this blog could become a book if I write about everything, but if I write about only one thing it doesn't give the full picture of my week. The goal will be to give you little glimpses into this week.
First of all the past few weeks my legs have been starting to bother me more and more. They started to just bother me a little, when I was running, but the last week or so they have progressed to bothering me more and more. I have been experiencing a lot of tightness in my legs and sharp pains in my right leg. I realized that I needed to either stop running altogether or start doing more walking with my running (which I am not a big fan of walking). For about two weeks now I have been running for about 20 minutes and then walking for 30 minutes or so. I have found this time to be an awesome time of praying for others and just enjoying God's creation. Well without going into to much detail with it really felt this past week that it was just a type of spiritual attack against me, because running here has been such an outlet for me. I was talking about it with a friend and said funny how I am able to experience God even in a closer way now that I am walking and able to focus more on Him, guess the devil didn't win that battle. I walked home from school that night and didn't have a lot of time before it was dark and was thinking man it would really be nice to just run tonight and not have pain. Well I was blessed to start running that night and realize that my legs felt amazing. I was able to run longer than I had in awhile. As I was out running I ran up on one of my housemates, and to make a long story short we were talking later about the whole story, and she said cool thing is as you ran up behind me I was praying that your legs would feel better to be able to run :) Love how God so clearly shows up in things like this. No, my legs are not completely better, but I am continuing to love spending time with God as I walk and do some running.
The next interesting part of my week was traveling to Zanzibar for a day as a part of my job. I am sure not many people can say they get to travel to an island for a day as a part of their job. The secondary principal, sports coordinator, and myself left at 5:15 a.m. to travel downtown to catch a ferry on Friday (of course we got some breakfast first). We took the 7:00 a.m. ferry over and got there around 9:00 a.m. We then traveled a little outside of town to visit a small international school. The purpose of the trip was to meet with the principal and discuss some ways our school might be able to do some sports with and against the school. The principal there really wants to try to give his kids some more opportunities since it is such a small school. It was fun seeing a different school in action and coming up with some ideas of what we could do. We then traveled back to the ferry and left on the 12:30 p.m. ferry (which left at 1:00). We got back to Dar around 3:15 p.m. and then had to fight the evening traffic back to school. We got back around 5:15 p.m. I was super exhausted and wouldn't suggest making a day trip to Zanzibar something on your list of things to do, but it was worth it to make some contacts with the school.
Then yesterday more fun was planned, but at about noon yesterday I decided that two full days of activities for my weekend is too much for me here. I was down right exhausted, between not getting a lot of sleep and being in the sun I was done. At any rate I took a trip to downtown Dar with a group of teachers from school. It was great, because I got to see some of the people that I worked with two summers ago when I came to Dar. We talked with the group that runs Youth In Dar and they took us around to some temples downtown after talking about what they do here in Dar. We then had Indian food for lunch and did some shopping for Indian clothing. It was a little weird to be around some of the places I was before, but being there this time as a person who lives here. At some point yesterday, not really sure when I unfortunately lost my phone, which meant that the day that I had planned to relax and recover from Friday and Saturday was going to have to become a day that I looked for a new phone. After much frustration with myself over losing the phone, feeling lost without a phone (not sure how we ever made it without cell phones :), and overall just feeling down, I was able to get a phone today, which is a praise!
So that was my week! I am praying that I somehow overnight feel rejuvenated and ready to go, because I am feeling worn out and a bit beaten down tonight.

Life Lessons through Basketball

Basketball has been a part of my life for a very long time and through the years I have learned some very valuable lessons through the game of basketball. I always thought that I would be a basketball player, but I never dreamed of how God could use my knowledge of basketball in so many ways and to teach me so many different lessons(I will not share all of those now because it would get to long). The past six years I spent hours and hours coaching basketball, and by last year I was honestly just getting to the point of being burned out. I started to lose sight of my love of the game and sharing that love with the basketball players. As I began to look at coming to Tanzania part of me was ready to have a break from basketball all together, but I have come to realize that God really has planted that love deep inside of me and He will continue to find ways for me to use that to glorify Him.

First of all I have been contemplating the past few weeks why it is always after the fact that we realize how much we really loved doing something. I have been greatly missing the girls basketball team back home and overall just the competiveness of coaching. I am trying to take that lesson into account now and really just "be here now", and enjoy every aspect of my life here realizing that there will come a day that I will miss what I have here.

Secondly these past few weeks I have had many opportunities to teach the game of basketball to kids who are soaking it up. It has made me realize again how much I love it. At the Sala Sala kids club the past few weeks I have been teaching the girls the fundamentals of basketball. Two weeks ago we were teaching them how to dribble and we happened to have enough basketballs that they all got to have their own. It was so amazing and humbling to see their faces light up as they each were handed a ball to use during the club. As I talked about dribbling and it was translated into Swahili, they were taking it all in. We then gave them the opportunity to practice dribbling on their own. It was so fun to see them try exactly the way I showed them and get huge smiles across their faces as they began to improve their dribbling skills. This past week we worked on lay-ups. This was a much more difficult task for them, but it was so fun to break them up into groups and allow each one of them to try. What a joy to see them all jumping up and down and clapping each time one of the girls made a lay-up, even if it wasn't great form. It has brought me great joy each week to teach these girls basketball. I love that God is bringing my love of basketball back again, and that He is giving me ways to use it to bring to glory to Him.

Finally, after much prayer and thought I have decided to coach the U18 girls basketball team. I wasn't sure about this because coaching here is going to be way different than coaching in the States (that is a whole different blog), but I am glad that I made the decision to do it. We had a "try-out" practice this Thursday and the U18 and U15 girls practiced together. I walked away feeling like I was back in my element. I absolutely loved it. I am excited to get to know the older girls a little better and to be able to teach them more about the game of basketball and how much it can tie into this "game" of life. I am also praying that it will be an avenue for me to show Christ's love to girls on the team.

This house is full of surprises ......

I am not exactly sure where time is going, but it is already January 15th and one of my New Years resolutions was to post on my blog once a week. I guess I am a little slow on starting that up.

My top excitement for this week was finding a new creature in our house. One night a few of us were out in the kitchen starting to get dinner ready, when Ali came running out of her room yelling....AHHHH....AHHHH....THERE IS A SNAKE in my room. All of us looked at her a bit funny, but decided we better go check it out. We all walk in her room and sure enough there is about a 3ft long snake, but thankfully it was fairly skinny. I am not a big fan of snakes and had no idea how we were going to go about getting the snake out of our house. We decided to call on our trusty Masai guards, who I think are getting use to our calls for help for all of our lovely creatures. Three of them come into our house and back into Ali's bedroom, probably not really sure what they were getting themselves into. I am pretty sure that they were not a fan of the snake either once they saw it, because they all just kind of looked at it. One of them happened to have a stick in his hand and he decided to start beating the snake to death with the stick. It was quite the site as all of us girls stood there and watched. After he was done you could tell they really didn't want to touch it, so they tried to pick it up with the stick. It wasn't working, so we gave them a plastic bag to carry it out in. So once again our trusty guards saved us, not from big bad scary people, but from another lovely creature.

It wa for sur the most exciting part of my week. I also had Thursday off this week for Zanzibar Revolution Day. It has been nice slowly working my way back into school. This will be our first full week back. On my day off I took time to read and relax. It was great. I also went to my new favorite place to hang-out. There is a coffee shop about a 20 minute walk away from my house that is amazing. The food is good and it is just a nice place to sit and read or catch up on emails. I don't get there often, but I think I might have to start making it a once a month Saturday morning thing :)

The Never Ending Week.....THURSDAYS

Wow so where does one start when they haven't posted to their blog in over a month. I figured I might as well finish with what I started and explain my other days of the week. I really need to get better at this blog thing. There is so much that has happened since October 27th, but I think I may just have to do a few short blogs to catch you all up on things.

Thursdays

The end of the weeks start to get a little slower for me as far as classes go. This is a good thing for this time of the year. I find that by the end of the week I am exhausted from being out in the sun so much. I start my day off like any other day in the 6th grade homeroom. They are currently trying to plan their Christmas party that will be on Friday. We told them they are completely in charge of planning it, so we shall see what they end up doing.

I then spend about an hour and a half planning for the next week. I have 9th grade from 9:15 - 10:40. This was not a big deal at the beginning of the year, but now that it is getting to be so hot I have had to get a little more creative with the double period. The last few weeks we have been doing some Taebo in the music room. Most of the kids have actually enjoyed it and I think it is a great option for here in Dar in the middle of the summer.

I then get to jump to the primary end of physical education. I have Kindergarten from 11:15 till 12:00 and 1st grade is from 12:30 till 1:15. At first I wasn't so sure about teaching these young kids, but they have grown on me. There is just something about doing the hokey pokey and the chicken dance with these students that has made me love them. I also enjoy being able to teach them to do the basic things like skipping, gallopping, and jumping and landing. The smile on their faces when they are able to do something that they were not able to do before makes it all worth it.

By the time I clean up from teaching those classes, I usually have about 30 minutes till the end of the day. I usually try to finish up my lessons for the next week during this time or catch up on the grades I didn't get finished before. On Thursdays right after school I have about an hour just to hang out and make some use of the internet. I then meet with two other teachers to help plan Sala Sala kids club that I help with on Mondays after school.

After that I usually don't have anything that is scheduled each Thursday night. There are some Thursdays that I will go out to eat, but for the most part by Thursday night I am exhausted.

So that is my Thursday :)