A little Realism from Africa

hello friends,

I hope everything is going well at home! I'm excited to be back in California in less than two weeks! My mind is becoming more and more aware that my time here is coming to an end and that i will be home soon, so i am starting to have one foot in Africa and one foot on the plane home. Pray for endurance, perseverance, and patience to finish the race that i started!

This weekend i had a fun adventure. My friend Edward went running one day and came upon a country club that some Westerners opened here in Arusha. He ended up meeting people who bought him food, drove him home, invited him to their houses, and one even leant him her car one weekend! He came back raving about this place, how he sat in the restaraunt for hours and watched football and so on. Needless to say we all wanted to go. So on Saturday Edward, Hannah, Stephanie and I set out to the country club! It ended up being an hour long walk across fields, winding through coffee plantations and climbing over things. But then we came to a clearing and there was a huge manicured grass field, then a huge club at the end! We sat in the restaraunt for four hours and talked and watched tv and ate and ate and drank coffee and juice and soda. it was so nice! (especially nice since our money goes so far in Africa). it was a nice break from serving on the base (;

my students are working on researching their topics this week for the final presentation. i think i am taking on A LOT in teaching them how to do a researched presentation, so pray for me! the project is stuff we learn in third or fourth grade in America so it seemed really easy and doable to me. but the idea of taking notes, using google on the internet, writing down three sources, making an outline, is all brand new to them! and paired with doing it all in English it is especially hard. i think they will learn a lot by the end, but i'm not sure if i will still have any hair or finger nails. when I lived in Heidelberg, Germany i had do a researched presentation on a topic of my choice and it was really hard. i did it on Marlene Deitrich, a German movie star from the 20s that i like, but it was challenging to translate my whole talk into German. and that was an advanced college level course. so i have to keep reminding myself that this stuff is challenging.

I have been told that around the three month mark in a foreign country people start to have a harder time with the culture. when i first came to Tanzania everything was new and exciting and i was able to accept cultural differences more easily because i had fresh coping skills. now my coping skills have been worn down a bit and because i am coming home soon i find myself not trying as hard. i think this is important to share with you all so you know that missionaries are not immune to cultural challenges! being a missionary is not one long spiritual high, it is also coping every day in a different country: the food, the people, the smells, the systems, the ways of thinking. God is fully capable and still works within our weaknesses and short comings, but it is challenging to serve in a different country.

So my message to the future up-and-coming missionaries: being frustrated with a different culture is normal, but what you do with that frustration is up to you. bring it to God and be positive. Don't focus on the negative frustrations. Don't let Satan build a wall in your ministry. have a realistic mindset in going to the new country, that there will be good AND bad things, and that God is bigger than both of them.

this may be more of a message to myself than to you guys, but hopefully it will have some helpful insight into serving in other countries.

be blessed this week!
Christina