Need For Grace

Well I’m at TOA. Language school is over and I spent the weekend and today at the orphanage.

Its official. I am in way over my head. That sounded so romantic when I said it in Long Beach, now its more daunting than ever.

I prepared to come here, but there was only so much that I could do stateside. I was assuming that once my foot touched the tarmac at Kilimanjaro International, all of a sudden all of these things would just come to mind and I’d know exactly what the ESL program would look like and the preschool class and the bookkeeping and everything. Well, Day 1 is in the books and I’m still like “huh?”

When I was a senior in high school, I took over as the PRHS website editor after the Christmas break. This was a position that had never been held by a student, but my teacher was being deployed to Iraq and he asked me to be in charge of posting because of my riveting journalism starting the “Bearcat Spotlight.” I got back from break and felt pretty legit, I sat in the teachers chair in the front of the class while all the other students were at their computers. Yeah, I was the man, pretty sure of myself. I thought I was cool, because I could put up pictures of Tobey skating and pass them as “extra curricular activity” posts. Well, my first day on the job in just trying to update the website, I managed to erase the homepage and left nothing but the template. I scrambled and felt pretty dumb. I managed to get up a note before the end of the period saying that the website was “currently down,” but I had managed to screw everything up on Day 1. My prayer is that that is not the case here.

I’m being dramatic, I apologize. I feel like the Lord has prepared me for this. No, I can say this with confidence… the Lord has prepared me for this. But in all my prior experience in education and working with kids, its been like similar but not this. Yeah, I’ve worked at a couple preschools, but I’ve never run one, much less in a foreign country. Yeah, I spent four years supervising tutoring, but I’ve never implemented ESL programs, much less in a foreign country. Yeah, I’ve got a degree in education, but I’ve never been responsible for 26 kids educational progress, much less in a foreign country. Yeah, I’ve been responsible with my personal finances, but doing payroll and bookkeeping for 26 TOA employees…hoo.

It easily adds to frustration in other areas, especially technology. I had all these dreams of how easy contact with the states will be once I’m here. Skype like crazy, Facebook up the wazoo and yada yada yada. I had the sweetest video to post on YouTube of me and the kids dancing in worship (it was so sweet!), but I can’t get the thing to load up and I can’t edit the videos from my camera on my computer because of a difference in files. Also I don’t know anything about networking, so I haven’t been able to get my laptop online at TOA so no Skype and no Facebook videos. I’m 23, this is my generation, I’m supposed to know everything about computers! Living with Josh and Cody for three years you’d think some of this stuff would have rubbed off. Nope.

Lydia is the most gracious program director that I could ask for. She is kind enough to walk in this with me and like me, she doesn’t know what to do exactly. To me, she’s the picture of strength and seems to have a grip on things. With me she told me that she’ll only give me what I can handle and if I say “tosha” she won’t give me any more. The problem is I don’t know how much I can handle, because this is all so new.

There are a couple things that I can fall back on. The Lord spoke a very simple truth to me last month as I was lying awake in bed at my parents’ house. I was worried about whether or not these programs for the kids will even be effective and if the kids would progress. He told me “the kids are already progressing.” Sam and Maggie were among the top students after finishing the Standard 1, Sifa was able to skip a grade to go into Form 1, Jerry is able to receive the special needs he needs at school, so is Awadhi (but that brings about its own difficulties at home). The kids are progressing. Hopefully anything that I do will just add to that.

The only thing that I can do is be faithful. That’s pretty much all we can ever do. I don’t claim to be God’s gift to education or fathering. I’m a 23 year old, inexperienced man without my credentials or too much in-class experience. But what I can do is be faithful. In my work, I can do it unto the Lord, I can be faithful. That’s where I gotta hang my hat and trust that His grace in all these things will be enough.

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The Rundown: Language school was a good experience and I learned a lot. It is quite practical Swahili and I look forward to using it. Thursday night, we had a end of the course party and a New Zealand friend Tom and I played a bunch of pop songs on the guitar. It was fun. I’m so glad to be at TOA. This weekend has been good. Saturday, I got a fridge to keep my chapati frozen and peanut butter cold. I find that my staple in Tanzania switches from peanut butter and jelly to peanut butter and bananas, of which I have been throwing back like crazy the last couple days. After that, I was getting settled into my office. (Pictures of everything will be coming once I’m finished settling in). I’ll be honest, it feels pretty legit to have my own office. Sunday, we did an all worship service at ICC and my hands were raw from drumming at the end. Sunday afternoon, I hung out at TOA with the kids and played basketball with Ryan, Noe and some others at ISM at night. Monday was some intro with bookkeeping and education stuff at TOA and Noe and I played a little indoor soccer at ISM in the evening. He, Amanda and the kids are moving back to the states soon and they found a buyer for the house. He said that the new buyers are cool with me living in the back house though. The heat and the mosquitoes suck. Awadhi is at a boarding school Monday through Friday. I’m glad that he is able to learn sign language and advance his education. It hasn’t really hit me yet though that I’ll see all the kids everyday, except for him. He is such an outgoing and loving kid, his teachers said that he loved his first couple days last week and our staff said upon dropping him off that he was energetic in making new friends and fitting in. He’s such a great kid. Everything else is good. Please do pray for my programs and that the Lord would use me and his grace would abound. Pray that we’re able to fix the technical stuff and get my laptop online. Pray for help with the electric company, they are saying that we owe them over a million shillings or something crazy when we don’t owe them anything. Also, Rita (HWCM Director) was supposed to becoming out this month, but its not looking like we can afford it. Pray that she only not come if the Lord says “no” if its because of money, then pray that He opens that up and soon, because she would have already bought the tickets. Thanks for your prayers family. Check Facebook for some pictures that I put up recently of me and the kids.