Planning my Future... One Headache at a Time! Or, Thoughts for the New Year

1 January 2011  <--Yes, it's been a while since I wrote this... but I wasn't ready to share everything QUITE yet!

If you haven’t gathered this already, I’m a planner.  I was even one of those people in college who had a four-year, color-coded excel sheet printed off on top of my coursework so I knew where I was going, what classes I needed, everything.  The only problem was, every time I tried to make it work, it wouldn’t.  The right classes wouldn’t be offered (turns out for a good reason – God had something else in mind!), or my idea of what I needed for the future (a minor in Spanish for when I go overseas?  Swahili would have been more practical... but I'm pretty sure it wasn't even offered!) just didn’t work out.  And when I had my small (ok, if you ask my mom, probably massive) life crises of trying to figure out what I want to do with my life three semesters in a row, the color-coded chart just kept getting revised.

About the time I got mono for 6 months and had everything crash down on me, I discovered that maybe this pathway wasn’t such a good idea.  But it’s been a long process in “letting go” of planning every little detail of my future, and I’m still pretty great at drawing up a four-year time table and making it all look good – on paper. 

So now, as I hit another transitional point in my life – my official two year commitment at HOPAC is nearly up – I’m tempted to jump back onto the Planning the Future band-wagon again.  And when everyone is asking the inevitable “what’s next” question, it's easy to want to have answers in hand and ready to go.

But I don’t.

So, what DO my thoughts about the future look like?  Well, something like this.

I miss my family and friends.  I want to live close to them and be able to call, come over, hang out, babysit for friend’s kids, all I want.  It's been nice over Christmas to realize just how easy life is (relatively speaking, of course) living in the States.  But the truth is also that God has given me a heart for Africa… especially East Africa.  And while I love being in the States, I’m also feeling “at home” in Tanzania these days, too.

I’m not good at languages.  It’s a downfall.  Or maybe it’s a mind-set, I’m not sure.  But at the same time, I know I really want to learn Swahili.  This, for me, looks like taking some time off teaching to work wholly on working on getting a new language under my belt.

I’ve wanted to teach Missionary Kids for a long time.  And while I thought that maybe this two-year deal was a good start to see what would happen, I’m realizing that my heart is still very much for it.  I’m done at HOPAC after this year, but there is a very real need for teachers in more remote parts of the country where parents are doing translation work in cluster projects – and where the current number of teachers available for plus or minus 8 families totals 1.

So… the plan.  I really don’t know.  I’m heading back to Tanzania in a few days to finish off the school year with some amazing kiddos… and enjoy some more time ministering and being with my friends and others.  Then I’m back to the States, to hopefully see all of you and somehow work towards my Masters… another question that has yet to be solved!  But my hope and prayer after that is to head back to another area of Tanzania, a place called Musoma, about 8 months later.

Map of Tanzania, and an Aerial View of Musoma/Mara Region

I would be the second or third teacher total at this mini-school for kids pre-school through 8th grade.  And I would be enabling, through my teaching, the work of getting nine languages in the "Mara Cluster" region of Tanzania into print, enabling literacy, providing health and information literature to the people in their heart language, and providing them with the means to translate the Bible into the language that speaks best to their hearts.  (If you want to learn more about the work being done in this area, click here for more specific information.)

Some of the kiddos (and a parent-teacher!) at Lake Victoria Learning Center - the mini-school in Musoma... which we went to visit over fall break.

A few scenic views of Musoma - and Lake Victoria.  Too bad you can't go swimming in the lake!!!

So, now you know.  Well, at least you know what I know.  And that’s a lot of up-in-the-air things.  Other passions and hopes for the future are being laid on the altar, with hopes that God will provide opportunities for things like marriage and family sooner rather than later!  But in the meantime, I know my place is to follow hard after God – and if this is what He has for me, then let the adventure begin!