Maybe Tomorrow (in a world where tomorrow never comes…)

Dear Patient Readership,

For a fresh, efficiency spoiled Westerner transplanted to Africa, there is a multitude of great character lessons that have opportunity to root and grow and deeply flourish that were mere shoots in American soil. You want to grow and be stretched to the max in patience, simplicity, flexibility, selflessness, softness of spirit, openness, humbleness, trust, thankfulness? You want a shoot in the arm of all the lessons in once experience? Well my friends all are available in one super dose by transplanting your life to East Coast Africa!

In this week’s chronicles we will highlight a recent favorite of character lessons in my life: patience. Its claim to favorite originates only its status of daily application in my current life circumstances. The past couple weeks have been an excellent test of my patience level in this new world of never-ending car issues. The combination of heat, rain, and back mud roads here does a number on cars, and mine has been the most recent casualty. This is the conversation I have had with my mechanic every single day for the past 25 days:

Me: Hello Ekard, what’s the status today on the repairs?

Mechanic: Well, we’ve had some complications. I need to get X part, talk to X person, ect.

Me: When do you think it might be done?

Mechanic: Labda kesho. (Maybe tomorrow)

...Tomorrow arrives and the exact conversation is repeated. For 25 days…not that I’m counting or anything. Oh what fun. It’s the “labda kesho” phrase that kills me…false hope everyday! (That’s very cultural – giving someone bad news is the last thing you want to do here. It’s considered better to tell people what they want to hear instead of the truth…) And thus I’ve entered into a new phase of waiting in patience: waiting for rides from people, waiting for daladalas, waiting for good news about the car. Circumstances such as these provide an such a unwanted comprehensive test of where my patience level is, and it’s actually been very cool to see I am a much more patient person that I was even a few months ago...God is doing a good work in me. As life rolls on here I will have many more chances to see how much I’ve grown in this area I’m sure!...lots of waiting involved in this stage of my life.

Some things I am waiting patiently for: (while still staining and working with eagerness for them to come:)

- To be with transport again
- To speak Swahili as fast and comfortably as I speak English (one day, one da
- To see and be a part of sustainable, Spirit led community transformation in
Tanzania
- To have deep friendships in Tanzania
- To see the cool ways God is going to use us (the team I’m working with) in
Kingdom stuff here
- To hang out with my family
- For Dan to finish the first season of Prisonbreak and pass it off to me
- To have the feeling of joy and thrill that occurs when you’re sitting on a plane
as it takes off and the great winds of motion bringing awareness off all that’s
behind you and the incredible possibility of what lies ahead (this one was for
you Lucian!)

Oh no I’m going to stop now….I’m becoming one of those “list” bloggers. For those of you who missed the Blogging List Boat, there are loads of people who have posted their lists online for others to peruse. I’m pretty sure only other list-writers would find any sort of enjoyment out of being list-readers…Not that I’ve read them of anything...:-)...well, only a few times. I'll leave you to explore and discover them for yourselves...

Love from Dar, Grace

P.S. Unforeseen side effect of rainy season: Mold. Creeping into food, walls, furniture, clothes… More fun times with the rainy season to come!