Learning More Than I'm Teaching

Update on My Mission

May 3, 2020 My Confirmation

Welp, I’ve lived in Musoma for over a year now (Tanzania for a year and a half). Sometimes it feels like I just moved into my house and sometimes I can’t remember what its like to live anywhere else. That same juxtaposition seems to be in every part of my life. Is that because I am living in a different country or is that because I’m in my mid-twenties? No one knows. I feel like I am super busy and am not doing enough. I feel like I want to go home but I also love it here. So many things in my life are both extremes at the same time- which I suppose just means I am in the  middle- where I am supposed to be. 

When I moved to Tanzania I was 23 years old. My 25th birthday is next week. When I leave Tanzania (if everything goes to plan) I will be 27 (or almost 27, it depends on when I book my flight). I am almost half-way through my service and I think I am beginning to understand my mission here. I came here to serve. I wanted to do my part for the world and I knew that God wanted me here. What I didn’t know, is that there would be far greater impacts in me than in any organization I worked for here. No school, training center, or convent is getting nearly as much from me as I am getting from them. 

When I came, I knew I had something to offer. I could help improve this or that. But things work here just fine. Most people don’t want to change, because there is a very ‘don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’ attitude. They are set in their ways and I’ve come to understand how that is a beautiful (albeit somewhat frustrating, at times) attitude to have. No one sweats the small stuff because ‘we are doing just fine’. I am trying to learn this attitude to hopefully take it back with me. 

Sr. Lucy and I
So grateful to be surrounded by Religious!

But because of this, there is not much change a person can effect. If you have a better way of doing something, you have to show do it very gradually or do it on a small scale so that its comprehendible on why the change is needed. If you say “we should measure our flour so you  know how much we are spending on cookies” you have to be able to back it up with profitable reasons and concrete proof because it is easier not to measure and its been working just fine for the last few months. Its a thought process of ‘if I’m not going to make more money, why would I make more work for myself’ which, honestly, is very intelligent way of thinking. Sometimes I think we are taught our whole lives on how to stay busy and keep working that often, we lose our ability to think critically and stop and say ‘is this step really necessary’? 

Cathedral of Musoma Dioceses. 

It seems to me, losing the ability to think critically is becoming more and more common in schools and in our young people. They are told what to think and when to speak and when they are allowed to go to the bathroom. So many things are so different here, some better some worse but in the end we are all on earth for the same goal- to go to heaven. I think its easy to get caught up in the nitty gritty of ‘proper protocols’ but at the end of the day what really matters is your relationship with God and here I am surrounded by more catholics (and very devote catholics, at that) than I ever have been before- so maybe they need to come to the US and teach us some things. The church in Africa is very young, and with that comes more intense fire, but it is definitely something I hope stays with me forever. 

As I write this, it is the third anniversary of my confirmation and I couldn’t be more grateful for my conversion and the blessing it is to be able to call myself a Catholic. All my life I longed to know where I came from. What is my heritage? How do so many people have the ability to trace their ancestors back so far? I have always loved studying culture and wanted to know mine. But now I do- my culture is Catholic and I think it is the richest culture in the world. There is so much history and tradition and people to look up to. I am so ecstatic to be apart of something that is not only worldwide but in this life as well as the next.  Having the opportunity to grow my faith inside of the Tanzanian culture is even more of a blessing and I am so grateful. 

Please pray for me on the anniversary of my confirmation, May 3rd. (And if you have any topics you would like to see in an upcoming blog post, please let me know!)