A Church Send-Off

My church prayed over me, blessed me, even commissioned me to return to the States bearing their greetings.

They said goodbye to me and I got a chance to say goodbye to them.

Then they gave me a kanga as a going away gift. One of the fun things about the gift of a kanga is that the givers often dance around you, wrapping you up, like a tamale, in the kanga.

I have felt so blessed by this little church over the past year and was truly glad to have such a joyful and loving farewell.

Less than a Month

With less than a month left in Musoma, the goodbyes are already flowing.

Among several other visits, a few weeks ago I visited Baba Milton and his family one final time. I got to see how much Milton has grown since last I saw him (here is a picture from the first time I saw him Little Milton).

They made some of the best ugali and fish that I've eaten during my time in Tanzania. They even commented on how particularly good that fish was.

They have been a wonderful family to me, very welcoming and loving and I will miss them. (Those are just three of their nine children!)

My Long Lost Daughter

This past weekend I went to visit my day guard at his parents' home. I got to meet his grandmother's older sister during that visit. Immediately upon seeing me her eyes grew wide and she said, "You look just like my mother".  During the entire visit it was a recurring topic of conversation. My nose was just like hers. I was just as white as her. Our cheekbones where the same. Even my arms seemed to be her very arms. What a wonder!

When we took this picture at the end of the visit she commented, "I didn't know that I would get to take a picture with my mother today." I responded, "I didn't know that I would get to take a picture with my daughter today." (She's the woman to the left of me).

The Many Hats of the Linguistics Department

The other day we realized that the members of the linguistics department in Musoma wear many different hats. We wear dictionary hats, orthography hats, and linguistics hats. We also wear coordinator hats, consultant hats and even an EC (branch governance) hat.

In order to fully embody these different roles we needed to know what those hats would look. So, we commissioned Sarah to conceptualize and execute a white-board haberdashery for our reference.

Here was the final result:

Swiss Chocolate and Cheese

There are many many advantages of living in an international setting with people from various cultures and backgrounds.

One of those advantages from this past week was having some visitors from Switzerland come to visit our project. A particular advantage of this visit was that they brought gifts of Swiss chocolate and cheese!

Ah, the sometimes decadent life of a missionary!