What does Gretchen do?

Over our four years in Tanzania, I had many people ask me, "So what do you actually do?" The term missionary can be so vague, and while Marc had a very defined role at HOPAC, my role was a bit less concrete. I figured some of you might be wondering the same thing now that we've moved to Rwanda - "What does Gretchen actually DO?" 

First, let me step back to last year in Tanzania and tell you what my time was spent doing there, just so you can get a feel for how different life is for me now! 

Things I was involved in last year in TZ:

* led worship 3 times a week for the primary school chapels

* worked 10-15 hours a week for Karama (www.karamacollection.com) - last school year, this included traveling to Kenya 3 times, Ethiopia 2 times, and Uganda 1 time. 

* was one of four coordinators for the largest bi-annual artisan market in Tanzania 

* led a monthly online health/fitness challenge group called "Commit To Be Fit"

* started a pre-school for staff children at HOPAC - spent several hours 3 days a week there

* partnered with a friend to develop her sewing business 

* attended weekly bible study 

* classroom mom for Isaac's class 

* normal life stuff - groceries, helping with homework, church, writing newsletters, etc 

Things I am involved in now in Rwanda:

* Teach Pre-K part time (Monday-Friday, 8am -1pm)
* work 15 hours a week with Karama 

* Kinyarwanda language lessons 2 hours/week

* Marriage bible study for 7 weeks

* Body and Soul exercise class 

* normal life stuff 

It looks like my list is much smaller now, and to some extent, it is. Marc and I have made a point to take this first semester to focus on transitioning our family and settle into our roles at KICS. First of all, we feel our call is transformational education through teaching at KICS. That is our primary reason for being here and we want to give our roles at KICS 100%.  This has NOT been super easy for us - we've had to hold ourselves back from jumping into areas where we could serve outside of school. In fact, this morning at church they made an announcement about needing extra help with the worship team - the whole time I was looking at Marc with eager eyes. I probably will talk to the guy currently in charge, but will say I need to wait until January to really dive into anything....which will be hard for me! In our first month of being here, we realized how much we had allowed our family time to move to the back burner as we packed up/left TZ, had a whirlwind of a summer in the USA and then arrived in RW and two days later started work. It's been hectic. Our kids need us & we have decided that outside of school, that's our focus for now.

Pre-K

The KICS Pre-K is held in a house a few minutes down the road from the main campus. There is one full time teacher that I work with and two para's who assist us. We have 20 students in our class and they are incredible. There are 7 (I think) different nationalities in the class, but several of the students have barely lived in their passport country. For example, Geneva is American, but of her almost 5 years of life, she's lived less than a year in her passport country. She's not the only student like that - many of our students are TCK's or Third Culture Kids.

My co-teacher and I have split the curriculum so that she teaches Math & Science and I teach Bible and Language Arts. Social Studies gets incorporated across both of our subject areas in a variety of ways. Our team - my co-teacher, our paras and I - work amazingly well together. We are all learning a lot from one another and enjoying our students immensely! 

Karama 

I'm continuing my work with Karama that I've been doing for over 1 1/2 years. I am the product coordinator and work directly with the artisan groups in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia (thus my travels over the last year). Mostly, this means I'm in communication between the artisan groups and our executive directors in the USA through email, whatsapp, viber and sometimes traveling to meet them in person. 

The vision of Karama is:

To live in a world where poverty is overcome through dignified work, so families and communities can thrive.

The mission of Karama is: 

Karama alleviates poverty by restoring dignity through creative, purposeful work for artisans, beginning in Africa.

I entered into this position in February 2016 knowing that the goal was to eventually hire national leaders to do my job. That's been the vision all along, and it's finally happening!! Karama has hired an amazing woman in Ethiopia to take over the work I do there, and is in process of hiring in Kenya. I'll spend the next few months training these new leaders and then will hand off this role completely. That means, around the end of December I will conclude this work with Karama. It's been an honor to work with this social enterprise as long as I have and while it will be sad to hand it off, I am so proud that it's being handed off to national leadership and excited to watch the impact to grow! 

Please visit the website to learn more about it, or to shop! www.karamacollection.com 

Kinyarwanda

Ugh. That's how I feel about learning another new language. Though I am conversational in Kiswahili,  I never became fluent, so that's hanging over my head a bit. And now I'm attempting Kinyarwanda, which I hear is much harder than Kiswahili. Great. I'm starting out with just 2 hours a week and I'm doing it with another TeachBeyond teammate, so it'll be fun to get to know her as well as the culture/language. Our kids are taking Kinyarwanda AND French in school, so they'll certainly surpass me in their language studies. We'll see how this goes. 

Marriage Bible Study

Our church is offering a 7 week marriage course, which we decided to join. It's in our neighborhood each Sunday evening for a few hours. While we are breaking our own rule of not getting involved in too much, we felt like it fit in with focusing on family right now and it is only 7 weeks, so it's got and end date. Our first study is tonight and I'm looking forward to meeting a few other couples in our church. 

Body & Soul 

There is a church about 4 minutes from our house that offers a few fitness classes each week. Due to my work schedule, I can only go Monday evenings and Saturday mornings, but I've been loving the accountability and challenge of these exercise classes! It's been good for me to be intentional about taking care of my mental and physical state and I've enjoyed meeting people outside of the KICS community. 

Normal Life Stuff 

Normal life stuff right now is helping kids with homework, making lunches, baking bread, taking the dog for walks, arranging playdates for our kids to build friendships, trying to find cheese somewhere, church, trying to make the house more our home, lots of coffee, newsletters & communication with supporters, etc. We don't have a car, so going shopping or running errands is a bit more difficult. We either get a taxi, or we check out a car from KICS if it's available. We're still trying to figure out where to buy things, how much things cost, how to get around (hilly/curvy roads EVERYWHERE!) and what to do for fun/relaxation. 

So that's my life in a nutshell. It's full, it's fulfilling, it's new and sometimes overwhelming. Overall though, we're setting in and trying to give ourselves grace as we remember we've been here less than 3 months. While it's still East Africa and some things feel familiar, it's a new country with a difficult history, new language, new school, new friends and new routines. Somedays we miss Tanzania terribly, other days we're ready to take on all the new challenges of cultural adjustment. 

This week, we only have school on Monday. Tuesday & Wednesday we have full days of conferences and then we have Thursday and Friday off. We're REALLY looking forward to the break! 

Thanks for reading along! 

At it again...Nitajaribu kujifunza Kiswahili pamoja familia yangu

One of my lifelong goals has been to be fluent in another language. Easy to write on a bucket list, much harder to accomplish in real life.

Our first year here, actually within our first few weeks here, Marc and I took about 10 hours of Swahili lessons with another couple who had recently moved. We learned the important greetings, learned numbers and some key verbs and sentence structure. It was hard to do during such a big transition and with the small kids, but it felt good to make some quick progress. School then began and Marc lost any free time to dedicate to lanague. Finally in December 2013, I partnered with a few other ladies and began a language and culture program called GPA, or Growth Participator Approach. For eleven months, I spent 3 hours a day, 3 days a week, studying KiSwahili with a few other ladies. After a few months in a group of 6, we paired off into twos. My main partner, Angie, also has a young daughter just a few months older than Geneva, so the two of us were constantly interrupted with requests for juice, TV shows, naps, bathroom breaks, arguments, etc. I'm pretty sure the other two groups (whose kids were all in school) progressed MUCH quicker than we did. It was discouraging at times, as many days we felt like we were taking one step forward and two steps back instead of the other way around.

My partner Angie with our friend and language helper, Lucy a few years ago. 

After about 11 months of language study, our language helper got very busy with a full time job and was unable to continue with us. We took a break for the holiday season and then actually never got started again!

This past year, HOPAC's Kiswahili teacher offered classes for the teachers during the school day. I wiggled my way into that as I am at school three days a week helping with assemblies. It was good, and early on I got moved from the intermediate class to the advanced class, but it was a more traditional style of language learning and I honestly did not practice or retrain most of what we covered this past year.

BUT THIS SUMMER....

The whole family is getting in on lessons! Our kids and three children from another family are going to work together with a language helper to begin learning vocab. The GPA approach,at least phase 1 where the kids will start, includes a lot of physical response and games - I actually really enjoyed it and think our kids will have a lot of fun with it as well! They will begin next week with 2 hours a day for 3 days a week. Marc and I are then going to work with the helper for about 5 hours per week as well.

I'll be sure to post some updates about our progress and maybe some pictures as well!

If you have any interest in the language approach we are using, check it out HERE

LUCY, SWAHILI & SALVATION

Lucy, my Swahili instructor, shared the gospel story for two hours on Christmas day and two people responded to the call of God and gave their lives to Jesus Christ!

Let me tell you this incredible story.

Lucy is a Tanzanian woman who meets with me and two other ladies three mornings a week for three hours. I feel so blessed to work with her as I learn language and culture here in TZ. She is incredibly encouraging, patient and joyful. You cannot help but smile when you are with her.

The three of us wanted to get her a little something for Christmas. She had mentioned her desire to go home for Christmas (to Moshi, a town hours and hours away by bus), but that the cost was too much for both her and her husband to go. So, of course, we decided just giving her some money to make that trip possible was a great idea.

We all chipped in and wrote her thank you notes in a Christmas card, and on our last day of lessons a week or so before Christmas, presented her with the small gift. She was literally jumping up and down with joy! I think we were all a bit teary as we saw her genuine gratitude for what seems a not all that significant of a gift.

This morning we met again after our Christmas break and immediately asked about her trip.

Lucy's father had invited a Muslim family to join them for Christmas, as well as other family members, and desperately wanted Lucy to come and tell the Christmas story as he was apprehensive  and felt ill-equipped to share.

As the family gathered, a woman and her three children were walking by the house and asked boldly if they could come in and have something to eat - they were hungry. Lucy and her family graciously brought them in and fed them. They told the woman that she was welcome to go after eating but was also welcome to stay. She stayed and was able to hear Lucy share the truth about Jesus life, death and resurrection.

God gave this woman the gift of faith, and she believed the words Lucy shared from the Bible! It seems she was not only physically hungry, but spiritually hungry as well.

Lucy's uncle also responded to the message of Jesus Christ and became a believer! She shared that she had been telling him about Jesus for years and years and he always rejected her words and didn't want to hear more. Christmas day, however, the Lord softened his heart.  Four days later he died unexpectedly.

A few others that were present have taken Lucy's number and are curious about Christianity and who Jesus is. She eagerly told them to call or message her with questions and she also wrote out things for her Father, so he might be ready to answer questions as well.

Here we thought we were merely learning about Lucy's world and language, but much bigger work was taking place through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's amazing and humbling to think that a small gift enabled Lucy to go home and share the gospel where LIVES WERE CHANGED FOR ETERNITY! Small things can make a huge difference.

It's also inspiring to see Lucy's obedience and boldness. I wonder if I would welcome in a mom and three kids on Christmas day to my family gathering - I might make a few plates of food or give them some money, but invite them to join us for the day?  Or would I invite a Muslim family  to share in our traditions, food, and fellowship with the hope of sharing about Jesus with them? Holidays typically hold special meaning and involve certain traditions in our families. It's hard when people or situations mess with those plans - and to welcome those 'messy' people and situations into our lives, on CHRISTMAS, is not an easy task. I admire Lucy and her family.

Friends, Lucy is teaching me so much more than just Kiswahili. She embodies compassion, obedience, boldness, passion, and joy. I hope her huge heart and her longing for others to know Jesus rub off on me as much as the correct vocabulary and grammar.

So let's take a moment to say a pray of thanks for Lucy, lift up this mom who accepted Christ on Christmas day, pray for those who have had seeds planted in their hearts and ask God to tune our ears to hear what little things (or big things) we can do that could make a HUGE difference in the Kingdom of God!