- Two ladies leave for furlough
- Two new ladies arrive to serve as linguists
- Another lady arrives to work with me for two months in SU, and is staying in my home
- A couple get married and leave on honeymoon and won’t be returning to our project
- Seven or eight Tanzanians leave for two months for studies in Kenya
- Two couples return from furlough
Each going is much more than just an item on the team meeting minutes, it’s goodbyes to friends and colleagues (some whom I have know for many years), whether for a short while or permanently, and it’s a change in work responsibilities and team dynamics. Each coming is more than just another name on the pigeon holes, it’s people to be welcomed to a new place and trained and potential for new friendships to be built.
Add to all of this the fact that the market from the centre of town has been demolished and shifted so that I don’t know where to find anything, and I am left feeling as if I have moved house without having packed a single suitcase!
With so many things changing around me, it is hard not to feel a bit unsettled, to feel a little unsure of where I fit in. How do you feel when you move house? Can you imagine how it might feel to stay in the same place, but have everything else around you moving, and on a fairly regular basis? What things give you a sense of stability in the midst of it all? I’d like to hear your thoughts!
Reading the Bible and praying is a source of peace for me in these days. One phrase keeps cropping up as I read through the Psalms which is ‘steadfast love’. ‘Steadfast’ to me means constant, unchanging, faithful… all the things that life here is unable to offer! But that’s what God has for us, a constant, unchanging and faithful love, that will endure through all the changes in life, through all the ups and downs we face, through all the questions and insecurities as well as the joys and happiness.
“Great is your steadfast love towards me” Psalm 86:13
