Fear

Off to a wedding in Engikaret. We were blessed to be able to attend the first Christian Wedding in that area! It was a huge testimony to the Massai.

Hannah in school in Engikaret

Everyone says that driving at night is not a good idea in Tanzania. People drive too fast, there are a lot of drunk drivers, you can hit wild animals, thieves can create a road block resulting in a lot of really bad things, etc. So, when we left town at 6:30 all of those fears ran through my mind. I haven’t experienced a great deal of fear since being here. I have heard the stories and the warnings of certain things which creates a sense of fear in me but I have not been afraid yet, until we started driving.  All the bad scenarios went through my head. I prayed that I would not worry and would enjoy the drive out to Engikaret.  We stopped a couple more times and when we got on our way it was pretty dark out.  We were in a van with about 8 others including my mom who helped me with the girls.  My kids were getting very hungry because I didn’t know we would be out so long and for the first time did not pack a sandwich for them.  As we were going along the highway I looked out the front window and saw a huge dog in the middle of the road.  Edward, our driver, tried to honk and get it out of the way but it didn’t move so instead of swerving around it and maybe going off the road he hit it head on. It felt as if we hit a huge speed bump going 60.  That started my nerves going a bit as I realized there are probably a lot of other things we could have hit and if we hadn’t been in the van we had we may be on the side of the road with a broken windshield and a non-working vehicle.  As I started to calm down I saw a flashing light ahead.  Edward said “uh oh” and we slowed up and pulled off to the side.  The police stand on the side with flashlights and flash the light at you to pull over.  All I saw was a truck and a man.  I heard the people in the seat behind me say “close the windows, it may not be police” in Swahili.  My heart started racing.  The man walked up the side of the car and I tried to hide Hailey who was on my lap, and myself from being seen by him.  I was so nervous it was someone impersonating a police officer and started praying fervently that we would be safe.   Hailey started asking again for food and I had to put my hand over her mouth to try and keep her quiet.  Fear was in my heart and I didn’t know what to do.  It ended up being an officer that just wanted to warn us to slow down because it is dangerous at night but everything in me was still shaking and holding in the tears that were welling up inside me.  Many people wouldn’t have thought about the worst thing that could happen but for some reason that is where my mind went.  The dirt, the lack of water, how long it takes to get stuff done here, being away from friends and family… all of that is hard but this fear that had gripped me was unmanageable.  As we pulled into the base about 10 minutes later I handed the girls over to nick and ran to the room and cried harder than I have cried in a while.  I placed my fear at Jesus’ feet and wept as I felt Him put His arms around me and hold me.  The fear I had was slowly replaced with peace.  Peace that Jesus would be with us every step of the way.  He would not abandon us.  I knew this didn’t mean that things wouldn’t be hard; that these awful things would never happen to us and we are out of harms way at all times, but I knew he was just asking me to remember that He is with us, walking before, beside, and behind us.  I was able to slowly get up the courage to walk out of the room and face Tanzania again.  I was excited to be back with Nick again in Engikaret but I have to admit I was not excited for the dust, lack of water, and lack of food that there was in Engikaret compared to our comfortable home in Arusha.  I just prayed the Lord would work in my heart and help the girls to be comfortable there and that is exactly what He did the next couple of days.  We woke up the next morning and Hannah wanted to go see what was happening in the school so we went out and joined the preschool.  As we did that Hailey decided to go with Nick to help work outside and she loved just sitting and playing in the dirt.  She was as happy as could be.  Hannah was so excited to be a part of class.  She was incredible.  It was a preschool class for 4 year olds and another slightly more advanced for 5 year olds.  The 4 year olds could draw much better than Hannah, but other than that, she was quickly bored.  So she went to the bigger class where the teacher was teaching English to the Maasai kids.  They would hold a pencil and then say, “this is my pencil.”  Then pass it to the student next to them.  After that, they held some scissors.  The teacher instructed them to say, “this is my scissor.”  When it came around to Hannah, she looked at the Maasai Woman/English Teacher and said in her clear American/non-euro-african accent, “these are my scissors.”  I love that my 3 year old was correcting the English Teacher’s English.  Hannah now can’t wait until she can go to school every day.