Three weeks into language school
We hope you enjoyed our first newsletter from Tanzania last month. We have arrived at language school in Iringa and have been studying Swahili for 3 weeks now. Classes are going well, and we are divided up into classes with about 5 people in each class. We are now able to construct basic sentences, and have been trying to practice on our trips to town. At one of the first classes, Rachel told the class “I like to eat a wife”. What she meant to say is “I like to eat bread”! Part of learning a new language is being able to laugh at all the silly mistakes we make! We still have 13 weeks of Swahili lessons left, so we are looking forward to becoming even more proficient in the language.
On our journey to Iringa we drove through a national park. As we were driving, we saw giraffe, elephants, gazelle, and zebra! The language school is held on a campsite with tents and some wooden cabins. We were fortunate to be put in a nice little cabin (called a banda) so we have a little more room to move around. We have attached pictures of the view from our banda and of the dining banda where we eat our meals. On Wednesdays we host a mid-week service in our banda so we try to squeeze 15 people into one small room. It’s cozy and gives real meaning to the phrase ‘close fellowship’! There are a lot of creatures on the campsite including dogs, snakes, guinea fowl, a hippo (although we haven’t seen him yet!), and a lot of geckos including one that lives in our cabin. We decided that since it appears he is here to stay and he does a great job eating mosquitoes, we would name him so we call him Bartholomew (we call him Bart for short).
We are very thankful for the support and encouragement we have felt from you all. We have had many e-mails of encouragement. For those interested in sending us letters or packages, we have put some helpful guidelines on how to do this on our website here. We have also made some suggestions on the sort things you can send. We are also hoping to post some pictures on our website soon.
Please give thanks for:
- Safe travels to language school as this was our first road trip in Tanzania
- That we have both just recovered from bouts of illness and are now almost fully fit again
- That we are enjoying our studies and made good friendships with our colleagues
Please would you pray for:
- That we would remain be healthy so that we don’t miss any classes
- That our spiritual lives would continue to be strong
- That our relationships with our colleagues would continue to strengthen and that our team will remain unified
- That we would grasp the language quickly and remember what we have studied
We appreciate you all, and would love to hear how you are doing!
