Letting Go

Being here in Rwanda has made me think a lot about who I am and what might be my “place” in life – what gifts I have and how and where best to use them – a ‘calling’ if you will. I’m thinking ahead to being back in the US in two months and wondering if I am going to be a math teacher in Chicago like I had always assumed/planned, or teach internationally, or maybe one day I will go live in Africa, for example, for longer than just a month or a year. As the options are endless, the future seems a bit daunting to me. I used to think that after I graduated college I’d have a clear sense of where I wanted to go with my life but now I’m realizing how that might never happen, so I’m letting go of my desire to know where I will be in 1 or 5 or 10 years. Why not just focus on the present and the near future and trust God’s guidance in that?

I’ve been thinking about the future because I’m realizing how little time I have left here. In 7 weeks I will be heading to Bujumbura and a few days later I’ll be on an airplane for Pennsylvania. I’m looking forward to being home to see my friends and family but I have been asking myself if I am ready to leave here. I have come to know and love many people here that will be hard to say goodbye to. Letting go of people in my life is hard – I recently lost my grandmother, and soon I might leave my friends in Rwanda forever. Also I wonder if I have really accomplished much of anything here…which is a hard thought to have. I guess I haven’t drastically influenced the way we teach English at MwanaNshuti, greatly improved our director’s report-writing or organization skills, or given the students all the confidence and skills they will need to live a successful life, but maybe I have made some small steps in these places. I hope so.

Perhaps this experience for me is more about learning to let go of my preconceived notions, plans, and control in my life…and let God and others enter in. That is especially relevant here where I am living and co-teaching in a cultural context much different than my own, where I could easily (and sometimes do) get frustrated about the way things happen.

In the moments where I have let go of accomplishing something big and noticeable, or doing things my own way, in my own time, I am often blessed to see God at work.

---My students trying to speak English on their own is somewhat rare and always brings a smile to my face. During our soccer game they tried to learn how to say and respond to: “You played well.” (“You too.” or “Thank you.”)

---I never know what games or activities my students will enjoy and will help them learn English, but last week I found a winner: BINGO. All the students copied the times into different places on their grids (we were studying telling time), I tried to explain how to play and what a bingo is, and I told them to say “I have bingo!” when they had a bingo. I figured we were ready. I read the first time and soon heard about 7 students saying eagerly, “I have bingo!” with bright smiles on their faces. They had found the time I said on their grid somewhere J. I laughed, congratulated them and kept going. This went on for the first 5 times or so, each time the students were excited to show me they had understood what I said and kept telling me they had “bingo”! It was so cute (and coincidentally showed me who was following and who wasn’t). Eventually I had to re-explain that “bingo” meant having a 5 in a row, and we did eventually have some winners.

--I hoped and prayed after our graduation in March that our training program would help the students be able to earn money or improve their life in some way…and one of my students from last year came back two days last week to use the sewing machines because she has found a few clients who want her to sew clothes for them! Way to go Marceline!