Greetings from Tanzania!

It has been a couple months since my last update and so much has happened in that short amount of time. October was a fairly quiet month, although I did get to attend an AIM conference and see other AIM missionaries from around Tanzania. It was very refreshing and encouraging to see and talk with them all.

 November has been the truly busy and exciting month. We started off the month with HOPAC’s annual International Day where we celebrate all the different nations representing our school. This year I believe we reached up to 40 nations represented at HOPAC! Again this year my students were able to sing for the entire school community “The Countries of Africa” song. They did so great!

My class and I at International Day! My roommate and I representing AMERICA!

I also got to celebrate my second birthday here in Tanzania! I had a great time; my students and their parents threw me a party and I got to hang out with my roommates and other teacher friends.

Blowing out my birthday candles  Celebrating that evening with my roommates!

Then later that week my students got to perform their first assembly of the year for the other primary students. They did a great job, but we ran into MANY glitches because of power/electricity issues. Praise God though, the wonderful message of God’s AMAZING character traits rang loud and clear, especially as my students belted out the song “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin.

 My student singing “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin

Finally I wrapped up November with a wonderfully diverse Thanksgiving Celebration held at our house! And a fun filled field trip to the sea shore to go exploring in the tide pools.

Praise Reports:

1. Things are going well with my students who are learning English and with my student who has Dyspraxia. Please do continue to pray for them though as sometimes they still struggle and are behind the others.

2. Praise God for my Tanzanian friend Neema who has started up her own business now and we continue to hold a Bible study together once a week!

 3. Praise God that two of our teachers who were in a recent car accident did not suffer from any permanent injuries and are healing very quickly!

 Prayer Requests:

 1. Please continue to pray for direction about decisions for next school year.

2. Please pray for extra endurance and against homesickness as the Christmas Holidays quickly approach and with the hot season.

 3. Please pray for one of our school’s teachers whose 4 month old baby is fight for his life right now in a hospital in Nairobi. He is improving some but still needs lots of prayer!

 Have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Here is a short update for all of you to let you know about my language school experience.  I was in Arusha, Tanzania for three weeks, which is up north near the Kenyan border, and I truly had an amazing time!  It was quite intensive with classes running six hours a day, 5 days a week, and with usually about at least an hour of homework each day.  Thank goodness there were enough breaks in-between that my brain did not explode!  In my class there were eight of us total, all from various parts of the world.  They split our class into two groups of four depending on our previous Swahili ability.  My goal in this intermediate course was to gain a lot of grammar knowledge and also to gain more confidence in speaking and listening.  It is a very different thing to do worksheets based on the grammar verses speaking it to someone.   I do feel I met my goals for the most part and I find already that conversing is a bit easier.  I have come to realize though this takes A LOT of practice, and I still have a ton of vocabulary that I need to gain.  Thank you all so much for your prayers during this time, it truly was productive and enjoyable.

            I am all moved into my new house, but it is quiet around here as I am waiting for my roommates to return from their visit home to America.  Some of the new teachers have begun arriving.  It has been fun meeting them, and I look forward to getting to know them more.  We actually have quite a lot of new teachers coming in: in the primary alone for K-5, there is only me and one other teacher returning from last year.  The school year begins August 22 and teacher training will begin the week of the 15^th.  Please pray for me as I prepare my classroom and lessons for the upcoming school year.  Also pray for good connections with my students, wisdom, and an abundance of our Father’s love for these little ones. 

God bless you all; please also do continue to update me on your lives as I love hearing from you!

 Greetings from Tanzania!  The school has been under way for about a week and a half now and I thought it would be good to update you all on how it is going and how you can begin praying for thing school year.

I have 22 wonderful new students in my class.  The dynamic this year is very different as I have more girls than boys this year which is the opposite of last year.   One perk to having so many girls is the amount of hugs I get each day has increased significantly!  I thought it might be interesting for you all to know the variety of ethnicities I have in my class this year and a few of the varying religions.  In my class I have:

 I have 7 children in my class whose families are missionaries here in Tanzania.  The rest are working here in Tanzania.  There are also a lot of new teachers at HOPAC this year.  In the primary grades alone there are only 2 returning teachers, the rest are new.  However, so far it seems that our primary team will have a great dynamic and I am so excited to work with them; especially since many of the new teachers are single ladies my age! 

Prayer Requests:

1.  I have 2 English Language Learners in my class, so please pray for wisdom how to best help them learn, succeed, and catch up more to the other students. 
2. I have a student in my class diagnosed with dyspraxia- http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/services/dys_dyspraxia.php .  Please pray for wisdom to balance meeting his unique needs, but also challenging him and making him feel a part of the class. 
3. Please pray for me as I train up and teach these children with a Biblical word view and the love of Jesus.
4. Please pray with me as I seek God’s direction as to what He will have me do next school year: come back to Tanzania or stay in Minnesota.  It is a bit early yet but I want to start seeking is direction now. 

PRAISE REPORTS: 

1.  For the cool weather we continue to enjoy.
2. For my new house and roommates and the chance to practice Swahili with my house guards. 
3. For supportive parents and a great staff this year!
4. My friend from Minnesota, Kara Redfield, is here teaching Kindergarten for 6 months at my school!

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support!  I am truly blessed.  I love praying for all of you too, so please do send me an update on how you and your family are doing.  Also, I will send pictures soon of my students.

 Ara Rustad, Kara Redfield, and Me: all friends from MN hanging out in Tanzania

 GIANT spider in my bedroom!!

Dear friends and family, Greetings to you again from Tanzania! These past two months since my last letter have been full of events that I am excited to share with you. I am actually writing this letter in the middle of a power outage and I do not have one drop of sweat on me…this is a huge deal for living in Dar es Salaam…I praise God for the cooler weather we are having.

Well, my first year of teaching in Tanzania ended on June 17. The year ended so wonderfully. The love I have for my students grew so much over this year, I was very sad to say goodbye to them. However, I am so glad that I get to see them again next year as they will be right next door to me in the grade 2 classroom. We ended the year with a bang…we had wrapped up our curriculum and we had three weeks of school left. I found this idea in a curriculum book to create a dinosaur museum and I thought to myself this will be the perfect end of the year project to keep us busy, yet to have a fun time of learning. So we embarked on our journey and my students were so excited, especially since I had a class of mostly boys who loved this sort of thing. We started off learning about museums, then did research on certain dinosaurs, then created books and posters to display our information. Then finally we created dinosaur models, dioramas, and collected artifacts that could pass for dino bones, skin, teeth, etc. Then we set up our museum and had over 100 staff and students from the school come to visit our museum in one day. It was a blast!

To top off the end of the year I was blessed to be able to have my parents come out for a visit in time to join us for the last day of school. They got to meet my students and they performed some songs for them. Then I had a surprise for my parents…I had written and framed tributes to my parents. I had the honor to read it to them in front of my students; it was a great memory. My parents were able to stay for two week. I got to show them around Dar, take them to the beach and we even traveled to the Zanzibar Island where my dad got to scuba dive for the first time in the open ocean. And we also got to embark on our first Safari to see the wonderful wild animals of Africa. The memories we created were wonderful and will last a life time. I am so thankful for their visit, it was so refreshing to me and much needed for all of us.

 Praise Reports and Prayer Requests:

 Praise God my parents had a safe trip here and stayed healthy! Praise God that my Danish student got along much better and gained so much confidence at the end of the year. Also praise God that my student who was struggling behaviorally began to improve 100% at the end of the year! And Praise God that the school year ended so well and my time with my students was well spent.

 Please pray for me as I leave for language school in 1 week. Pray for safety, good focus, not feeling overwhelmed or lonely. Also please pray for transitions, I am moving to a new house next week with new roommates. Thanks so much for your prayers and support, please do send me updates on yourselves as I LOVE hearing from you all!

Greetings to you in Jesus’ name from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania!  I hope this update finds you all well.  Much has happened here that I look forward to sharing with you.  First of all, the rains have begun to arrive, praise God!  The humidity is still here, but I have noticed some drop in the temperatures and we have had consistent power (which makes a world of difference). 

IN SCHOOL: During the month of March we had been studying about the Masai people group in Tanzania.  We were lucky enough to have some Masai men come to our classroom and teach us some more about their culture and show us some dancing.  It was a blast.  One of my students is half Masai and half German, he is the little one in the picture next to the man jumping. 

We also had our class assembly performance at the end of March.  The highlight of the performance was a song which listed all 66 books of the Bible. They also performed a poem, a skit about the three little pigs, and a shadow puppet show.  They did a fabulous job! 

Spring Break:  In the month of April we had our spring break and I had the privilege to travel with three other single ladies up to Nairobi, Kenya and to the Great Rift Valley by bus.  It was quite the adventure and God took great care of us during the entire trip.  I have friends whom I met at my training in July who live in Nairobi and at RVA School, so it was great to have the chance to see them again.  Two of my highlights from the trip were hiking in the Rift Valley, being in cooler weather and getting to wear warmer clothes and wrap up in blankets!  Oh the little joys in life right? 

Praise Reports: I praise God for the rains that have begun.  I also praise God that I was able to make a decision about what to do this summer.  I did decide to go to language school for three weeks in the month of July.  I also praise God that my new student from Denmark has been making progress and making friends.  And I praise God for helping me get through the hot season here, it was tough and happened to be when homesickness hit me the most, but Praise God I am feeling so much better!  Also, my grandmother is not healed yet, but is coping as best she can.

Prayer Requests:

Summer:  My parents are planning to come and visit me at the end of June so please pray for safety, health and a good time with them.  Also with language school pray that I can truly get better at conversations in Swahili so I can converse and connect more with the locals here. 

Students: My new Danish student is learning more but seems to have been emotionally struggling lately so please pray for him (his name is Jonas).  And I have a student who is struggling with her behavior and her emotions; so pray as we work with her parents and the school counselor to help her before the year is over.

End of school year:  We only have 1 ½ months of school left.  Time will fly by, but please pray that we can all persevere and that that any final influence I can have on these children would be accomplished by God’s grace. 

Thank you for your love, support, and prayers! They are very much felt over here.  Blessings to you all, and click here for more pictures: http://s994.photobucket.com/albums/af68/jkmoser/Spring%20Break%20trip%20to%20Kenya%202011/

Love in Christ,

Jen Moser

            I hope this update finds you all well and in good hands.   January and February have flown by, the weather is still boiling hot here and all of us are praying it decides to cool down soon.  The heat wouldn’t be as much of a problem if we didn’t have power cuts every day.  That is just one of the joys of living in Africa I guess. 

            So what has been happening at school?  Well several things have happened.  We had an exciting book week at HOPAC.  During that my students go to do things such as have a snuggle with a book day and wear their PJ’s to school, dress as their favorite book character, have a book drive/exchange, go on a field trip to a local ministry which sells Christian literature, and finally we got to celebrate the 100^th day of school!  It was quite the exciting week! 

 (Favorite Book Character Day)                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                               (100^th day of school!)   

Click here for more photos of book week: http://s994.photobucket.com/albums/af68/jkmoser/Book%20week%20at%20HOPAC/

            Lately with my kids I have been focusing some of my Bible lessons on helping my students understand how important it is that the seek wisdom and truth and that the place to find this is in the Bible.  So what I do is tell them some “wisdom” and they have to decide from what they know in the Bible if it is God’s wisdom or the world’s wisdom.  It really has gotten some great discussions going and I can see their little first grade minds really thinking through some the statements.  There have been a few stumpers like “If it feels good just do it” and “Having lots of money will always make me happy and take away my worries”.  

            I have begun to pray over my students with a book called The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian.  It has been so powerful and helpful in knowing what to pray about when I pray for my students.  I highly recommend this book to anyone! 

            In Tanzania we had a scary thing happen for many people.  Some explosions went off at a military base and hit a lot of home and injured and even killed many people.  Luckily it was not near enough to me to affect us, but the explosions could be heard and felt from where we were.  Currently people are donating items and blood to help the people affected by this.  Please be in prayer with me for those affected. 

PRAYER REQUESTS:

1.  My Grandmother on my dad’s side had surgery on her shoulder a while back but had some really bad nerve damage.  Please pray with me for her supernatural healing as this is not something that can be fixed and she really needs movement and feeling in her hand to be well because she is deaf and signs to communicate.   

2.  RAIN: Please pray that the rains will come soon to help cool off Dar es Salaam.   

3.  New Student: At the end of January I received a new student from Demark who speaks no English.  He has an interpreter with him every day to help but please pray for him as he learns English and acclimates to a new culture.   

4.  Perseverance: Through the month of March and into April as we have no days of school off so it could get to feeling quite long (our spring break is the end of April) 

5.  SUMMER: please begin to pray with me as I seek God’s guidance on what to do this summer (I am praying about possibly doing some Language school) and I will be moving to a new house.   

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support!  Again I LOVE hearing updates from all of you so please don’t feel shy to e-mail me  jmoser@aimint.net and tell me what is going on in your life since I don’t get to see you all face to face.  God bless!

I just had to write to share a story that just couldn’t wait until my next update!  Today during the Bible lesson with my first graders we were talking about how God is our refuge.  We made a big tower and learned about the verse “The name of the LORD is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe.”  -Proverbs 18:10.  Now I wanted to emphasize that God is our tower and keeps us safe but it is not always  and only to keep our body safe or from getting sick or hurt, but it is to keep our soul safe.  I then began to explain that God wants to protect us from the most deadly thing that is out there….Most of them thought I was talking about the devil but I told them something even worse is out there…SIN!  And that the sin dirties our soul and separates us from knowing God and eventually we would live in hell away from God.  As I was explaining this one of my students raised their hand and said with a very concerned look on her face, “Miss Moser, what do we do?”  I told her that was a VERY good question and proceeded to tell her that only Jesus is the one who can come and clean the sin from our soul and make a way for us to come into a friendship with God and spend eternity with him in Heaven.  But we need to ask him to come; he won’t do it unless we ask.  Then this same little girl raised her hand again and said, “Miss Moser, can we ask right now?”  I was so excited that she has just said that so I said by all means yes!… and we prayed as a class.  And this little girl was just so happy she came up to me and said, “I did it!”  I was so happy for her, it was SO neat to see it just suddenly click in her mind!  Shouldn’t we all so simply see our need for a savior?  Without him we are so lost….so as this little girl said, “What shall we do?”  Oh Praise God for sending Jesus to make a way for us and be our STRONG TOWER, HALELJUAH!

So before I taught my students about the Omnipresence of God I ask them this question and this is all of their responses:

I think God can be everywhere because…

1. Maybe there is 1,000,000 of him.

 2. The people have problems.

3. He is holding the world.

 4. He is in pieces.

 5. He is magic.

6. He made the earth.

 7. God is so big.

 8. He is in your heart.

 9. He is somehow invisible.

 10. He is everywhere.

11. God lives in your heart.

 12. There are 100’s of Gods.

13. Jesus has magic everywhere.

14. He is a superhero.

15. He is outside the world and the world can move so he can see everything and be everywhere.

16. He is God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

 17. He is big.

 18. He is special.

19. He is God the son Holy Spirit.

 20. He is looking at the world and he’s looking everywhere in the world.

It’s always interesting to get into the mind of a child and see how they see the world!

 MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM TANZANIA! I hope this update finds you all well. So this was my first Christmas away from my family and I must say there was times where it was hard and I missed home a lot, but God surrounded me with many wonderful people here and filled my heart with joy when sorrow tried to take over. It was also weird to have a hot and humid Christmas instead of a white Christmas, but thankfully I was able to escape the heat for almost a week and go up to the mountains of Lushoto. There I was able to sit by some fires and wear long pants, sweatshirts and socks…It was wonderful!

At the end of this first term of school all of the elementary students performed a drama/musical called Come to the Stable. It was a very powerful story and they did a fantastic job. My first graders were the animals and they all dressed as camels, donkeys, cows, and chickens and sang a song call All of God’s Creatures Can Celebrate with a “late” cow who had “udder” business to attend to. They were adorable I must say.

We also got a chance to go Christmas caroling this past month. We went around to some of the staff and families of HOPAC. One of the families from Europe had never heard of going caroling so they were quite enjoying it!

 On Christmas morning I had the opportunity to skype with my family. It was nice to share some of Christmas with them. I sent them a package of gifts that I got to watch them open. School starts again on January 5th so I have two more days. I will spend some of that time preparing for this next term.

Prayer Request Updates:

 I got my ATM card back. It took three times of going into the bank, but I finally got it, so thank you for your prayers. Check out my blog http://jmoser.aimsites.org/ for the full story. Also God has been gracious in helping me endure the heat and power cuts. Thankfully I have some friends who live not too far away that rarely lose power, so if I get desperate I am always welcome over there! Also the transition of one of my roommates moving out went smooth. And great news about one of my other roommates: her boyfriend came over Christmas and proposed!

New Prayer Requests:

1. That this next term would start off smooth and we would get back into the swing of things quickly.

2. These next couple of months are actually supposed to get hotter, so please pray for God’s grace as the extreme heat and humidity makes me feel quite lethargic.

3. Homesickness: as I went through the holidays and missed my annual ONE THING conference in Kansas city it has been a bit hard.

I hear that many of you have been getting dumped on with snow. If you have any great snow pictures you should definitely send me some! I have added some pictures online as well, click on this link to check them out. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support, you all mean so much to me…GOD BLESS! http://s994.photobucket.com/albums/af68/jkmoser/African%20Christmas%202010/

SO I just realized that on my last post I FORGOT to add in there a very important and fun event that happened…THANKSGIVING!  Yes we did celebrate it here.  We had a big turkey feast here on the compound I live on with the other Americans and one Tanzanian family!  It was so yummy, we each pitched in a brought a dish to share. 

Ok so on to my story… So this is a story that those of you who have lived in Africa for any length of time I am sure you can relate.  But it is one that I am somewhat thankful for having gone through because first of all it shows that the training I went through with AIM helped prepare me a lot for situations like this and it also was a time for me to work on PATIENCE!  oh yes that wonderful thing called patience that we all tend to lack.  But for some reason by the grace of God I am learning a lot about that here and noticing how much AMAZING patience Tanzanians have! 

SO….On Tuesday of this week I went to an ATM somewhat near my house and the second I put it in the machine it told me sorry my card will not work here.  Which was weird because it has worked before.  But then I realized that it was not spitting my card back out!   I was like OH NO oh my gosh and this guy came over and said that I can’t get it back out here but that tomorrow I will have to go to the bank at the mall and get my card! I was SOOOOO confused.  As I stood there talking with this guy who couldn’t speak much English this Mzungu (white guy) came over to me and told me the same thing just happened to him a little while ago and that it has happened before and that I do have to go to the mall and get my card.  So I had to leave with no money AND no card. 

So the next day I went to the mall, my lovely roommate Carley so kindly drove me there.  And what do you know…the card is not there.  I wasn’t all that surprised though… again AIM training (good job!) Anyway they said to come back the next day.  So I gave her my phone number and asked if she would call me when it turned up.  Well she never called which didn’t really surprise me either.  So the next day me and my other roommate took a bijaji (public transport) to the bank again.  This time when I talked to the lady she said that yes my card came but it got sent back to the headquarters and they are going to destroy it so it will be impossible for me to get my card back..  WHAT!?!?! This was the moment my patiences was wearing out… So what do you know that Mzungo guy was there to getting his card back.  Apparently they tried to do the same thing to his card but he called them a bunch of times and had it sent back to the bank so he could get it.  He thankfully told me to talk to a manager because it is NOT impossible to get it back.  So i talked to a manager and she was very nice but after a little while said that it would be impossible to get it because it is their policy that they must send cards that are not with their bank back to the original bank which for me would be back in the USA…

SO at this point I camly explained that I need that card because I live here right now and not in the USA and I already came the day before and gave them my phone number and they told me to come back today.  When I told her that she was like, “oh… ok in that case yes that is not ok we will help you.”  So she called the headquarters downtown where my card was and talked on the phone for a long time.  Then finally she said ok you card will be sent here tomorrow so come back on Saturday to come and get it.  And she gave me her phone number so I could call to confirm on Friday if it came. 

So I called her on Friday and she told me that it had not come but that it should come Sat. morning and I should not come until Saturday afternoon like at 1.  Well my only ride to get there was actually going in the morning so I decided to go there early at like 10 a.m. and then do some shopping and hang out and eat lunch and and bring some school work to do and stuff.  Well when about 12:30 rolled around the lady at the bank called me and said that the guy still had not come but he was still coming, I felt really calm and just was like ok I will wait.  So I went into the bank at 1:00 and brought my school work in.  They let me sit in a comfortable back room and I waited for an hour and then finally my card came!  I was so happy!  But then she asked me for my passport and I was like uh oh i don’t have it with me!  so then I asked if giving her my driver’s license would be ok and she said I think so.  SO thankfully that worked! 

Through all of this I truly learned a lot.  And I am so thankful to AIM training to help me understand that often in Africa to get things accomplished you have to not give up and just do a lot of waiting.  I also realized more that when you expect to wait then waiting is not so bad.  It is when you are in a hurry and not wanting to wait that waiting sucks.  Anyway I am always noticing how Tanzanians are amazing at waiting, they wait in lines all the time, no complaints at all (well at least from what I can tell)  I am sort of thankful for this experience, not that I want it to happen again but just thankful for what I could learn from it and thankful for the grace from God to have the perspective I did so that I didn’t get too stressed out or frustrated.  I think the only time that I was starting to feel really frustrated was when they told me it would either be destroyed or sent back to America.  I was like, HELLO??? YOU stole my card from me, give it back to ME not my bank in the US.  But praise the Lord, it worked out!