The March 2008 Newsletter from Jean Wahlstrom and Marvin Kananen

Serving with the ELCA-GM in Tanzania since 1998

Dear Dearest Friends, Colleagues, Sponsors, Family, and, especially, you,

                Greetings from the bush in East Africa. To remind you, this year the African March only has 20 days for us, at which point, on Maundy Thursday, we fly out of here for America, not returning until late in May. We will be in Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, and California. We’ll also be driving through Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We will speak at 35 different sites (generally churches) and get our physical and dental work done. Several of the places where we will speak are actually multiple speaking situations. Also, if you know us at all, you’ll understand that between speakings we will be talking.

                 By tradition, it is March that comes in like a lion or lamb and goes out like the other. In February, getting ready to put together a dynamic PowerPoint demonstration, the sound of a computer crashing (there is no sound, which may have prefigured the word ‘dumb’ to also mean silent and describes how I felt sitting there, feeling really dumb, asking myself, “What have I done?”). What we managed to save was most teaching documentation and writings, what was lost were the pictures, lots of pictures. We’ve had two people knowledgeable in things like computer crashes say these words to us in describing the computer: ‘dead,’ ‘fried,’ and ‘not repairable.’ Apparently computers, like eggs, are never worth unfrying. Alas. The younger one of the two, a Peace Corps volunteer (who looks like Keanu Reeves of the Matrix), and a computer tech from Virginia both tell me so. It feels like death. One of the difficult times that people who crawl off drugs or alcohol go through is, literally, time. As they suddenly find themselves with time on their hands and no pattern to fill it, so am I’m finding myself. Again. So I am continuing to work on the school’s electrical system, trying to update the as many of the buildings as possible with Energy Saver systems. Time without project is really burdensome. As soon as we return to America, we will get a new laptop.

                But the reason that we mentioned the lion and the lamb of March, this year February went out with a whimper that sounded a lot like Marvin.

                The Form Six girls have gone out of our lives. In a sense they are like our own children: they’ll only come back when they need money. (That last statement isn’t always the case: Often students return to say ‘thank you’ to their teachers which is a Tanzanian traditional nicety that we do not want to forget or overlook.) The Form Six test results will be out in April and only then will they know their options. But their options do not always match their hearts. One of our grads from last year who scored only a Division IV (not good, Divisions I and II are good) found a university in Uganda who would accept her (they accept anyone with money) and only needed $3,500 a year for three years. We and OBA agreed the answer had to be ‘NO’ in big capital letters, so she’s angry at us (think Jean here) because we ‘stopped’ her education. In her case, there’s an American idiom that has something to do with having no peas in her pot, and she doesn’t. But, when we return to Tanzania in late May, we expect the nine 2008 girls lined up at our door. Half of them will be easy to handle, they will have done well on the test, they will have their applications and financial figures in hand, and they will go on. The remaining students will be in two groups, half will have their applications and financial records, but not the grades and so we will help them find alternative options. The second group will have applications to places like Uganda or something else inordinately unaffordable but without merit regarding their futures. Our graduates can only apply for one educational opportunity after MGLSS, if they choose to get a 6-month certificate in nursery school teaching, so be it. But we urge them to go as far as their numbers (test scores and support) can go. That is what we will return to, but only after we’ve left the land of Starbucks and big bookstores.

                When we are stateside, if you come to hear us speak, please come up and identify yourself. And, help out this missionary; tell me your name, even if I’ve called you ‘Mom’ all my life: give me a hint. Tell us who you are and your link. I have hated the feeling of being too polite to ask, knowing I knew you and liked you but not having any of the details, then realizing too late, “Oh, that was . . . ! She/he/they was/were instrumental in . . .” Rather than assuming we know who you are (although generally we do), tell us your name. Especially for the male of the ‘us.’

                We’re packing now, making our lists and checking them twice, setting up the appointments we need to make, trying to think like Americans in an African setting after years of being Americans trying to think like Africans. The reason we wear nametags is not for your benefit, but for ours. Really.

                We have one wildlife sighting that happened yesterday. There were two doors on campus that had never closed, ever. And these were solid-core doors, too heavy to carry. I hauled them to the car, loaded them, brought them home, cut them (handsaw), returned them, one fit really well and the other took an hour’s work to finish. I drove the car home. (Dull story, huh?). And then, after a cup of coffee, I walked back up to campus. There, in the middle of our driveway, was a 20 inch cobra with a full grown mouse in its mouth. The mouse looked impossibly big to eat. The snake wasn’t going to eat it anyway, because some large white Toyota Land Cruiser had, at the moment the snake seized the mouse, at the moment the mouse was saying to itself, “Bad day! Bad day!” run them over. There was the snake thinking, “I won’t need to eat for a week,” focusing on the mouse. There was the mouse in the jaws of the cobra, looking up, seeing the big tire rolling toward them, saying his last words, “This is really a bad day!”  And, of course, there was the happy Lutheran missionary smugly aware only of the fact that the doors were now closing, smiling and oblivious as he ran over both snake and mouse. Interestingly enough, by the time I walked back, the ants and flies were saying to themselves, “This is a really good day.” This story not so much about wildlife, but how I sometimes think we’re impacting society: the ants and flies are doing well but the snakes are not. Yet, for whatever impact we have on society, if we help break the pattern of the fathers ‘selling’ their circumcised, twelve-year-old daughters for cows, I feel as badly about that as I do about running over the poisonous snake.  And, wanting to be a part of this, Jean did see a black African mole.

                We ask your prayers for safety in all the travel during these next two months in the USA . . . staying on the RIGHT side of the road . . . for health as we jump from 85 degrees to Midwest weather . . . for the Form Six students here as they wait for their exam results . . . for the teachers who will be assisting us in the O-level classes while we are gone . . .for OPERATION BOOTSTRAP AFRICA as they search for sponsors for our new Form One class…

                We love and appreciate all you’ve done to make our ministries possible. May you all be more richly blessed than you deserve . . . and you deserve a lot of blessings.

                Love,

                Jean Wahlstrom and Marvin Kananen

                                ELCA-GM missionaries serving in Tanzania

HOME ASSIGNMENT – 2008 – Jean and Marv

MARCH 30 – Morn – St. Matthew Lutheran – Monticello, IA

                                Eve – Bethany Lutheran – Burlington, IA

APRIL   1 - Zion Lutheran – Gowrie, IA (inviting Dayton Lutheran and Stratford Lutheran)

                2 – St. Petri Lutheran – Story City, IA

                3 – Trinity Lutheran – Webster City, IA (inviting First Lutheran, Clarion)

                5 – Augustana Lutheran – Manson, IA (inviting Elfsborg Lutheran, Pomeroy)

                6 – Morn – First Lutheran – Algona, IA

                                Eve – St. Paul’s Lutheran – Rockwell City, IA (inviting Fulton Lutheran, Moorland)

                7 – Bethlehem Lutheran – Cherokee, IA (inviting Faith Lutheran, Marcus)

                8 – St. Mark’s Lutheran – Sioux City, IA

                9 – Morningside Lutheran – Sioux City, IA

                10 – Hope Lutheran – Everly, IA

                12  Eve and 13 morn – Grace Lutheran – Fairmont, MN

                14 – OPERATION BOOTSTRAP AFRICA event – Peace Lutheran – Plymouth, MN

                16 – Christ the King Lutheran – New Brighton, MN

                20 – Morn - St. John’s Lutheran – Northfield, MN

                23 – First Lutheran – Red Wing, MN

                27 – Morn – St. John’s Lutheran – Kasson, MN

MAY     4 – Morn – St. Andrew’s Lutheran – Bellevue, WA

                                Eve – TASTE OF TANZANIA – Kent Lutheran, WA, 4 pm

                7 – St. Paul’s Lutheran – Oakland, CA

                8 – Bethel Lutheran – Cupertino, CA

                10 – Trinity Lutheran – Freeland, WA

                11 – Morn – St. John’s Lutheran – Chehalis, WA

                14 – Bethlehem Lutheran – Marysville, WA

                17 – (tentative) – Trinity Lutheran – Longview, WA

                18 – Christ Lutheran – Walla Walla, WA

                19 – Peace Lutheran – Puyallup, WA

                21 – Glendale Lutheran – Burien, WA

                25 – Bethany Lutheran – Bainbridge, WA

Our cell phone number from March 22 until May 27 will be : 206 – 225 – 5475

GUIDED BY THE GOSPEL: GATHERING • GROWING • GIVING