It Will Get Done by Becky Thorn

Life in Tanzania is a refreshing step back from life in America.  There are no time limits, no deadlines, and generally no rush for anything.  As a matter of fact, I have only seen one clock since I've been here which was on a clock tower of a church.  I doubt it was of much help though, because on each of the three sides I could see there was a different time shown, none of them being correct.  Time seems to never be an issue or a concern with the Tanzanian people.  The market shops open in the morning after the owner has had breakfast and they close when there are no more customers.  Lunch will be served once everyone has worked up an appetite, and we will sit, eat, and chat until everyone has had their fill.  Even here at the mission, some of us on the trip were ready to "rally the troops" and get everyone ready to load the truck and tackle the day.  When we proposed this idea to Laine, she responded with, "don't worry about it. Relax. If it needs to get done it will get done."  We had to then take a deep breath and let the day take us wherever we were to go.

This schedule (or lack thereof) has been quite the transition from life back at home.  Today after touring the mission, visiting with the children, and shopping at the market for fabric, we had a two hour break until our next activity.  Many of us (myself included) felt quite lost as far a what to do.  We are so used to our "go go go" schedules at home that we didn't know what to do.  After about a half hour of sitting in my room with my roommates talking about our experience at the market, we decided to venture out of the room.  I think that was about the same time that many other people ventured into the common room as well.  Within minutes we were cutting up a mango, drinking tea, trying to figure out how to say new words in Swahili.  This is when I realized that one of the most important values to the Tanzanians was to take the time to create new friendships, and that was exactly what we were doing.  We had officially been accustomed to the "no rush" lifestyle. 

Later in the evening after dinner, we had the pleasure of listening to Father Tim speak.  He told us about his journey to where he is today and the many bumps in the road that he had to overcome.  His story was so inspiring and rejuvenating that we all responded with and enormous round of applause.  He has done so many wonderful, miraculous things, and he has looked rejection, doubt, and fear in the face along the way.  None of these set backs stopped him, however, because he had this feeling with him that if things were meant to be, they would get done.  He definitely has the mentality that you should do the best you can in this world, and everything else will work itself out.  I think we should all adopt this idea that when you try your hardest and let the forces of the world work themselves out, everything will get done.  So if you are reading this, I invite you, please, to sit back, relax, take time to build friendships, and know that everything else will work itself out.  If it needs to get done, it will get done in time.