Going Home!

Blessed by my family to move on in the Lord...

Good friends will be missed much!! I love you Rabia!

After almost 3 years of serving in Pemba , my time here is finally coming to an end. On February 12th, I will fly to Cape Town for a friend’s wedding and also visit a few other friends in SA, before heading back to the States on March 5th.

This past November during a night of teaching in the mission school, the Lord spoke to me and gave me a vision of doing different things with my family. I saw myself planting a garden with my mom, going to the beach with my family and being at my mom’s annual “Fall Harvest Party” in October, among other family outings and get-togethers. The Lord said to me that he wanted to give me a season of being a daughter and sister. I cried and cried, because it is something that I have really been wanting: some time to be a kid, but also because I thought of how much I will miss my precious family here, and all the great cultural stuff that has now become part of me. Pemba has become my home and the people my family, so it will be a bit sad to leave and a very BIG transition, yet I am very excited for the opportunity the Lord is giving me to love on and be loved by my family!

A few things I will really miss about life in Pemba……..
1. The babies and all the children at the center who have really wiggled themselves into my heart over the past years, especially Carlito and the girls in the room whom I help give extra love to on a regular basis.
2. Speaking Portuguese daily and trying to figure out what Marcelo (one of our older boys) is rattling off to me in Makua.
3. Church services African-style: 3-4 hours long, singing traditional Makua praise & worship songs, and dancing in worship till you drop! I love it!
4. Baptisms in the Indian Ocean .
5. Missionary friends who have been like moms, dads, brothers, & sisters for me here. I will miss them all dearly!
6. Amina & company!! She has become such a sweet Mozambican friend to me. Even though she started out cleaning our house, she’s feels like a sister now and her kids like nieces and nephews!
7. Hearing “Mana Tanya, Mana Tanya!” yelled out wherever I go. (Mana means big sister in Portuguese.) Even the kids in the village behind our center all seem to know who Mana Tanya is, as well as market and street vendors in town vying for a purchase.
8. Frog symphonies in rainy season and cricket symphonies during dry season.
9. Friendly critters, ie: bug eating lizards, toads, bush babies (little monkey looking animals that cry like babies at night)
10. 4:30AM sunrises and the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life. This is Africa !
11. Towering baobab trees with trunks even wider than a redwood tree. Beautiful!
12. Swimming in the warm and beautifully crystal clear water of the Indian Ocean .
13. If you are half an hour to an hour late you’re still right on time

And a few things I definitely, well, probably won’t miss…….
1. People begging for something everywhere you go, because of your skin color. Here “white” equals rich. Even if you are poor in America , you would be looked at as rich here.
2. Unending need for maintenance on everything! Everything you can buy here seems to break within 6 months to a year.
3. Not-so-friendly critters, ie: big flying cockroaches, tukwehs (Makua for biting ants) that find their way into your clothes, centipedes (yuck!), scorpions, poisonous snakes, etc.
4. Feeling like you could just melt into a puddle on the ground because of the intense heat (100-120 F) and humidity (90-100%) during rainy season (Dec.-March)!
5. Witchdoctors beating on their drums and chanting through the wee hours of the morning. Talk about intense spiritual warfare!
6. Being "proposed" to more times than you can count by men who just want a “rich” white woman to take them to America!
7. Always looking over your shoulder or across the street for possible “banditos” (thieves) every time you walk down the road from our older, smaller base to the newer, bigger one.
8. Malaria, cholera, worms and other ‘known to Mozambique ’ illnesses….

But, after all is said and done, I will miss this place and people very much! Whether I get the opportunity to come back or not is up to the Lord, but the community of Pemba-Iris will certainly remain in my heart forever!!! Please pray that my transition will not be too difficult and that miraculously I won’t have reverse culture shock, but that I will really be able to enjoy my time back in the States. Pray for traveling safety and favor with luggage, etc. I will be traveling on these dates: Feb. 12th from Pemba to Cape Town , SA, 18th & 26th within SA, & March 5th & 6th back to the States.

I am so very grateful for all your support and prayers over these past few years, and look forward to partnering with you once again when the Lord shows me my next step to the nations! Many blessings to you all and please continue to keep in touch!

Email: tanybo@yahoo.co.uk

Carlito (almost 3!)

More of my family in Pemba

Preschool buddies with teachers Ancha(L) & Olivia(R)

My girls & Carlito... (back L-R) Zelinha, Bina, Luisa, me, Carlito, & Fausia....(front L-R) Lila, Atija, Paulina, Catarina, Mariamo

Missionary mom and dad (Jacques & Mary)