Our friend, Katherine

Over recent months you may have noticed us mention our friend Katherine. She lives a few minutes around the corner from us in Mbeya and works with us, in the Scritpure Use (SU) department. Our two departments, Literacy and SU, work closely together and we have combined many trips to language areas. She is our closest friend in Mbeya.

Katherine returned before us to the UK for a month’s holiday and was planning to travel back with us when we returned. That was until plans changed. Katherine had an accident and spilt boiling water on her arm. This turned out to be more serious than any of us expected and she has had to have an operation for a skin graft to be done. This has required regular hospital appointments for bandages to be changed, she will be fitted with ‘pressure garments’ to help the wound heal, and in future she will need to be observed by the hospital periodically to ensure the burn is healing properly. Of course, she has delayed her return back to Tanzania and is still currently waiting to find out exactly when she can return.

This is very sad news and has obviously affected us knowing our close friend is in such pain physically and emotionally after this accident. But we didn’t anticipate how much it would affect us in other ways – in our work as well as personally. This just goes to show, we believe, how interlinked our lives are here as ‘missionaries’. Maybe we have taken on some aspects of our ‘host culture’ where the social network you have is the most important thing you have or maybe it’s just that without your family close-by friends almost start to become like family to you. The personal effect we may have foreseen – we have returned without our friend to make the journey more enjoyable and tried to settle back into Mbeya not only after saying the hard goodbyes with family and friends in UK but without a close friend here to share our experiences with.

The effect is further reaching than our personal happiness though. We are now struggling to complete work that we had started together, in partnership, and are trying to re-arrange timetables of visits in an already busy diary. The Scripture Use work is continuing in part due to Katherine’s two committed colleagues and her e-involvement from the UK, however there are still many aspects of the work that have stopped completely and are on hold until Katherine’s return. This is frustrating for Katherine, for the project and for those it works with. The work can’t get done on its own – it needs people to do it. As always we realize how easily our work can be frustrated and grind to a halt….

That’s where you come in though, our praying people! It occurred to me that Katherine has her own supporters but it needn’t just be them praying for her…why not our supporters too?! Her situation affects our life in Mbeya and adversely affects the work that we are all trying to do. It should be the concern of everyone who supports our work. So, if you are a praying person, please take a moment to think of Katherine and all the unforeseen problems caused by this accident. Thank you!