The last day of my maternity leave was Friday, February 1. At that time, Zarya was taking three irregularly-timed naps a day - I never knew when she'd get tired or for how long she'd sleep, but she slept enough during the day that I had some time when I could focus. I found I work for about four or five hours a day from home.
However, being a translation adviser means that I need to meet with translators to advise them. While I can do the time-consuming part of my job from home (reading through the drafted chapters and making notes on them), I still need some face-to-face time with the Tanzanian translators. How to do that with a three-month-old baby who refuses to take a bottle and naps unpredictably, often for only 30-40 minutes at a stretch, was a big stress in my life. For lack of being able to figure out how to leave Zarya and go to the office, I didn't go there at all my first week back at work. I knew I needed to be there some, starting the following week, though.
Looking back on how things worked out, I figure that God must really want the Ikizu people to have His Word in their language, because He worked out what seems like a miracle! It began with one of the missionary moms here offering to watch Zarya for me when needed. I couldn't believe that someone who has only been in Tanzania for a few months (meaning she should still be at the overwhelmed by daily life stage) and has six of her own children was willing to take on another! And then I found out that she lives less than two minutes away from the office, which is pretty astounding (we live 15 minutes away, ourselves). In hopes that Zarya might feel like napping in the afternoon that day, I planned to leave here there at 2:00 and go over there to feed her if necessary and just leave the office whenever I had to leave. I dove into work (I've never been so excited to be at the office!) and tried to get as much done as quickly as possible, knowing that any minute my phone might ring, telling me I had to leave. Well, leaving time arrived without me receiving a phone call, so I left to pick up Zarya. I found out she'd slept for two hours straight! I was shocked!
The next day, Wednesday, I was working from home and tried to get her to follow the same nap schedule as the day before. It worked! Once again, she slept the afternoon away. On Thursday I took her to the same family's house for the afternoon, and this time she took a good nap and then woke up happy and not hungry and played with them for an hour before I got there. Amazing!
So while a baby taking a long nap is nothing really astounding, the timing of it is what floors me. That Zarya abruptly was able to go from short, unpredictable naps to long ones at the same time every day on the very day when I started working in the office - if that's not God orchestrating things, I don't know what is. Her napping well is a small thing, and me being in the office is a small thing, but the Ikizu people having the Bible in Ikizu, well, that is a big thing! And me having four hours a week with the Ikizu translators working hard to finish the translation of Genesis is pretty important if we're going to achieve that big thing. God is very good!
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