Why is the Electricity so good these days?

 When we were away from the islands last month we were told that electricity had gotten really bad.  We had even read an island article that said it wouldn’t be until mid-July or later for the needed parts to come to fix the malfunctioning generators, but since our return, the power has been particularly good!  Over lunch the other day, we enjoyed speculating all the possible reasons for the recent improvement.

 Our first reason was a joke —Perhaps the electricity company heard we were coming back and made sure things were working better!  A nice thought, except that we do not carry the notoriety, fame, importance or clout to bring such a thing about.  However, we have noticed that when the president comes to town, electricity generally improves for as long as he is around.  So it is not unheard of for electricity to improve due to the arrival of important visitors.

Cloves drying in sun here on 'Clove' Island

Our next thought was on the same theme.  The summer months are the time of year when all the island diaspora that lives in Europe and other places comes back to the islands for vacation.  Could it be they are keeping the power on for all the visitors?  Does that mean instead of rationing the fuel used to run the generators, they are using it up and when the visitors leave, power will be terrible again?  Perhaps.

On the otherhand, the summer visitors come with lots of money.  Perhaps electricity bills are finally being paid and they are using the money for extra fuel.  Is it simply a matter of money greasing the wheels???

That got us onto another possible reason.  The season of summer visitors coincides (quite deliberately)  with the wedding season.   There are multiple weddings every day once things get going, and people pay extra to make sure the power stays on.  Do we benefit from this demand for power?

Then a more mundane answer crossed our mind: Perhaps they simply fixed the generators earlier than expected, and they are running smoothly right now.  Such ideas almost sounds preposterous, but not impossible.  Still the idea of things just running smoothly here seem to be a rarity.

And then another explanation struck us—maybe demand is down.  The weather is significantly cooler this time of year.  Air-conditioners and fans are hardly necessary and many may have been turned off.  Could it simply be that thanks to fewer demands, the system is able to meet the needs?

And then to bring it full circle, we had asked for prayer that power would get better on the islands.  We know there are some real prayer warriors among you.  Perhaps some of you started praying…

Working on homeschool project!

We will probably never know the reason, but whatever the reason, we are thankful for these days of good power.  You may live in a place where you take electricity for granted.  Next time you flip a switch or grab something from your consistently cold fridge, you can say a small prayer of thanks, and think of all the things that help cause your electricity to run smoothly.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for better electricity! A short-term medical team had a successful trip to the small island with lots of islanders being seen and being intentionally told good news.  Tom was able to meet and study with an island brother who was recently deported from the French Island— while he hopes to return to his wife and kids on the French Island, we’re hopeful that his temporary presence could have a positive impact on his extended family here. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
An island sister on the plateau just lost a brother at sea (one passenger among two boatfuls that are presumed drowned).  Pray for her family as they grieve and that she might be able to be a light to those without hope. The monthly women’s gathering that should be this week is being pushed back a week because so many of the island sisters aren’t around. Pray that in the midst of increased travels during July/August that gatherings of brothers and sisters would still happen. Pray for the follow-up with those islanders who expressed interest in learning more during the medical team’s trip on the small island.  Pray for our kids as they have just two weeks left of school and have many projects, presentations and exams to get through. Pray that they wouldn’t be troubled with stress and anxiety. Our teammate has only two weeks before she heads back to her home country for some months— pray that she would be able finish up well and have good interactions with island friends and neighbors as she says goodbye. There have been so many mosquitoes around lately (the worst we’ve ever seen). Pray for them to decrease and for protection from mosquito born illnesses going around (primarily dengue and chikungunya). 

Cycles

 There are all kinds of cycles and rhythms that mark out our life. There is the cycle of a single day— the sun rising with the accompanying morning sounds and routines of waking up, praying, getting dressed, and ending with the setting sun and bedtime routines. There is a our weekly cycle of school or work, followed by the weekend. Then there’s the seasonal cycle of weather changing and holidays coming and going. Finally there are the bigger changes of life cycles, babies growing into kids, growing into teenagers and so on. They all help us to mark the passage of time. 

Sunrise before morning flight

We were only gone from the islands for a few weeks really and in some ways it felt like no time had passed, but there were several markers when we got back to show us that time had continued. 

• We reach for a dish and find that there is some dust that has collected on it. 
• Our teammate commented that our son looked taller, requiring the mandatory check to see how he stands in comparison to the adults in his life. 
• At 7am every morning, the school behind our house is no longer humming with life, telling us that the main school year has ended. 
• We woke up in the morning and realized that we hadn’t turned on the fan in the night and had pulled the flat sheet up over us, letting us know that the weather has cooled and the season has changed. 
• An empty amorylis stalk let us know that a bloom had opened and gone in our absence. 
• As we passed through the big island, our old teammate’s young baby was holding her head high and giving us smiles in a way that she couldn’t when we left. 
• The hair had started to grow around Tom and our son’s ears, highlighting the need for new haircuts. 
• Some island friends and shopkeepers greeted us with the common phrase, “I haven’t seen you,” to let us know that our absence had been noted. 
• Suddenly idle talk is all about upcoming nuptials and we’ve been handed a few invitations, letting us know that the wedding season of July and August is fast approaching. 
• A new kitten is roaming in the back area behind our house that wasn’t there when we left. 

Back on the islands!

Without markers, it can be easy to lose track of time, but we have these humbling reminders that life and time keeps going forward. Our daughter is needing to think about college. Passports needed to be renewed. Our youngest is becoming a teenager in August. The grandmother downstairs is able to do less and less on her own. We are needing reading glasses more and more often. Students are learning and getting their certificates. Life keeps going with all its telltale cycles of change. 

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Genesis 8:22

So here we are with our blog, one of those markers— reminding us (whether it feels too quick or too long to us) that another week has gone by!

PRAYERS ANSWERED


We are thankful that we see God’s hand sustaining us in all the short-term and long-term cycles of life.  When we wrote on Monday last week, the passports had not come through.  That was in the morning.  By the afternoon we got a message from the US Embassy saying the passport had been found—so thanks for praying!  We were able to get the passports, and though we had started the process of changing our flights, we were able to change them back without too much trouble or cost.  In the end we were able to travel under our original itinerary and are happily back in our island home.  Thank you for praying for island marriages (last week’s blog).  There has been some positive markers in that area, but do keep praying.  Our daughter got to get some good sleep over the weekend and seems to be doing okay with no arthritis flare-ups.  
One of our former teammates got married this weekend and we were able to watch the wedding ceremony livestream with colleagues and a few islanders. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We are looking forward to a few months without any planned travel.  Pray that we could get into some good routines—including finishing up home school for the year, starting some new English classes, and getting our English Club going again.  Kids around the islands (and our kids at their school) are entering the time of final papers and exams.  Pray that they could remember all that they’ve studied and do well without stress or anxiety.  Megan’s back has been a little out of sorts after all the travel and a strange bed, pray that it would settle down, be strong and pain-free.  Tom got to study with someone new this week.  They made a plan to study again on Wednesday.  Pray that this new man would remember, show up, and have a hunger for further study.

Breaking Patterns

 Our son was struggling to make a decision, not wanting to rest on a firm opinion (a common problem). I took the opportunity to share how I have struggled with indecisiveness. Sometimes I used to frame it positively as being laid-back or easy-going, but there are times when not having an opinion and not just making a decision is unhelpful and annoying to others and harmful to ourselves. So I shared some stories with my son, letting him know that he isn’t alone, but also that it was something he could work on.

Praying to pass on good patterns to our kids

We all carry with us patterns and habits that can be hard to break. Some of them we are aware of and acknowledge. Others we may not recognize as being a pattern or habit. Some may be good things, patterns that have a positive impact. Others are insidious and hurting the things that we really want for our life and community. We can see the roots for some patterns in our own lives and experiences. We see how they took root and grew. Others have roots that go even deeper than just us— they are patterns and habits that span generations of our family or even into the wider community and culture. 

I have a friend on the island whose whole family struggles with anger issues. She has seen it clearly in other members in her family and herself, but it doesn’t make it easy for her to always stop it in herself, though she does want it to stop. 

These deeper rooted habits are often the hardest ones to break (assuming they are bad and you want to break them) because the people around us are potentially wrapped up in the same patterns. You don’t necessarily have good examples to look to and emulate. If the community or culture embraces this bad habit, then there is no one even encouraging you to change. 

We have been reminded lately about the unhealthy patterns in marriage on the islands. Divorce is such an expected outcome of marriage that people don’t want to work on or fight for their marriages when they get hard. Islanders don’t expect to trust or necessarily confide in their spouses. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not patterns with which most islanders are familiar. Even among our brothers and sisters on the islands, we don’t see many strong marriages. It is easy to become discouraged, but we realize that it is a huge battle against all the generations of negative patterns. 

We see prayer as a huge weapon against the negative patterns in our lives. But we need to recognize the pattern, want it to change, and hand it over to the One whose power is much greater than ours. He is also our source for asking for new, good patterns and habits that we can foster and hopefully pass on to the next generation. 

Milkshakes to celebrate Father's Day

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Praise that our colleagues were able to return to the islands after their medical appointments in South Africa. Praise that our older two kids were able to be part of a school music tour this past weekend and that Tom was able to go along as a chaperone.  It went very well. Praise that our friends were able to enter Chad on their already-issued visas. We were thankful and encouraged to get to visit with some African colleagues from the big island who are currently in mainland Africa. We are also thankful that our island friends have made initial steps working through their marital issues. We are thankful for Tom and for all the other fathers in our lives as we celebrated Father's Day.  

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for island marriages to be healthy and establish new life giving patterns and leave behind the old destructive patterns of previous generations— continue to pray especially for our island friend’s marriage as they move forward with their reconciliation. Pray that our daughter would stay well.  Things like music tours are fun but also exhausting and there is a cold going around, both which can cause a flare up of her arthritis.  Pray that she would be able to get the rest she needs and stay healthy.  Unfortunately, we have not received the passports.  Our youngest son’s passport has not been received by the embassy even though it was sent from the US 10 days ago. They are not sure why this has happened.  This has meant us needing to change our tickets and extend our stay.  Pray that we would get the passports ASAP so that we might return to the islands soon— we’re ready to be back home. 

Looking for Stuff

 I wanted to buy two things.  That’s all—two things.  So I scheduled the whole morning for it.

You see, these were not two typical things.  Plus, there is no Amazon on the islands—nothing even close to it.  Nor are there catch-all stores like Walmart or Target. So with some items, you just have to accept—this is going to take a lot of searching and asking.

Looking at chair options

To be specific, I was looking for dining room chairs and soldering paste.  Our dining room chairs are falling apart, every time you sit in them it’s a bit of a gamble. I had just gotten the okay from our landlord to go out and price some new ones.  (We agreed to go halfsies on them.)  The soldering paste was because I had just bought a cheap appliance which had broken after a few days (no warranties here either) and which I was determined to fix myself.  I’ve got a soldering iron and some solder, but from watching some youtube videos, (and many failed attempts) it was clear that I was missing a key ingredient—soldering paste.  So off I went with a hope and a prayer looking for these items.

Now you might be thinking that it sounds dreadful spending half the day looking for two items.  Truly, we’ve had to let go and mourn the notion of one-stop shopping or click and pay deliveries to your doorstep.  But there is another part of me that has learned to enjoy this activity—the thrill of the hunt, you might say.

Finding and pricing dining room chairs was actually pretty straight forward.  There are no furniture shops or Ikea’s here.  Instead we have furniture built to order from local carpenters.  Most of the carpenters live in the next town over, so it was just a matter of walking down the street, looking at their wares and haggling over the prices.  Still, there is some fun in doing this.  Talking about color and price and timing over and over again is a good local language lesson and you discover things—like the going rate for a dining room chair in Clove Island is 17500 francs each.  That’s about $40.  I know this because carpenter after carpenter quoted me the same price.  (Side note:  A good language learning technique is to play dumb and ask different people the same questions again and again.  That’s how I discovered the going-rate.)

Our son making a friend

Finding soldering paste would be a little trickier and I knew it.  There are a host of little hardware stores all over town.  But what one will carry versus another is anyone’s guess.  I knew I would go past a number of hardware shops on my way to the carpenters, so I planned stop in and see what I could find.  

First problem is, I have no idea how to say what I’m looking for.  First attempt—look it up in French with google translate: “pâte à souder.”  Sometimes the French translation works.  In this case it did not…The shopowner thought about it for a second and said, “I don’t have that,”  which probably actually meant, “I don’t know what you’re talking about so I probably don’t have it.”  

Second attempt, I tried to explain what I wanted in the local language: “I’m looking for something you use to fix electronics, it’s kind of like a glue, but it’s not glue…no, I don’t want glue…you know with the stick that gets hot and then you fix the electronics…yes, the stick…yes, and the solder…yes, I’ve got those…No, I don’t want the stick…No I don’t want the solder…I’ve got those already.  I’m looking for the paste…the stuff that’s kind of like glue…”  

After being shown a couple of soldering irons and rolls of solder, the shopowner said, “I don’t have that.”

“Do you know where I could get some?”  I ask.  He doesn’t.  I don’t think he knows what I’m talking about.  But I am undaunted.  This is part of the fun!  I’m learning language and now I really want to find that soldering paste.  So I press on!

Third attempt—I pull up a picture of soldering paste on my phone.  I make sure it’s a picture that also has a soldering iron and solder in the picture so I can point to the paste and say, “I want that stuff.”

This is a very effective way—Praise God for the internet!  The next shopowner sees the picture and definitely understands.  “Yes, yes, yes…I don’t have that.”  But I’m ready for that answer, “Do you know someone who does?”… “I think the guy down the road does.”

So off I head down the road.  The next guy tells me the same thing.  So does the guy after that.  At the next shop there are 4 guys sitting around.  One of the guys takes my phone and says—I know where you can get that stuff.  You need to go to this guy in the next town over.  So I make my way to the next town over. I stop by a couple of hardware shops on the way and they say the same thing, so I decide to catch a taxi over to the next town, and when I get there I look for this guy’s shop.  His shop is up some stairs on the backside of a building (basically, a place I never would have found without asking) and sitting on his shelf are three jars of solder paste.  I ask how much it costs (as if I’m going to argue over the price—at this point I’m ready to pay just about anything) and he says 1000 francs—that’s like $2!  Sold! 

Ready for Jr/Sr Banquet

I got home around 1pm, overall a successful morning. 

P.S. The solder paste worked—I fixed my appliance and it’s working great!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for a good long weekend with kids for their midterm break. We have also had some good connections with old colleagues and other cross-cultural workers while here in mainland Africa. Praise that our daughter’s health has continued to be better. We are thankful that our colleagues made it safely to South Africa and have been able to get the medical testing they need (they are awaiting results). Praise that Hashiri seems to be reading the stories that Megan left her and is writing with her questions. There was a major holiday on the islands-- praise that our teammate got to have some positive interactions and conversations with islanders around the holiday. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray our kids’ new passports would come soon— we are hoping to be notified sometime this week that they are ready for pick-up. We have old colleagues and friends who serve in countries that are reciprocating the US travel ban, making it unclear if they will be allowed to return to their countries of service or have their visas renewed. Pray for God to ease international relations and open the way for workers to continue to serve in their various countries. One of the few believing couples on Clove Island is having marital problems— pray for their marriage and witness, pray that they would both seek God and find unity in Him. We are hoping to visit with a family that is working on the big island (but currently in mainland Africa)— pray that we would have a good and encouraging visit with them. Several of the Clove Island sisters are having health problems— meaning they weren’t all at women’s gathering this past week. Pray for healing and that health problems wouldn’t cause them to become isolated from other sisters. 

Small Sacrifices

 At first I wasn’t sure what Hashiri was talking about. She always sends me lots of messages, but the way she spells the local language always makes it a bit of a puzzle to decipher. She adds letters to match French spelling or she drops letters/sounds.

Henna-ed hands and fingertips of an island bride

But finally I realized that she wanted to make me henna! She had access to a henna plant and she wanted to make some for me so that I could dye my fingertips. Sometimes islanders use henna to make elaborate designs on the arms and feet of brides, but generally married women would only just use it to stain their fingertips or toes, maybe on their palms. Nail polish is frowned upon here, but henna is okay.

I have gotten used to how it looks and the intricate designs can be very pretty, but I have never found the dying of the fingertips very attractive, especially on my skin color, but I have never been in a position where I was pressured or asked to do it, though teammates have.

Hashiri kept on with the messages telling me how beautiful I would look with the henna, how much like an islander. She also let me kow how grateful she was that I had given her a book with stories about God and so how now she wanted to give this henna to me as a gift.

Applying the henna paste

As the messages kept coming, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. If it had been an offhand offer to make me henna, I would have been able to turn it down without causing any offense. But Hashiri had put thought into it and was making it specifically for me.

When she came to deliver it, I was relieved that she was just dropping it off (so I wouldn’t be pressured to doing it a lot) and extra thankful that she mentioned that some people just use it on the nails and not the entire fingertip (meaning I could get away with doing it that way). I made a point of thanking her for her gift and the thoughtfulness it demonstrated.

I wasn’t excited about it. It’s not really my style. Henna also doesn’t just wash off. On the skin it will last a while, but on nails, you usually have to wait for the stain to grow out. Tom suggested that I could get away without using it since we were traveling shortly afterwards and Hashiri may not even see me again, but I knew she might visit one more time and if she saw that I hadn’t used her gift, she might be hurt. So I took out the thick henna paste and applied it to my toenails.

Once the paste dried, I had orange nails! Not something I would ever choose to have, but in the end I got off easy and it was only a small sacrifice for the sake of relationship.

Nails dyed orange!

I sent Hashiri photos of the finished product. She returned with her compliments, suggesting I do it a second time to make it even darker!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’re thankful for relationships and creative solutions to cultural differences.  We are thankful that our trip to the US embassy went smoothly and they accepted all our paperwork without incident.  Now we’re just waiting for the new passports to arrive.  It feels like we have been using our time here well, getting plenty of work done.  We’re thankful for the time we get on the weekends with our kids.  We are thankful that WhatsApp has allowed us to keep in touch and encourage our island friends.  Some colleauges recently had to travel to South Africa for some medical testing.  We are thankful that they arrived safely.

PRAYERS REQUESTED

We’ve heard that electricity in the islands will probably not improve for a month or two.  Although we are uneffected by this at the moment, we feel for our colleauges and neighbors who have to deal with long and unpredictable outages both day and night.  Pray that Hashiri, Muki, Mtsa and others would remember to read the booklets/books they’ve been given and find encouragement for their hearts.  Pray that we could continue to use our time here wisely and that the passports would arrive quickly.  Pray for this upcoming weekend, as we celebrate our kids’ mid-term break from school.  They’ll be with us (and off school) from Thursday evening till Monday.  Pray for our colleauges in South Africa getting all their medical testing done.  Pray for good reports and good healing. Megan had another skin biopsy taken, pray for clear results.

Travel Surprises

 Travel can be hard.  Like all travelers, we are at the mercy of the weather.  A bad storm is just as likely to strand people in Chicago as it is on Clove Island.  But we are also at the mercy of unreliable services.  Not that services in other countries are never unreliable.  They might have the occasional strike or maintenance recall that will cancel flights and suddenly leave people stranded, but generally they can depend on reliable services.  While flights get delayed and cancelled on occasion, the airlines will usually help you find alternative routes.

Preparing to leave Clove Island

Back in 2020, we remember flying home just as countries were closing their borders.  Despite cancelled flights and rearrangements, the airlines worked hard to help us and many other passengers get to where they were going as best they could.  If only you could expect such service and help on the islands…

Wednesday morning we left for the airport and the weather was beautiful.  It’s a thirty minute flight from Clove Island to the big island.  Our international flight to mainland Africa would be the following morning. After waiting around for about an hour, one of the airline workers came out to announce that there would be no flight today.  She also gave no assurance that there would be a flight the next day and no offers to help us find a solution.  

That puts us in a pickle.  There was a time when there were a multiple local airlines running on the islands, and if one was unable to fly you could often jump over and buy a ticket with the other airline.  (Good luck getting your money back from the first airline.)  But recently only one airline has been running.  Why wasn’t it flying today?  A maintenance issue had come up.  Where other companies in the past have had 2 planes flying, the current company has only one plane.  So if we wanted to make our connecting flight on the big island the next day, we were out of luck in terms of flights.

Halfway- arriving on the small island

That’s when we heard a man (not an airline employee) announce to the crowd—that there was a boat going today that hadn’t left yet that might have 10 spots.  We quickly let him know we would be interested in that option as we and our fellow airline passengers hurried toward the taxis that would take us across town (the port is on the other side of town from the airport).  

As we rode in the taxi, we tried to prepare ourselves mentally for the trip ahead of us. We’ve already told you of our adventures taking the little boat to the the small island.  But we’ve never taken the little boats all the way to the big island!  This would be a first for us— one leg to the small island and then a second to the big island.  Thankfully, the preparations are about the same.  Not having planned on boat travel, we quickly went and bought a bunch of large plastic bags and packing tape to put around our luggage. Then we bought some seasickness meds at a pharmacy near the port, and lathered up in sunscreen.  (Despite our best efforts, my  backpack still got pretty wet, my journal taking the most damage.)  

By 10:45am, we were loaded onto a boat—sitting on slightly padded benches with no back support, exposed to the elements except for a canopy to shield us from the sun.  

 A good deal of spray comes into the boat, so depending on your seat and the wind, you may be quite soaked by the end of it.  Imagine being relentlessly doused with sea water over and over again for a few hours and you get the picture.  There is no bathroom.  There are no complementary food and drink services.  When you get out to the open ocean between islands, the waves get substantially higher, which causes the boat to slap against the water as it breaks over each wave.  On the first leg of the trip to the small island, there was an island woman with a small baby who was absolutely terrified when the boat started rising and dropping. (Remember, sitting on a bench, there is nothing to grab onto.) Thankfully the weather was good so we had relatively few of these back breaking drops and the terrified young mother got out at the small island so didn’t have to endure the second leg.

Arriving on the big island

The two legs of the boat ride took about 5 hours. We arrived on the big island in the early evening, tired, wet, and covered in a thin layer of salt, cramming into a taxibus for the hour ride up to the capital. We had made it! Our connection the following day would not need to be changed!  

It was a long, hard day, but we could see all the provision…Our flight was early enough that we were able to switch to the boat option before they had left.  There were spaces available on the boat.  We had recently taken the same boat to the small island so we had a fair idea of what to expect.  We had enough cash on hand to pay for the boat tickets, the weather was good, and the sea was mostly calm!  We do not know why it was we were meant to take the boat this time, but we see God’s hand watching over us all the way.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it to the big island and then to mainland Africa! Our youngest son who had to travel with us was a trooper and didn’t complain. We are proud of him. Our daughter continues to be doing better and is back to her baseline. We went to the rheumatologist today and she was encouraged to see how she has improved from the latest flare-ups.  Our older son did a great job performing in his school drama performances this past weekend. We are thankful that we got to connect with several of our colleagues on the big island and for one that just got recently engaged (his fiancée is visiting the islands now).

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for our appointment at the US embassy to renew our kids’ passports. Pray that it all goes smoothly and that the new passports come without significant delays. Pray that we would use our time in mainland Africa well while we wait for the passports— we will be focusing on administrative tasks and online meetings mostly. Pray that Muki and Mtsa would keep coming together and studying in Tom’s absence. Pray that we could encourage islanders to keep growing even while we are off island— islanders use WhatsApp and Messenger a lot, so we hope to stay connected. Continue to pray for our island colleagues as they face medical challenges and needing to find a new house. Pray that electricity on Clove Island would improve, the power cuts have gotten long and unpredictable.

Overcoming the Language Barrier

 Language is a complicated and beautiful thing. We earnestly believe that learning to speak and communicate in another language is a deeply humbling and edifying process that everyone should experience.

Tom with teachers overcoming the English barrier!

At our last women’s gathering, three women joined us for the first time. One was an islander and the two other were women from other African nations. We have worked really hard to encourage the women’s gatherings to be in the local island language, and usually it is, but there is the tendency that when there is a foreign visitor that the educated women switch into French out of deference for the visitor, but in the process end up isolating the lesser educated women who can not follow the conversation in French. But this time it was more complicated than that, because although the two women were foreigners, only one of them knew French, the other spoke Swahili, so actually she was able to pick up more words from the local island language than the French (the local language is a Bantu language like Swahili). How do we bridge all these language without detracting from the study?

As I passed through the big island some weeks ago, I heard how the international group in the national capital overcomes the language divide. They encourage whoever is speaking to speak in whatever language they are most comfortable in, but then they have several translators avalailable— some people ready to go between French to English, or English to Swahili or Malagasy to French to make sure that everyone is hearing the message in a language that they understand. But the complication is that they only have people with certain combinations of languages, so if someone speaks in French, there is no one who knows both French and Swahili, so it first has to be translated into English and then from English it can translated into Swahili.  I didn’t get to witness it, but it is a lot of work and I am sure it makes their gatherings longer, but it is what they have commited themselves to in order for everyone to be connected to what is being shared.

Enjoying nature doesn't require language!

Back at the womens’ gathering, we didn’t have an established way of how to proceed.  We just went ahead with the study— primarily in the local language but with some translation given in French and some responses in Swahili (which those of us who speak the local language could get the gist of if not the entire meaning). It was a interesting and lovely time of study, because  although I don’t know that either of these women followed everything, they were engaged. There was a feeling of camaraderie and connection despite the language barrier. We were all reading the same story in our languages so even if we couldn’t understand each other perfectly, we were all engaging with the same source and finding lessons in it together.  

I was proud of these two women. It can be easy as a language learner to check out and disengage, because staying engaged takes energy and willpower. They stuck with it. Ultimately they both hope to learn the local language, but it will take time. Meanwhile, we rejoice that even with language barriers we can find community and unity through the One who understands every language!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for this group of women and their commitment to meeting together and to one another.  May they continue to grow and encourage one another.  We are thankful that our daughter’s health continues to improve. We are thankful for good timing as Tom was able to finish up a class and go to an English ceremony over the weekend, leaving him more free to travel this coming week.  We’re thankful for Muki and Mtsa who continue to come and get so much out of their study times.  This week has had some particularly good times together.  We are thankful for a door getting installed in our office with minimal trouble and for the opportunity this might give us for new uses of our group office space going forward.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We travel on Wednesday and Thursday.  Pray for the travels to go well and smoothly.  We are hoping to connect with some of our colleauges on the big island as we pass through, pray that flights would be on time to give us the opportunity to make those connections.  Continue to pray for our daughter’s health.  The powerful prayers of our island sister for healing have been answered.  May it be not just be for a few weeks!  Pray for our son who will be performing in a drama performance this coming weekend (which we will get to attend!)  May he and all the other actors have some great performances.  Pray for a family from our group on the big island who have had a rough year with lots of medical emergencies.  Soon they will travel for yet another medical reason and they also received news that their landlord has given them their two months notice to find another place to leave.  It just seems like one thing after another for them. Pray for healing and grace and perseverance for their whole family.