Thanksgiving

Our team by the Thanksgiving table

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone.  We hope you were ale to enjoy your holiday with family and friends.  We ended up celebrating on Friday this year because of schedules, but that did not dampen our joy.

We have a tradition of writing out the things we are thankful for in the previous year for our Thanksgiving blog.  Even more goes into our Thanksgiving book, but we always share some of the highlights right here.  It has not been an easy year, but we still have much to be thankful for:

We have a great team!  We have said goodbye to some members this year, but we were blessed by them when they were here and we have continued on.  Currently we have only two teammates, but they are amazing women. We are blessed to call them teammates, friends, sisters, and aunties.  What a joy it is to serve with them, be challenged by them, and to learn and love with them as we serve here together on the islands.

We have great kids!  It seems like everyone is gaining or losing teeth these days.  The youngest and oldest have new molars coming in, while our middle one has lost so many teeth in 2018 there is hardly a picture this year where there isn’t some kind of gap.  All signs of growing up.  We are so happy to see them doing well in school and learning.  Reading skills have had a definite increase this year!  As well as the fun we are having going on hikes and swimming and now even karate!

We got half a pumpkin just in time to make pie!

We work together with great people!  We are not the only people on this island with a heart for the islands.  We work with some great people here on this island.  We work and pray with island brothers and sisters.  We talk to, pray with, and learn from colleagues on the other islands too.  There are times when working with others can be hard, but we are very thankful for the unity that we have, may it increase!

We’ve had some great visitors this year!  Our short-termer from Madagascar joined our team for just one month, but we were enormously blessed to have her.  Others have come through for shorter visits, but each visit has encouraged us.  There are great people out there, looking to serve with heart, soul, mind, and strength and we are thankful for the ones we get to meet.

Yum for Thanksgiving pie!

We get to do some great things!  It may not seem great to everyone, but we think seeing English programs grow, seeing translations happen, seeing people hear the story of 2 Kingdoms, seeing people studying the deeper truths, seeing spiritual growth in ourselves and in those we work with are all amazing things.  We are thankful for them.

We are thankful for a great light shining on these islands!  I wanted to write “we live on a great island” but I felt that would not be true.  For though there are great things about this place and people, there is also great darkness here.  But a great light is shining in this place and one day it will be transformed and then we will say with confidence, “We live on a great island!”  But until that day we will rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation and be steadfast in prayer!  I hope you’ll pray with us.

P.S.  We have great people on our support team!  If you’re reading this blog, then you are probably one of our support team.  We love and depend upon you to continue in this work. We cannot do it without you.  So often we see the fruit of your encouragement and prayers. Thanks for all that you do for us.  We are thankful!

We didn't eat turkey, but Tom saw some (a rare sight here)

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We had great day celebrating Thanksgiving— we even found pumpkin so we could have pumpkin pie! We had an encouraging meeting with brothers and sisters on the islands, sharing what they had recently learned at a seminar. It was nice to see them learning and challenging one another.


PRAYERS REQUESTED
The consultant checking is going smoothly, if not as fast as they hoped. They still really hope that they can finish checking the first book. Pray that they would continue to work well and would have peace about how much they are able to finish in this second week of work. We were invited to a neighborhood wedding but after one event learned that the bride is only 13 years old! This is not not a common practice on the islands, but not unheard of either. Pray that we would be able to respond in ways that challenge people in our neighborhood to think and question such practices.
We’ve heard that there is a sick sister on the big island that needs to seek medical care abroad. Pray that she would find healing and the needed funds for getting care. Continue to pray for the political situation. Not much has changed and we anticipate the tensions to lead to unrest again whether in coming days, weeks or months.