Cultural Mix

The islands are pretty homogeneous. We’ve actually heard it said that the islands are one of the most homogeneous countries on the planet. That means there isn’t cultural diversity. Almost everyone is the same people group, same language, same culture. (This might help you understand how and why we stand out.)

Our family in Europe

Other countries usually have multiple people groups and languages (and not just because of the presence of foreign expats and immigrants), even people that started the same tend to diversify with time. We remember being surprised when we lived in France that among purely “French” people there was still a lot of local culture and even different dialects that still existed. It was fascinating. Even the islands (to be fair) are not as homogeneous as they may seem at first glance. Each island has a distinct dialect of the local language and a lot of unique cultural practices and rituals. Even different villages on a single island have been known to have some unique expressions and customs. Still, the fact remains that the islands are not very diverse.

This past week we have been on vacation with Tom’s family in Europe, seeing the diversity of different European cities while at the same time experiencing the unique diversity of the people group known as “tourists”. We sat through a security briefing that was repeated in 8 different languages and regularly saw tour guides flip through several languages with ease. We passed by people in impossibly short mini-skirts followed by people in full head coverings.

I’ll admit that the diversity has been refreshing. Maybe it has just been nice to not stand out as much. But then there was still the problem of where did we fit in the mix? We may be Americans but for the past decade we’ve lived in Africa. We both studied Spanish in school and learned French as adults, so most of the time we could follow to some degree the romance languages being spoken. Having lived on the islands we are generally more modestly dressed than many Europeans or even Americans, though our clothing choices do change when we’re not immersed in island culture and climate.

It was funny to see people try to size us up and guess where we fit and specifically what language we would speak. Most of the time if they saw us as a whole family they would try English, but we did end up having several conversations in French when that seemed easier. The funniest was when they saw Tom by himself. People often have a hard time placing Tom at a glance. Tom actually loves to play “Guess my ethnic background” with people because he has heard almost everything… Arab, Indian, Filipino, North African, Native American, Latin American, various Southern European countries and more. On the islands people usually think he is Arab and those that don’t know him will often greet him in Arabic. But on this European vacation, when he stepped out in front of us and was mobbed by the tour guides and taxi men, they tried several languages trying to see which one would get Tom to respond. They started with Italian, then Spanish, then Portuguese, then English, then French, then German…For fun, Tom finally expressed his disinterest in the local island language!  The blank stares were pretty funny and it turned out to be an effective way to be left alone. 

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PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve had a great time with family on our vacation.  Everyone’s travels have gone smoothly so far.   We’re also glad that those who were sick did not have severe symptoms and recovered within 24 hours and that everyone seemed to have a good time.  We’re thankful for lots of great moments with parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, brothers and sister and cousins.  We were ale to spend a day with one of our colleagues who lives and works among islanders in France.  It was a blessing to spend the day with her.  Our vacation was both fun and relaxing.  We are thankful for times of refreshment and beautiful scenery.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our good friend and boss just busted his knee playing soccer on the big island.  We’re praying for a quick recovery and that there would no need for surgery.  Pray for the rest of our travels as we make our way back to the islands this week.  Pray for our kids and our nieces and nephews as they transition from vacation mode back to school.  Pray for one of our island colleagues who had a traumatic experience while off island— pray that they would have the space to process and recover. We are looking for people to join our team in the immediate future as well as down the road in 2020.  Pray that the Lord would send wonderful teammates  our way.

Love makes the Difference

Feel the love

Sometimes it is the simple, most basic messages that we need to hear again and again. Probably because, although simple, the most important messages are also deep and profound. You can understand them immediately but can continue to explore them and learn from them for a lifetime.

Love is important. Love is essential.  It is not a new idea, but we need to be reminded.

This past week we were at a biannual conference of people that work in similar contexts all over Africa. This conference is always an encouraging time. We have many beloved colleagues from all over that we only see every two years at this gathering. It is refreshing to be with people who automatically understand our situation and challenges without much explanation. We can dive right into deeper topics because we know that they are on the same page. We always learn a lot from our time surrounded by this special group of people and each time there are some essential lessons that we learn and relearn.

This time it was about love. Do we really love the people and country where we serve? Are the things that we do from a sense of obligation or an overflow of love from our heart?  Because love makes all the difference.

It is easy when we are surrounded by people that understand, to actually wallow in the negatives, in all the hard things about our location and the people we serve, in the frustrations and heartbreaks we’ve endured. We might defend ourselves and say that we are just sharing requests for prayer, but we are also venting. This venting is sometimes cathartic, but if our hearts stay wallowing, if this wallowing is actually our normal state of mind, then our service becomes a burden and not an act of love.

We are called to rejoice always! If love is our starting place then rejoicing (not complaining) becomes normal! When we love someone, we are thankful for them and it is easy to see the good.

It is not that our visible actions or to-do lists will necessarily change, but our hearts and attitudes will change. For us, joy will increase and burdens will become light. For others, they will feel the difference. Our love can have the power to soften hearts and tear down walls.

Some of you may ask, “But how can we control who we love? It is a feeling outside our control.” The answer is that we pray for it! And while we wait for love to grow in our hearts, we do acts of love in obedience. We practice a thought-life of love, lingering on the positive thoughts of compassion and thankfulness and shooing away the thoughts of frustration and annoyance. And again we pray for more love.

God is love. He has enough to fill our hearts to overflowing, let’s ask Him for more.

Travels continue

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The conferences went very well! It was so good to be surrounded by so many great friends and colleagues. The times of singing and prayer were sweet. One of our colleagues is a speech therapist and she was able to meet with our boys and is helping to make a plan to help them speak well. We are blessed by her willingness to serve us in this way. The work continues to spread, there is the hope to spread work into new countries and among lots of new peoples in the coming years, pray for the right workers and connections and love for these new pushes. We are meeting Tom’s family for some vacation! So far travels have gone smoothly and we look forward to some family time!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
There are various islanders that are hoping for us to bring things back for them, pray that we would be able to meet as many of these requests as possible and that by doing so that it would strengthen relationships and give us opportunities to share with them. Many of our island colleagues are returning to the islands this week, pray for their transitions back. Also pray for a new family coming to the smallest island to live for the first time. Pray for them that they would have the energy to dive into language learning and relationships, that love would overflow from them in the initial challenges of island living. Two of our old teammates who now live on the French island weren’t able to come to the conferences because she was put on bedrest the day before (she is over 7 months pregnant), pray for the rest of her pregnancy, for a healthy baby and safe delivery.

Isolation

Youngest at island school

It is never easy to feel alone or isolated. On the islands, our children are always different.  Though they have many island friends at their island school, they will always not quite fit in.  This is the reality of our life, for we too, as adults, though we have many friends, speak the language, and understand a great deal of island culture, will never quite fit in.  The reality of that is isolation.  It is one of the reasons why we work on teams, but often kids don’t have have kids their age on the team (or in our kids case right now, any kids at all). So that is a reality for our kids…but not this week. This week we write to you from continental Africa where we have been attending something called Educational Support Week (ESW).  Held at a school for children of workers in Africa, ESW allows our children to be tested for grade level, participate in a regular English speaking school setting, and enjoy the company of a whole bunch of kids a lot like them.  It’s been a joy to see them running around on playgrounds, playing sports, eating in a cafeteria, and reading books from a library.  Our kids are surrounded by kids like them in many ways.

It is not only the children who benefit from this time with others, but we as parents get to interact with parents from all over Africa, we get to hear their successes and difficulties and commiserate over the challenges of being a lifelong sojourner.

As we talked with other families, we realize how difficult this problem of isolation can really be, and how, though we deal with this on the islands, it can be far more difficult in some contexts.  One family we spoke with lives among a violent and dangerous people group where honor killings are frequent and children fighting, beating and throwing rocks at one another is the norm.  In this context they have to keep their children close to home.  Local schools are not an option.  Children sometimes come to their house, but even then, neighbors can be suspicious and hinder their visits.  Their children’s world is quite small.  Comparatively our kids have it easy on the islands, they may always be “different” and without the extended families that island kids live with, but they can still go to school and play.

Oldest at island school

Girls are a whole other isolation challenge.  As they grow into adulthood, many times the places in which we live, where standards of acceptable behavior are very different, become increasingly difficult for them.  Already we have neighbors who demand for us to tell them when our daughter officially enters puberty.  We have no intention of sharing the details of our daughter’s body with the neighborhood.  Still island men, though not normally inclined to make physical advances will talk and look and leer.  How do we teach our daughter to withstand that?  Many island families will keep their daughters at home.  Safe. Secure. Isolated.  Will we have to do the same with our daughter?

It could be worse.  Again we talked to other families in other people groups where young women are regularly groped and often unsafe.  Other places where cloistering adolescent girls at home is the cultural norm and the rules of keeping them at home are strictly kept.  We empathize with these families and the challenges they face.

In the Kingdom of Light there is no such isolation.  We are fully known.  We have complete and joyful community.  There is no fear.  There is no taking advantage of innocence.  There is no need to hide or guard what is good and pure.  It is yet another example of it’s power to transform.  In the meantime, we will live with the problem of isolation.  We will suffer with it’s consequences, as we proclaim the freedom, inclusion, and community that can be found in the Kingdom of Light, so that one day, isolation will end, and all may be free.

There were monkeys at ESW too

PRAYERS ANSWERED
ESW went very well.  Our kids’ testing went well and the kids didn’t seem stressed about it.  They greatly enjoyed the opportunity to be in school with other kids a lot like them and their teachers appreciated having them. We also were given great advice for how to help them in the future. We are so thankful for how well the week went.  We had a bit of sickness over the weekend, but everybody seems to be doing better now.  We are thankful for good health. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We are finishing up one conference and beginning another.  Pray that these conferences would be good times of prayer, fellowship, and learning.  Pray for all the travel and logistics that go into moving from one conference to the next.   Pray for the networking that happens, as we talk to people that want to work on the islands and people who can guide our future work. Continue to pray for our island brothers and sisters that they would encouraged and studying with one another as most of the foreign workers are off-islands.

You Can't Do That

Forbidden photo--(it's okay, I smudged the price out)

“Madam, you can’t do that.”
I put my phone down. I had been taking a picture of one of the toaster oven boxes on the shelf. Remember my friend who wanted us to buy one for her?  So I stopped by one of the prominent stores on the big island to check out the options. The problem was that there wasn’t just one toaster oven model, there were at least five, made by different companies, with different prices and different sizes. At that point I just needed to get the information.

I explained the situation to the door guard who had stopped me, but he insisted that no photography or video was allowed in the store.

“It is the law of the store,” he told me emphatically.

So I put my phone away into my purse and got out a pen and paper. I started to write down the specs and prices. I could sense the man looking over my shoulder and acting tense. I started to look at the back of one of the boxes and he had to speak. “Don’t do that!”

I immediately asked him why and while he didn’t seem to know why, I could tell that he thought I was circumventing the rules somehow. Whatever the heart of the no photography law was, he seemed to think that the heart was to keep this detailed information secret. “But I need the information to know which one to buy.”

Kids taking a break from testing

I kept looking at the toaster ovens, trying to commit the information to memory without writing, thinking I might go outside to write it down if necessary. Soon some type of manager came up. I still had the forbidden pen and paper in my hand. The manager confirmed that I was not allowed to write down information like that. I expressed my dismay. “How am I supposed to tell my friend what you have available if I can’t have this information? She is on another island, she can’t come here.” The manager gave me a solution. “Tell me which ones you are interested in and we will print you a paper with all their information and prices.” I was surprised and wondered if perhaps I didn’t understand (these conversations were all in the local language), so I repeated, “You will give me a paper with all this same information.” He nodded his head. So I pointed out the five different toaster ovens on the shelves and he took them down and to his counter, while I looked around the rest of the store.

Ten minutes later the manager found me and handed me the printout, full with serial numbers, specs and prices. I left the store still at a loss of what the point of the “don’t write anything down” law was.

Islanders are often content to accept rules without the “why”. They are generally told not to question, to follow the letter of the law without an awareness or concern for the heart of law. That’s why it can be so confusing for them when they ask what are the laws that govern us. How are we supposed to pray? wash? live? We tell them that for us, it is the heart that is important, not the letter of the law.  Islanders also value information.  Having information that others do not have is a form of power.  Perhaps this was also at play in this interaction.  A sort of cultural perfect storm of silliness.

The good news is, I have the information about the toaster ovens.  Now we just need to choose one…

First time with glasses!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our travels to mainland Africa have gone smoothly.  We are enjoying the cooler weather.  Our medical and dental visits went well.  Tom has a new crown and Megan’s ultrasound showed her to be completely cyst free—the first post-op follow-up had shown the cyst growing back. We see this as a miracle!  Megan and our daughter also had a very good experience at the optometrist and are now sporting new glasses.  Our colleague managed to return home and be with her mother before her passing.  We rejoice that her mother is with the Lord, and that family could be with her for her final hours.  Pray for our colleague as she hopes to return to Africa this week. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our children will be in testing all week in an effort to assess how they are doing with homeschooling.  This is a bit stressful, but it also offers them a lot of fun opportunities to participate in activities at the school where the testing is being done.  Pray that this week would be a good one and that we would learn what we can continue to do to oversee our children’s education.  We have had frequent messages back and forth with our friends on the islands.  Pray that those islanders who have been learning and growing will continue to do so in our absence.  Continue to lift up the political situation which has the potential to become unstable. Good friend to many of our teammates has just gotten engaged— she has been wanting to get married for a long time so this is an answer to prayer but we also want people praying that she would marry a good man and not just be forced into a marriage with the first man that offers.