Vote Aftermath

People waiting for candidate motorcade (before vote)

This past Sunday morning, as is our habit, we were studying together. We were studying a passage that included a group of leaders discussing how to answer a question. “Should we answer yes or no?”, they wondered. “If we answer yes, we’ll be caught in hypocrisy. If we say no, the crowd might get angry with us.” So ultimately they decided to say, “We don’t know.”

Now this story is 2,000 years old, but we see that the human dynamic still repeats itself. Notice that they don’t ask each other which is the true answer. It isn’t about truth at all, they are weighing how each answer will appear and which will be most advantageous. Truth isn’t important to them in that moment.

We’ve gotten so used to this practice, that it has made us sometimes cynical and untrusting. When island leaders make claims and promises, we almost never take it at its face value.  At the same time, we also realize that the truth sometimes is superseded by people’s impressions and what they believe is true.  If enough people believe something, it shapes their actions and the events of the nation, no matter what has actually happened.

Island elections were yesterday. It wasn’t even mid-morning before we heard the reports of trouble. The reports are that people came first thing in the morning to different polls scattered around our island to find ballot boxes already full with pre-marked ballots (all voting for the incumbent president). Other stories are of international observers not getting the paperwork they needed to actually observe.  News reports show polling places ransacked, ballots strewn in the streets, military coming and responding. Friends have told us about going to their local polls and not finding their names among the registered voters but seeing on the list lots of people who had died or traveled. One friend said they went to polling place after polling place until they found their name and the names of some of the neighbors listed at a neighborhood poll far across the capital from where they lived. All twelve opposition candidates have united agains the incumbent denouncing the election and calling for protests. We’ve seen video and photos that suggest that people have been injured and even died from shots fired.

Daughter finds a friend

But at the same time the incumbent president’s office has sent a statement that everything has gone fine, that there has been no violence, no injuries and no problems. We don’t claim to know exactly what has happened in all these locations, but we’re convinced that things have not “gone fine.”

We’ve been having you pray for the islands’ elections for several weeks. As we prayed ourselves, I often felt conflicted about how to pray. The default prayer that seemed to come to my mind was praying that “everything goes smoothly and that there is no problems and everything stays peaceful.” But as I reflected on it, I questioned if that was the right prayer. We DO want peace on the islands, but we also want justice and good governance. Probably the “smoothest, least eventful” version of events would have been for everyone to just go with the flow and let things happen. But what if there is injustice, did I really want that to be ignored or apathetically accepted? Did I want “false peace” at the cost of justice? No, we want a bright future for these islands. So I started to pray for change. I started to pray for the bright future we dream of here, with leaders who lead selflessly and serve their people, with leaders who promote true justice and champion peace, honesty and transparency. I continued to pray, this time for peaceful change. We don’t want violence and are very troubled by some of the events we are hearing about, but we are encouraged that islanders are not just accepting a situation that strongly suggests the presence of corruption and injustice.

We’re not sure what happens now. We hear about the demonstrations on the big island being dispersed by tear gas and gunfire. We hear rumors of more to come, but we don’t know what the coming days will bring. So we continue to pray. We pray for peaceful change. We pray for the bright future for islanders that brings true hope and full life.

Son & goats escape the rain

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful that reports of violence have been relatively limited and that our city remains calm. We are staying close to home but our neighborhood is not tense and people are still milling about outside. Flour arrived before the elections! We are excited to have daily bread back in the bakeries and the option of making baked goods! Thanks for praying. We got our kids exam results back and they did fine. The kids have two weeks off of school between trimesters (which is nice since schools usually closed during unrest anyway!). Pray that our kids don’t go too stir-crazy. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Continue to pray for the islands. Continue to pray for us, our colleagues and our island brothers and sisters that we can make wise decisions and be bright lights in this uncertain time. Pray for peaceful change. Allergies are really bad right now on the island and our daughter has gotten very wheezy and coughy— pray for relief and that we can find medication that can help her. It is horribly hot and humid, and electricity cuts means no fans at times. Pray for regular rains to cool the islands down. The island sisters are hoping to revamp the idea of meeting monthly to study and encourage one another (this was proposed a year ago but then too many people traveled away and it lost momentum). Pray that this gathering could happen and be an encouragement.  We’ve been telling our island friends and neighbors that we have been praying for their nation and getting others to pray too. Pray that we would have more opportunities to share our hope with them.