Unforeseen Blessings

Quality family time- homemade pizza

It is easy to get discouraged these days.  COVID-19 has made 2020 feel like the year that was cancelled.  Some of us have experienced great sorrow and grief, sickness and fear, and others have not.  But everyone has experienced loss.  Schools cancelled, graduations cancelled, vacations cancelled, celebrations of all kinds curtailed or cancelled—everyone has experienced loss.  It has been a strange time for us to come back to the States, but like so many difficult times we can choose to rejoice, we can choose thankfulness, we can look for the blessings. 

Normally our time in America is busy, involving lots of travel, lots of visits, lots of face to face time with many, many people.  Clearly COVID has done a number on all those plans. Originally, we had planned to be on the road for more or less two months with some short visits with family interspersed.  We had also hoped to spend some quality time (like 3 weeks) in a couple of places where we could be available for unplanned gatherings at coffee shops, the church, playgrounds, and parks.  All of this has been curtailed.

As many of you know when COVID first hit, everyone hunkered down, and so did we.  We didn’t leave Massachusetts and Tom’s parent’s house for almost 2 months—the same amount of time we had planned to be traveling.  When we finally came to California to be with Megan’s family, it was more or less the same— staying at our parents house and “meeting” with people online. As society has learned more about the virus and people have grown more “comfortable” with social distancing, we’ve all come to realize that we can still visit each other—outdoors, with masks, at distance, etc.  So some visits have happened, but we can count all of them on our fingers. So not nearly as many as we would normally have.  Just like the rest of you, we’ve learned to use zoom and to connect with people in virtual ways in lieu of face to face.

Mom & Son date

But with all of the challenges of this time, we feel that we must acknowledge the unforeseen blessings.  There have actually been many for us.  To begin with, shelter in place has greatly changed the tenor of our visits.  Instead of short visits with lots of people we have had long visits with a few people, and it is a blessing.  As much as we regret our inability to see so many face to face and share with them the things we have learned from living on the islands, it has been a blessing to go deeper with a few.  It has been a blessing to our families who have gotten to really know their grandchildren—not just the hyped up, vacation version, but the bored, silly, grumpy, happy, content, lazy, just hanging-out versions too.  The same goes for our kids getting to know their grandparents.  COVID has taken away a lot of celebration and outings to restaurants, museums, amusement parks, mini-golf courses, movie theaters, etc.  But in stripping all those things away, it has meant for quality time with those family members.  Our kids have learned that America is not all kids’ meals and fun outings (a.k.a. land of constant vacation)—but a place where normal life happens, and for that we are also thankful.  It has been a blessing to be with our families and love them even through the “you’re driving me nuts” stages of communal living and to have those deep connections that extended time together fosters.

Hike

We are also thankful for the chance to have community beyond our family too. So we’re thankful for video-gathering apps like zoom that have made that possible.  Because of zoom there are certain groups that we have had a chance to join that would never have been possible in our normal visits to the US.  One of those groups has been a small group on the North Shore of Boston. If COVID had not happened, most likely we would have visited this small group a few times.  One of those times would have been devoted to sharing about the islands.  The other would have been a chance to say goodbye before we headed back to the islands.  But because COVID caused this beautiful community to go online,  we were able to join them early on. We shared about the islands, and then kept attending because we could.  It didn’t matter that we were hours away (and now thousands of miles away). Zoom meant we could join the group from wherever we were.  They have accepted us and gotten to know us and we have gotten to know them.  As strange as it is, even though we have never met many of them in person, they have become community to us and we’ve gone much deeper with this small group than we have with a group in the US for a long time.  Similar opportunities have also arisen for Tom to join a men’s group and for the kids to join online youth groups.  We realize that the online nature of these groups is unique and hopefully temporary, but without the current circumstances we probably wouldn’t have been as integrated into community as we have been.  It has been an unforeseen blessing for us.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” says the Sage.  We thought this was going to be a time for visiting, traveling and meeting new people.  Instead the Lord has given us this time to settle, stay and go deeper.  So we accept this time for what it is and remember the commands to rejoice and be thankful.

PRAYERS ANSWERED

Our teammates (who had COVID symptoms) are feeling better after about two weeks of being sick. Thanks for praying. We continue to be thankful for our health and the blessing of friends and family. Tom’s long online conversation/debate with our island friend has ended for now— pray that our friend would continue to seek the truth. We continue to be thankful that the islands don’t seem to have been hard hit by COVID. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
We only have a few weeks left in CA, pray that our remaining time here goes well, especially as Megan’s dad has the next couple weeks off and we have the chance to have some fun together. Continue to pray for our colleagues that have been waiting to travel, some waiting to  leave the islands, others waiting to return. So many plans for the coming year have fallen through, we are left wondering if we should start fresh and consider new directions for our work as team leaders on Clove Island. Not sure what that would mean, but pray with us that we would not cling too tightly to our old plans but be open to new ones. Continue to pray for new workers for the islanders— both from the West and from mainland Africa.