70,000

Men gathering for funeral event

Island culture still holds surprises.  Just this past week I attended an event I’ve never been to before.  Sadly, it was a funeral event.  COVID has been raging through the islands and people are dying.  There is a lot of denial, little testing and little the meager health care system can do, so people die.  We have not had any close friends die.  Most of our friends are still young, but we have had many friends who are bereaved… an aunt, a father, a mother, or a grandparent passed away.  

Last week the ex-husband of our old neighbor, Ma Riziki, passed away.  Sadly, we didn’t know Ba Riziki very well.  After we moved away from that neighborhood, Ba Riziki had come back to be taken care of by his ex-wife because he had nowhere else to go.  He was a sick, old man and we rarely saw him.  Last week he died.  Although we did not know Ba Riziki well, we know the rest of the family, Ma Riziki and her sons and daughters and knew that we would drawn closer into the circle than we usually get and therefore invited to more of the funeral events.  This is why, I (Tom) found myself at an event I had never attended before.

It began much like other events begin.  Men milled around and were ushered to seats.  There was a man handing out prayer beads.  That seemed a bit different, but you often see men with prayer beads, so I thought little of it.  When everyone was seated a prayer was said.  This too seemed normal and I was waiting for the event to get going.  But nothing happened.  I was sitting, looking around, wondering if something had gone wrong.  Maybe the teacher hadn’t shown up.  Maybe there was a problem with something.  As time dragged on I started to feel bad for Ma Riziki’s family.  This must be embarrassing for them, I thought. 

Finishing their prayers

Then behind me a man yelled out, “500”.  I thought I had misheard him, or perhaps it had been someone selling something out on the street.  Saying 500 in the Island language is the equivalent to $5, so that seemed like a possibility, but then another man called out “500” and another and another.  No, it was definitely part of the event.  Now I was curious.  Were these men promising to give money to the bereaved family?  Was this a way of drumming up funds for the funeral?  I really wish someone had told me, because I should probably say something too.  But how much would be appropriate for me to give?  As I was contemplating this question I heard a man say, “1000” and then another—$10 dollars.  Maybe that’s the amount I should do.  But then one of the men next to me called out “500” and I saw him shift the beads in his hand and looked around with the realization that everyone was quickly and methodically passing bead after bead between their fingers.  Suddenly it all made sense.  It wasn’t amounts of money they were shouting, but amounts of prayers.  Each bead counts as a prayer and once through all the prayer beads is 100 prayers, so 5 times through is 500 and 10 times through is 1000.  Now I saw that there was someone keeping a tally—counting up the prayers.  Working to reach a certain number.  Later I asked and was told they were going to 70,000.  

Relaxing with this realization of what was going on and that I had no responsibilities, I was a bit chagrined at my slowness to pick up on the situation.  I sat back and prayed my own prayers.  I looked around at the men and saw no one who looked grieved.  No one seemed to miss the passing of this old man.  As I looked I noticed how fast some of the men moved from bead to bead and wondered what prayer they could say so fast and move along so quickly.  Did these tiny prayers touch their hearts?  Were they from the heart?  But then I asked myself a more grievous question.  Did it even matter?  The point was not a heartfelt prayer.  The point was 70,000.  70,000 was all that mattered.  And what was 70,000?  A payment.  In a sense my first thoughts were not far off.  They were not offering physical money to the bereaved family but spiritual money.  Each prayer helps work off some of the dead man’s debt—paying off his sins, until he has done enough to enter paradise.  A fundraiser to help the old man get through his suffering a little faster.  And I was reminded again of just how transactional people see eternal life here.  God demands payment through prayers and sins make you a debtor.  You must pay any way you can, but pay you must.  

As I listened to the prayers add up I sat, and thought, and prayed.  What a difference one prayer from the heart could make.  One prayer prayed in brokenness and truth, not as a payment but as a cry for life.  7 million prayers said on the beads could not equal one of those prayers.  Had Ba Riziki ever prayed like that?  Will any of these men ever pray that way?  Or will it always be a business transaction?  Pay as you pray.

When they hit the number, 70,000, they stopped, chanted a bit, handed back the beads and everybody went their way.  “Duty done.  Good luck old man.  Hope the prayers did you some good.” I went home and prayed some more for their hearts.

Celebrating a good orientation time!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The orientation of our new teammates went really well. We are very excited to have these two new women on our team! They moved into their own home on Saturday and have been warmly welcomed by neighbors. We were praying for rain to cool things down and it rained! Our kids have been really enjoying playing with our close neighbors and Megan has been getting to know several of the women. It is an answer to prayer that our new house has provided good neighbor families for us to connect with!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
May we continue to be stirred to pray for islanders— for freedom, for change, for grace, for justice. Pray for the beginning of language learning for our new teammates, that they would get into good habits and routines, that language helpers would be helpful and consistent and that even now they would be making friends and shining brightly in their neighborhood. We don’t know how COVID is doing on our island because they have stopped testing, but we continue to pray that the surge pass quickly. They plan to reopen schools March 1st. Pray that this would not We have been talking to some different prospective teammates who are in different stages in the application process. Pray that the right people would be led to work on the islands. Pray for a business team set to start on the big island which has been delayed because of people testing positive for COVID.

Starting Again

Setting up newcomer's house

As we walk down the main street, we’re pointing out shops and landmarks. We come up to a few women sitting on the side of the road, so we quickly say our greetings and then take a few steps away, letting our newcomers try out their few simple phrases in the local language. We can’t help smiling at the enthusiastic response they get from islanders, even as we know that our newcomers can’t understand a bit of it.

Our new teammates are grown mature adults, but in this culture they are a lot like young children.  Life is a mix of excitement and difficulty. Everything is new and so much is unknown. There is so much to adjust to and so much to learn, But they can’t learn it all at once, even if they want to. They will need lots of help.  Everything will need to be repeated again and again.  They can’t handle too much.  They can only digest one piece of information at a time.  They have to be patient.  They have to work hard.  But they also need to know that they are safe and to be encouraged and no matter how independent they may want to be, they are going to need some hand holding.  

In the same way that our new teammates are starting something new, for us we are starting again.   
It means going back to basics.  It means returning to the fundamentals of who we are, what we do, and why we do it.  In a way, it’s a lot like becoming parents—again.

As parents, our kids are getting big now.  The youngest is eight and we see how much they have grown in independence and ability.  They genuinely help out around the house.  They can be sent on errands.  We still love them, and help them grow, but they do not require near as much attention as they once did.  We’ve been feeling that way as team leaders too—our teammates are all grown up, independent, self-sufficient.  We lean on them now as much as they lean on us.  Our last new teammates arrived over three years ago, the batch of teammates before that was over seven years ago.  

Learning to wear traditional wraps

But now we have new teammates again. As team leaders it is our privilege and challenge to guide our new teammates through the process of growing up in island culture and language. It seems so long ago that we had to help people with this initial adaptation. The experience and knowledge is all back there somewhere, but there’s a lot that has been forgotten. We have to re-remember the steps we went through. What did we teach? What order did we go in? What rules did we have?

Thankfully we still have some of our notes and we also have the strength of our veteran team members!  We’re not doing it alone and can benefit from their memories and experiences as well.  Our teammates help out, pick up the slack, and often do things better than we could have done it.  What a joy to be able to work together with them to welcome new people together.

New people, just like a new child, are an investment.  They will need help and it will take time for them to find their way.  But at the same time, this is an investment with some immediate benefits. We have two new wonderful women with whom we get to interact and study.  We get to reignite our passion and vision for the islands by sharing it and teaching about it. Plus there is the wonder they have for the islands and islanders around them—as they experience island culture for the first time,  we  smile and remember how much we love the islands and islanders too.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our two new teammates got their negative COVID tests, made it safely to the islands and had no trouble at immigration/customs! Unfortunately the same-day connection to Clove Island didn’t work out, but our teammates and colleagues worked quickly and were able to organize their stay on the big island for a night. Now they are safely settled into our house and partway through their orientation time! We feel very blessed to have them and can already see the wonderful asset to the team they will be. We are feeling all better from our run-in with COVID! On the small island at least, it seems the COVID surge is fading away— we hope and pray that the other two islands will follow that trend.

Our now bigger team!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Please pray for our two new teammates as they get used to the climate, culture and language of the islands. Pray that our team will adapt well to welcoming and supporting them. This whole week will be full of orientation and then they will move into their own home. Pray for good transitions and that everyone will continue to be healthy. Pray for us as we go into the season of Lent that we would be drawn more into God’s heart and plan for us and the islands. Pray for our team and various colleagues as we have opportunities to pray for the sick and grieving. May we see great moments of power, healing and truth. Pray for all kids on the islands while all the island schools are closed (with no online schooling), they have little to do. Pray also for all the island teachers who aren’t necessarily getting paychecks and are struggling to get by.

New Purchase Expectations

Curtain shopping

You know that feeling you get with a new purchase—taking it out of the box for the first time, it’s pristine, and perfect, just what you wanted and you know that you can expect it to work and to work well.  That’s the point in getting something new rather than used, right?  New things have guarantees, warranties, and return policies.  I know with online vendors, sometimes what comes out of the box isn’t right—the wrong order, not what you expected, inferior quality, but if that’s the case, well, you can put it in the box and ship it back.  The customer is always right!

It doesn’t work that way on the islands. These past couple of weeks we’ve been making a lot of new purchases.  We recently moved into our new house and there are things it needs.  Moreover, we are preparing to receive new teammates, and their house also requires many new purchases to get it ready for them.  So over the past month we’ve done a fair amount of shopping.

New purchases never seem to go as planned on the islands.  Things are just more complicated, and we’ve learned to lower our expectations.  To begin with, we long ago gave up on the idea of finding “exactly what we want.”  Most of the time it’s just not possible.  We know that either it won’t be the exact size we wanted or maybe the color will be hideous or the quality won’t be as good as we wanted. Take our new house for example.  We wanted some pre-made curtains for the living room.  Before setting out, we agreed that whatever we found, we would probably not like it from an aesthetic viewpoint.  It was more about what we could tolerate. The selection is limited.  We are not talking about hundreds of options we are talking about a dozen options, distributed to about 4 or 5 shops around town with at most 3 options per shop.  The same goes for most purchases.  A shop rarely carries multiple versions of the same product.  If you want to see more options, you’ll have to hunt for another shop that carries it, where you may or may not find anything better.

Then there is taking it home and opening up the box.  Brace yourself—because there’s probably going to be a problem straight out of the box.  This is often because this is not the first time the product has left the box (they rarely discount the display models). Just this month we found that the new curtains didn’t quite match, there was a dent in the side of the new stove, a screw was missing from the new fan, and little bits of broken plastic came tinkling out with the new flashlight. This is par for the course. We swallow the disappointment and face the next wonderful question.  “Is it worth returning it?”

Comparing options

Returns are not a given on the islands.  We have purchased things, had them break within 5 minutes of use, returned the next day with the product and been refused a refund.  That happens all too frequently.  Sometimes you can get a promise before the purchase that they will take it back if it doesn’t work—but they are talking about a day or two.  If you come back after a week—forget it!  So when it comes out of the box without the screw, or the small dent, or the bits of plastic, we look it over and try to decide if we can make it work.  Can we get another screw?  Can we bang out the dent?  Was that little piece of plastic really necessary?  Basically, we start fixing it right out of the box. If it doesn’t seem like a big deal, we accept it, because we know that returning will most likely be a hassle!

So that contented feeling you get with a new purchase—we sometimes get that here on the islands, but it comes later.  After a few weeks, when the slightly mismatched curtains turn out to work fine or that dent in the oven is hardly noticeable, or when you really needed that flashlight and you realize “those little plastic pieces must not have been all that important after all because that flashlight worked when you needed it!”, that’s when you feel it.  If something is functional, and doesn’t completely break or break down weeks after purchase—that is a win! 

Not matching, but close enough!

So we can feel the joy of a well-made purchase, it just takes a little longer to appreciate it.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We ended up having a harder week than we hoped. Both of us had a strong relapse of COVID symptoms that returned us to bed, but we are thankful now that we are improving and have our energy back! We are hopeful that now that we have passed the two-week mark, we won’t have any more setbacks. Both of our teammates are doing noticeably better. Our third teammate is set to come out of isolation tomorrow! The house for our new teammates has finished its needed renovations and most of the big purchases for house set-up have been made! Ma Imani had the chance to share with a friend that then passed on what she had learned, which led to Ma Imani being invited to a village where she was introduced to an old isolated brother (he had heard and accepted when he was a young student abroad). She will go back and study with his family!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We have two new teammates arriving on Wednesday (Feb 10). Pray that their COVID tests would come back negative, that they would have no problems at immigration and that they would be able to make a same day connection from the big island to our island. Pray for our other teammate who will fly to the big island to facilitate their arrival. Once they arrive they will be staying at our house for the first week and a half for orientation. Pray that orientation would go well and that we would get along well as a household of 7! Island schools have all been closed! There is no online learning here, so please pray for all the bored island children stuck at home. Pray for the teachers that won’t be paid. Pray that these shut-down measures have an impact so  that this COVID surge on the islands will end soon! Continue to pray for the sick and the frontline medical workers. Our colleague doctor on the French island says the hospital there is completely full, no more beds!

Staying Inside

Megan awaiting COVID test

Some cultures are indoor cultures and some cultures are outdoor cultures.  Americans are mostly indoor people—at least the parts of America where I have lived.  We spend the majority of our time inside buildings.  We get outside for sports and walks and other leisure activities, but day-to-day life and work for most people are usually inside.

It’s not like that on the islands.  People simply prefer to be outside.  For instance, a shop owner will sit outside his shop most of the day, only going inside when a customer calls.  Carpenters, mechanics, welders, seamstresses, even computer and phone repair—often take place outside.  Sometimes it’s out on the street, sometimes it’s on a porch.  The fact that I am sitting in the living room and not outside on the porch while I write this reveals my American indoor tendencies.  People even prefer to watch television outside.  It’s not uncommon to find a crowd of people on the street at night watching sports or a movie on a television that has been set up in a doorway or brought out to the street.  Cooking is done outside too!  The house we used to live in had a large, spacious kitchen, but in preparations for the wedding, an outdoor kitchen was being added to the premises.  Islanders are outdoor people.

Science lesson on the porch

It has been my suspicion that this was why COVID has not done more damage here.  While in America we move from room to room most of the day (or air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space in the summer), islanders are outside almost all the time.  Could it be this helped flatten the curve?  Who knows?

We are dealing with a virus surge on the islands—the more virulent strain from South Africa.  Lots of people are getting sick.  Including our team.  For the past ten days, because I (Tom) tested positive, our family has been quarantining at home.  All three of our teammates have suffered COVID symptoms and are in various stages of recovery.  Many of our colleagues on the other islands have tested positive too.  

What’s the big deal?  10-14 days of isolation.  The whole world is doing it.  It’s the way things are these days—but somehow it feels different on the islands.  We know what it is to isolate.  We did it while we were in the States more than once.  Yet somehow, there it was easier.

On the islands, isolation just goes against so many of our routines—so many of our normals.  For the past week we’ve been turning people away from our door—generally keeping our gate closed—this is bizarre.  Normally we have people passing by, saying hello, picking up some library books, staying to chat, asking us English questions, asking to borrow something, asking for something to eat or drink.  All of that has been greatly curtailed this week.  

Then there is the aspect of not going out.  We realize that because of the outdoor culture, we are used to seeing lots of people.  Some of our visits are intentional, but a lot of them are incidental.  When we walk through town on our way to class or to buy something at a shop, we are bound to be greeted by numerous acquaintances, friends, students, and neighbors.  All these people are used to seeing us and we’re used to seeing them.  Our absence was surely noted.  Moreover, walking around town is our way of getting news.  We’re much more likely to hear about what’s going on from someone on the street than from a news source or facebook.  Apparently there was a big fire down at the port, but we didn’t hear about it for days.  

Baby geckos can't get COVID!

By the end of the week it was getting pretty tough.  Islanders were starting to call us and ask if we were alright.  (They noticed that we haven’t been seen.)  We would explain to them about isolating, since many islanders don’t really get it. They’d say, “You’re feeling better.  You can go back to doing what you want.” Ultimately we’d tell them that we will be out on the streets again soon.  Assuming no one else gets symptoms…Oh Lord, please let there be no more symptoms!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Thank you so much for your prayers! Tom is feeling much better, no more symptoms. Megan got retested but still hasn’t heard the results (days later), but is also feeling much better. Thankfully the kids have not had symptoms. We continue to be thankful for our new house— we’ve gotten to know if pretty well this past week and continue to enjoy it. The newness of the house helped the quarantine time to pass quicker too. We were thankful that there was always one teammate healthy and not under quarantine at any given time so there was someone to call on to run errands. 



PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our teammates still struggle with COVID symptoms— two were feeling better but had a sudden return of their symptoms that sent them back to their beds. Pray for complete and full recoveries. We have two new teammates arriving on the islands on Feb 10— we are preparing to host them and working to set-up a home for them. Our preparations have been hampered somewhat by the team being sick and under quarantine. Pray that we would all be healthy and able to have everything ready for our new teammates and begin to pray for their transition to life and work on the islands. Our team’s annual proverb calendar has also been delayed by sickness. Pray that we would find printers that can do a good job and give us a fair price, and that it would be a blessing to the islands