The Power of Sharing Our Failures

When we were leaders of our first team, back in 2013, we made some big mistakes.  One in particular sticks in my mind.

New leaders with a new team (2013)

We were all new.  Megan and I were new leaders, our teammates were all new to Africa.  We were feeling our way forward, struggling to figure out how to live, love and get along and how to be a team.  We did a lot of team building activities back then.  As leaders, we didn’t have any particular thoughts on which ones might be better or more effective, we just followed the manual and tried them all.  One day, we decided to try something called team sculpting.  

The idea is to make your teammates stand in a sort of tableau, moving them around like mannequins, to represent your understanding of the team (I can already imagine some people gagging).  Once everyone is in position, you then share your thoughts about the team in what is meant to be an inspiring, maybe even surprising opportunity to see themselves and the team in a new way.  

Wanting to get the ball rolling, I jumped right in and took a swing at it.  I lined up all my teammates as if they were in a race, I showed which ones were winning and which ones were losing, which ones were thriving and which ones were struggling.  And I showed how I hoped we were all going to get to the end of the race together. 

At training with other leaders

I meant well.  But in my hurry to try it out and in my lack of thoughtful reflection, I had just lined up my teammates and compared them all. (We always warn our teammates about the dangers of comparison!)  I had told them who I thought was doing the best and who was doing the worst and I had let all the other ones know it.  It was a horrible blunder that caused real damage to the team.  I had to go back and apologize to each teammate, but apologies only go so far.  It was a failure of leadership that I hope to never repeat.

I didn’t really want to tell you about that.  It was an embarrassing failure.  Honestly, at the time, I don’t think I could have told you about it.  I was too ashamed of it.  But a number of years out, although I’m still chagrined by it, it feels like there is something to be gained in the sharing.

I shared that same story this past week with members of a leadership training group.  We spent most of the training talking about the importance of leaders being vulnerable and real.  Leaders need to be able to share with at least a few others their fears, failures, hopes and dreams.  As we share the deep parts of us, it allows light to shine into the deep parts of our hearts and for God to work there.  It is an important part to growing as a leader.

During the training, I was reminded by how much it has meant for me to hear the stories of other leaders’ failures.  When we were struggling as team leaders, many times it was a story from the leader above us admitting their own struggles and failures that gave the most comfort and remained with us.  More than good advice or wise strategies, what our hearts needed most at that moment were their failures.

There is power in sharing our failures.  Why should this be so?  It seems illogical.  We don’t want to fail, we want to win.  We want to succeed.  Who wants to fail?  No one.  And yet, we all fail.  Perhaps that is why it is so important.  When we hear those stories, we are reminded that we are all broken.  We all need help.  We all need healing.  And the stories of failure give us the courage to come clean, admit our own brokenness, failure, and need for healing.

It is one of the reasons why I most appreciate the apostle Peter.  Peter often seems like the fool, the screw up; the one you know is going to fail.  All the other apostles come off looking pretty good compared to him.  It’s as if someone took the time to carefully record every one of his failures…and that someone was Peter himself.  Who else?  It is believed that Peter dictated the story that Mark wrote.  He didn’t hold back in the telling.  Peter understood the power of sharing a failure.  I sometimes wonder if that what was meant when the Lord said, “On this rock I will build my community.”  A community built on a rock of confession, owning failure, and sharing it with others.  A community that humbly admits brokenness.  A community that allows light to shine into the deep parts of our hearts and for God to work there.  Yes, that sounds like the kind of community we want to be.  

Our son worked hard to stack those tires!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our teammate made it safely to her home country and already attended one of two weddings that she’ll go to while she’s there. The house-hunting on the other side of the island for our medical team members continues— they’ve seen a number of house and a couple real possibilities. We’re praying for wisdom and discernment as they decide how to proceed. The medical team members finish their internship at the main hospital here in the capital this week! They have made new connections and have a new appreciation for what medical care on the islands is like.  

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our island sister Elewa has been under a lot of stress lately and had to be taken to the hospital when she nearly fainted. Pray for her— her husband is ill and they are hoping to travel to mainland Africa soon so he can get treatment there. A colleague on the small island has gotten news that her mom is not doing well, so she is having to leave suddenly to go home (not knowing if or when she will be back). Please pray for her and her team as she prepares to go, that she would be able to leave well in spite of the rushed nature of her departure. A number of our teammates are going to be traveling during early/mid Oct but then we will come back together for a busy month full of transitions— pray that we would all have good times of rest and reflection in the coming couple weeks so we are prepared for the busyness to come. Pray for our new teammate preparing to come to the islands in the coming months, before coming to us, she needs to visit the town in mainland Africa where she was previously— pray that she would be able to get the clearance and visa to make that visit happen.

How to Respond to an Invitation

 Here’s how it all went down:   

Groom's party at wedding

Ma Riziki had been telling us for weeks that her son’s wedding was coming up, but she’s not the best with dates.  Anything more than a few weeks away is all the same to her.  Something next month versus three months away are kind of vague concepts for her.  A couple weeks before the wedding she finally told us the date and location—and it was a problem.  English teaching takes planning.  Tom was already committed to a teacher training course in a far village that day. It had been arranged for months, he was the primary teacher and that was the final evaluation day.  He had already arranged for colleagues to go with him for this important event.

When we told Ma Riziki about Tom’s prior commitment, she was not impressed. Ma Riziki expected Tom to spend the whole day preparing with the groom and then to travel with the groom to the bride’s village—a village 40 minutes away— for the afternoon wedding.   For Tom, keeping his commitment to his teachers was the priority, but in Ma Riziki’s opinion (an opinion shared by most islanders) a wedding trumps all.

How do we honor Ma Riziki & honor our commitments to being responsible, reliable teachers?  What would you have done?

As you ponder that, let us give you some more background information: We are invited to lots of events. Ceremonies, celebrations, prayers, birthday parties, weddings, funerals. The manner of invitation is important. It is major factor in helping us to know how important our attendance of the event is to the host. In order of importance it goes something like:  The lowest level importance is a quick word of invitation on the street as we pass someone.  The next level would be a printed invitation handed to us.  Above that might be a phone call or a personal visit.  Above that would be a delegation of people coming to our house in a formal fashion.  (Yes, this has happened on more than one occasion!)  Added to these factors are how far in advance we are told and if we are invited and then reminded multiple times. If our attendance is really important then people will often want to confirm and reconfirm that we are coming.

Ma Riziki dressed for wedding

The deliverer of the invitation can vary too, and also holds weight.  These are harder to order.  An invitation from a good friend or neighbor we have known for years is certainly important. But sometimes a new acquaintance is hoping to deepen our relationship with an invitation, and so that is not to be slighted either. Sometimes it is less about a specific person and more about a group.  It doesn’t matter who, but having a representative from our group is what is expected. Sometimes, someone who doesn’t know us in the slightest will invite us on the hopes of getting a foreigner to attend their event and add to their honor.  These rarely hold much weight unless the person asking is of great influence (and if they’re of great influence, they probably don’t need to ask us!).

Some of you might be thinking that attending a large event will have little impact—they won’t even notice if you are there or not.  You need to know that the photos and videos from these events are often treasured souvenirs that will be looked at and shared by many. Our attendance will be noted, remembered and commented on. People who weren’t even there will comment on us having been there. Our noted presence has the potential to bring honor to the person who invited us and also often leads to even more people inviting us to more events. We can’t go to everything to which we are invited and still maintain our energy and sanity.

Another thing we have to weigh is how important the event is. Birthday parties are lower importance. Weddings and funerals are highly important and carry much weight. The importance also depends on our relationship to the people most involved in the event.  A birthday party for a cousin that we don’t know—low priority.  A wedding where we know the bride, groom, mother or father—high priority.  And then there are degrees in between.  For example, most weddings are actually a series of events.  Depending on our closeness to the wedding party, we may attend one or two of the bigger events.

So this brings us back to our situation with Ma Riziki.  How do you navigate the tricky situations?  Is it possible to say “no” sometimes?  It is possible, but it must be done tactfully.  This is an honor-shame culture so we have to be careful not to dismiss an invitation too flippantly if we don’t have a reason that islanders will understand and appreciate.  Sometimes we have to consider whether we have an ‘island-valid’ reason for not going. If the reason we give isn’t valid in the eyes of the islander who invited us then we could cause offense. This is tricky because “island valid” often doesn’t match “American valid”.  American valid is often first come first served.  The earlier I get it into my calendar, the more right you have to demand of me to go.  This is why we send out “save the date” messages.  But that doesn’t work on the Islands.  On the Islands, that only works for competing work commitments.  But weddings and funerals trump work, good friends trump acquaintances, and family trumps all.  The exception to that being sick.  Sickness truly trumps all. We suspect that when islanders really want to skip out on someone’s important event they just lie afterwards and say they were sick.  Can’t argue with that excuse.  But we don’t want to lie.

Back to Ma Riziki.  Remember: Ma Riziki—close friend, almost family, is inviting us to the wedding of her son, she’s told us about it multiple times (but neglected to give us the date).  She expects us to be highly involved all day, including going to the big wedding event in the far off village.  Meanwhile, Tom had arranged the extra important, coordinated with colleagues to help, final evaluation day of a teacher training in a far off village weeks in advance.

Tom made it!

Armed with all this cultural knowledge, what would you do?

Here was our solution:  To honor our relationship with Ma Riziki, we negotiated a compromise. Tom pushed the teacher evaluations a little earlier, told the teachers that they couldn’t feed him a meal afterwards (which would have been expected) because he had to go to a wedding (something they understood because weddings trump all).  By getting started earlier and leaving as soon as possible, he would miss the morning activities, but he should be able to get to the other village in time for the afternoon wedding ceremony, where the rest of his family (including the kids) would be there waiting to add greater honor to Ma Riziki’s family. Tom arrived just in time.  Ma Riziki seemed pleased.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The reconciliation meetings were a good first step to what will hopefully be meaningful change and healing between the involved parties. Pray that follow-up would happen for continuing healthy communication. Our old teammates welcomed their baby boy yesterday! Mom and son are doing well. (Now we’re just sad that we’re not there to hold him ourselves!) Our weekend leadership training kick-off went well. The meetings were intense and long, but good. We look forward to the coming year of training and the monthly Zoom check-in we will have with our fellow team leaders. Our kids and teammates left behind on Clove Island did great in spite of our last minute flight change, continuing electricity issues in one bedroom and a bad illness in one of our teammates (thankfully she is starting to feel better now). We’re proud of our kids and thankful for our team. Ma Nadjma (whom we mentioned in a blog a few weeks ago) had an ultrasound, she is pregnant with a boy and everything looks good so far.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Unfortunately one of the other women that we mentioned a few weeks ago (Amira), has had another miscarriage. Pray that she would be comforted in her loss and for her openness to talk to our teammate as she processes this most recent heartache. Pray that we would continue to learn how to navigate and prioritize well all the demands on our time. Pray that we’d be able to give this leadership training program the attention it deserves. We have been given different possibilities for how our roles could change or grow in coming years— pray for wisdom and unity for us and our leaders as we try to discern what is best. One of our teammates is on the big island hoping to travel to her home country for a month-long visit with lots of domestic travel— pray that all the logistics (including this first negative COVID test) would come together.

A Great Day

 Last Sunday was a Great Day.  

Ready for the event

We had visitors, which is always fun, and we were taking them to an island event—a chance for them to experience island culture.  Only, this was no ordinary event—a birthday party in part, with a worship service and a prayer time, all wrapped into one—a gathering of lots of island brothers and sisters.  Gatherings like this can’t happen all too often so when they do they are special.  The organizer had asked everyone to dress in their traditional best (hooray for thoughtful contextualization coming from islanders!).  So we put some traditional hats on our guests, got ourselves and the kids all dressed and headed to the event. 

View from Hike

The event went about as blessedly as it could.  There was lots of prayer and singing.  There were thoughtful and meaningful words shared.  Good fellowship and food followed, including the Happy Birthday song sung in 3 languages and a beautiful delicious cake.  At the end of the event, a few of us were asked to go pray for the husband of the organizer who suffers from crippling gout.  Though not exactly a happy moment, it was powerful to gather around him and pray for healing.  We got to share with our guests all of this special occasion—a rare gift that, I hope, will stay with them.  The kids did great (not something we take for granted) and we taxied home around lunch time.

A delicious lunch was followed by some deep conversation with our guests.  It’s a blessing to be able to talk to them about important things.  This was followed by some welcomed rest. Not napping, but gathering with the kids and reading aloud 5 or 6 chapters of the Wingfeather Chronicles by Andrew Peterson (which I’d highly recommend them).  Restful family time together around a good book is a joy.

As the afternoon sun moved toward the western horizon, we rose from our repose and headed out with our guests and teammates for an afternoon hike.  The hike was near perfect.  Cool breezes, lemurs, beautiful sunsets, exercise, and pleasant conversation.  As we made our way back home walking through the narrow streets of the city’s medina, I had to say goodbye to the group to join two guys for a scheduled appointment.  

We’ve been meeting each Sunday for about 6 weeks now, studying the great stories and looking for the truth in them.  Today we studied the story of a paralytic man having his sins forgiven and his paralysis healed.  My two study companions did not become angry as the religious leaders (then and now) had done, but rather became quiet.  They well understood what was being said, but didn’t dismiss it. They were struggling to understand what it all meant.  When we got to the part of the study where we ask the question, “How will you apply this to your life?”  Their response was simple.  “We need time to reflect on this.  How about we read this story again next week and we will bring our questions to you then?”  It was easily agreed upon.  

Rejoining my family and guests, there was some good dinner and some good kitchen conversation as our guests graciously offered to do the dishes (or “the washing up” as they might say).  While one washed and one dried, we put the dishes away and enjoyed some more good conversation.  A little while later we did devotions with the kids and talked a bit more and then headed to bed.

Team at weekend retreat

It wasn’t until I reflected afterwards that I realized just how great a day it was.  Days don’t often look like that, so it’s important to be thankful for them when they come around.  Some days we are sick.  Some days we are tired.  Maybe on another occasion, we could write a blog about a day where everything seemed to go wrong.  (Often enough those days happen too.)  But some days are special.  Some days are great.  We want to give thanks for all of them.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for great days! They are often a needed encouragement. Our team retreat went well. The hotel changed up our reservation at the last minute, but the changes ended up being a blessing. We’ve had a great team these past 7 months that we have been together and it was good to celebrate even as we prepare for the breaking off of the medical team. The first house-hunting trip to the far side of the island went well— they saw four houses. No clear winner, but house-hunting on the islands often takes multiple tries to get the word out before you use all the possibilities.  


PRAYERS REQUESTED

The first of the reconciliation meetings on the big island happened today and went well. Please be praying for the larger meetings that will happen tomorrow (and perhaps the next day as well). Pray for humble hearts among both foreign workers and islanders, and for grace and forgiveness to abound. We are going to the big island on Wednesday afternoon for a long weekend kick-off of a year-long leadership training that we will be attending with other team leaders/potential team leaders. We will be leaving our kids on Clove Island and our teammates will be helping with them. There are supposed to be two more face-to-face weekends like this, so we pray that this first one goes well, both for our kids/teammates on Clove Island and for all of us gathering on the big island— may we be able to surrender and be refined into better leaders! Our future teammate is trying to make plans to come to us on the islands before the end of the year— pray for open doors and clear direction. We’ve had a message from others looking to come to the islands (not with our group) who are asking us for advice, pray that we can speak words of wisdom to them.  Pray for our old teammates on the French Island as they await their baby boy— the mother would prefer he be born as soon as possible! We’ve also just found some electrical problems in our house. Island houses always have outlets/fixtures that don’t work, but now half our house isn’t working. Pray for an easy solution and especially before we leave the kids alone on Wednesday.

Culture Behind Words

 Some words don’t have good one-word translations.

Island procession of wedding gifts

At English club, a student asked us what ‘dowry’ meant. The idea of a dowry is antiquated enough in the States that I could imagine that American young people might not know what it is either, and hearing it explained I would imagine that to American youth it would sound strange and archaic.  

On the islands, the idea of a dowry isn’t strange at all. For them the problem is that they already have well-developed ideas about gifts and money surrounding weddings and so they automatically want to create a one-to-one correlation between dowry and some part of island culture.

We’ve run into this problem with other words around marriage and weddings. Because the island understanding of weddings is so different, the terms for weddings often don’t have good one-word translations. If you do find a word, it is often forced.

For example, the word ‘wedding’. In the US this is usually a singular event that takes a couple hours at most and represents when the bride and groom actually become man and wife. The ‘reception’ is then a party to celebrate the union. On the islands, ‘weddings’ usually consist of several days of different events celebrating the union, each often lasting for hours, and these events can be done years after the bride and groom actually got married. For any one of the these events, an islander could say that they are going to a ‘wedding’ but they all have individual names as well. So what do we mean in English when we say ‘wedding’?

Some gifts from bride's family

At the English club, we ended up with the word ‘dowry’ written on the whiteboard with our island friends discussing what the island equivalent would be. Islanders exchange a lot of gifts at weddings. Some gifts go from the bride’s side to the groom’s, some from the groom’s to the bride’s. So the islanders took a lot of time asking from whom and to whom a ‘dowry’ was going. But eventually this highlighted another complicating difference between the islands and the west.

On the islands, families are still very involved in weddings. The families negotiate what the weddings will include and the families are the givers and receivers of the gifts. Our good friend Ma Riziki married off her son last week and we are considered part of the family. This means I was asked to contribute to the gifts given— both with something I personally bought as well as a financial contribution towards some of the baked goods that had to be made. I was also called over to film and document all the gifts that came from the bride’s family. There were piles of produce, baked goods, clothes and toiletries. As part of the family, over the next few days, I got my share of the wedding ‘booty’— a bunch of pastries, a traditional outfit, a slice of pumpkin, a big hunk of an island-made dessert, and local peanut brittle balls.

Now I’ve been to a number of weddings in the US, but I’ve never seen the members of the bride or groom’s family divvy up the presents afterwards. Speaking generally, weddings in the west are usually more about the bride and groom breaking away and starting a new family. On the islands it is about families coming together and blessing each other.

Eventually we were ready to start our English club activity so we told our friends that some words are just too steeped in culture to have good simple translations. If you want to understand the word, you have to understand the culture behind it.

(Doesn’t it make you so grateful for the people thoughtfully working in the important area of translation!)

Part of our share from the wedding gifts

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The women had their monthly gathering and it was well-attended, including a visiting sister from the smallest island who is eager to study with others while she is here. The administrators were able to make the same day connection to visit us on Clove Island and safely made it to the small island today. It was a blessing to have them, to share the islands with them and to hear more about what is happening in the greater region. Tom had both of his weekly meetings to study last week and both were very encouraging, including a new island man coming to study. The big group event on Sunday happened. It is exciting to see our island sister be creative about how to engage her family and neighbors in thoughtful ways and how to draw people together for mutual encouragement. 

 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We are very excited that we have a new future teammate! However the question of timing is proving a complicated issue. Pray that we would all have clarity and unity about the best time for her to join us on the islands. Our medical teammates are going to start house-hunting on the far side of the islands. We pray that God would provide just the right house for them to rent. Our team is planning on taking a retreat this weekend— pray that it would be restful (it has been a busy time) and that we’d be prepared for the months of transition ahead of our team. Please start praying for some reconciliation meetings scheduled for Sep 13-15. Islanders from Clove Island will be going to the big island to help mediate some long-standing conflict there— pray for all involved that they would have humble hearts, a willingness to admit wrong and a desire to forgive and be reconciled.