Getting Used to It

"They’ll get used to it!"

Throwback: Our daughter on homestay in 2009

Having a new family on our team and having them live in our house with us this past week highlights for us the ways that we have gotten used to island life. If you live with something long enough, you get used to it, but it takes time. When we look at them, we see ourselves from years ago.

We notice our new teammates reacting with concern to things that for us are normal— a mentally ill man in the street (he’s always there), the armed soldiers on the street (the president must be passing through town), there’s a goat on our stairs (just shoo him down), people are yelling in front of our house (a normal debate among neighbors). You get used to the sights and sounds of our town.

Our neighbors hear their baby crying in the cold bath water and they say, “he’ll get used to it.” It’s true. Most of the times the cold water feels good to us now.

We see our teammates struggling to differentiate sounds on their voice recordings from their language lessons and then fail to get the music of language quite right in their repetition. Their ears and brains will get used to hearing the island language and their tongues will get used to making its sounds. “They will learn,” our island friends declare.

Learning to take out trash

Our island neighbors saw the new family’s babies dripping with sweat and suffering from heat rash and they reassure them that the babies will get used to to the heat. It’s not just our temperaments but our bodies that adjust too. We don’t sweat as much and we don’t get heat rash as easily.

We notice our new teammate holding out the traditional wrap, trying to remember how to put it on. Soon she will be so used to putting it on that she won’t have to think about it.

Continuing with what you were doing when the power goes out or washing all the dishes when the water is cut, these are part of our everyday, so we don’t really think about it, but our new teammates need advice and tips on how to cope with these new realities.

Learning about traditional wrap

I am not sure if the repeated calls of “you’ll get used to it” are actually encouraging. Perhaps, it is encouraging to know that everything won’t always be a struggle, but it isn’t a phrase that helps them in the moment. In the moment, they aren’t used to it. In the moment, it is hard or awkward or painful. In this moment, these things aren’t coming naturally and our everyday life looks exhausting to them. Because it is exhausting, until you get used to it.

We asked one of our new teammates how to pray and they said to pray for perseverance. Perseverance is a great word— it implies patience and hard-work and hope. Persevere, it gets easier, you’ll get used to it!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve gotten some rains, providing needed relief from the heat and humidity. Trash pick up has become very irregular and problematic, but we are thankful that the trash truck came a couple times this week when we needed it most! Our daughter had a wonderful weekend on a choir tour— we got to listen to recordings from one of the concerts and hear her stories— it sounds like the music and words touched many. We are so thankful for our team who has worked hard running orientation and preparing the home of our new team family— things have gone well and and the house is ready! Our new teammates have made good connections with their language helpers.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Continue to pray for the transition of our new team family— pray for them as they finish their homestay with a local family and move into their own home this week. Pray for them as they start to establish rhythms of living and language learning and as their children continue to have a lot to adjust and to get used to. We are finally returning to more of a normal routine this week, but we are behind on a lot since we paused many things to do orientation for our new teammates and we’re already feeling tired. Pray that we would have peace about what to try to do each day. Pray that we would be able to reconnect with some islanders that we haven’t had good time with for awhile. Also pray for a young woman coming to do a vision trip to the islands, coming this week to the small island and next week to Clove island, pray that it would be clear to all where she should go longterm whether the islands or elsewhere.

Babies Are Fun!

A one year old crawls over to the coffee table and hefts himself up.  He looks out over an arrangement of papers, cups, pens and phones.  Clumsily and perhaps deliberately, each item is tossed to the floor.  Meanwhile Megan is playing peek-a-boo with a toddler who giggles with glee every time she reveals herself from behind her hands.  Meanwhile, our sons are patiently losing at Top Trumps to the six year old who has all the cards memorized and has strategically stacked the deck in his favor.  And yet, as the children run around and make messes and giggle and squeal in delight, our son says to us, “It’s fun having babies in the house!” and it is. 

Learning to wear traditional wrap

A new family has joined our team and for their week of orientation, they are staying with us.  They have 3 little ones and we are having fun having little ones in the house again.

Babies are fun but they require adjustments.  Our routines are effected by nap times.  Food has to be kid friendly.  Anything breakable or dangerous must be moved out of reach.  But we don’t begrudge these adjustments.  In fact, they are good reminders.  This new family is going through a lot of adjustments—new routines, new language, new culture, new climate.  It can be overwhelming and annoying, difficult and stressful.  It can take it’s toll on a family.  Our little “baby” adjustments are nothing compared to what they are going through.  But they are good reminders.

Making adjustments is part of life.  It means change and change is not easy.  Most of the time, change means sacrificing something for something else.  So as we change our routines and make sacrifices for babies, we don’t mind, because, as our son said, “Babies are fun!”  But really it’s more than that.  If it were just because babies are “fun,” then as soon as it stopped being “fun” we’d stop adjusting our routines.  But we know that babies are precious and vulnerable.  Babies aren’t just fun, we love babies.  They are worthy of our time and sacrifice.  Their lives and well-being are important.

Baby fun!

Our new teammates know about sacrificing for their children, but now they are learning about sacrificing for something else.  They are sacrificing their comfort and their routines, their lifestyle and their customs, their skills and their strengths.  Why?  Because islanders are fun???  Sometimes, islanders can be a lot of fun.  But it would not sustain them.  No.  Our teammates have made the choice to love.  They have decided that islanders are precious and even vulnerable.  They are worthy of our time and sacrifice.  Their lives and well-being are important and worth the sacrifices they are making.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it back to Clove Island with our teammates and new family! There were problems for them checking in to the flight to the islands, so we were a little concerned that their bags would make it, but we were so thankful when they all arrived! We have also been thankful for all our colleagues and teammates that have been able to help along the way. We know two couples on the islands that we care for deeply have recently gotten engaged (one couple are both workers and one couple is our island brother/sister)— pray for these couples as they prepare for their lives together. We're thankful that an island friend's wife safely gave birth (he seemed touched that our team had prayed for a safe delivery).

Island friends at a wedding

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our new teammates are diving into language learning this week— pray that they would connect with language helpers and develop good habits that will allow them to learn well. At the end of the week, they will go to stay with a local family for a long weekend. Pray that the babies would be able to sleep and eat well during that stay so that they can build relationships and gain some valuable insights into culture. Pray that the final preparations for their house would go smoothly. It has been really hot and humid with no rain (which makes adjusting to the new climate harder), pray for some cooling rains to come. Economic times on the islands continue to be hard. Pray for provision for the poor and for all of us to learn how to be generous with the added requests we get for help.

Broader Perspective

In the morning, we heard someone from central Africa discussing his life and work in academia in northern Africa. In one of the sessions, we heard stories from a couple working 37 years among hardened pastoralists in the deserts of eastern Africa. Then it was dinner with our good friends struggling to retain workers for the hard work on the Sahel.

Tom and friend during our first team near the Sahel

At times there are layers of similarity with our life and work on the islands, there are things we can relate to and parallel stories that we could share. At other times, our experiences and contexts contrast greatly, and we can only imagine what we would do in a similar situation.

When we first came out to Africa and during the first team we led, it was using a specific 2-year program. The program threw a team into a new place and people group under the guidance of experienced leaders. The program gave the team tools to help them understand and appreciate all the newness they were encountering in this new language and culture. But you spent much of that first year (if not the whole time) being stretched and pulled in new ways. Diving into a new culture like that automatically makes you view the world with a new and broader perspective than you did before. No doubt people going home at the end of the 2 years are changed, but the program does one thing more. Towards the end of those 2 years, it asks each person in that program to go somewhere new for a month. The reasoning being that after 2 years working cross-culturally in one place one can begin to think that the way your team does things is THE WAY to do things, and as much as that one place has broadened your perspective, you can also have a fairly narrow perspective of cross-cultural work if that one place is all you’ve known. That month out of your context can help push people out of their rut and open their eyes one more time.

Our boys, not on the Sahel

Several times during this past week’s conference, we heard ourselves saying that we have been on the islands for 14 years! We first arrived on the big island in 2009 with a baby. In May, that baby turns 15 years old. And as much as we are continually humbled by the ways we need to continue to learn and the things we don’t fully understand, there is a sense where we are comfortable on the islands. We have learned what to expect and have strategies about how to respond in a variety of situations.

That’s why we need these conferences, these chances at cross-pollination. We need to be surprised by new ways of doing things. We need to be challenged by different complications that cause us to reconsider old assumptions. We need our perspective broadened to include new contexts and new ways of doing things. If travel was cheap and not so time-consuming, we would love to visit all our friends in their different remote locations, seeing and experiencing life and work from their perspective. In the meantime, we listen to the stories from villages, cities, deserts and coastlands across Africa and ask God to open our eyes to new things He may want to see in and through us on the islands.

Our kids enjoying our daughter's long weekend

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The conference went well. The African speaker was wonderful. Our kids had a great time and we got to see many people we care for deeply but don’t get to see often. It was encouraging to hear about how God is moving and changing lives and calling workers across Africa. We also got to spend the weekend with our daughter as it was her middle of term long-weekend break.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We are still in mainland Africa, but have already begun the orientation for the new family joining us on Clove Island. It has been a tiring whirlwind for this family for the past several weeks and their two youngest have not been well.  Pray for the energy to get through the orientation process and complete restoration of health for all of them. Also pray for wisdom for us as we guide and support them at this time. Pray for our daughter as she returns back to school for the rest of her term. Pray for our travels back to the islands and for our transition back to life, work and relationships on the islands as we continue to orient our newcomers. Pray for everyone from the islands and elsewhere that were at the conference, may we not forget the commitments we spoke and the challenges we received, but come away renewed and ready for what God wants to do in and through us.

Colliding Worlds

 This past week we got to interact with some education specialists who are used to working with kids like ours, kids who live between different cultures with different languages, customs and cultural expectations. They talked about how adaptable kids can be and how they are able to compartmentalize their different worlds: local school vs homeschool, interacting with island neighbors vs interacting with teammates, life on the islands vs life in the US. They can hold the different worlds with their expectations separate and know their role in each.

Having fun at daughter's school

We were at our daughter’s school for the week. While us parents had sessions with education specialists, our boys had testing and got to participate in classes. It was fun for our boys to be in a world with lots of kids like them and a world with playgrounds and lots of sports equipment. But I think it was a little weird for our daughter. She has had this new school world for a number of months, with her schedule and dorm and friends, but this week her family was suddenly there in the middle of it. She’d walk out of class at break and all at once she’d bump into her parents! Her school world and life was already full and busy, so incorporating her family into that world was a bit bizarre. 

Son with chameleon on shoulder

Our daughter got a pass to leave campus with us and go into the adjacent town to go to some shops, and she commented that she hadn’t known what to expect. Her school is a world unto itself. You walk around the campus and the culture of the school, its schedule and curriculum are very American (except perhaps for daily tea time, which is British). So part of our daughter expected to find western shops outside the gates. But just off-campus, you quickly remember that her school is in Africa and the shops were decidedly African in their feel and arrangement. As we walked back towards campus, she admitted her momentary surprise once we were off campus (I guess she had never looked around much as she’s been driven to campus), but having been raised in Africa, she quickly shifted her worlds and knew exactly what to expect in an ‘African shop’.

This weekend we gathered with all the workers on the islands from our organization, 30+ adults, 50+ with kids! But we’re not on the islands. We’re in mainland Africa and while it is the same people, it can be a little weird seeing them off the islands. Everyone is wearing clothes we never knew were in their wardrobes. Jackets and pullovers for this colder weather. We do a double take because we’re not used to seeing our female teammates wearing jeans or leaving their hair down. Couples can show more affection than they would publicly on the islands, holding hands or linking arms. We can talk openly about things that would be sensitive topics on the islands. It’s the same people but in a world with different expectations and rules.

Beautiful View from Kenyan hills

This week, we are at a conference with 250+ people. Everyone will have colliding worlds, as people they have known from different periods and seasons of their lives will suddenly all be together. Our current teammates will be with our old team leaders will be with our original teammates from when we first went to Chad will be with one of our former youth group kids who has served in Tanzania for years will be with workers that served on our island a decade before us! Because we all have similar hearts for Africa, it isn’t that weird to have everyone all together— there isn’t a clash of values and we have common interests. But sometimes it is hard to know with whom to catch up first among the throng of familiar faces. There is also that bizarre realization that people that mean so much to us, from different periods of our life, don’t actually know each other and need to be introduced.

We all have different worlds between which we move.  For us, it is different cultures with different languages, customs and expectations. We learn to adapt and transition between the different worlds.  But sometimes it is when those world collides that we gain new insights and appreciation for the worlds we inhabit.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The week of educational testing for our boys was good. They are both doing fine and we gained some good advice and tips. We made it through the online course that we were facilitating! Our time with all the islands workers was great— we were so happy that all of us could be there, especially as canceled flights meant that some arrived a day later than planned. It has been encouraging to hear stories of how God has been working on the other islands and also the visions and dreams for the future shared by some of our colleagues. It’s exciting!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We’re heading into a big weeklong conference. There are many we would love to connect with, pray that we would use our time and energy well and have all the conversations we are meant to have. Pray that we, along with our teammates and colleagues, would have open hearts for whatever we are meant to learn and be challenged by this week. Pray for the new family joining our team (whom we have finally met in person now!) that they and their kids would continue to do well with all the transitions and new people. Pray for everyone back on the islands. We are encouraged to see island brothers and sisters sharing prayers and verses on the big group chat. Pray that they would be inspired to continue to meet and study together and to share with their neighbors and loved ones.