Growing and Multiplying

Last weekend we were at an English ceremony.  English ceremonies are something of an experience.  

Getting certificates

In one way, they are an opportunity for students to show off how much they have learned and what they have accomplished.  Songs are sung, poems are read, speeches are made and small plays are performed—all in English to a delighted audience which probably understands very little of what is actually being said, but who are nonetheless extremely proud of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.  

In another way, the ceremonies are an advertisement for the English Center, hoping that the attendees will see students speaking English at the ceremony and want to sign up for the next round of classes.

Giving Speeches

We have been to so many English ceremonies over the years that we mostly know what to expect.  The fact that it can take as much as 4 hours, that power may go off and on during the event, that students like to make speeches when they receive their certificate, but they get nervous and stand there silently like a deer in the headlights trying to remember the phrases they had memorized, before finally saying, “Thank you,” and handing back the microphone.  We know most of the jokes and the canned phrases like, “English is the key to open the door.” and “English is an international language.”

But this time around, we experienced something new. About halfway in, after a song, they turned on the projector and shared a prerecorded message from a former student and teacher of the center.  He has gone to study abroad in West Africa.  There, at his university far from the islands, he has gathered other island students and started teaching them English.  A satellite campus of the island English program all the way in West Africa!  That’s some impressive multiplication!

This week Tom has been going to the other side of the island to do a teacher training.  This will be the third time he has gone there for this purpose.  That program has been going strong and multiplying, with almost no oversight from our group.  Every few years they have a new batch of teachers who are ready to be trained and Tom makes the long trip down (2 hours each way in a taxi-bus) to train them.  They take it from there.  They then teach in 5 of the villages down on that side of the island, graduating many students.  Some of the old teachers are still around, but many have moved on.  The attrition rate is pretty high as English means opportunity and many end up going abroad or finding a job that lets them move on in life.  English teaching is something they do for a season. 

Video from West Africa!

What is our role in all of this?  If you listen to the speeches made at an English ceremony, you might think we are doing some amazing things.  But that would not be true.  We have a role to play and it is important—we are catalysts who help get things started, but the islanders are the elements that make it happen.  We are scaffolding that help support a new structure, but they are the materials and the workforce to build the building.  At this point, many of these programs can (and do) continue on without us.  We helped plant seeds, but others have caused those seeds to grow.

The program doing the teacher training is a success story, but not every story is a success.  Many of the programs that start up only last a year or less.  They fail for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes the organization and responsibility are just not there.  The students get tired of a center that doesn’t take its job seriously and after a short time it fizzles out.  Sometimes the facilities are not up to snuff.  One program failed because the classroom was so noisy, the teacher could barely be heard over all the noise.  Sometimes the vision fails to be passed on.  We were saddened to learn this month that one of the stronger programs (that had been around for 5 years or more) had folded.  The original founders had moved on and hadn’t passed the vision on to anyone else. So when things began to struggle, it just faded away.

It is our dream to see things grow and multiply—not just English programs, but truth, and hope, and change, and new life, and communities of life-giving fellowship.  We often wish these other things would grow as quickly and reproduce as easily as English programs.  But where English programs are like vines, these other things are like mighty oaks.  They grow slowly and take time.  Yet, even with patience we must accept that some will grow and bear fruit and multiply, others will be fruitful for a time only to fade away and others will bear no fruit at all.  So we plant, we water, we encourage and hope for new life to grow, and leave the rest to God.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The teacher training in the far away village has gone well and Tom only had to spend 2 of 5 nights away. A short-termer on the French Island (who had been trying for months to come to Clove Island) finally has made it! We’ve enjoyed getting to know her finally. There was an encouraging story of an island brother living abroad going and praying for an islander sick and alone in the foreign hospital.  A new teammate has had really encouraging conversations with an island friend, who is really seeking. Some the Word has been printed and should be making its way to the islands soon.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our longtime teammate (whom we just said goodbye to) is getting married tomorrow in mainland Africa. Our daughter will be able to attend the ceremony. Pray for all the final logistics, that the ceremony would be a great testament to the good news and that the celebration would be joyous! One of our new teammate’s birthday is tomorrow (her first on the island), pray that she would feel loved and appreciated. Pray for our daughter as she has a long weekend coming up. Lots of her fellow students will get to see their families, but she won’t— pray that she has a relaxing and fun weekend. Pray for multiplication of truth, hope and new life on the islands!

Believing Fear

The streets are quieter at night than they used to be. Neighbors are more insistent that our single teammates not go walking around too late. We see a heightened fear in our island capital.

Early morning on the island

 Fear is a powerful emotion. It is also a powerful motivator. Lots of things have been done and are done because of fear. We wish we could claim to be different, but realistically we know that we also do things and don’t do things out of fear. Sometimes we don’t recognize the fear, because we see the flip-side instead. We see the desire for acceptance instead of fear of rejection, the desire for unity instead of the fear of conflict. 

We would say and think in our minds that we shouldn’t be doing things because of fear of other people. Our eyes should be on God, trusting in Him and following His lead, not the lead of fear. But that still doesn’t mean that fear can’t creep into our hearts quietly, and perhaps unconsciously we find ourselves acting in ways that have their root in fear. 

One problem with fear as a motivator is that going where fear guides, usually doesn’t get rid of the fear. The fear just builds and grows. It’s a darkness that can grip our hearts, torment us and not let us go.

People come to our club at night

 Fear can be most powerful when it has some opening founded in facts. Something that makes it real. The streets are quieter earlier now because people are worried about increased crime. Now we’ve talked about house break-ins, but that doesn’t seem to be what people are worried about when they tell others to get home earlier. The impression is that they are worried about violent crimes or muggings?    

 Now we’ve never had to worry about these kinds of crimes on Clove Island, and we haven’t heard reports of these types of crimes happening here….at least not yet. It’s that sense of ‘yet’ that has given rise to fear here. Because everyone knows those kinds of crimes happen on the French Island and people know the French plans to deport the troublemakers from the French Island here. They see the increase in house break-ins and wonder if an escalation in other crimes will happen too. So even though there is no indication that a rise in this type of crime has started, islanders see the potential and fear has found its opening.

So even though things haven’t changed yet, fear means that they have changed. People are frightened, so life here has started to change. Every once in a while in the past, something has stoked fear in islanders like this and after a few months it passes and things go back to normal. We’re not sure if that is what will happen this time, but in the meantime, we don’t want to feed fear, nor do we want to be foolhardy. So we try to be more careful, a little more cautious when we are out and about, but at the same time, we don’t have the fear that some islanders seem to have and we pray that it will never grip us. 

May we look to the One who tells us we don’t have to be slaves of fear, so we can walk forward with Him and in the peace that He offers.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our colleague made it back from the UK safely and told us she has recovered from long COVID! We are so encouraged to see her with energy and breath back!  Some boats between the French Island and Clove Island have restarted. There is still a lot of tension and the bigger boats haven’t restarted, but we are thankful that some travel/transport has opened for those that rely on it. Our teammate preparing to get married finally got the needed appointment to get the needed license (after delays)! Pray that would be the last hiccup in their plans and preparations.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray that this fear would be unfounded and that the islands would not see an increase of crime. Pray that those who pursued lives of crime on the French Island would find new positive directions for their lives. Pray that our island brothers and sisters could be a contrasting voice in this time of uncertainty. Tom has started a teacher training in a far village a couple hours away, which means he occasionally may not find a taxibus back home and will have to spend the night. Pray that he wouldn’t have to spend the night many times and that if he does it would lead to openings to deepen relationship with islanders and have good conversations. Pray for his energy for the next few weeks while he does that training.

Once is Enough...

“Never again,”  I told my teammates, 10 years ago after we hiked the tallest peak in Clove Island - Mt. Ndziro, a staggering 5233ft summit. 

Tom & son on way up Mt Ndziro

We were a brand-new team.  We didn’t know what we were getting into.  We had little experience both as a team and with island hiking.  We were young—all of us in our 20s and 30s—and relatively fit.  But this was no easy hike.  I just went back and read our blog post from ten years ago about the experience.  You can read it too if you’d like.  The last line of the blog says… “I am so thankful for our team and thankful for the trip...but I never want to climb Ndziro again!”

But ten years is a long time, and you start to forget and grow a bit nostalgic.  Plus, Megan never got a chance to do the climb, and now one of our sons is old enough and interested.  Moreover, our teammate who made the climb with me ten years ago was about to leave us to go and get married—she wanted to climb it again—a sort of last hurrah for us all.  Finally, we planned to take a different route, one that was supposed to be less steep.  All these things together brought me around to a place of acceptance, even a bit of excitement about the trip.  And so on Saturday, we woke up early, gathered our supplies, and headed out to conquer Mt. Ndziro once again.

Two days later, we are still incredibly sore —especially our quads—walking the streets, even a hint of elevation seems to make our legs complain and make our walks become a little wobbly.  Stairs are a truly unpleasant matter.  Was it an easier than the last time?  I don’t think so.

The new route seemed just as hard, just as dangerous, just as unforgivingly and relentlessly uphill, but it had better views!  In fact, the new route meant we lengthened our trek and our elevation gain.  It took us 5 hours to reach the summit.  But we were rewarded on the way with a fern forest—a kind of fern tree I’ve never seen before on the islands that looked like something out of prehistoric times.

Some beautiful views

We ended up coming down the same route we took ten years ago.  It was just as hazardous as I remembered it, but this time with a lot more mud.  Somehow the fact that it felt a bit familiar made the going a bit easier, I think—that and poles.  We’ve learned that hiking poles are essential for a long trek downhill.  True, our son bounded down the mountain like a billy goat, his knees unaffected, but Megan and I took our time and used the poles to help us down.  I made a joke out of it.  In the island language, we often say, “Mpole, Mpole,” which means “slowly, slowly.” I would hold up each hiking pole in turn and say, “I’m going mpole, mpole.” (This got a wonderful eye-roll from my son and teammates.)  

It took us another 4 hours to come back down the mountain.  This time we were rewarded with the sight of lemurs, which was nice, and the fresh water lake, which is always a beautiful sight and a nice way to end the hike.  Ten years ago, the lake was not the end of the hike.  There was a long hike down from the lake to the nearest town.  But in the intervening years a road has been built that passes near the lake.  We thanked the Lord, that as we came off the trail, our guide had already been able to stop a passing taxibus to take us home.  Tired, muddy and dirty we scrambled into the taxibus, telling the islanders coming from their fields that we had climbed Ndziro for fun.  They smiled and shook their heads at us.  “Crazy foreigners,” they were probably thinking.

Lemur on the hike

Ten years ago I wrote, “I am so thankful for our team and thankful for the trip...but I never want to climb Ndziro again!”  That’s how I’m feeling this time around too. But I guess we’ll see how I feel about it ten years from now.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We survived our climb up and down Mt. Ndziro and are grateful for the taxibus meeting us when we exited the trail.  Tom got back safe from his travels and they went really well.  He was much encouraged and felt like the members of the conference were greatly encouraged too. Four islanders were dunked over the weekend by other island brothers and sisters.  The monthly women’s gathering went well and was also an opportunity to say goodbye to our teammate of ten years.  We are thankful that she has been able to have many good goodbyes and end well.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our teammate just left this morning on her way to marriage and a new life on the Big Island.  Pray for all her transitions, wedding plans and coming marriage.  We are so happy for her and her fiancé who has shown himself to be a gentle, thoughtful, humble man of God.  May they be blessed! Pray for the housemate on her own now that her housemate has left.  Another teammate will arrive back from her time at home in the UK.  She has been recovering from long COVID.  Pray that the island heat will not be too hard on her and the great strides she has made in recovery will continue. The boats are still not going between Clove and French Islands. Some people rely on these boats to bring prescription medication from the French Island, pray for a way forward for them and for the boat company.

Every Place's Challenges

This week I (Tom) traveled to the island of Madagascar to help lead a training session about team-leading for men and women who live and work on that great and diverse island and have a similar vision and purpose as we do.

Learning together

Madagascar is huge.  226,000 square miles.  3,000 miles of coastline.  25 million people.  18 distinct people groups.  Their people and their struggles are different than on our islands.  As I listened to the stories of different attendees, I was struck by just how different each different location is and how different their challenges are.  For some of them, the biggest challenge is poverty and drought.  For others, it is dealing with violence and theft.  For others, there are evil spirits and worship of ancestors.  For others, there are troubles of deep jealousy and distrust.  For still others, there are problems of honor, shame, cover-ups, lying and corruption.  Every place has its challenges.

Yet we were there to talk about teams. The challenges that teams face seem to all come down to the same things again and again.  The hardest part about being on a team is interpersonal conflict.  

Learning about team

How do you get people to work together, love each other, and achieve something of value?  More than that, how do you avoid spending all your strength and energy dealing with conflict and misunderstandings on your team?  

For example, it is hard to deal with poverty and drought.  It is going to take all your compassion, strength and resources to deal with it.  But if, as a team you don’t agree on how to deal with famine and drought, if you are unwilling to work with one another, unwilling to forgive when your teammates make mistakes, and unwilling to trust them, much of your strength will go to dealing with your team. So when the interpersonal conflict is combined with the poverty and drought, it will soon become overwhelming.  Burnout and/or the break-up of the team often follows.

As we talked about all sorts of things to help teams get along, grow, and resolve conflict,  the heart of it all it seemed to come back to the same things again and again and again.  What teams need most is humility, forgiveness, and trust.

These aren’t things that come from a book or a formula, they come from God working in our hearts. Every place has its challenges, but some challenges are the same across the board.  So though our island teams may face very different challenges from those of the teams in Madagascar, we all need to have our hearts worked on. We all need humility, forgiveness and trust if we are going to work with others. So we can all learn from each other’s stories. Stories of struggles and failure, of victories and redemption, as we look to thrive on teams by handing over our hearts to our humble, forgiving, trustworthy God.

New friend in Madagascar

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for our daughter’s 15 years and for the community, friends and dorm parents that were able to appreciate and celebrate her on her birthday at boarding school. We’ve celebrated birthdays of two of our other teammates as well! We are thankful for all of them.  The conference that Tom was helping lead went really well. It ended today and he begins his (long) travels back to the island tomorrow. Pray for a smooth trip back. We heard that Bako made it home to Clove Island from his trip (that we wrote about a couple weeks ago), we look forward to hearing from him how it went. Another Clove island sister helped lead her friend to accept the good news this week! There has also been encouraging stories of changed lives and new commitment on the big island as well. We rejoice and continue to pray for growth and more changed lives!


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Two of our teammates had a break-in during the early hours of Friday morning that woke them from their sleep. Thankfully the thief left quickly once they woke up, but it was a scary experience and the thief had taken pains to force his way in. Pray for peace of mind for our teammates, especially that they would be able to sleep well at night. Pray for this rising trend of forced break-ins on the island. Boats have still not resumed between the French Island and Clove Island, and things there continue to be tense and volatile. Continue to pray for the light to shine in this complicated and messy situation. This is our one teammate’s last week living on Clove Island before leaving to get married and then live on the big island. Pray for her as she finishes things, packs up her stuff, and says goodbyes. Pray for this new chapter that she is beginning. She has been with us for a long time, so pray for us and our team too in this time of transition. We have heard that there might be a meeting soon between two island brothers that have been estranged for years— pray that the meeting actually happens and that repentance, forgiveness, humility and trust would grow.

The Promise of Rest

 There are many times where life can feel busy, but recently I have been challenged that a feeling of busyness (though common for people) is not something we should accept or be content living in.
It is so easy to find ourselves in the midst of seemingly endless striving and rushing. Our days are full, our to-do lists long. We need rest, but are we finding it? 

Finding beautiful spots on the island

Or it may be that we finally find a good balance of rest, but then something about our routines or circumstances changes and our balance is broken. We find ourselves getting tired and worn out again, we aren’t finding enough rest.

But that’s not how it is meant to be. There are many places where we read about God’s promise and offer of rest. Come to Him all who are weary and find rest for your souls!

We need to slow down and look for joy and rejuvenation. As team leaders, we have seen various people come to the islands and we have always tried to emphasize the importance of a day off, where people do things that are restful for them. But the problem is that a lot of the things that people are used to finding rest in aren’t available to them when they come to the islands— there aren’t the same relationships, technology, food and entertainment options that they had at home.

What is restful for one person isn’t the same for the next, and depending on how long you have been on the islands our needs are different. But back home, they might have gone to a restaurant or out to a movie, hung out with friends, looked up a new hiking trail. But here restaurants are few and have long wait times, there are no theaters, relationships take time to grow, and everything is done in the local language (which is exhausting for someone just learning).

Heading to the river

Being stripped bare of the things we know from back home, we are also forced to realize that a lot of the ways we often seek rest are actually just escapes and not drawing us to God (the one who offers us rest), but merely attempts to distract us from our lives.

But there is one thing that the islands has in abundance that can also help draw us into God’s presence. That is nature! Beautiful mountains, waterfall and rivers, ocean and beaches, caves and rock formations.  But accessing this beauty is not so easy.  You can’t go to a website, read a description of how to hike somewhere and just do it.  Even if such descriptions existed, the island trails are not maintained or marked. You have to have someone show you.

This weekend, we had some visitors from the big island and our teammate was showing them the sights, especially some of the natural wonders (waterfalls, beaches). On Saturday, we also took our new team family to a river spot, close enough to not be too hard to get to but far enough to feel like you are someplace new. It’s one of those spots that reminds us, “We live on a tropical island!”

Relaxing at the river

Their little son kept looking up and pointing at the sun shining through the ceiling of green overhanging leaves and saying, “Ooooh,” with a look of wonder and a sweet smile. What an innocent reminder of our need to slow down, step back, look around, and allow ourselves to be awed by what God has done and is doing. We don’t need to be in nature to do it, but a beautiful spot makes it easier to let go of other distractions and to notice what is around us.

More and more I have been convicted that the feeling of rest should not be limited to our day off or those moments out in nature. It should seep into our everyday. We should let go of the hurry and give ourselves time to look around in wonder and to come back to the throne of the one who has promised us rest for our souls.  

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for the many beautiful spots on the island that we have discovered over the years that we get to share with others.  It was a joy to hear our visitors speak with delight about the beauties of Clove Island and to see our new family relaxing and laughing with their little ones in the river’s cool pools.  This past week was quite full with work, but with an attitude of rest fresh in our minds, it did not feel overwhelming.  There was even time for Tom and our older son to take a prayer retreat.  It went very well.  We heard this week that one of our island sisters was able to share with her father and he accepted the good news.  

PRAYERS REQUESTED
The campaign to destroy slums and deport illegal immigrants on the French island was briefly stopped by the courts, but promises to continue.  Many people have been displaced from their homes, and there is almost constant fighting with police over there.  The two countries are at logger heads over the situation, making travel more difficult and ill-will to grow.  Pray for peace, solutions and compassion for the poor and suffering.  Tom will travel this week for a conference.  He’ll be gone for almost two weeks.  Pray for Megan and the boys as they get along without him and pray for Tom’s travels to go well.  Our daughter will have her 15th birthday on Sunday (her first away from family), pray that she would feel encouraged and loved that day.