Embracing Newness

New people stir things up. They drive us out of ruts. They make us question how we have been doing things and they provide opportunities and catalysts of change.

New flowers bloomed

This week we’ve had a visitor. He only has one week in Africa under his belt.  Our newer teammates look like seasoned veterans in comparison. His questions and confusions help to highlight all the ways that they have grown and learned. As he goes around with our teammate of 5 years, his simple questions have opened up several new opportunities for her to share again or for the first time with people she has known for a long time.

As a team, we were learning about and discussing the cycles of teams. There was a graph with ups and downs, highlighting areas like ‘honeymoon stage’ and ‘conflict’. It struck me that it was very much the same terminology and graphics that we’ve seen when learning about culture shock or marriage. When big changes happen, there are common cycles of emotional and developmental ups and downs.

Our role as team leaders changes depending on where everyone is in the process. This gets complicated because we have a mixed team. Some teammates have been here months, another a year, another two years, another multiple years. As leaders, we hope to interact with teammates differently depending on where they are in the journey of personal adjustment to life and work on the islands. On top of that our teammates interact together differently depending on where we are as a group on the journey of adjustment to team life. But any time we accept a new team member that team journey partially or completely restarts. It makes things complicated!

New experience for our visitor

We’ve seen other teams decide that the rollercoaster is too much. They decide to not accept new people for a few years (or indefinitely), thus getting rid of one complicating dynamic of team life. We see the attraction. As soon as all your teammates are veterans, then the individual ups and downs are less and the team knows each other better and can thrive in ways that they couldn’t before.

But even if leaders want to take a break from accepting new people, all too soon the veterans start getting called away to different things, the team shrinks and they realize that they have to ‘restart’ with a new batch of new people if they want the work to continue.

The cycles of change and transition, of welcoming newness, come upon us even if we successfully resist them in the short-term. So we try to embrace the newness, we remember the blessings that new relationships and new perspectives bring. Seeing people beginning their journeys of adjustment reminds us of the blessings we have experienced and gives us new insights into our own journey.

Trying a new painting technique

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our visitor has been part of lots of cool opportunities to share truth with islanders and lots of chances for him to get glimpses into work and life on the islands. Tom was able to finish studying some a series of story books with a longtime island friend and they are moving on to studying stories from the main book. He is learning and absorbing a lot and sharing with his family. Our son got his results back and learned he passed his local school exams. Our daughter had her end of year concert at school in mainland Africa. There are plans in the works for a gathering to distribute the first copies of the newly translated books and introduce players with audio versions. Our teammate joined a gathering of islanders this weekend and was encouraged by the things she saw. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
One of our teammates is traveling to South America for 3 weeks. Pray for smooth travels and a restful time for her as she interacts with workers in a very different context. Two of our teammates have been plagued by bad water issues at their house, pray for good solutions as they look into cistern options. We hope to finish the homeschool this week so that we don’t have to be doing it while our daughter is home. Pray that we could get it all done without it being stressful. Megan has seen some improvement in her pain, but it is still well above her normal levels. Continue to pray for healing. The wedding season is beginning on the islands. Pray that our team attending weddings would lead to deeper relationships and opportunities to have good conversations.
 

Small Islands

The islands are not a big place. You can find smaller places and much smaller people groups, so they are not insignificant, but in the scheme of the whole world, they are small.

Island fishermen in small traditional boats

We have a visitor this week from the US, who has not traveled internationally much. It is fun seeing him process the islands and how different things are here. Coming from a ‘big’ place like the US, we think it is always important for Americans to see how differently others view the world. These small and diverse places give us new perspectives, can open our eyes and change us for the better.

Some weeks ago we talked about our good friend Bako and how we went to South Africa, rubbing shoulders from other young leaders from various African countries. I think it was a humbling experience for him, coming from a small place and going to a big one. The size of Johannesburg and the variety of cultures represented at the school were at times overwhelming. But perhaps the most humbling point may have been that some of the other participants had never even heard of the islands. We’ve encountered this many times, and while we aren’t surprised that people back home in the US haven’t heard about the islands before, it stings a bit that people from Africa, even countries nearby, don’t know where the islands are or anything about them.

Big international boat

For most islanders, the islands are their whole world. Many will never leave them. One of our good island friends is convinced that the islands are important. She loves languages and recognizes the importance for business and interacting with people from other countries. Several times she has suggested that if we ever had to go back to the US, that we should just open a language school to teach Americans the local island language! Her assumption is that, of course, people in the US would be interested in learning her language, because then they could do business and travel here with no problems. We have refrained from bursting her bubble about the feasibility of such a school and instead have thanked her for her advice.  

Another island friend, who has never left the islands, seems to understand the smallness of the islands. She was lamenting about war in the world, but she declared that the islands would never have to worry about ‘real’ war. She asserted that they were too small to be worth anyone’s notice. Also she said that the islands would never provoke a real war because, “All it would take is one bomb.” She made this point with hand motions, sound effects and gestures showing how, “One bomb—and boom—everyone would be dead.”  While I don’t know that her assessment is completely accurate, she’s an example of an islander who feels that they are small.

Father's Day mug from our daughter

In homeschool, our youngest son is learning about space. We are reading about far-away galaxies and the reality of how small our planet and solar system is in the context of the universe. It is humbling to feel so small.

On the islands, we struggle between wanting islanders to recognize the bigness of the greater world, to see beyond their one-way of seeing things, and to realize that there are different ways of viewing things. At the same time, we don’t want a feeling of smallness to make islanders not celebrate who they are, recognizing that their language and culture are something beautiful and unique and worth preserving. In the grand scheme of things all of us are so small and yet God in all His bigness tells us that we are valuable and important enough to him that He knows every hair on our heads!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We all made it back safely to Clove Island after the previous weekend on the big island. Two of our teammates and a number of island sisters traveled together and said it was encouraging to see them caring for each other and enjoying each other’s company. Our youngest is officially done with the local school year (still a few weeks of homeschool left though). We are thankful for fathers, as yesterday was Father’s Day. We are thankful for the time on the big island connecting with workers from all the islands and for a fun final day with our old teammate and leader who leaves the islands for good in a couple weeks. She has been a blessing to us and the islands and we are grateful for our years serving together here.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for an island brother who is experiencing health problems and has been told that neighbors have put a curse on him. Pray for healing and protection for him and his family. We have a houseguest from the US for the next week, pray it would be a good visit for him and give him insight into cross-cultural work and how God might guide him in his future.  Megan is having sciatic pain. Pray for healing and insight into what she should and should not be doing. For the newly translated books coming into the islands, that they would have a powerful impact here. Pray for our team that we would remain steadfast and stable in the midst of lots of transitions and changes. This past week we heard of two overseas workers (friends of friends) who died suddenly leaving behind wives and children (some of who attend our daughter’s school). Pray for all those in shock and grieving.

Competing Influences

 Two teenage island girls stand on stage together, singing a duet in English. They have varying abilities and different amounts of nervousness. One seems frozen in place as she sings, while the other moves her body expressively with the music. But these differences pale in comparison to how differently they are dressed…

Two island girls on the stage

The girl who was getting into the music had a conservative head wrap that hugged her face completely hiding any hair and trailed down all the way to her waist. Her robe went all the way to her feet and her sleeves all the way to her wrists.

The other girl stood awkwardly, not sure what to do with her hands.  She was garbed in a bare-shouldered, simple white dress, with half sleeves and calf-length below which she wore stylish black boots.  Her head was not covered. No headscarf or shawl in sight.

Neither of these girls were dressed in a typical island way. In fact, if you sent us a photo of either of them, there wouldn’t be much to tell us that they are from the islands. The conservatively dressed girl is more reminiscent of countries that speak Arabic and that hold to stricter religious rules. The exposed shoulders and hair style of the other girl would make us think of styles from Western countries or at least Westernized urban areas of Africa.

These girls are clear representations of the competing influences on the islands. The traditional island culture is already a mix of different peoples from the complex history of the islands. But the islands still have clear traditions that are now fixed and distinct. On top of that, there are the current influences. There is the ever present influence of French and western cultures coming from social media, the internet, music, movies and islanders who now live in France. Then there is the influence from the Arab world, from countries that would want islanders to be more religiously conservative and strict.

With specific individuals, it can be easy to see which influence is winning. There are those that dress in Arab styles and encourage their friends to embrace more severe reading of certain laws or regulations that islanders are traditionally lax on. Others embrace Western influence, potentially at the cost of any thought to religion, not seeing much of God in the materialism coming from the West .

But a lot of islanders are a mix. They see the influences from Arab countries as being good and right, but they still like Western music and movies. They may like to religiously ‘look the part’, but the religious fervency hasn’t really touched their hearts. The girl dressed so modestly was still up on stage, singing a Western song and moving her body to the music. None of those things would be allowed by truly strict religious practitioners.  

Megan teaching local language to teammates

Now, you might be wondering about our influence. Are we just another presence pushing islanders towards Westernization? We hope not. Yes, we are predominantly English teachers, but we try to counteract this by being learners and advocates for the local language.  We may be from the West but we try to show that we all should value and appreciate island culture by wearing traditional clothes, going to traditional community events, and enjoying local foods.

This week I was in a store, a newer little supermarket (more Western). A man dressed in traditional island clothes said the price in the local language, and one of the workers teased him for not saying it in French. I saw the older man struggling to come up with the right way to say the price in French, when I spoke. I said his language is beautiful, and that he should say the price in his language. He is an islander on the islands, speaking to an islander, why should he have to speak a foreign language?

We see that both Western and Arab influences can be seen as asking islanders to move away from their own culture, move away from their own language, to be foreign in order to be accepted. At the same time, it is only surface changes. These influences often don’t reach the heart. We want islanders to stay islanders but to experience heart change that makes them seek truth, justice, love and hope.

Ready for the weddings on big island

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Both of the team’s little ones and our medical team colleague are feeling much better. Our youngest finished almost all of his exams at local school without much stress. Everyone made it to the big island for the wedding. It was a double wedding as both our teammate and husband and two islanders celebrated their new marriages. It was a blessed day! May God be with them all in the married lives. It has been good to be able to connect with workers from the small island, big island and the French island this weekend. Our former teammate and doctor on the French Island finally got his official French paperwork as a fully recognized doctor (after years of bureaucracy, waiting, and prayer)! Praise God that some of the fear on Clove Island seems to be lifting and it seems like people are out and about at night again.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for the two newly married couples— for our teammate as she settles into life on the big island, and for the island couple as they combine their families (6 kids in all) and settle into life together on Clove Island. Pray for us as we travel back to Clove Island and as our youngest finishes the local school year. Pray for the French Island, which above its other problems is also running out of water after a dry year (they expect to run out of water by Aug) and is also seeing a mass exodus of expats. Most of the doctors have left the island to return to France. Pray for all those who remain. Pray for the right influences to impact the islands, that we might see more new life here.

Anecdotes on Island Marriage

I was visiting the family of a friend and overheard them discussing a recent family event.  

Beautiful place with lots of issues

On the islands, it is customary for people to go to the airport to greet family members returning from abroad or who have been away to another island for a long time.  They dress up in their finest clothes and make flower necklaces to drape over the returning family member.  The travelers are surrounded by their loved ones who embrace them with big smiles and escort them home like royalty.   

In this case, it was my friend’s cousin who was returning.  Apparently a few years ago he had gone to find a living on the small island and was returning now to Clove Island to introduce people to his new bride — a young woman also from Clove Island whom he had met while living there.  

As people gathered at the airport, a large contingency of the family was there—a surprisingly large contingency.  Were all these people here to meet his cousin?  No, in fact they were here to meet his bride. Here comes the surprise…the bride is also his relative!  To be more specific it turned out (if I understood it right) that his cousin had unknowingly married his aunt!  

I can only imagine the confusion at the airport.  What is usually a joyous occasion must have become extremely awkward.  Moreover, a baby is already on the way, so there is little use in trying to annul the marriage.

Boys and teammate on sunset hike

As my friend shook his head at the turn of events he told me that it is all too common here.  You have to be really careful whom you marry.  Not only are the islands pooling from a small population (about 400,00 on Clove Island), but polygamy is culturally acceptable, promiscuity is rampant, and large families are the norm.  My friend pointed out that he has eight children from two wives just like his father before him.  He says it’s pretty hard to keep track of whom you are related to.  Another friend from another village has told me he is still discovering all his half-brothers and half-sisters as he has learned more and more about his father’s multiple wives and indiscretions.

It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.  

Yesterday I went to a wedding ceremony where the man giving the wedding sermon was one of our former landlords.  I think he must have heard and remembered our story of the 2 kingdoms, because his speech to the groom sounded so similar.  He said that when God made the world everything was good, including marriage.  Adam and Even loved each other and shared everything and did not have any jealousy or cheating.  

It was one of the nicest speeches I have ever heard at a wedding here.  It’s much more common to hear speeches about the importance of an obedient wife—nothing about love, or helping one another.  As far as I know, this man (the speaker) has not had a change of heart.  He may not even realize the influence the story of the 2 kingdoms has had on his thoughts and words, but it is there, and it gives us hope.

This coming week we will go to the wedding of two of our colleagues.  Though they are both foreigners, they have lots of island friends and island experience.  They will be celebrating their marriage in a distinctly island way, and yet, a distinctly different way from that of the majority faith.  Many islanders will be there, seeing something modeled that might get their minds thinking, whether consciously or unconsciously: What could marriage look like for people like us?  How could it be reimagined in a way that still honors our culture, our families, our heritage?  The possibility of something new and yet understandable, transferable, usable is an exciting thing.  It too gives us hope.

Another group of teachers trained!

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”  Matthew 13:33

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our longtime teammate was married this past week in mainland Africa and our daughter was able to attend the wedding. Two islanders were also able to attend. This week Tom successfully finished leading the teacher's training course in a far away village. We celebrated our new teammate’s birthday with both cake and a hike (we saw a live chameleon on the islands for the first time!). Our daughter had a relaxed long weekend break with a good mix of getting out and resting.  We got to talk to her several times, so even though we couldn’t be with her in person it felt like we were able to have good times of connection over the weekend. The short-termer from the French Island was able to visit and made it back to the French Island safely this morning. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We read an article this week saying that the island’s head religious leader has proclaimed that the weekly religious teachings can’t be given in the local language, it has to be in Arabic. We’re not sure the impact this will have on islanders, but may the contrast with us embracing local language and sharing truth in it be a comforting and inviting difference. Our new team family’s little ones are sick, as well as one of our medical team colleagues. Pray for healing and full restoration of health. Our youngest son is starting his end of the year exams at school. Pray that we’d be able to study with him so that he feels prepared and not stressed by them. Pray for our daughter as she returns to school from her midterm break and settles back in for her last month of freshman year! Lots of our team and many islanders are all going to the big island this coming weekend for our teammate’s wedding celebration there (since most of us couldn’t get to mainland Africa for the original wedding). Pray that it would be a joyous time that would draw the body together and help us celebrate God-centered marriage. Pray for us as we connect with different island workers while on the big island as well.