Long Haul

 It feels like we are in a time of innovation on the islands.  We know of several new ideas floating around among our friends and colleagues on the islands— new business ideas, new ideas for reaching out, and new projects for engagement.   We are hearing about new people from new places (and certainly with new ideas) expressing interest in coming to the islands.  We are writing requests for new workers who might be interested in branching into new areas, helping us to grow, change and innovate. It’s exciting to think of all that might happen in the coming years if these things come together!

A big tree on small island-- it started as a seed

But what do we say to the prospective workers? to those who are eager and want to jump right in and see things happen?  We want new workers who have a vision for the future. We’d love to see new projects and ventures.  But we also know that new things on the islands take time.  

We were excited to be a part of the orientation of five new workers this past week.  These men and women are excited and eager.  They have new ideas and will push our teams into new areas of work and connection.  But they are also eager to listen and learn from the veteran workers leading sessions for their orientation.  As orientation went on, we noticed a theme emerging.  It was not planned.  It just seemed to happen.  Whether it was a session about language learning, team building or simply a veteran member given a devotion about their story, their struggles, their triumphs, the theme returned again and again.

Sometimes things take a really long time.
You need to have a long-haul mentality.
Don’t get discouraged. Don’t give up. Pray a lot!
It’s more of a marathon than a sprint.
Progress might be slow but keep it up.

These were the sentiments we heard shared again and again with the new team of workers.  Whether it was language learning, relationships, or starting a business, new workers need to know that it could take time. They need a long haul mentality. They may need to come to the islands and just learn the ropes and make connections for a couple years. They may need to first work in an area that isn’t where their passion or excitement lies.  They will need to be patient and humble. They will need to pray a lot and be sure this is the direction God wants them to go in.

Current best boat option

As an example of this, take our friends’ boat project.  He’s been hoping to provide safe and reliable travel between the small island and the other two islands—it has been an idea for a long time. It has been an active plan for years. The timeline has gotten delayed and plans have had to be completely scrapped and restarted several times. Sometimes the delays have been because of the government, sometimes banks, sometimes business partners, sometimes pandemics and global economics. There is a still a plan, but when will it become a reality? It’s still hard to say. These friends have been on the islands for many years, they know the culture and understand a lot of the bureaucracy. They have connections that have helped streamline things and still it has been a long and painfully slow process, and we are still waiting to see it successfully started.  It could be easy to give up hope.  But we encourage our friend and encourage our new people to hold onto hope. There is the chance for them to start something new.  Don’t get discouraged, don’t give up. Let’s pray! Even marathons have a finish line!

At one point doing the orientation, a worker who has been on the small island for over 24 years, shared about some of the things she had felt God leading her to when she was much younger, only to have her life and work go in a different direction for many years. It might have seemed to many as if those prayers had been unanswered—like the door had closed.   She thought the same at times, but was encouraged to persevere.  Now she could tell these new people, her prayers had become a reality, some 20 years after the initial prompting.  That’s endurance.  And as she let us know with a broad smile on her face, they were answers worth waiting for.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The new workers on the small island had a week staying with local families and it went well and they are all happily settled into their own homes now. Our sister on the small island was under threat of having her house torn down and being completely excluded from her village community, but on the appointed day, no one showed up and the next day a group that included some of the main instigators came to invite her involvement in a community project! This was a huge and encouraging answer to prayer for her and all of us who were praying for her. We have some visitors passing through the islands and we are thankful that they made it safely to our island (including a much nicer boat trip from the small island than we had). It has been encouraging to interact with them.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for the new team as they settle into their first week of living in their new neighborhoods and starting what will become their normal weekly schedule of language learning, relationship building and team life. Pray that they would develop good and healthy habit and routines. The drama for our sister on the small island continues. Just today, she was called in by the military police on charges that she posted a video talking about what she believes on the internet. She will be held in custody overnight and there will be a hearing tomorrow morning. Pray for her kids and her to not fear but to stay strong and encouraged. Our older kids are going into finals week and then have to pack up and clean their dorm rooms before traveling to the islands Friday night into Saturday. Pray for their travel and energy/stress levels—we look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with them on Sunday. May we be thankful and rejoice in all the blessing of this past year!

There's got to be a Better Way

 I looked around the boat.  Everyone was soaked to the bone—including the boat driver.  Everyone looked miserable.  Then I looked outside the boat.  It was a beautiful day.  The ocean was wavy, but not overly so.  A steady but gentle wind was blowing (blowing a continual spray into the boat—soaking us), but I imagine it would have been perfect for sailing.  The island looked beautiful, green and lush.  I thought about how I’d been out on boats in weather like this and called it vacation.  How could it be such a beautiful day for boating and yet such a miserable experience for us?  I sat in the boat, cramped, wet, dreary and downcast thinking: “There’s got to be a better way.”

Waiting for our boat back home to Clove

And we know there is.  We have a friend, an ex-pat, working hard to start a boat business that would transport people from island to island in a reliable, safer, more comfortable manner.  He’s convinced that if such a service were offered, islanders would flock to it and we’re convinced of it too.  We're sure there are plenty of people who would be eager to travel in this way, even if it meant paying a little more for a seat.  Such services exist in lots of other countries. Why not here?

But that’s the part that gets to us.  Why not here?  Islanders have tried but different boat ventures but they can’t seem to make them last.  Why not? Surely, we weren’t the only people in the boat thinking, “There’s got to be a better way!”???

The boats loading up on the small island

C.S. Lewis once said, “We are half-hearted creatures…like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Perhaps we’re taking Lewis out of context, but what is striking to us is not how easily people are pleased, but how easily they are appeased—how much misery they are willing to accept.  If the boat gets us from point A to point B, no matter how awful the journey, we take it.

Where does such a mind set come from?  Years and years of dysfunctional government and systems?  Yes.  A fatalistic worldview supported by religion?  Yes.  A life that is generally full of suffering, difficulty and discomfort that makes islanders numb to such things?  Yes.  Poverty that makes them feel powerless? Yes. Spiritual blindness?  Yes.  Hearts lacking hope?  Yes.  A deadness inside, that discourages the idea of the possibility of change? Yes.    There’s got to be a better way!  Yes.

Back on Clove, very wet

So we sat in the boat, miserable, wet, cold, uncomfortable.  The Lord’s beautiful creation was all around us, a beautiful day full of hope and promise, but we could not see it.  We couldn’t even open our eyes because of the spray.  Most of us were cowered with our eyes shut.

What a picture of the world we live in.  What an illustration of island life.  There’s got to be a better way!  There is a better way.  But will they ever see it?  We sat in the boat, with the Lord’s beautiful creation all around us.  One day they will see it.  One day they will rise above the spray and have hope and joy.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our time leading the orientation for the new team on the small island went well. We are excited for this team. They were welcomed to their village and are now staying with local families for the week!  We made it safely back to Clove Island (though very wet). It was a day later than planned because of canceled boats on Sunday, but our colleague allowed us to stay at her house for the unexpected extra night. Ma Imani said her leg pain has been less this past week.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for the team on the small island— pray for their transition to the heat, for their week staying with local families, for their local language learning and for their acceptance into their new communities. It is an intense first few weeks, so pray that they stay healthy and can sleep/rest well. Pray for our island sister from the small island, who after her court victory, is facing a new obstacle with the village elders. They say that they plan on confronting her this coming Friday and if they don’t like her answers to their questions that they will tear down her house. They have also said no one is allowed to visit her and she isn’t allowed to visit with anyone in the village. Pray for this sister to continue to stand strong. She believes something big will happen on Friday, pray for light to shine in the darkness, for protection for her and her kids and for fear to not take root in her heart. Our older kids have just two weeks left in this school term— pray for stress-free days with a good balance of rest as they finish normal classes and term projects this week.

Kids Learning Language

Our kids were babies when they came to the islands, and the assumption was that they would just learn the local language from growing up here. The idea was that they wouldn’t even have to be formally taught, they would just absorb it. But after watching our family and other families on the islands, we realize that it doesn’t usually work like that.

As little ones, it’s true that our kids learned to respond to the basic commands and greetings that they were bombarded with by local adults. But then, like all island kids, they started local preschool at the age of 3, and at school it was French only, no local language. So throughout elementary school, while we may have wanted our kids’ local language to grow, it didn’t seem fair to push it when going to school in French was challenging and we were needing to help them understand French grammar and vocabulary for their school assignments.

Practicing local language while playing cards

We have good friends whose children are growing up learning 4 languages at once and it is wonderful to see them in action.  The parents seamlessly and almost unconsciously weave different languages into their conversations with their children.  They mix prayers and songs in different languages into their daily life.  The children do not resist this or point out to their parents that they are speaking a different language.  Their parents don’t scold when the children respond in a different language, but the ambiance of language learning seems to naturally permeate all their interactions.  It requires an intense intentionality that to be honest wasn’t even on our radar when our kids were little. We were even advised back in French language school to make sure to speak English at home with our kids, but now we question that advice and wonder if we could have created a more multilingual home and realize that we could have helped our kids more in those early years.

Not that our kids haven’t learned at all. By the time our oldest’s French was good, she wanted to know the local language more and understood a lot, though she usually had to respond in French (which with an educated islander will quickly just move the whole conversation into French).She joined our team day language times and put some of the grammar and vocabulary she needed to understand and speak more. Our older son followed a similar path of becoming interested in the local language once his French was solid.

Our youngest is a different person. He had hearing loss as a young child (which was corrected), so we think he got used to lots of incomprehensible sounds going on around him. So he was content to just let it go on around him without him understanding.  It meant French at school was harder and maybe gave him the idea that he isn’t good at language (a lie that often gets in the way of language learning). He has finished local elementary school now and only doing homeschool, so doesn’t have that stress of having to function in French everyday. So we have started doing local language as part of home school.

Waiting to take boat to small island

We pray that our kids would enjoy the local language, that a natural curiosity would grow and they’d want to know and understand. For our son, we are trying to nurture that curiosity. We focus on vocabulary that interests him (animals, sports, playing). We turn the lessons into games and role plays where he can repeat a few phrases and be silly or argumentative in the local language. We focus on the situations that he encounters a lot, and we do language study in small doses in hopes that his aversion to language learning and fatigue from learning French don’t erect walls that will make it harder the next time.

Language learning is often a slow and long journey, but as we shared in a blog a couple weeks ago, there is an island proverb “slowly, slowly isn’t a handicap.” For our family, language learning has been a long, slow journey, but we remind ourselves that going slowly doesn’t mean we aren’t getting anywhere.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The women’s gathering went well, though we were missing a few people. We started a study of Ruth that was well received. We made it safely to the small island, after traveling by boat. There were several delays, but the ocean was calm, for which we are thankful. The new team has arrived safely with all their bags and are now on the small island and we have finished their first day of orientation! Our teammate’s first week working in the hospital went well.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for us as we lead this orientation for the rest of this week, as well as helping with childcare.  Pray for the stamina of the new workers as they adjust to the heat, new language and lots of meetings (with three of them just coming from 3 weeks of the larger organization’s orientation). May we have wisdom as to how to use the time well, when to speed up, when to slow down, and when to stop. Pray for the little kids on this new team as they grow up surrounded by several languages. Pray for our return travel back to Clove next weekend. Pray for our son to love the local language! Pray for Ma Imani who has had knee/leg problems for several months and is looking into traveling for medical treatment- pray for healing and that the logistics of being away from her kids and getting the care she needs would come together soon.

Surprise! I've Left

 Hi, I hope you are doing well. I would like to tell you that I’m on [the French island].
I plan to live [here].

Back in June we wrote a blog about traveling called,  If You're Going to Travel...  It was mostly about the culture of preparing for traveling—whom you tell, when you tell, why you don’t tell, etc.
This blog is more about the other side of that situation.  This is about not hearing about people’s travel plans, but rather finding out about it after the fact.

Tom encouraging English teachers/students on Clove

Every year it happens.  Students we’ve come to know and love go off to study abroad.  We are happy for them.  We hope the best for them.  But we’re hardly ever told until after the fact.  Sometimes they tell us themselves, like the message above.  Sometimes—mostly, we find out through a friend.  “Did you know so and so is in Morocco?”  “You didn’t hear?  So and so went to Senegal.”  In those cases, we wish the best for them.  It would have been nice to say goodbye, but they are young and off to study abroad.

The message from above was a bit different.  It was from our good friend, Tumayin.  He’s already done his studies and has been teaching English for some time.  He’s someone we’ve worked with for many years. It seemed to us like he had a pretty good life here.  He was busy, making a little bit of money, doing fulfilling and honorable work.  But then he sent us this message this past week.  And just like that he’s gone, another islander illegally immigrating to the French island, and we may not see him again for many years.  It’s a strange feeling.

Papaya carving!

Moreover, Tumayin did not leave to study abroad, but ostensibly to “find a better life.” To find a better paying job, or a better citizenship, or a chance at those things.  It is not certain that he will find them.  His years ahead may be full of hardship because without legal papers to be on the French Island, he will have to hide from authorities and find work under the table.  He will probably have to live in cramped quarters and get by with less.  All the while, he will try to secure his papers that would allow him to stay and move about freely, and maybe even one day travel to Europe and find work there.

I don’t know all the pressures that may be on Tumayin’s life.  Perhaps he has family that pressured him to go.  Perhaps he has more obligations than I am aware of.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply the temptation of a better life that led him to his decision.  Illegal immigration is a complicated topic and a hot one.  People have strong feelings about it.  But it’s different when you know someone.  I don’t agree with Tumayin’s decision, but I can understand it.  He’s a smart guy with a bright future.  He just couldn’t envision that future happening here on the islands.  Like so many, he’s probably convinced these islands are hopeless—that there is no future for a bright young man here.  

We wish we could have convinced him otherwise.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Tom had two good visits to villages where English programs are just getting going. We will have the women’s gathering this week and plan to study Ruth for the next few monthly meetings (one of the local sisters went to a conference focused on how the story of Ruth can be used to challenge and encourage). Our kids at boarding school seem less stressed. We were able to be vaccinated against cholera (no cases on our island, but a few on the big island so they were offering free vaccination!). We were able to secure boat tickets for the small island, after weeks of trying to figure out if we could fly there. It is nice to have tickets since we travel at the end of this week. It continues to be encouraging to see Mtsa’s growing eagerness to study and learn.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for Tumayin that he would look for hope for his future in eternal things. Pray for interisland travel. There are currently two airlines running, but their planes keep having problems and making travel between islands difficult. Pray that the new team coming to the small island would be able to arrive safely and get to the small island as planned. Pray for us and others who will be boating from Clove Island to the small island to help with the orientation for this team. Pray for smooth seas. May we all arrive safely without difficulties! Pray for the boat project’s needed loan to get approved so that they could start providing reliable transportation. Pray that the women’s gathering would be an encouragement to all and that everyone would be healthy enough to attend (there have been various health problems lately). One island sister just moved to Clove from the small island and wants help to learn English. Pray that we could help her and also encourage her walk. There was a police raid on a Sunday gathering of expat Africans this weekend on the big island. Afterwards the government issued a statement condemning the raid and stating that it violated people’s rights and freedoms. Pray for that gathering that they might be encouraged and that this government statement might be a real indication of increasing freedom.