Exploring Possibilities

 Our daughter is turning 17 next week, she’s taking the SAT on Saturday and finishing up her junior year of high school (that’s the second to last year).  Her school sent us a handbook for the college search process and encouraged us to talk to our kids about it over this break from school. It’s a big decision and there are so many different paths and factors and options to consider.

Tom and son on French Island

People respond differently to big decisions and to exploring the options and possibilities for the future. Even within our own little family, our older son and Megan like to imagine the different potential paths in their mind and can have fun thinking about how things could play out.  On the other hand, Tom and our daughter will only usually do it if they have to, but don’t gravitate towards it. While our younger son actively avoids it and would much rather someone else do the planning for him. This doesn’t mean that any of us are terribly decisive. Megan likes to explore the different possibilities, but that doesn’t mean that she’s quicker to making the final decision.

At our most recent English Club we talked with islanders about making decisions and what people do to help explore the options and make those decisions. It became clear that they weren’t very conversant on this topic. They weren’t used to thinking about decision-making as a process. By the end of our time, it seemed that usually for them decisions were just made and there wasn’t a drawn out process of research or getting advice or making pros/cons lists or comparing different options. On reflection, we think that many islanders don’t know how to do the research needed to explore different possibilities. Without research, they don’t really know what is possible unless someone presents it to them or they see someone else doing it.

We remember that when we first came to Clove Island, we were under pressure to start an English center. Clove Islanders saw this as something foreigners did, but then we took some Clove Islanders to an English teaching conference on the big island. They saw that islanders there were starting their own centers and programs. They came back with this new possibility in their minds and now we have the privilege of coming alongside 16 different centers/programs spread across Clove Island run entirely by islanders!

Unfortunately, not knowing how to do research well, means that islanders are often victims of scams. Possibilities are presented to them via email or online ads, and they don’t always know how to independently verify that something is legit. They don’t always question that they have to wire money in as an application fee or a formality in order to open up some great opportunity, not realizing that there is no opportunity. We know an island family that sold everything and gave up their house because they were sure that they had gotten a job in a different country and were just waiting for the airline tickets to be delivered any day. No tickets ever came, it was all fake.

Heading back to school

Our daughter was given a handbook and access to a database of different colleges, with search options, filters, side by side comparisons and more! She can trust the information. It was provided by her school and has been verified by others. She is privileged to have such resources and whether she likes the process or not, she has the tools to guide her.

Or at least they can start to guide her. There is still the most important factor.  The God factor. All the resources and charts and information doesn’t necessarily help you know what you should decide. God can use those things as tools, but ultimately we look to Him to give us the discernment— to close and open doors, and to grant us the peace as we step forward into the future.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Thank you for praying for our daughter. Her fever and other symptoms resolved and she was able to travel as planned. They made it safely to mainland Africa and back to school. Today is the first day of third term. Meanwhile Tom and our youngest son made it safely to the French island— they didn’t get sick on the overnight boat ride and were even able to get some sleep. They had an encouraging time visiting our colleagues there— the island has found a new normal post-cyclone. It is still not ideal and lots of repairs to buildings still need to be done but people are getting by, mostly in much more cramped living, working and school situations.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for islanders to not be the victims of scams and to be aware of different legitimate possibilities for their futures. Pray for God to guide us and our daughter as she begins to think about college. Tom and our youngest are just arriving back on Clove Island— pray for them as they jump back into life, work, and homeschool. Tom’s friend is supposed to meet with him to pray for a dream to decide which path is correct. Pray for the truth to become evident to him and for his heart to be open enough to accept it. Megan takes our daughter to the rheumatologist tomorrow— it has been a discouraging past few months for her arthritis. Pray for healing and better months ahead. Pray for our daughter— that she would stay healthy— colds/viruses hit her harder and lead to flare-ups in her arthritis. Pray especially for the first couple weeks as she has SAT and AP exams. Pray for Megan’s travels back to the islands and that she can travel back with some of our daughter’s refrigerated medications.

Figuring Out Food

Food is a central part of celebration. It is a central part of bonding together as a group or a community. So as we were coming together to celebrate resurrection and new life, we needed to figure out food!

The idea was that everyone bring some food or drink and we all share. In the US, we call this a potluck, and it is a cornerstone of most shared meals in larger communities that we’ve been a part of in the US, but for the islands potlucks are not normal.  An islander had suggested it once before and we did it successfully, but several key players hadn’t been present and they were still skeptical.

‘What about drinks?”
“People bring their own water and maybe some people will bring drinks.”

“What about a snack when people first arrive?”
“Maybe some people will bring some snacks.”

“What about poorer people?”
“They can just bring something small.”

“What about single men who can’t cook?”
“They can just buy something small to bring.”

“What if there isn’t enough?”
“Then people can go home and eat more. But don’t worry, there will be enough.”

Tom and boys after   potluck

 On the islands, the normal way to do food at an event is for the person/family hosting the event to provide the food for said event. If a group is coming together for an outing, then they might set a price that everyone will pay in order to participate and then a big part of the event is preparing the food together as a picnic. Food can become an obstacle that stops people from getting together.  
If a participation price is set, then the poorer people may just not come. Or if there is no wealthy person to host, then the event may just not happen.

We wanted to have a service and celebrate together, so we didn’t want to take up the day with preparing food like at a picnic. We wanted people to feel like this kind of event could happen again, even if there weren’t wealthy people carrying the brunt of the expense.  We wanted everyone to come and everyone feel like they had a part in making it happen, not just a few hosts. So, as a group, we planned a potluck.

There was plenty of food. There were snacks. There were drinks. There were starches, greens, meat and dessert. People had extra plates, spoons, cups and water for those that forgot. No one had to miss any of the proceedings because they were in the back preparing the food, everyone was there to hear and sing about resurrection and the promise of new life. There was food leftover at the end. It was enough.

We thought it was a success. Time will tell whether the islanders liked it and see it as a model for the future. But we’re always praying for ways of doing things that seem doable and reproducible for average islanders with the hope that gatherings and celebrations keep happening even without the wealthy, even without the foreigners.

Celebrating bday with food!

We pray that islanders will see that God loves to stretch what we bring together. He will make sure it is enough!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The celebration went well with only a few minor mishaps. There were some people there that are new to the community and it was encouraging to see them getting to know people. Hashiri has continued to message Megan a lot and remember things that she has studied in the past. Tom has had two new men show interest in studying with him.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray that island brothers and sisters would continue to meet together and wouldn’t allow obstacles of location, transport or food to stand in the way. Pray that they would be led to creative solutions. One of Tom’s old friends, Fakhadi, has set down a challenge that they should both pray to their own God and see which one answers. Tom has suggested that they ask for a dream. Pray with us for a miraculous end to this challenge. Our daughter is not feeling well. Pray for her healing and that she would be well enough for the planned travels back to mainland Africa for her new school term. Megan will travel with our older two kids and take our daughter to the hospital for her follow-up. Meanwhile Tom and our youngest will travel by boat to the French Island to visit and encourage our colleagues and friends there— this requires an overnight boat trip. We all leave Clove Island on Wednesday— pray especially for calm seas and no seasickness and for our daughter to be recovered.

Coming Back to Same Questions

We have had a number of colleagues and teammates come and go during our years on Clove Island. Each person has had their own friends and contacts, and as they leave it is often the hope that the seeds that they planted with islanders would continue to grow. Attempts have been made to pass on relationships to people who are staying on the islands, but in our experience it has rarely worked. You can’t just transfer the friendship from one person to another. People have different personalities. A new person won’t have the same trust and connection that had been built with the person leaving.

Island sunset this week

But sometimes we will have an islander that was a friend of a colleague show up at our house and want to befriend us (now that our colleague has left the islands). We don’t allows know their motives. Maybe it was because they used to practice their English with our colleague and they really want to have a new conversation partner. Maybe they enjoyed the prestige of having a foreigner friend whom they could take along to events. Maybe they struggle financially and want a new contact from whom they can ask for help. Or maybe they saw our colleague as a source of light and truth and they are seeking for more.

Hiking to catch sunset

Last month, someone arrived at our house for a visit. We didn’t recognize her, but she made a big point of saying that she had met us once at our former teammate’s house almost 2 years earlier. By the end of that first visit, she had shared enough about herself that we thought we knew who she was and remembered our teammate having talked about this friend ‘Hashiri’ frequently, but this teammate had left the islands a year and a half ago. Why was Hashiri coming to us after such a long time?

Hashiri has continued to come every week since that first visit to see us and has been messaging Megan a lot in between. She’s a unique person and seems to struggle to follow social norms. While we’re still not sure of all her motives and expectations, it has been interesting to see her jump quickly to the same conversations that she had with our old teammate. We remember our teammate asking us to pray for Hashiri and talking about the vivid dreams and questions Hashiri had shared. Now Hashiri is sharing about these same dreams and asking these same questions with Megan.

Sometimes our colleagues don’t even have to leave. Sometimes there is an islander that befriends one of our teammates and then makes a point of trying to visit and befriend everyone on the team. Again, we sometimes we wonder about their motives, but one motivation can be that they are looking for truth, but they trust it more if they hear it from multiple sources. With these kinds of people, we often hear that they have asked the same questions and had the same conversations with multiple people. Rather than being upset that they didn’t trust the first person’s answer, we see this as a very encouraging sign that the person is serious in their search and is invested in the answers.

Tom at ceremony this weekend

Sometimes it takes hearing answers and explanations multiple times, in different ways, with different words and in different circumstances, for the truth to sink in.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Tom went to a far away village for an English Ceremony.  It is always a bit of an adventure with these trips, what it will look like for him to get there and make it back using local transportation, but the buses showed up and he is thankful for safety on the road, as not all bus drivers drive responsibly.  We continue to enjoy having our older kids around, even just doing simple things with them like playing board games or watching movies.  It’s good to be together. A man with whom Tom studied several years ago, came back this week and studied with Tom, Mtsa and Muki. This was encouraging, pray that he continues to come!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for the celebrations this coming weekend— that islanders and foreigners could have good fellowship and be encouraged by the reminder of new life and resurrection! Mtsa continues to have money troubles and it’s not clear what the solution is.  Neither is it clear what part we should play in helping him.  Pray for wisdom in these things.  Pray for our daughter’s healing from her rheumatoid arthritis.  Pray for these interactions with Hashiri.  May she develop a hunger for the words of life.

A Reminder for Patience

I get frustrated with Muki.  One day, it seems like he is finally understanding what he is reading, that it is penetrating that heart of his, and then the next day, he comes back with something that shows he has not understood at all.  Or perhaps whatever it was that was getting inside his heart has gotten pushed out again.  One day he talks like we have the same king, the next day he talks like we follow very different masters.  It has gone on and on like this for a year now.  Glimmers of hope followed by moments of disappointment.  It has been painfully slow.

Back to the river after fasting month

Sometimes I wonder if he only comes for what he can get.  His coffee, some breakfast, and the obligatory ask for something.  It seems like he doesn’t feel like he can leave the house without asking for something.  Give me a dollar.  Give me some ibuprofen.  Give me some cooking oil.  Give me some rice.  Every time, something.   Sometimes it feels like such a downer—to have a good study and then to have him turn with a “that’s done” sort of attitude and say “now, this is what I need.”  As if his studying were payment for his request.  I often pray that that would never be the case.  I never want it to be that he feels he must study with me to get something—but how can I know his heart?

The month of fasting had me wondering.  We hardly studied at all during the month of fasting.  Could it be because he knew there would be no coffee and snacks for him?  Perhaps… At the same time, the month of fasting is so disruptive to routines, everyone is tired all the time, either buying or selling, cooking or sleeping—I don’t know that I can blame them for not feeling up to studying.  It is one of the many things we don’t like about the month of fasting.

Last week, with the end of the month of fasting, Muki came over for his coffee and his snack and to study.  We had been reading the stories of Moses, so we picked up where we had left off.  A staff became a snake.  The court magicians did the same by their magic, but Aaron’s staff swallowed up the other snakes.  It’s a good story—but that could not explain Muki’s joy at reading it.  His whole face lit up.  He raved about how this story was so wise, and there was so much for us to gain from it—but that too did not really explain where his joy was coming from.  But I knew.  It was the joy of a soul that had been starved for an entire month—feasting on the nourishment it longed for.  “As a deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you.”  Muki certainly loves his coffee and snacks, but there was no doubt that he loves to study as well.

The next day, a funny thing happened.  As we were talking about life and politics before our study time, he said to me, “So, there’s Africa…and there’s Europe…and America…America is part of Europe, right?”  I got out a globe—it’s really just a ball with a map of the world on it, but it shows the continents.  I pointed out to him the different continents—Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America—“So there’s 2 Americas?”  he said to me.  

Celebrating our 15 year old!

It was a reminder to me.  I get frustrated with how slowly he understands.  I lose patience with him.  How can he seem to understand the good news one day, and then the next day say just the opposite?  But here is a man whose world has been quite small.  He has no sense of the world outside his islands.  Before meeting us, he had probably never met a foreigner—certainly no one who could speak his language and explain to him the things of light and truth and love. Is it any surprise that it’s going to take a while for him to learn and understand these things?

PRAYERS ANSWERED
So glad to have our older kids with us.  We had a wonderful time celebrating our son’s birthday and then, later in the week making a trip to our favorite waterfall.  We are thankful to see that people who were studying before the month of fasting are willing to come back and start studying again.  We’re thankful that Bako is feeling better. Women’s gathering this week and we made a plan to celebrate the holiday all together coming up in two weeks.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for our family time together, that we would balance work and community and fun well.  Pray for Mtsa who is having money troubles.  He has a number of debts that he needs to pay and doesn’t know how he will pay for them.  Pray for Muki, that his love for studying would result in actions of obedience.  A friend of one of our colleagues has been coming around asking Megan lots of questions.  Pray that Megan could guide her towards life.  Pray for our daughter’s healing from her rheumatoid arthritis.