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| Tom with his heartsick students |
The following were real conversations:
My friend Sterehi came to visit the day we left. He told me how much he was going to miss me. I reminded him that I would only be gone three weeks, but that didn’t seem to matter. He had brought a USB drive because I had taken a bunch of pictures in the last month with him included in them so I was happy to share them. Some of them were of Megan and the kids.
“Now I have pictures of all of you, so I won’t forget you,” he told me.
“I’m only gone for three weeks,” I reminded him. Meanwhile our daughter was dancing around the room. As if he hadn’t heard me, he watched Grace and remarked, “When you are gone I will remember this moment.”
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| Our kids (worth missing) |
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One of my students came by to visit. He is an extremely eager English speaker, the kind who makes the whole class have more fun because he is willing to say or try anything and challenge his classmates to join in. With a big smile on his face he told me how sad he was feeling because I was leaving. I reminded him that it was only three weeks.
“Three weeks!” he exclaimed. “That’s,” counting on his fingers, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday…” he continued until he had done three weeks worth. I tried to console him a bit (although I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of pity) but he went on.
“You know, I haven’t eaten anything today.” I looked at him skeptically. “Really,” he said. “I was so sad that my teacher is leaving that I couldn’t eat all day. Only just now I ate a handful of popcorn, but that’s all!”
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| The whole family on vacation |
Ma Riziki, our neighbor, told us, “We’re going to miss you so much...We’re going to look up at your porch and no one will be there…”
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Now, it’s possible that we really are that special and memorable--that we’ve made such a deep impression and culturally integrated ourselves so well that they really will be devastated to have us leave. But I think more likely this is a cultural way of showing friendship. Most likely they will hardly notice we are away and when we get back, we’ll hear things like, “Oh, you traveled?”
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve been having a wonderful time with Megan’s parents. They watched the kids and let us have a few nights away to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It was a great time! We’re thankful to be in a place with good dental care for vacation-- our daughter's tooth just started hurting and it turns out that the dental work she had in France was not well done. We are thankful that this was discovered with time for it to be taken care of before we return to the islands.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our future teammates just have a couple days left to raise the rest of their financial support. Pray for them as they come to this deadline. We have lots of important email to respond to, pray that we can keep a “vacation” feel while still keeping the preparations for our team moving. Our daughter is going to the hospital on Wednesday for some dental work-- pray that it goes well and that it isn’t traumatizing in any way.
