Peope in Need

The path to the river

Here are three quotes from just this week:

A young father who has been coming regularly to study with Tom:
“I’m sorry Tom isn’t here and he won’t be back for awhile.”
“Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow…..but….do you guys not have some food?…..I’m very hungry.”

A neighbor, a grandmother (though still young) comes at night:
“We’ve used up the last of our oil and now the last of the rice is gone. I don’t have anything left and not a single coin. I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

The youngest team members

A neighbor, mother of seven kids who works for one of our teammates:
“I don’t have a man anymore. When I was three months pregnant, he left me, so now it is up to me to find the money for the baby. I used my last pay for the electric bill...Can you tell them that I need an advance to buy the baby’s medicine.”

The islands are a poor place. Sometimes it is hard to see the extent of people’s poverty. They often look healthy, they may be wearing well-kept clothes, someone in their family may have a job, or they may have family overseas who send money back to the island. But island employers can often go months without paying their employees. The money from overseas may never show up. What then?

We want to help. We want to be generous. To one of these friends we gave a bunch of bread and then invited back again for a meal. To another we sent her home with all our warm leftovers (enough for 2-3 people) and then hired her to make us some local samosas. To another we gave a little money, made the appropriate phone calls and then prayed for her baby.

Peter & Grace with valentines

Ultimately the most powerful thing we can do is pray. We simply can’t meet every need. We are not the solution to the islands’ many problems, but we pray.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We have a visitor from South Africa staying at our home this week. He is a young man hoping to return to work on the islands one day. We are encouraged by his heart for the islands-- pray that he would find direction for the how, where and when he might return.  As always we are praying for more workers to come to the islands.  The special local language time with the team went well.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our team is sick! A virus has hit half the time so far. Megan was one of the first sick and is starting to feel better. Pray that this illness would pass quickly and that no one else would get sick. We recently heard about some breaches of trust among island brothers- pray for reconciliation and a healthy way forward. We pursuing the option of Megan traveling to the neighboring island sometime next month to get an MRI, pray that things would easily fall into place and that she wouldn’t have to be away from the family very long.