Hope for a Good Marriage

Exploring on the island

Ma Imani married young. A man approached her family. He was kind to her and wanted to marry her. They all accepted. She didn’t really know him well but she liked him and was excited about the idea of being married. Ma Imani told me that it wasn’t long after the wedding that she started to learn about the kind of man she had married. He already had children out of wedlock. Soon people came to her with stories of his past and current escapades with various women. “The day I realized that I had married a bad man, I just cried and cried and cried,” she told me. Over the years she has suffered a lot— the pain of the neighbor’s whispers about who her husband is sleeping with, the fear of the angry husband of her husband’s latest fling come to get him at their home, the shock of catching him with one of her good friends, the uncertainty of hearing he might have a STD.  To this day, she suffers in various ways under the weight of her husband’s antics.

A new man has come to the family wanting to marry Ma Imani’s younger sister. They don’t really know him, but he is relatively wealthy. He wants to get married quickly— October, just a couple months away. Ma Imani’s sister is already 24 yrs old and she wants to get married and start having kids. She’s willing to marry this guy she barely knows, but Ma Imani is telling her to wait. “She doesn’t know…he could be deceiving her. I don’t want her to have a marriage like I have.” Ma Imani wants something more for her sister.

The reality is that most island women have very low expectations of marriage. Marriage is more about just being a married woman and having children than about the person they are actually marrying. Many seem primarily concerned about his finances, and some don’t even bother to ask/think about his character.

We want island women to want more from their marriages, to get a vision of what marriage can really be— a shared life, a best friend, a partner in every sense. But then we’d have to change the men’s expectations too. It’s fine to have island women holding out for good, faithful husbands, but we also need island men striving to be good, faithful husbands!

The words from my classroom of island men several months ago still ring in my memory, “She wants a faithful husband! It doesn’t exist!” People fail but when they don’t even try, they are all the more sure to fail.

As depressing as this all sounds there are exceptions.  There are some island men who have just one wife and are faithful.  There are even some marriages that have been made with the stipulation that the husband would take no other wives.  But there is no cultural reinforcement for it. 

Celebrating 12 yrs while on vacation

This is why we pray for good marriages among our island brothers and sisters, for spouses to find truth and for godly families to emerge.  Not just because these families will be greatly blessed , but imagine the revolutionary picture they present.  Imagine the challenge they pose to the island worldview.  A husband who loves and cherishes his wife.  A wife who actually cares for and respects her husband.  This is something so beautiful it speaks volumes. It is worth praying for.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’re thankful for people like Ma Imani who are willing to want more than the status quo. We’re thankful for our 12 years of marriage— we are been blessed to share this life together. Getting back to the islands, Megan was hit with a weird illness, but she is thankfully much better now. We keep getting reports of our islander friends sharing with their friends, neighbors and families!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
The wedding season has just a couple more weeks left, after which schools will reopen and normal routines. Pray that we would Pray for us as we make plans for our upcoming classes. Pray for our kids as the thought of restarting island school has them nervous. Pray for our teammates— especially as some of them are anxious about what the coming months/years look like for them. We hadn’t updated you all, but we finished burn care on our neighbor and he has healed well! Thanks for praying. Our team has one more concentrated week pushing in the local language— keep praying as we strive for fluency!

Thinking of Islanders on Vacation

Tom and kids in front of fountain

(Sorry for the late blog this week, we’ve been traveling.)
We’ve been on vacation.  We traveled to a place with lots of old buildings full of statues and crosses, gold, and marble.  (See if you can guess where we were.)  As we admired the artwork and marveled at the workmanship, the wealth, the extravagance of it all; as we waited in long lines with the rest of tourists and did things that tourists do, it was hard not to think about some of our island friends—not the well-traveled ones, and not the ones who have never left their village or never gotten past a third grade education, but the run-of-the-mill islander.  Educated through high school, knowledgeable about the world through some TV and internet, but limited in their perspective and knowledge.

My first thought of this came about while standing in a line to visit a museum.  Islanders don’t really do lines.  Even as we were boarding the plane today we were reminded of this.  The flight attendants tried to call people by groups, but everyone got up and crowded around the gate.  There was no line.  It’s more like a funnel—the edges of which are closely guarded with elbows and bags.  A bakery in town recently started something of a revolution by requiring people to line up to buy bread—really unheard of.  Would people be willing to stand in line to see art?

Our youngest in front of a different fountain

Art, especially of the visual sort, is pretty limited on the islands.  Partially this is a religious influence, partially it may be cultural as well.  So I couldn’t help but wonder, depending on the upbringing and exposure of a given island friend, what would they think of paying 10€ to enter a museum?  (That’s sounds like a lot money.) In order to see paintings and statues? (This could be considered idol worship—graven images.)  What about nude statues? (Idol worship and immorality.) 

At the same time, although some would be offended, I think the majority would roll with it and enjoy themselves.  But secretly would they think about how immoral and godless these Western nations are?  Oh wait, did I mention this museum we were visiting was inside a church??? (“So that’s what their religion is all about,” my island friends might conclude.)

Playing among a swarm of tourists

What a tremendous gulf of understanding to overcome.  Of course, there is thousands of years of history behind these museums and I can look at them and wonder, admire, understand, appreciate,and to some extent separate the holy from the unholy, the glorious from the obscene, but I doubt our normal island friend or neighbor would be able to do the same. We reflected that if we lived in such a city, attended such a church (so filled with history) that we would want to encourage tour guides to highlight and remind people of some of the amazing things that happened there and about the Creator it was all supposed to draw us toward. 

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it safely back to the islands today. We’re thankful for the break, the chance to see Tom’s parents (who very graciously made this trip possible- thanks to them too!) and a chance to visit a place so filled with history.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for us as we dive back into life on the islands. Starting with leading our team through two intensive weeks of language learning. As a team we are working on a resource (a grammar book for the local language) that will hopefully help our team, as well as other future anglophone workers to learn this language. Pray that we would work together well to make a quality resource. Pray that we would gain greater fluency so that our whole team could dig deeper with islanders and communicate more.

Rights?

Our island home

Several months ago, the islands’ only telecommunications company started blocking some of the most popular audio/video chatting programs. Apparently they had seen a drop in their revenues as islanders switched to online chatting programs and stopped making expensive international calls. It was annoying but we found ways around it.

Then some weeks ago, more and more websites weren’t coming through on the islands. Suddenly some of our teammates were seeing all their internet credit disappear. Finally one of our teammates went to the telecommunications company to get to the bottom of it.

“All of my credit is gone? I want my money back.”  He said.
“Were you using video chatting programs or going online via outside servers?”
“Yes, but…”

Connecting via outside servers is how we ensure we have a secure connection on the islands. It is standard procedure for us. It also gets around some of the blocks, so the telecommunications company decided to put an end to it. 

Our team’s (and our) reaction included a lot of:
“But we have a right to be warned before my credit is taken away…”
“But we have the right to get a statement explaining where our money has gone…”
“But we have the right to connect to whatever servers we want…”
“But we have a right to make our connections secure and to protect our privacy…”

Celebrating our 3 yr old

But the truth is….I’m not sure that we do have these rights on the islands. It is so ingrained that people have certain rights that we assume everyone agrees with us. Sometimes we act like the islands are like our home countries. But they aren’t. Our teammates want to keep pushing the telecommunications company on this, but we don’t know whether it will amount to much. The islands are not a free place and people here don’t have all the rights we feel they should.

This serves as another reminder of that fact.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our team is all taking some vacation time at the moment. As far as we know everyone’s travels have gone well. We are enjoying some time with parents/grandparents! Our little boy is 3 years old today! We are very thankful for him and had a great day with him. We are excited about Tom's sister's engagement!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray that our team would continue to be rejuvenated and that we would all make it back to the islands ready to dive back in! Pray that the islands would be a place that embraces truth, justice and freedom of thought. Pray for those islanders that are trying to stand up for these things.

Death is Sudden

Special mens funeral event

Our days lately have been very full and busy. Lots of things planned, lots on our to-do lists. We’ve been going to bed later than we want and just barely keeping on top of things.

On Wednesday, we had had a full morning meeting with teammates. With no time to make anything for lunch, we were going to a little shop that makes local-style sandwiches to eat at home. I had been exhausted all morning, eyes heavy-lidded and finding myself yawning all the time. My afternoon plan was to take a quick nap/rest (if the kids let me) and then try to chip away at more of our to-do list. Tom’s afternoon was going to be taken up by another English certificate ceremony.

Fresh haircuts

But then Ma Imani came into our house to tell us that Ma Fado’s brother had just died and that Ma Riziki would go with me to the funeral if I was going. On the islands, people are supposed to be buried the same day that they die, before nightfall. Funerals, like death, are sudden. But funerals also trump any other kind of obligation. Going to a funeral is a reasonable excuse for any absence. Even weddings (very important on the islands) will be canceled or postponed if there is a funeral in the extended family.

Now funerals are usually several hours of women sitting around before the body is taken away for the actual burial. But the burial itself is usually linked with one of the 5 prayer times. Ma Imani confirmed it was set for the afternoon prayer time.

Now came the sensitive moment.. trying to discern how important it was that we both go. We didn’t know the man that died, but his sister is our landlady. Did we both need to go? If only one of us went, which one of us would be most important to be seen at the event? Because a man died, should Tom go? Because our connection to the dead man is through a woman, should I go? We looked to Ma Imani for advice. She quickly said that it was more important for Tom to go.

With a local birthday girl

But then I began to doubt her advice. She had been teasing me earlier for being so tired, was she just saying what she thought I wanted to hear (a common African practice)? So I pushed her again.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t go?”, I asked.
“What can you do? You have little kids and you only just heard about it,” she answered.

Her words were true. It would be difficult to find someone to stay with the kids at such short notice and we had no idea how long we’d be gone. So we decided, Tom would go. I’d stay with the kids and go to one of the later funeral events in the coming days. But then Ma Riziki came by just after we finished our sandwiches. She was going to leave soon. It was important for the close neighbors to be there early. Was I coming?

I told her that Tom was the one going and watched her and Ma Imani’s reactions. Ma Riziki just nodded and went back to her house across the street to get ready and I knew I needed to go too. I turned to Ma Imani again. “I should go.” “Yes, Ma Fado needs to see you both there,” she said, finally giving us the right advice. 

So I quickly got dressed. We found someone to watch the kids and we went, me with the women, Tom with the men.

It wasn’t the afternoon we thought we’d have but death can be sudden and unexpected.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
All our guests and interns made it off the islands safely. We continued to be blessed by them to the end of their time here. We had a chance to look back over the past few months and celebrate all the things that have happened. It was encouraging to see all the amazing things we’ve seen. God is good.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Some ladies had a bad run-in with some island men. Pray for them as they continue to process that experience and for us as we look to do our part to respond and defend women on the islands from bad treatment. Our team is heading out for some time of vacation. Pray for safe travels and for some restful, rejuvenating time after some busy weeks. Continue to pray for our teammate who has struggled with allergies and other health concerns that she can get extra rest and see a dramatic change in her health.