The Right Choice?

A happy island bride and groom

Bweni is only 24 years old, but she feels like an old maid. “I’m a grandmother,” she claims. Her mother was married as a young teenager. Her younger sister was married at 17. There was an attempted arranged-marriage when she was 15 years old that fell through. She studied abroad and had a long-term boyfriend but his family didn’t approve of her. So here she is 24 and still not married. Her mom bugs her about it a lot. Apparently she has rejected at least one guy that came to the family.

She doesn’t want to marry an islander. She’s traveled abroad and seen a bigger world. In her experience, island men are never faithful and they threaten divorce or getting a second wife at any disagreement. She doesn’t want any of it. She’s seen some island women who married foreign men— those men don’t get second wives and they’ve taken care of the children. Sounds pretty good in her mind….she’s wants to marry a foreigner.

Now she has a new-found faith, so she has been praying for a husband. I talked to her about patience and about waiting for a good man. But by all accounts she has taken things into her own hands. She has hung out at a local hotel where foreigners frequent. She has made a point of getting to know the foreign men. This is not respectable behavior for a single island girl. Rumors have abounded and her reputation has plummeted.

This past weekend I got the news. “Bweni is getting married on Dec 19th. We’re all invited.” What? To whom? Did she find a good man? I asked her this question in person when I saw her. The answer was a resounding, “No.” He’s a foul-mouthed, drunk. He is also as old as her father and unhealthily obese. She could not say one positive thing about him. By all accounts, it appears that he has come to the islands for his retirement, to drink himself to death. “He’s always drinking. From the morning until the night, so he can barely walk most of the time,” she told me freely. It became clear that no one is really happy with this match (except perhaps the man in question). She doesn’t even like him. “Don’t sleep with him, “ I urged her. She looked at me like the idea was gross to her, “Don’t worry. I told him not even a kiss until after the wedding.”

Kids with newly-made ornaments

My heart cries out, “What is she doing?!?” But in her mind, she prayed for a husband and this is the man that God provided. Being married will give her the independence that she craves and will stop the nagging of her mother. She will also lose a lot of the shame she has been carrying. I get the impression it is more about “being married” than the actual man involved. In our conversation, I told her that I wasn’t happy with this news. I told her that God wanted her to marry a good man, not a man like this. I told her repeatedly that she had a choice.

“If I lived somewhere else I’d have a choice and I would wait, but here there is no choice.” I told her that I was scared for her. “I’m scared too,” she admitted. I jumped on this. “If we are following the way that God wants us to follow, He promises to give us peace. We won’t be afraid.” I told her she needed to pray and see if God gave her peace about marrying this man. As she got up to leave, I said one last time, “You have a choice!”

“The wedding is on the 19th,” she told me.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The electricity and water cuts have both improved. Thanks for praying. We have been enjoying all the fruit of the season— we’ve eaten lots of lychees in the past few weeks and they’re good! Exams and classes continue to finish well— now we have all the certificate ceremonies, too! Our daughter finished her exams and was happy with them.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
I haven’t given up on Bweni. I’m going this afternoon to hopefully talk to her and her mother. I want her mother to know that this is not the kind of man that we consider good (since islanders usually group all foreigners together). I want to urge her in the presence of her mother that she can still back out. Please pray for her and us during this time. We still don’t have the plane tickets we needed to secure, keep praying that we can find the flights we need. There is a training scheduled to begin Friday for some of our good island friends— we feel like this training could be very important for the future, so please be praying that the right people would go and for the right things to be discussed.