Saturday, April 30, 2011

Celebrating Six Years

By: Cindy

We are back in Port Vila now and our time is flying by at break-neck speed! It is amazing how quickly it is going. We’ve been enjoying it all – the variety at the grocery store, eating some of our favorite “American” foods, running water, indoor toilet, washing machine...the list goes on. It is a delicate balance, though. Enjoying the conveniences, but not becoming so mentally attached to them that we won’t want to leave come the end of May. For the first week, being back was almost surreal. Now that we’ve had some time to rest from the physical and mental labors of working in Tanna, the preparations that we need to make before heading back out to Tanna are at the forefront of our minds. And it is back to work for the Bakers!

Our teammates, the Brandells are still in town with plans to leave for Malekula Island next week. The four kids have had a marvelous time playing everyday and spend most of the day running back and forth between the houses playing, laughing, fighting over toys, and just having some great “cousin-type” fun! Our other teammate, Mike, arrived on Tuesday evening and will be here until Saturday. He is officially moved and settled in to his work on Santo Island, but decided to come back to Port Vila so we could all be together. This will be our only opportunity for our entire mission team to be together until Christmas (at least the way the schedule looks right now).

April 14 marked our team’s six year anniversary for living and working in Vanuatu. And for us it is a big milestone. Often we think of milestone years as being the ones that we count by “5’s”. However, for us, this year marks the end of our time as a team, all working in one place together. Now that we have moved out to the outer islands, our work is undergoing great change. On top of that, Aaron and I know that we will be moving back to the USA in 2012 and so this year marks the beginning of our last year here in Vanuatu. The beginning of the end, so to speak.

As a result of our awareness of how short our time together as a team is, we have found ourselves doing a lot of reminiscing about the past. In essense, the five of us adults have been a daily part of each others lives for the last nine years (furloughs and traveling, not included). We had two years at Bear Valley, almost one solid year of raising funds (living in the same house!), and six years together in Vanuatu. No wonder we feel like family. We’ve had many good times and some bad times. We’ve been annoyed and frustrated with each other. We have spent hours upon hours together, have had countless “Fajita nights”, and have laughed…a lot. It has been a great six years.

To celebrate this milestone we all (4 kids included) took a day trip out to one of small islands that surround Efate. We rode on a “pirate” ship (as Titus called it), snorkeled in some clear blue water at a beautiful reef, ate lunch and just spent some good time together. The four kids had a blast swimming and playing all day long – what is better than that?! We took the time to appreciate all God has done for us in the last 9 years, knowing that come this time next year things will not be as they are now.

Thanks be to God for the last six years of our work here in Vanuatu. For Aaron and I, we know that no matter what country we call home, the continued growth of the Lord’s church in Vanuatu will always be our “mission”.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Our Month in Vila

Hello all:

Beginning on Thursday, April 21st, our family will be in Port Vila for one month. We have work to catch up on in Vila, and need to spend some time with our teammates Eric and Shawnda as well as Mike Olson. For our family, it is a needed break from the everyday routine, yet our hearts and thoughts will be for the church in Tanna.

In the meantime, this is a great opportunity for the church in Tanna to practice standing on its own. More to come soon....

Friday, April 15, 2011

Our Week in a Nutshell

by Cindy

Why a nutshell? Because some weeks things are so crazy with all of our coming and going here in Tanna that it is just NUTS!

This is what our basic weekly schedule is like – these are our “scheduled” events, not including “un-scheduled” occurances such as, but not limited to: visitors, household work, maintenancing children, visiting Christians and non-Christians alike, preparations for Bible studies, sermon preparation, prep for RTC classes, etc. (most of which fall on Aaron’s plate, with the exception of a few).

Sunday
We worship in Loun Village and Lorakau Village (about 30min. apart) on alternating weeks.
8:30am Kids Bible class (Taught by Aaron and Cindy)
Worship at 9:00-ish (Last week we had 7 Christians, 14 visitors, and about 15 kids)
Fellowship meal after worship each week
Sometime between 3-5pm we have a small group discussion/Bible study with Tess and Harry.
We start a movie for the kids in the RTC classroom. Then after our study, they come over and we eat together and visit until bedtime

Monday
Aaron: RTC class 7:30-9:00am (English)
9:30ish – family trip to Lenakel town to get supplies, attend to business, etc. If dry roads – takes
40 min., If rain, we must take a different route which takes one hour driving time. Roads are such that it is kind of like riding a horse or being on a boat in really choppy water! :o)
Arrive home between 3-4pm. Makes for a l-o-n-g and tiring day

Tuesday
Aaron: RTC class 7:30-9:00am (Bible)
Cindy: 8-11am, 1-2pm Kaela and Melia school (Melia has shorter schedule)
Cindy: Lorakau Women’s Bible study. Time???? It varies. Can be anyhere between 10am and
3pm…it’s like waiting on a repairman. I’ve held studies at 10am, 11:30am, 1pm, 1:30pm and 3pm. We study about an hour. Usually I have about 5-7 non-Christians coming to study.

Wednesday
Aaron: RTC class 7:30-9:00 (English), 9:30-11:30 (Bible)
Cindy: 8-11am, 1-2pm Kaela and Melia school
3-5pm Small group discussion/Bible study with Tess and Harry again, kids watch movie,
eat together afterwards. True to Island Time we never know when the study will start exactly....

Thursday
Aaron: RTC class 7:30-9:00am (Bible)
Cindy: 8-9:30am, 1-2pm Kaela and Melia school
Cindy: RTC class 9:30-11:30am (Stitching)
Cindy: 12:30pm Bible study with Rachel
12:30pm Aaron leaves and walks down to Loun village right after lunch where he meets and
studies with Miswel and Harry (if Harry is free to accompany him on the walk and study)
Harry and Miswel are only two of three Christian older men on the island and thus looked to as leaders. It is imparative for the future growth of the church that Aaron studies with them frequently and works to train them well. They study until about 4pm.
Cindy: Holds down the fort while Aaron is in Loun. At 3:30pm I round up people and drive our
kids, Tess and her kids, plus assorted visitors to Loun for evening Bible study
4pm-6pm or as the sunlight holds out…we sing together (practicing hymns from our new Bislama
songbook) and Aaron is holding a series of conversion studies. We have about 6-8 visitors each week.

Friday
Aaron: RTC class 7:30-9:00am (English)
Cindy: 8-11am, 1-2pm Kaela and Melia school
9:30am Aaron heads to Lenakel town. When he goes by himself he doesn’t drive the truck (saves
on fuel and headache). Takes a 30 minute walk to “the other side” near Tuhu Secondary
School on the main road where he can catch a transport into town (another 30 minutes) for 200vatu ($2). In town he attends to some basic business: bank, internet, Post Office, pick up a few supplies. Then meets Thomas and studies with him for an hour or so. Eats lunch, catches the transport back to Tuhu School (all the way to Lorakau IF he is lucky!) and walks the 30 minutes back through the bush. Usually arrives home about 2:30pm

Saturday
Your basic Saturday events. SLEEP IN…until 7:00! Woohoo! Ha! :o) Household tasks and
projects that have been put off all week. Some Saturdays are busy, some are not. It just depends on if, when and why people might come and call us to go do something. Go to the garden with the family. Spend family time together.
Cindy: 12:30pm Rachel comes and we study the Bible
Aaron: Last minute prep to ensure he is ready for Sunday



Monday, April 11, 2011

When it Rains in Tanna...

By: Cindy

It’s been raining here all week. When it rains in Tanna it really isn’t such a bad thing. Okay, so the girls DO get a little stir crazy after a few days (and so does their mother). And we may have a laundry basket full of clothes waiting to be washed. But, that is okay because the alernative is to handwash in the rain and then deal with wet clothes that won’t dry because of all the moisture in the air. Okay, so we may have to wash dishes in the rain because our washing table is outside, but hey, washing them makes them wet anyway, right?

There’s good things about this week of rain too. One thing being, I don’t have to haul water very far. One of the gutters on our house is broken so it makes a nice stream of water right out the side of our house. I just put my bucket right under the water and pretty soon it is full!

Another good thing is that we are blessed to be located high up on a hill. And because we are high up on a hill, we get a lot of volcanic ash blowing our direction. It falls down on the ground (and on houses and plants and sometimes our hanging clothes). But, with so much ash mixed in with the dirt, it doesn’t really get muddy here. Our house is surrounded by “cleared” ground – just dirt, no grass – for about 4 feet each direction. If we didn’t have the ash, we would have a virual mud pit! Instead, the water just soaks right into the ground and we have very little mud to deal with!

Of course, with all the extra humidity in the air, it tends to just soak right into everything, including our box of matches. Wet matches don’t strike (yes, I know, so profound). BUT, Aaron and I are coffee drinkers. No, you didn’t mis-read that. One DOES have something to do with the other. There is an easy solution to the problem of damp matches. Just place them in your container of coffee and soon you will have dry matches! I won’t charge extra for that little tidbit!

After being stuck inside all day long on Friday and Saturday due to a literal DELUGE of rain, we began to get the itch to get out and get some fresh air and space. There is only so much spreading out four people can do in a two-room house, afterall. So, we beat the trail down to Tess and Harry’s kitchen, where we found them gathered around the fire. Passing the time together on a day like today gives much the same feeling you get when you are cooped up with your family during a blizzard. You are just happy to be warm and dry. And if you are those two things then you can relax and have a little fun. So, we practiced the Bible class songs from the USA that Aaron and I have taught the kids, which sent us all laughing hysterically to tune of “Hippo-Hippo-Hippopotums”, “Hallelujah, Praise Ye the Lord”, and “Wrapped Up, Tied Up, Tangled Up in Jesus”. Good times! Then, Aaron pulled out a deck of cards and we taught their family how to play Spoons (only with shells instead of spoons) and Go Fish. Before long, the sun was setting and our stomachs were getting hungry so I headed back to the house to cook dinner with Aaron, Kaela and Melia braving the rain about 20 minutes after me. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and bonding with our two Christian friends and their 6 kids. Come next week when we head back for our month-long time in Vila, it will be hard to leave.

So, when it rains in Tanna…you get the good and the bad. I may not love my leaky roof (which is especially bad when it has been pouring night and day), but at least I am blessed to have enough bowls and pots to catch the water! And not to worry, the sun is sure to come again. Let’s just hope it is soon - I only have one laundry basket! Ha!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Teaching: Taking It One "Stitch" at a Time

By: Cindy

Three weeks ago, Willie, the RTC School Manager called a teacher’s meeting. Since I agreed to help teach a course or two in the coming year, I was invited to come to the meeting. Originally, I said that I would take on teaching a class at the RTC when we came back for our second lot of time in May. I figured that would give me three months to get used to life here and a month in Port Vila to prepare for my class. Well, naturally in Vanuatu things don’t always go the way you might expect. So…we go with the flow and on with the show!

As it would so happen, the “regular” Home Care teacher is away somewhere (?) and no one seems to know when or if she will return to the village. (Home Care includes Cooking, Sewing, Caring for Babies and Children, Painting, Drawing, etc.). So, teaching the female students has fallen to the RTC Manager’s wife, Iawilam (YAH-Will-Am), and me. Finding out that Willie was expecting me to take on a class with just a week to prepare did not go over very well with me. I do not like feeling unprepared. Seeing as how there is no “set” course to teach or guidelines to follow it can leave you feeling kind of lost and frustrated.

I went to visit Iawilam to talk to her about teaching Home Care. At first, I wanted to ram my head against a wall! We talked for about 20 minutes as I tried to nail down exactly what we were supposed to teach and when. I also tried to explain that teaching at the RTC falls to about #4 on my list of priorities. #1 being our mission work, #2 teaching Kaela and Melia in school, #3 caring for our home, #4 helping with the RTC. For 20 minutes we talked and talked and it became very clear that while there are a couple of people “in charge” of the school, in reality there is no one person to give out directives and thus there are very few teachers taking responsibility for their work in the school…and so I just wanted to ram my head against the wall in exasperation! However, as we talked some more I began to realize that Iawilam is in the very same position I am in in regards to teaching. She didn’t ask to take on teaching the girls. She has her own work to attend to in her home and that takes up most of her time. But, yet, Willie is her husband and therefore, he volunteered her for the task. I felt much better knowing that she wasn’t overly excited about it being thrust in her lap at the last minute either. That was how I felt. But, as there was no one else to take on this task, it has become ours to do with it what we will. So, we agreed that she would teach the course of her choosing on Mondays and I would teach the course of my choosing on Thursdays.

It is at that point that our innate cultural differences became very obvious.

We both were called upon to take on teaching the girls this term. We both, somewhat grudgingly, agreed to do it. We both were responsible for choosing what course we would teach in the coming weeks. However, Monday’s Home Care class came, but Iawilam did not. After a little while Willie showed up and taught the class. And the same happened this week on Monday. No Iawilam.

On the otherhand, because I said I would teach Home Care on Thursday’s that is exactly what I spent the week before my first class preparing to do. I chose “Stitching” (very simple embroidery) as my course to teach. I felt most fortunate to find some embroidery floss in the school’s storage house. It was apparent that it had been abandoned and no one really knew what to do with it. So, I decided to teach the girls how to stitch. A skill they can use to make gifts for family and friends or decorate clothing or tea towels to sell.

I’ve had two classes so far and they are going well. I have 8 students and almost all of the girls seem to really enjoy their newfound skill. They not only practice their stitching in class from 9:30-11:30am on Thursdays, but most have been working on their projects outside of class, as well.

Even though I wasn’t quite ready to take on this new task, I have found that I am enjoying it. I just had to draw some definite lines with the management as to what I was able to do. Teaching two hours in the morning once a week? Yes, okay. Taking on another two hours in the afternoon each week…I had to say, “so sorry”. You have to know your limits. And I know that if I agreed to teach more than that this term, I would find myself with little time to prepare Bible studies and shorting Kaela and Melia on their schooling, which just isn’t right. Now, come May we will see what will happen. I’m scheduled to teach Cooking and Cultural Relations sometime before the end of the year, so we will see how those courses pan out as time goes on!