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”.