(Photo: Grace reading a book and wearing her crown) The city streets of our island bustle with cars. Most popular are the small, compact variety found in Europe. Renault and Peugot are the most common brands. These function as the city’s taxies, and for the same price as a coke, you can get a ride across town in a vehicle in some of state of disrepair. Sometimes they can’t idle and the driver is left revving the engine and honking during traffic jams. Other times it is the doors, windshield, shocks, or seats that are in desperate need of an upgrade. Still, most of the time they manage to get you to your destination.
Also fairly common on the streets is the beat up pickup truck often loaded down with too many people or too much stuff. Blending perfectly in among this milieu of cars, trucks and motorcycles is our Team Truck: an old Toyota Hilux with cracked windshield, ripped canvas and orange top, manual steering, and enough bumps and bruises (i.e character) to make it both endearing and frustrating. But a big beat up truck can be a good thing. It can handle the bumpy roads. It can be filled with people (recently holding 19 women--some of them quite large--along with all their picnic supplies). It can get our team from here to there. And it’s great for learning to drive.
Driving lessons started out as a team thing at first. Although all our teammates know how to drive, some of them had never driven a manual before. So I (Tom) took them out for
some driving lessons. So now I’ve helped two of my teammates get used to shifting gears and pushing in the clutch, but word got out and a couple of island friends started asking. “Why not teach us to drive?” Why not?
Although there are no Wal-Mart parking lots to practice on, fortunately there is something better. On the edge of town you can access the old city airstrip. Located between the city and the ocean, the abandoned runway offers long open roads and beautiful views of both the ocean and the volcano. This is where we take our lessons.
So far I’ve taught islanders who have a fairly good grasp of the English language, but even this is difficult because they rarely know they words for clutch, stick shift, first, second and third gear, etc. Also, unlike my teammates, they have never driven before, period. So while I was teaching Ankili to drive, there were some of the basic beginner mistakes. It happened more than once that as he struggled to understand my instructions, his eyes looked down to his feet and the gearshift, not realizing that his hands had pulled the wheel to the right so that we were steering off the road. Then we pulled some U-turns in a wheel screeching third gear, which was very exciting. And don’t forget that it takes a bit of practice
learning to do a smooth stop, but I think we only slammed our heads into the windshield once. But after many stops and starts, turning and gear shifting he was getting the hang of it. Next time maybe we’ll go out on the real roads, but that will be a whole ‘nother story.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our newest teammate from the UK arrived yesterday and we are having fun getting to know him. We are thankful that he has made it here safely without any problems. Our whole team continues to have good conversations through this special fasting month.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our teammate Kathryn has been sick, and though it looks like she’s on the mend, pray that she would heal completely so that she could keep working hard on language learning. Please pray for all our new teammates in this area of health. Tom will be giving a sermon this Sunday. Pray that God would speak through him. Please continue to pray for this month and for opportunities for us to deepen our relationships with friends and neighbors.
