The Ladies

(Pictures: Abby (holding Grace) and Amy this past summer; Kathryn at the beach; Megan and Grace this week)

Last week we told you about Chris and Beka. This week we want you to meet the single ladies on our team. They are: Abby, Amy, and Kathryn.

Abby:

Abby is from Oklahoma. She’s lived on the island for three years now and speaks the language very well. She is especially good with intonation and rhythms of the language (which are more pronounced in the speech of female islanders) so she invariably makes islanders smile. Abby is an encourager and makes people feel welcome with a big smile and real interest in how you are. She makes friends everywhere she goes and has a special affinity for ladies that sell peanuts. These ladies take sheets of used up paper and roll them into cones that they then fill with roasted peanuts. They sell these along the road as a snack. Abby has spent a good deal of time talking and rolling cones. She is also a great teacher and has even taught an English class to local police officers. Abby is wonderful with kids as well as adults, which is a great asset on a team with seven (soon eight) young children. Abby is often one of the first teammates that Grace runs to and asks about.

Amy:

Amy is English. She has also lived on the island for three years and also speaks the language very well. She meets with women regularly to share with them, going through stories from our book with them in the island language. She challenges them to think about its implications. Her drive and passion to see people understand and be changed is compelling. She feels this especially strongly for the women of island (who are usually more apathetic) and is always reminding us to pray for them. She is also a well-respected English teacher. In fact, she and Abby recently created an English learning CD that is quickly spreading all over the island. They are becoming celebrities! Amy brings to our team a clever wit, an ability to keep us on task, and a forceful love of prayer. She is also our person of choice if something needs to be written down on a white board!

Kathryn:

Kathryn is also English, although she has a strong love for Northern Ireland (especially since her fiancé is from there.) She has been living on the island for six months now, and we are impressed with her commitment and diligence to language learning. She memorizes her phrases and tries them out on all her neighbors. It is part of Kathryn’s gifting—when she puts her mind to something she works hard at it and does it well. Earlier this year she took up the monumental task of organizing all the written and audio/visual resources of our entire team, a tedious job that she did quickly and thoroughly. She lives on her own, but she has been taken in and loved by her whole neighborhood. This has allowed her to share many things with them. Now unlike most of our team Kathryn is not a English teacher! (Yea for variety!) Kathryn is a physical therapist or “physio” as they call them in England and just in the past months she has begun working at the local hospital. This takes quite a bit of courage considering she only has six months of language under her belt, but she is doing quite well.

These ladies are a huge asset to our team. We are so glad to have them serving with us and to hear the stories of the many exciting opportunities they have. Yet, it is hard to be a single woman in our island context. Marriage gives women a great deal of respectability, and sometimes it is hard for them to understand the place of a single, foreign woman in their midst. So please keep them in your prayers as they faithfully work here and as they look to their futures ( Kathryn gets married in the summer 2011 and Abby & Amy are beautiful and available, know anyone?).

PRAYERS ANSWERED

Thank you for your prayers. Tom is starting to really move forward on the website which is good. Grace continues to enjoy playing outside and with the kids who come by the guesthouse. We have been doing pretty well with staying committed to language learning and have found a good daily routine. Our doctor’s visits have gone well and the baby is happy and healthy. Megan still has trouble sleeping, but she’s hanging in there pretty well.

PRAYERS REQUESTED

Pray for our teammates back on the islands. Aly (who we will feature next week) has been pretty sick with something like malaria. Here in South Africa, all three of us have been suffering from congestion. Tom’s problem is almost certainly allergies since he also has itchy eyes. Pray for Megan and the baby as the day approaches (we’re almost at 38 weeks and counting).