(Photos: Sergio with their little girl, Aly with their little boy; Jonny having an "I'm on a tropical island" moment)This week we want to introduce to you the final 3 (5 with kids) members of our team. They live to the south of us. In fact, where the rest of our teammates live in the capital city, these three live in towns/villages just south of the capital.
Driving south out of the city Sergio and Aly and their two children live in the first town you come to. In the past six months they have really been embraced by their community and most everyone in their town knows them. That’s partially because they are great with people.
Sergio, who loves language and excels at it, is always telling us about the new people he met or the challenging conversations he is having with local men. It seems like the village people are a bit more serious about what they believe than the city folk, which means Sergio is regularly getting into interesting talks. This is great since Sergio is a good student and a deep thinker. It’s exciting to hear his weekly reports.
Aly does a good job of keeping up with Sergio while running a household and taking care of two kids. She has made some great relationships with ladies in her area—partially through her love of cooking (our team has benefited immensely from her fine cooking and baking skills!). Her vocabulary in the local language for spices, fruits and other cooking matters is hard to beat.
Both of them bring a lot to our team in terms of gifts and personality. They are talkers and storytellers, and both of them are born teachers. Sergio is from New York and a Yankees and Jets fan, which always gives him and Tom something to talk about! And Aly has great artistic talents that come out through crafts, artwork, and birthday cards.
They have two children, a boy who just turned 3 and a girl a bit younger than Grace. They get along well with the rest of the kids, the 3 year-old runs with the rest of the boys, and the two girls play well together. Grace misses playing with all of them here in South Africa!
After you pass through the first village to the south (where Sergio and Aly call home) you enter a second village where our final team member lives. His name is Jonny. Jonny is English and only 19 years old. He has come to the island for one year before going to university. We weren’t sure how things would go with a 19 year old joining the team, but we have been blessed to have Jonny among us. He is mature beyond his years, thoughtful, flexible and easy going. He doesn’t live with any other teammates, so he’s on his own most of the week. He lives in an island home and eats with an island family most days of the week. He is well loved in his town and the young guys are always taking him somewhere—to a football match, into the fields, around town at night, etc. Jonny helps all of us keep perspective. We especially like his tendency to say at opportune moments, “I’m on a tropical island!” He says this with such joy and thanksgiving, it makes everybody on the team smile, especially when we might be feeling bogged down with the difficulties of language and culture. We wish he could stay with us longer, but he will be leaving for home in July.
Those are our teammates. We hope you get a sense of how important they are to the work we do. We can’t imagine living on the island alone. We love our teammates and being part of a team. They challenge us, encourage us, and drive us to do better. Together we see our different gifts blending to form a sum greater than the individual parts. We are much stronger together and we believe that is how God intended it.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
Aly is feeling much better now. Thanks to all who prayed for her. Tom is still feeling congested but Grace and Megan are feeling much better. The pregnancy continues without any problems. Mom and baby are very healthy, although Megan is getting ready for our little boy to come out. Tom got a new passport this week. The process was easy and painless.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Tom is troubled with a sore throat and is stuffed up. This is making it hard to sleep at night. Megan is also having trouble sleeping, but for different reasons—39 weeks pregnant now! Please keep her and the baby in your prayers
