(Photos: Tom & Mshababi; the truck; Our kids playing in the leaves)As we’ve been going around sharing with people about our life and work on the islands, there are some stories we come back to again and again, and surprisingly, we’ve realized that some of these stories have never made it onto the blog. So for the next few weeks we will share some of these stories, in hopes that they will inspire you to remember the islands and all the people there.
Mshababi is sixteen years old. He started coming by the house about a year ago. He’s a nice guy, bright, but also (as with some sixteen year old boys) socially inept and immature at times. He had a tendency to call every week, sometimes every day, just to check in on our friendship. This is not uncommon by Island standards, keeping up friendships is very important. Mshababi, however would not actually call. Instead he would “beep” us numerous times until we responded to his calls. In this way he would use up our phone credit (our money) and not his own. If we failed to respond to his beeps he would later ask, “Why didn’t you call me? Are you angry with me?”
Mshababi could be a good friend. He came over often and was always willing to help out with an English class (his English was pretty good) and go along for a ride in the truck. It was around the time when we were getting rid of the truck that I (Tom) told him about our plan to give the truck to our pastor friend (he runs the international church in town.) A few days later Mshababi came back and told me that his father wanted to buy the truck and that we shouldn’t sell it until we got his offer. I explained to him that, actually we weren’t selling the truck. We were giving it away. We wanted to help out our friend. Mshababi didn’t seem to understand.
“No, Papa G..., you don’t understand my father wants to buy it.” I told him I did understand and that the money didn’t matter to us. We wanted to help out our friend. At that Mshababi gave me a knowing look. “O, I see,” he said. “You’re going to get a lot of fadhwila.”Islanders believe that our deeds, good and bad, are very important. They believe that all deeds count for points that are put onto a scale. Good points go on one side and bad on the other. At the end of life, if the good points outweigh the bad, paradise awaits, but if bad outweighs good...The island word for good points is “fadhwila.” This type of thinking is deeply engrained into their worldview. So when I explained to Mshababi about the truck, his natural thought was to think, the only reason to give something away and not sell it is because you want good points to put on your scale. Thus, it was that it really stopped Mshababi dead in his tracks when I said to him:
“No, We aren’t doing it for fadhwila. We don’t believe in fadhwila.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Why would you do something, if you got nothing for it in return? It was clear that he was amazed. A few days later Mshababi came by to see me with a question. “That time you lent me money and I didn’t pay you back and you said it was okay--you didn’t get fadhwila then either?” “No,” I replied. It wasn’t long after that when Mshababi asked me if we might start reading the good book together. He wanted to learn more about us--people who did nice things even without fadhwila.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We had a nice group at our sharing time this past week. We are thankful for the time to share with people these things that are so important and so close to our heart. We even met some people interested in joining our future team! It’s exciting to see people inspired with a vision for the Islands. We went to the French Consulate this week and handed in all our paper work. We should receive our visas in 2-3 weeks. We all ad medical checkups and everyone appears to be in good health.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray that our visas get processed quickly. Megan has gone off to a conference this weekend with Tom’s mom and sister. Pray that they have a good trip and learn many things. As always, pray for the islands. A new team will arrive next week! They will be living on the second island. They have many hard days ahead of transitioning to island life and language and culture learning. Pray for their safe travels and their smooth transition.
