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A letter from Bruce and Lora Whearty
in Vanuatu |
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April 13, 2004
Letter 21
The days have been full lately, with plenty of work to juggle
and decisions every day about how to best spend the hours. Correspondence
has been slow, and we apologize to those of you who are wondering
when we will ever get around to replying to your letters. Please
know that we cherish them, and read them aloud together at breakfast,
and appreciate your faithfulness. They are reminders of far-reaching
connections, even when we are wondering how to get our teeth brushed
and still get to class on time.
Cyclone relief has arrived. The PC(USA) sent $17,000 all by itself,
and that was only part of an ecumenical aid project that was coordinated
through the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu. There may be more
denominational donations coming to Vanuatu, and the funds will
need replenishing. Several of you have asked how you could contribute,
and I would like to list some possible pathways. Please understand
that it is our intention to offer you the chance to donate, not
to compete with the charities that you already support.
Donations can be sent to One Great Hour of Sharing, Central Receiving
Service, Section 300, Louisville, KY 40289. The One Great Hour
of Sharing supports the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which sent
$15,000 to Vanuatu, and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, which
sent $2,000.
There are also three special accounts for long-term projects
here in Vanuatu. They are:
- Onesua Computer Lab, ECO 048016. Click here
to give.
- Teacher Training Project, ECO 048015. Click here
to give.
- Women’s Training Program at Talua Seminary, ECO 864229.
Click here
to give.
If you are so move, you may send checks to: Central Receiving
Service, Section 300, Louisville, KY 40289. Write the title and
the ECO number on the subject line of the check and put it on
your cover letter, too. Send a copy of the cover letter to the
East Asia and the Pacific Area Office, 100 Witherspoon St., Louisville,
KY 40202-1396. |
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A man from a nearby village using a portable sawmill to cut the
natavoa tree into beams for the new classroom. |
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For PC(USA) churches that wish to support our
ministry through Directed Mission Support, our DMS number is 506665.
You'll need to fill out a pledge form. Call (800) 524-2612 and ask
for a copy of the 2004 Directed Mission Support
book. For more information, call Judy Pearson at (888) 728-7228
x5654 or Jacqui Lovett at (888) 728 7228 x5650. |
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I sometimes feel like apologizing
for talking about this or that numbered account, as if the church
were just some huge bureaucracy. But this is the power of being
a connectional church. Lots of little donations can add up to
mosquito nets and rice and water filters, as well as computer
labs and expanded chances for women’s education. In that
sense, these connections provide all of us the opportunity to
be a part of a wider effort, just as these letters that I share
connect you with people and places you would never have touched
without the church to help.
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the yam harvest. It is a skimpy
harvest this year for most islands, but still the first small
yams were brought into the churches and blessed. Along with rice
from cyclone relief, the yams will provide the staple parts of
the local diet for the next month or so. Island cabbage, which
is like a perennial spinach but slimier, is being harvested now
and will be the main source of vitamins. I hate the stuff! It’s
a lot like eating boiled green slugs. I suspect I would be more
grateful for it if I lived in a village on an outer island, and
it meant life to me and my family. |
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We have been doing a lot of work in the garden
lately, and it is beautiful. The banana trees are unfurling unblemished
new leaves, the corn is taller than I am, the tomatoes and cabbage
are begging to be transplanted from their crowded nurseries, and
the stupid papaya trees are trying to revert to jungle. Lora and
Emily sit in the garden and take turns reading textbooks aloud while
they weed. It’s a little strange to hear phrases of David
Copperfield coming out of the cabbage patch. |
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The top priority in the villagers' oral history project was to record
Kalia's story of the founding of the village of Ekipe. |
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Onesua hired a nearby village to
bring their portable sawmill and clear some of the trees downed
in the cyclone. Payment is one-half of the wood. The school’s
half is cut into beams and 2x4’s for new classroom construction.
The village’s half is for resale. It was good to see the tree
that smashed the cement storage container recycled into wood! Take
that, you monster! The principal decided to take advantage of the
opportunity to have some other trees felled, particularly those
which were close to houses or newly exposed to the wind because
other trees close to them had been blown down. We mourned when he
chose the huge natavoa tree behind Robea and Leiwia’s house
to go. It was about six feet in diameter, and could have crushed
their house in the next storm, but it was still sad to see a tree
that big fall. It safely crashed into the brush behind our garden,
with only a few branches covering the cucumbers. A tree that size
holds an entire ecosystem of epiphytes on its bark and branches,
and we took some orchids and transplanted them to an old stump at
the front of our garden. It may be too sunny there for them, but
we will try to keep them watered. For the next few days, there were
several families of puzzled lorikeets flitting among the neighboring
trees, and the dark red sawdust smelled rich and promising next
to the huge stump. No one knows how old the tree was. Some guess
only fifty years, but others say maybe a hundred or more. There
were several bullets imbedded in the wood, enough to worry the sawyers,
and the people here say that means that the tree was already big
enough in World War II to have been used by the Americans for target
practice. No rings were visible, maybe because growth is slow and
steady instead of seasonal. There are no winter rest periods here. |
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Emily helps adjust Lilly's head scarf for the Easter play. They
both play women going to the empty tomb. |
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Maki Okada, the PE teacher from Japan,
became a Christian at a baptism and first Communion ceremony. She
has been teaching at Onesua for almost three years. She had heard
of Christianity before coming here, and she and her family had nothing
but disdain for how rude evangelists have been in her community,
but here at Onesua, she experienced a community of caring people.
She came to teach, and learned instead. I was asked to preach for
the service, and from the vantage point of sitting facing the congregation,
I had the chance to see the students as they answered the question
posed to them. Would they support Maki by prayer? |
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“Yes,” they answered,
on behalf of Christians everywhere. (That’s you!) Maki’s
conversion was inspirational for the students; since most of them
come from Christian families, this was a rare event for them to
witness. Please remember Maki in your prayers. She will return
home in July to a family and a culture that is openly hostile
to her faith.
Last Saturday we walked about six kilometers to Ekipe, Robea,
and Leiwia’s home village to tape some stories for our translation
project. The villagers would like to record a lot of old traditional
tales for the kids, but their top priority was to record Kalia’s
story of the founding of Ekipe. So we sat down with a tape recorder
in the brightly painted church and listened to Kalia tell his
story.
In 1953, Kalia went to the Tangoa Training Institute, the forerunner
of Talua Seminary, where he became friends with another student
named Metak. Kalia was from the tiny island of Tongariki, where
the people were having problems with overcrowding. Metak was the
son of the chief of Epau, one of the largest villages on the main
island of Efate. They became friends, sharing their studies and
their work on the school farm. Eventually, Metak invited Kalia
to come home with him and presented him with a gift of a large
amount of land where he could settle with his family and friends
from Tongariki. They sighted from landmark to landmark, from stone
to banyan tree, and marked a generous boundary with sticks. The
islanders from Tongariki worked for several years, sailing back
and forth between the two islands while the new gardens grew and
the new village was built, and then in 1956 the two villages sat
down to formally recognize the new village of Ekipe. They cut
a chicken in half, and cooked it on two pieces of laplap, the
national dish. The leaders of each village solemnly ate their
piece of the chicken, and then everyone held a huge feast, complete
with gift exchanges of food and woven mats. Metak eventually became
chief at Epau, and at his death his son followed, and still the
friendship continues strong. Ekipe worked to build a new Presbyterian
Church in Epau when they needed to expand, and there are still
gift exchanges at holidays. There have been four marriages between
the villages, so now their futures lie even closer together.
Lora and I walked back to Onesua, toward our own Easter celebration,
thinking about this history. How remarkable, to have a friendship
that would transcend the gaps between two islands and languages
and cultures! How incredible, in a place where land is seen as
the property of the entire village, including the unborn, that
such generosity could take place!
We live in a world where resources are scarce and greed is not.
We who were given the Statue of Liberty have a heritage of welcoming
the poor. I think that Kalia’s story is a reminder of our
own history, a call to be faithful to our own roots. What will
we do to help the refugees of today?
We wish you a happy Easter season, a time of new rising. You
might like to find a good spot, somewhere not too close to a house,
and plant a sapling in the sawdust from the past. Save an orchid.
Pray for a convert. Share the stories that remind us who we are.
And weed the dickens out of your garden!
Christ is risen indeed!
Love and peace,
Bruce
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
101 |
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