Preparations for a Furlough (and next stages of life)

 

A letter to the friend of a missionary:

 

One of the most stunning flowers I've ever seen

Dear Friend,

Your missionary is coming for a season of furlough (now called Home Assignment by some agencies.) What can you do to welcome them or help them? Much like a new neighbor or a visitor to your church they may have some practical needs or other, a little less obvious, needs.

Now, I have issues with that term, Home Assignment, but that is for another day. Let me just stand up right in front  and announce that neither they, nor their children, are coming home. There is only one element of that word, home, that I can think of that may or may not even describe the arrival of your adult missionary. That is: home: a place where you grew up.

 

 

Please recognize that HOME is a multi-faceted word. Just think of the saying, “Home is where the heart is.” I can tell you right now, loud and clear, part of their heart and most of their kid’s hearts are the shape of their host country, and likely the shape of that furry pet they had to leave behind, perhaps the shape of an exotic fruit that isn’t available at “home”. Their hearts are certainly wrapped up in the memory of a favorite vacation spot. And, best yet, those hearts are the shape of the local and sojourner faces in that land.

 

So, welcome them with a big hug and a sympathetic heart of your own. Consider saying, “welcome to your new place. I’ll be here for you to help it become a home.”

Here is some insight into what they may have been going through in recent months. A huge part of preparing for a furlough is living a double life. They need to prepare for living back in their passport country and they need to do many practical things in their host country to be able to leave. Perhaps they need to sell furniture, find homes for their pets, store personal belongings they hope to see one day again, help their employees find new jobs or comfort them through the change (If you are wondering about that part about employees write me later; that is a whole other topic).

 They likely have work deadlines to meet before departing. They certainly need to say “good-bye” to a host of people. Meanwhile attention needs to be given to children’s needs and their own emotional needs. And they must plan for that year +/- to come to be able to live somewhere and probably educate their kids. Of course, not everyone’s needs are the same. Some may need to plan doctor’s appointments and find a car to get around.

 Whatever they have been through before getting on that plane, when they arrive they will likely need a hug and a comfy bed!

 So, friend, when you learn your missionary is coming back please reach out to them and ask how you can help, how you can pray, offer them your ear, offer them a meal, offer the kids some Leggos or Duplos because they probably didn’t bring many toys with them. But by all means, don’t welcome them HOME.

Sincerely, a concerned friend. 

 

P.S. I really don’t know why this is a P.S. aside from the fact that the letter was written and signed and then my husband chimed in.

 VERY important! Don’t let the welcome end after the 1^st month. Very often your missionary will arrive exhausted, very appreciative of your practical help. Then after some time of refreshment they will realize they have few, if any, real relationships outside of their 4 walls. Come back again and check on them. Invest in them.

Another, most unique, flower; on a tree in the RFIS property

 

 The personal part:

 So what have the Chiltons been doing to prepare for furlough?

 Well, I bought a used toaster oven. “What?!” you may say, “I thought you were selling things!”

I am, but I also want to know if it would be useful for the time when we may come back and there are only 2 of us who need baked things ( Yes, our thoughts go from present, to furlough, and back to here). 

 

 

 

We have been selling and downsizing for over 3 years now. That is not normal for the “average” heading to furlough missionary. Usually an overseas term is closer to 4 years than to 9 like it has been for us. And not too often do you need to downsize from a family of 9 to 2 (Considering hand me downs and storing many, many things over our previous furlough, yes, we STILL had things from the older children to get rid of).

 We have been praying about and searching for homes for our beautiful dogs and I just recently got 4 chickens to care for and get eggs from. “What?” you may say again. Yes, I needed a distraction from the persistence of sorting, selling, trying to do the last bit of work related things for the mission as well as the emotion of it all. So, why not make friends with 4 laying hens to give us scrumptious eggs? (If you'd like to see more of how to create a home-made chicken coop then scroll to the bottom for images).

 We have been guiding Channah through the process of college choice and scholarship applications and answering a lot of questions from both of the twins, like, How will I learn the safe areas and not so safe areas to go?, How will I live without – fill in name of delicious food here-? We have been looking for cars and a home. We have secured a furnished apartment here so that the last weeks in the country we can fully empty this home and sell or store the belongings. And, finally, we’ve been filling out countless forms so the mission is satisfied.

 Between now and mid June we will have some significant “goodbyes” to endure, the yearly meetings with the entire population of the mission, more than a few school events and hopefully the chance to taste and see everything we want to so that lasting memory is in our souls.

 And, for the record, part of our hearts are Cameroon shaped with mangoes, soursop, and   guavas hanging in there. And the faces of our friends will forever be imprinted in our minds.

Home is a plural and our hearts are split. 

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, if you do want to engage a missionary, their children, or any international worker really, in a meaningful way here are some suggestions:

*Tell me about the people.

*Describe your favorite foods.

*How did your family take vacation?

*How did you spend your free time?

*What are the seasons like compared to here?

*What is the purpose of your work? Any memorable accomplishments?

*Do you have concerns about being here for this time?

What NOT to say: “ What’s it like there? Do you like it?” Just reverse those questions onto yourself and you may figure out why they are hard to answer.

In general missionaries might not very good at small talk so if you want to chat, be prepared. Oh, one last thing; they may want to know some things about current life where they find themselves now. Offer to tell them about the recent sports seasons, current common topics for conversation, best new restaurants, etc. 

I hope you haven't gotten the wrong idea. We are definitely looking forward to coming and visiting!
Thanks for listening. 

 

Making a coop with Earnest's help. Mostly it is made from scraps! 

Earnest used fire to warm the plastic pipe to be able to expand it over the joint piece.

Just life – mostly pictures

I told you in our 

news letter

that I’d put up a blog 

with more photos of

life for the Abbots 

and life around here. 

Peanut, was brought to the city a couple times

So…. This family has had the best pets.

WHAT???? 

Kids play everywhere.
Barry's village gym. 

Physical fitness goes with 

spiritual teaching.

He even built a Salmon Ladder.

Friends......

Music....

This is Caeli in front of my lunch spot. Can you see the hammock?

Below is the RFIS soccer pitch. The art on the wall is each graduated class's "wall." At the old campus each class could decorate a wall of the pavilion and it would be repainted each year. Here, they get to stay! To the left of the dugout is another dugout and then already 4 more sections are painted. The twins will have the next one. Caleb's is two to the left after the second shelter. Kaiah's is the one with the cross/sword. Daniel's is the one you can clearly see 2015 and Josiah's is two to the right of 2014. (I think.) Bradley's was the last one at the previous campus. 

Oh, that is Channah right under the "Class of 2014"

 View of the RFIS Library and classrooms

They are a little jumbled but the program is not cooperating in letting me move them around to group things together. So, below here there are photos of the following: 

 

 

 

 

science room,

 

 

 

 

acting,

a termite mound found at school but I have them in my yard too, 

 

Our school sign that came from the previous campus, 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chapel held in the covered gymnasium due to COVID-19,

 

 

 

 

 

Channah's class garden, 

Exquisite beauty,

A neighborhood road, 

The pictures are reversed then and now. The first one is meant to be after the next but Blogger is difficult so I left it. I took the lower picture a few years ago coming from the direction of my house. The road was not really safe for some cars to drive in rainy season. The first picture was taken within the last month or two after the completion of the "new" bridge. The photo is taken from the opposite direction so the road looks like a different place. The new bridge is raised up quite a bit from the height of the old bridge quite visible in my photo. (The photographer is coming down the hill visible in my photo.) 

These two photos are taken on carnival day, a fun fundraiser for the classes. 

 

 

Same field as the one above with players on it in the heat of the day  but at sunrise. The dugout pictured here is the one not pictured above but the photo was taken a year back so the most recent wall art is not present. The middle art is from Caleb's year. 

 

 Can you tell that the laundry is soaking wet. During any rainy season many people's laundry gets a second or third rinse!

Bananas I planted a few years ago, so glad we have enjoyed the fruit. I'm done with collecting photos but trust me I have enjoyed the fruit of the trees I've planted: soursop, guava, banana, and maybe a jackfruit before we go. I planted an avocado too but that one won't get mature in the next 1/2 year.

 

 

That's all for today. I hope you have enjoyed your stroll through our lives. 

I think my mistake with the programming is I didn't format it all in Word and transfer it over to Blogger. I'll try that next time but if it is this difficult again be prepared to give me suggestions for other blogging programs. :) 

Jake doesn't fit in a Baka house

 

 

Our friend Jake doesn’t fit inside a Baka house. Taking a look at the picture I’m sure you can understand why. I’m sure Jake could bend and fold a little to get in there and visit with the family for a while but eventually he’d be pretty uncomfortable. ….

I wrote the first draft of this blog a few years back when I was feeling pretty uncomfortable myself. I had a lot of pain and uneasy feelings. I thought I understood the cause to be simple change in my life: kids leaving, mission changing, friends hurting and so on. But the other day I read an entry in a website called, “A Life Overseas” and it clearly described and gave a name to what I have been going through for quite some time now.

Culture Pain and Culture Stripping

Culture pain is when you have spent enough time in the host culture to consider it a home and are therefore deeply affected by people who live there and events that take place there.

Culture stripping is after culture shock, after the settling in, after the acceptance and adaptation. It is what happens when you are invested in the second culture and you still don’t quite fit in but have changed so you don’t fit in your previous culture either. Understanding this reality helped me be more free to write the following. …

So, to re-cap….Jake could turn himself into a pretzel and stay a while to visit but eventually he’d be in pain. That is what has been happening to me since pieces of my heart started scattering all over the world – pain. (Yep, I am partly writing this to make my kids feel guilty about growing up and leaving home. But that is not all. I’ve made friends now that are all over the world and sometimes missing them causes that pain too).

I used to fit just fine here on this warm, strange continent with my family all tucked in around me. I knew what I was to do and learned how to make it happen. I made new friends and they became important to me. It hasn’t always gone perfectly. Some pieces of me have been broken along the way. However, I knew how I fit here. Anyone that has known me longer than 10 minutes knows that me and kids go together. ( I subbed in the Grade 3/4 class just yesterday.) So as these days of young ones in my everyday life keep getting shorter and shorter in number God is having to reshape me. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I fall apart. I have been broken as my children have left home and gone oh so far away. Nobody warned me about how much this would hurt. Nobody warned me about how it would redefine me.

This season of my life happened to coincide with a season of other sources of pain and I couldn’t describe then what I know now about fitting or not fitting in any culture. Pieces of me have also broken as I simply go through life here interacting with people under intense circumstances. Nothing in my personal upbringing prepared me to see children hungry because their parent simply cannot work enough to earn sufficient money. Nothing prepared me for so much disease (not even being the daughter of an ER nurse and knowing that hospitals are full of sick people). And nothing, absolutely nothing, could prepare me to learn that my Cameroonian brothers and sisters’ families are forced out of their homes, due to armed conflict, into snake infested bush with little or no protection from rain or sun. Or perhaps they somehow made their way to another city to arrive at their relative’s homes for shelter (bursting the walls of the home made for 8 that now must hold 17).

And another thing that has caused a bit of broken pieces and falling apart, nobody warned me that after 20 + years on the mission field we would experience loss and grief with our colleagues. (They warned us that we might not get along with them but they didn’t tell us about the bonding and consequent breaking that would happen). People come and go frequently now. The school we love has had to change with the changing circumstances of the missions we serve. The mission organization we have been devoted to has also had to change with the times. And simply being here has changed and shaped me. I don’t drive the way I used to (good or bad – jury is still out!). I don’t eat like I used to. I don’t speak like I used to. But, so what? People change. Well even through all that’s happened, all I’ve learned, I still don’t fit in here. And because of so many changes, so much time away, I don’t fit in where I came from either. I love both places, both groups of people. I would sacrifice myself for any of the ones I know and yet, neither group fully connects with me anymore. Culturally Stripped.

So what now? Do I just accept that I will live in the in between forever and feel lost? Do I go “home” and start over to reconnect with loved ones? Can I thrive again in either location? Maybe. Probably getting all broken like this has brought me closer to the heart of Jesus and that is a good thing.

God has been reshaping me, bending me and sometimes allowing brokenness for me to be fitted into the spaces He has planned for me. I think I’m learning that.

I sit and think about the image of Jake visiting the Baka. It was just that, a VISIT. We Christians, like Jake, and like Jesus, are visiting this sphere we call home but really, we are being fitted, shaped, bent, broken, re-made to be with our Father forever.

Meanwhile I will stay culturally stripped, a global nomad, a wanderer following God and my children around this globe – between however many cultures that takes me through.

A "Never Ending" Story (emojis are fun)

One day an unsuspecting mama👩 was walking in the woods🌳, along the side of a mountain in Tennessee or Georgia where the two states collide. As God had planned she slipped that day. It was so strange; she rarely fell while out walking; it was even stranger that no part of her body was injured save a place on her hand✋ that was scratched.

As the hours passed after returning from the walk🚶, however, her shoulder began to hurt – more and more. The homeopathic remedies that she had taken many times before, for bumps, bruises and the like, were not effective against this pain. She reached out to her friend who also treats injury and illness with homeopathic remedies to see if she had a different or more potent remedy. The mama’s friend 👩provided some help but also suggested she go to see the chiropractor in the morning.

The next day the pain was just as severe so off to the doctor 🩺she went. By the time she arrived the mama could barely lift her arm and grasp a pen✎ to fill in the required forms📎.

To move the story along let’s jump to the end results of that introduction to the work of a chiropractor. One little slip in the woods 🌳created an incredible chain⛓ of events. It is not often that one can trace such a God ordained event.

The mama returned to her home in Africa🌍, healing from the previously dislocated shoulder, and sought further care to complete the treatment begun in the States two weeks earlier. She found Dr. Eric, an internationally trained specialist of multiple areas of medicine and learned about the immense potential for healing that this doctor, gifted by God, could offer. And the chain of events started:

• Dr. Eric confirmed that her shoulder was still correctly aligned and she began the process of getting treatment to correct the damage that occurred to her spine, years earlier, as a younger mama.

• She brought her friend in to begin treatment for a severely painful condition for which others had said she needed to have surgery😟 outside of the country.

• Because of the mama’s recommendation, another friend sent her own friend to Dr. Eric's to begin treatment for long standing, debilitating pain😧 and now she uses him as a primary care physician.

• Mama brought another friend for help.👩

• And a colleague👨

• And another friend👩

• And has encouraged many others to go.👨👩

• Learning that Dr. Eric’s wife 👰was traveling led to conversations about COVID testing and she learned that there was another option, a lab, to get the testing done rather than the busy, unpredictable location most people use in town. This paved the way for a family that needed to evacuate to the States because of a medical condition.The chiropractor called his connection with the lab and the technician came directly to the hospital🏥 room where the sick little girl 👧was waiting with her family to get the tests done.

• And, most recently, the mama recommended another friend👩 take her husband👨, suffering from intense headaches to Dr. Eric.

How many more people👩👪👨 will God bring in this story starting from a slip in the woods?🌳