Martin’s Voyage

On April 28, Bill and I will have been married for 20 years!  But we got to celebrate early this year.  This past Thursday evening, Anna got invited for a sleepover at a friend’s house for the next night.  We realized that with Anna gone, we would have three out of four of our kids missing over Friday night.  Will was scheduled to be at the high school youth retreat, and Sam already had plans to stay at a friend’s house overnight.  So we quickly sent off an email to some friends from DA, the parents of one of Caleb’s friends, and asked if they would be willing to have Caleb on Friday night.  They sent an email back right away, agreeing, and suddenly we had Friday night all to ourselves!  Bill had found a nice looking restaurant online, and we decided to try it out, in celebration of our anniversary.

What a treat!  It was a truly elegant restaurant, and the food was outstanding.  After our appetizers, the waiter brought something in little tiny glasses – about the size of a shot glass – that looked kind of like whipped cream, but it was pinkish.  Next to that on the plate was a tiny ramekin with about two spoonfuls of chopped vegetables – tomatoes, squash, onions, etc.  After tasting the pink stuff we decided it was a tomato-flavored mousse.  It reminded us of a date we had, many years ago, before we were married.  Bill had taken me to the Escoffier restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America for my birthday.  They did the same thing there – brought us something on a tiny plate that we hadn’t ordered.  In that case, it was a small rectangle – about the size of a pat of butter – that was beige in color.  We weren’t sure what we were supposed to do with it – spread it on bread?  Eat it all by itself?  We chose the latter, and couldn’t figure out what it was!  Later, the waiter asked how we enjoyed our salmon mousse, so that’s when we realized what it was.  That’s the last time that happened to us, until our anniversary meal.  You know you’re in a fancy place when they bring you food you didn’t ask for.    It was a wonderful experience.

After dinner we watched a movie and enjoyed relaxing at home, and on Saturday we had fun looking at scrapbooks of our dating years, our wedding, and our anniversaries.  We realized that although we kept careful track of anniversary celebrations #1 – 10, we didn’t do that for the next 10.  We spent some time trying to figure that out, but we still have several gaps.  In any case, it was wonderful to look back and remember lots of special times together, as a couple and as the kids came along.  We are so thankful for the many ways God has blessed us!

And we are also thankful for the unexpected gifts of a free weekend evening and Mom and Dad’s anniversary check.  Thanks to everyone who made it possible for us to celebrate.  Happy Anniversary, Bill – here’s to the next 20. 

I apologize that it’s been so long since I’ve posted something new… we’ve had lots of computer problems lately.  First, Bill’s laptop stopped working in September, so we were down to just the desktop for four months until it was fixed.  We finally got the laptop back at the beginning of the year, and now the desktop is giving us trouble!    It still comes as kind of a surprise to me that electronic equipment is so quickly outdated and prone to failure.   I consider something “new” for at least 10 years… and these computers are only about 5 years old.   We’re praying that we can limp along with these two hurting “dinosaurs” until we get back to the States in 2011.

Many of you have asked about my parents’ visit – what a blessing that was!  When they told me they were planning on coming here, back in the summer, I was thrilled, but concerned.  I knew it was a daunting undertaking for them.  As African countries go, Senegal is probably the easiest country to travel to.  It is the most western country in Africa, and you can get non-stop flights to Dakar from New York City and Atlanta.  But it’s not always easy to get the non-stop flights, and my parents had a layover in Dulles both coming and going.  There were lots of logistics to take care of before they came here.  They had to decide what shots to get (many are recommended – none are mandatory – all are expensive), investigate and pay for travelers’ insurance (in case they had to cancel at the last minute because of Dad’s health), figure out what to pack and how to handle money while they were here… and the list went on and on.  My mom and dad travel a lot, but mostly in the United States, with no language or cultural barriers.  I was especially concerned about the airport in Dakar – it can be quite intimidating, with lots of people trying to “help” you with your bags and asking you for money – and no one is allowed inside the airport except travelers – you have to wait outside to greet visitors.  Dad had been sick the week leading up to their trip – he was even in the ER for several hours on December 27 – just four days before their flight!   But, thankfully,  everything went very smoothly.  They arrived here early in the morning on December 31 – tired and hot and weary – but boy were we happy to see them!  It had been a year and a half since we saw them last, and it was wonderful to see them again.

Arrival at the airport - early morning on New Year's Eve

After just two days to adjust to a new climate and time,  we drove five hours north to spend three nights with many other families from Dakar Academy at a Mauritanian-style campground.  It was quite an ordeal getting there – lots of hours in the cramped car, having to make our own “restrooms” along the way, and traveling the final leg of the trip on a pirogue (like a large canoe), crossing the estuary that separated the mainland from the spit of land the campground was on.  But once there, we were able to enjoy three days of relaxing, reading, playing cards, and visiting in a beautiful setting.  We took a pirogue ride out to an island known for its many birds – Dad brought along his “Birds of Senegal” book and was able to identify many new birds for his life list.  We all enjoyed our church service among the pines, watching fishermen bring in their catch not far away, singing and sharing together.  It was a real treat for our whole family, and we hope to make it an annual tradition.

Back in town, we had a wonderful time showing Mom and Dad around Dakar.  They spent a morning at the Talibe Center, and attended our first Open House at the English Resource Center – we were glad that they got to see our places of ministry.  We ate at a Brazilian restaurant, where the waiters are ex-talibe boys.  We spent a day at Goree Island, home to the historic Slave House.  Mom braved the streets of Dakar and the market place where vendors hawk their wares very aggressively, and found lots of fun souvenirs to take home.  They saw Dakar Academy, and Caleb and Anna were able to show off their classrooms.  They were able to visit our Senegalese friend Ibou in his home, and meet his family.  The last time they saw Ibou, it was back in the States, for Thanksgiving dinner, several years ago.  They were also able to connect with Moussa, the uncle of a young Senegalese college student they have befriended in their hometown.  Moussa was happy to see pictures of his nephew, and to hear how well he was doing in school.   So we had a very eventful time while my parents were here!

But it was also nice just having the time to “hang out,” to look at birds, to share meals together.   The boys even got Dad playing golf with them on the Wii!  We wished our visit was much longer.  But we are so thankful that Mom and Dad made the effort to get here – it was really great having them.  Unfortunately, after getting back to the States, Dad was soon hospitalized with two blood clots, most likely the result of the long plane ride home.  He received good care and is home now, but we continue to pray for his health.

I’ll post a few photos here, but for more, take a look at our photo-sharing website: martinsvoyage.shutterfly.com.

Mom and Dad at campement beach

Visiting Ibou and his family

Ousmane is happy to work in his notebook again

I honestly did not expect to see this dear boy walk through the doors of the center again.  I was sure something bad must have happened to him.  But last week, in he came!  All of the other boys were excited to tell us where he had been.

Ousmane ran away to his older brother’s K. school – he is also a T. boy.  The brother’s school was a two-hour walk away. He stayed for several weeks, and then returned.  We don’t know why, or what transpired while he was there.  But the good news is that he was welcomed back at his K. school and was not punished for running away.  This is quite rare, from what we hear.  We think that he was very surprised at the welcome he received when he came back – if he didn’t realize how much we cared about him before, he does now!

Thank you to all who have been praying for this little boy.  Having him disappear is a sobering reminder that our contact with these boys is tenuous; we have no way to know how long we will be able to work and play with each one.  Please pray that our time with them will bring glory to God, and that the boys will come to realize how special they are to Him.

About a week ago, someone very dear to me passed away.  Her name was Sue Thompson, and she had a tremendous influence on my life.  This blog entry doesn’t have anything to do with living in Senegal… I just wanted to record a few thoughts about Mrs. Thompson, for the record.

Mrs. Thompson taught art in the same school as my dad, who taught music.  She began bringing her daughter to our house for private music lessons, and that’s where the close relationship with my family began.  I have no idea how or why she came up with this idea, but for most of my childhood, Mrs. Thompson drove to our house in her turquoise woody station wagon, and later, her Volkswagen bug, and picked up the Thompson girls to spend most of Saturday with her.  I can only imagine how much of a blessing that must have been for my mom!  She remembers holding Wendi in her arms as Mrs. Thompson drove off with the other four little girls, dancing around the room and singing, “We’re free!  We’re free!”  I remember the years when our own kids were babies and toddlers – what a gift to a young mother to entertain her children for the day.

At Mrs. Thompson’s house, we were introduced to all kinds of art media.  We painted with watercolor and acrylics.  We sculpted with clay.  We made banners with felt on burlap.  We did wax batik, and made linoleum prints.  We sat for long periods of time as Mrs. Thompson made charcoal portraits of us to give as gifts to our parents.  What a treasure of an education!  I am sure that my love for art and my choice of profession was due in large part to all that I experienced and learned in Mrs. Thompson’s art studio.

But when I think about all those Saturdays spent with Mrs. Thompson, it isn’t really the art lessons that I remember the most.  I remember…

• Music.  Mrs. Thompson loved music.  She always played 8-track tapes in her car, and I can still remember the sound of her voice as she sang along with “The King and I,” “Oklahoma,” and “The Sound of Music.”  (I always thought she looked a lot like the Baroness in that movie!)   She loved opera and took us to several performances – I remember my first one was “La Traviata.”  My mom always made sure we learned the plots ahead of time, so that we would have some idea of what was going on.  Still, I don’t think any of us really loved going to the opera when we were kids – we always sort of “put up with it.”  We knew Mrs. Thompson liked it, and sitting through a performance where people were singing in different languages about things we didn’t know much about was a small price to pay indeed, for all the other things we did with her that we loved so much.

• Food.  We often went to McDonald’s for lunch.  This was a treat for us; our family rarely ate anywhere other than at home.  And on the rare occasions when our family did go to McDonald’s, my dad would buy one shake and ask for five little cups, to divide it between us.  Mrs. Thompson bought each one of us our own shake – a treat of lavish proportions in our eyes!  When we ate lunch at her house, I remember Mrs. Thompson making us “puzzle sandwiches.”  She would cut them in three lopsided pieces and we would have to figure out how to put them back together.  Sometimes we would have a picnic in the back yard and she would hand things out through the kitchen windows.  I remember her giving us Mrs. Butterworth’s maple syrup to pour over vanilla ice cream – another special treat.

• Generous gifts.  When we were very young, Mrs. Thompson used to give us nice clothing for Christmas.  She gave us baby chicks one Easter – I remember driving home from the farm with them running all over in the back seat of the station wagon.  (My mom wasn’t thrilled with that particular gift!)  Once, when I was a teenager, she took me on a shopping spree at the local mall for my birthday.  She helped me pick out my first perfume – “White Shoulders,” and bought me several different outfits.  I remember after I had tried on a few things, I asked her which one she preferred, and she said, “Let’s just get all of them!”  What luxury!  What fun!  When I graduated from high school, she gave me a painting, and when I graduated from college she gave me another.  That one is hanging in our dining room here in Africa – it has come with us to every home we have had.

• Just hanging out at the house.  My sisters and I loved her freezer and the automatic ice-maker.  She would give us sturdy paper towels that had some kind of thread running through them, and we would wrap ice cubes up and eat them like popsicles.   We also loved the hidden door inside the bathroom closet that opened up into the attic – we thought that was very cool. There was an amazing willow tree in the backyard, and I loved to climb it.

• Getting into trouble.  Once, I locked the bathroom door from the inside, then came out and pulled the door shut behind me.  Once, I crossed the road in front of her house to play in the water running down the gutter across the street after a storm.  Thankfully, I didn’t misbehave too many times, but I remember feeling badly when I did!

• Mrs. Thompson’s family.  We didn’t see Mr. Thompson much when we were at the house.  Sometimes he wasn’t there, but sometimes I think he was there and understandably holed himself up in his home office – can you imagine the chaos he escaped?    We didn’t have a clear understanding of family relationships back then, and we would often ask Mrs. Thompson if her “father” was home.  (She thought that was funny, although I’ll bet he didn’t agree!)  I always thought of Mr. Thompson as having a quiet, solid, kind manner.  There was a photo of their son Kenny on the refrigerator.  He was standing in front of a pup tent, and I got it in my head that he was away at camp.  He was actually in Vietnam.  When he came home, they made a huge “Welcome Home Kenny!” banner and put it up in the front of the house.  I was very young and had no idea about the war in Vietnam.  I remember thinking they were making a really big deal about him coming home from summer camp!  Their daughter Gail was a teenager, and not often at home during the day on those Saturdays we spent at the Thompson’s house, but I remember seeing her from time to time.  Once I got to see her room, and I thought it was extremely “groovy.”  Many years later, I got to know Gail very well when she hosted me for a summer in Virginia.  She is a woman of great faith and kindness and generosity.  I am sure that Mr. Thompson, Kenny and Gail were not always happy to “share” Mrs. Thompson with a group of noisy, sloppy little girls, but I know I speak for all of us when I express how thankful we are that they put up with us.  There’s no way to place a value on what we received over the course of the years in that home, with that special person.

I was able to talk on the phone with Mrs. Thompson not too long before she died.  I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to tell her again what a blessing she had been in my life, and for the chance to reminisce a bit about old times.  It was a very sad feeling, saying “goodbye” at the end of the call.  I knew that most likely it was the last time I would hear her voice this side of heaven.  But, I know that I will hear her voice again some day.

“Many still mourn, many still weep

For those that they love who have fallen asleep,

But we have this hope, though our hearts may still ache,

Just one shout from above, and they all will awake,

And in the reunion of joy we will see

Death will be swallowed in sweet victory!”

Until that day comes, I hold tight to the memories of countless Saturdays with Mrs. Thompson, and thank God that I knew her.

Oh, how well I remember that car!

My sisters and I painting in Mrs. Thompson's studio.

We have been plagued over the past few months with frequent power cuts, but this weekend things have gone from bad to worse… I think we have been without power more than we have had it.  It is making us all very weary.  It’s difficult to sleep without fans, to do homework without the computer, and to keep the food from going bad without the refrigerator.  Also, the boys miss the Wii!    We know that once the cooler weather comes, the power cuts will go away almost completely – but that is still three months away.  (The weather begins to cool down around the middle of November.)  Please pray for us as we try and remain patient and kind with each other when we are so hot and uncomfortable.

I’m grabbing this “power on” moment to report on the picnic we hosted this past week for the officers of the English Club at the university.  Bill and Bruce and their colleagues have wanted to do this for some time, and finally we were able to arrange a date that worked for all of us.  In case you’re not familiar with the English Club – this is the group that Bill and Bruce discovered not long into the academic year began last fall.  There are around 8,000 students at the university who are enrolled in the English program there, and the English Club is a campus organization run by some of these students.  Throughout the year, the guys attended meetings and helped out in any way they could, establishing relationships with the club members as well as the professors that sponsor it.  They have been warmly welcomed and the club has thanked them repeatedly for their help.  One of the students even wrote a poem about the guys that was published in the school paper!  Here is an excerpt from that poem…

For You All

We just are grateful

Of you all.

Being with you had been fruitful

Our whole family, this way

Thank you their way

Words now mean much

More to us because we have never seen such

Good guys like you. ( Jéré nguènn Jèf) 

(Wolof for “thank you.”)

As I hear (Naka nguèèn dèff)

(Wolof for “I hear you.”)

I suddenly think of Geoff

As Bill burst into laugh

I feel joy surrounding my heart

You’ve given us a new start

I can read Bruce’s

Mind and say he is open-hearted

We just are grateful

To you. You deserve it after all

On the wall of my heart your pictures shall

Be stuck as long as I live.

- BASSIROU THIAM

Now that the university exams are finally over, the students are getting ready to return to their villages until December, when they will come back for new classes.  So we invited them to come to a picnic before they headed out of town.   Bill and Bruce and their colleagues wanted to tell the students how much they appreciated getting to know them, and how much they enjoyed working with them.  They also wanted to tell the officers that by the time they return for the new school year, that we hoped to have a place off campus where we would be hosting events for the students.

It happens to be Ramadan right now, which makes hosting a meal a bit difficult, but we worked with it.  12 out of the  13 student officers that attended were fasting, so we weren’t able to eat right away.  We picked them up and brought them here but started out by just hanging out in the side yard.  We all introduced ourselves – Julie and I had never met the students, and there is a new couple that we hope will be joining the university team that the students had yet to meet.  Sometime after 7 PM, when it was time to break the fast, we offered the traditional food used for that: dates, bread and coffee.  We also provided prayer mats, water, and head coverings for their ritual washing and prayer.  (I didn’t know we were going to need to provide head coverings for the women.  I don’t have any scarves, so as we looked quickly for something else that would work, we came up with tablecloths.  So Janice, if you read this, thanks again for the taupe/button tablecloth – it came in handy, along with one other!)

Once the fast was broken, Bill and Bruce got to work cooking the hamburgers.  We wanted to do an American style picnic, so along with the hamburgers we had chips, potato salad, baked beans, carrot sticks, and soda.  Later on in the evening we had a surprise dessert supplied by one of our colleagues – ice cream floats!  There isn’t any root beer in Senegal, so he used orange Fanta instead.  That made for an interesting concoction – kind of tasted like an orange creamsicle!

We all really enjoyed the students.  They were fun, friendly, and talkative.  Everything went very smoothly and they seemed to really enjoy themselves.  After dinner we all sat around in a big circle and talked.  Bruce did a great job explaining to the students why he and Bill and the others do what they do.  He told them that they not only loved the English language and working with university students, but that they loved God above all else.  He spoke about how it was important to them to help the students not only with their studies and their plans for the future – getting a good job, etc. – but with their relationship with God as well.  This was well-received by the students, who nodded their heads in agreement throughout his talk, and at the end asked if they could pray for us.

How glad we are that God has worked it out for us to work with these students and the group that they represent.  Please pray that they will have good vacations with their families, and for our friendship with them to grow.  Please also pray for the English Resource Center that is not yet in existence – that God will use it for His glory.  I’m attaching a few shots of the evening – the faces are blurry as a safety precaution.

Eating dinner - good food, good times!

At the end of the evening

PS – this blog entry was written in several sittings – due to – you guessed it – multiple power cuts!