Moving Forward
Hello everyone, Visiting the Penguins on Boulders Beach in South Africa! Sorry for the silence for...
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When Things Fall Apart
Sometimes, even in ministry, everything just falls apart. The foundation has crumbled, the walls have collapsed, the seed has rotted, and the sprouts are choked by weeds and burnt by the sun. Sometimes by the end, there’s nothing to show for our years of efforts.
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Our Double Lives
Where we are now is about as close as we can come to being on the exact opposite side of the world from where we were just a month ago. Sometimes that’s what it can feel like, going from one side of the planet to the other – like we’re standing upside down…
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Treasure
How could I take a 9-month-old, and a 2 ½-year-old and a 4-year-old to a place where they could get sick or hurt and be days away from medical care? A place with no schools, where my wife and I would have to struggle to educate them, where they would be exposed to demonic activity and where child trafficking happens? I was ashamed of myself that I was not strong enough to pay that price.
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Visiting the US Next Year!
That’s what our last few years have been like here on Nosy Mitsio: exciting! Challenging! Full of promise, hope, struggles, loss, and gain. In it all we see God at work. He’s maintained us, given us strength and perseverance when we’ve needed it most, and he’s opened our eyes to see…
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As a Child
Can you imagine being born again? Everything you see is for the first time. The world is bright and the sights are strange. Everyone’s talking at you and they’re clearly excited to see you, but none of it makes sense: it all just sounds like gibberish…
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The Faithful Foreigner
The past year and a half has been a life of transience for us. During this time we’ve traveled over 40,000 miles! We’ve stayed for over a week in 11 different places including 5 different countries, traveled in 15 planes, 4 boats, hiked probably a hundred kilometers, and have…
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Back and Forth
We stepped off the taxi, three of us this time, back in our village in South Africa. We began...
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Transition to Madagascar Photos
Pictures from our move to Madagascar. They’re mostly from South Africa, in Pretoria, Dumphries, and Kruger, where we stopped for a few weeks along the way to visit friends and “family”. But the last 10-15 are from our arrival in Madagascar. 139 photos
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Latest News
This is a sad reality of life here in Madagascar. This article is very well-researched and written and shows that this sad reality of life isn't just in Madagascar, but very much has an impact on us Americans as well.
To be honest, the longer I've lived over here in Africa (more than 10 years now), the more I realize that our Western lifestyles and economies depends on exploitation of people in dire situations like this. Our economies are fueled by cheap products and our cheap products are fueled by child labor and other terrible labor conditions. As a whole, us in the West are becoming more sensitive to these things and are demanding more responsibility from our manufacturers/producers. They respond with nice statements saying they don't support this type of labor or these conditions... but as is quite obvious to anyone reading this article, they're statements only, but not actual efforts. They'd rather not look into the realities of their supply chains for fear they'd have to find other means of manufacturing that would hurt their profit margins or make them less able to compete with cheaper products from others who happily exploit poor labor conditions. And so we all live blissfully in ignorance, enjoying the fruits of others' self-destructive labors. Sorry if my personal comments are difficult to rectify with some of your economic or political ideologies, but it's a complicated world we live in.
On another note, this situation is happening on the other side of Madagascar from where we live. The wages mentioned in this article there in the south sound much much lower than typical manual (and child) labor in the northern part where we are. The conditions are very much the same, and this main photo here looks just like the standard method for making gravel for any use (such as concrete, roads, etc), all over Madagascar - a family affair done by hand, with many young children involved. But at least the wages of everyone I know and have talked to anywhere around where we've lived have been quite a bit higher and more able to provide food and other goods for their families. The south may be more desperate (and thus willing to accept even more hardship wages) simply because their environment is more difficult for subsistence agriculture. I've never lived down there, but it sounds like drought and locust plague is a standard for them, and personal subsistence farming is more difficult or impossible. Whereas everywhere else I've been in Madagascar (the east, the north, and the central highlands) - people can generally always grow enough food to survive, and often enough to have a little extra.
‘Zone Rouge’: An army of children toils in African mines
www.nbcnews.com
How mica mined by kids in Madagascar ends up in products used by millions of Americans.I saw this on NBC the other night and thought of you guys over there. We have no idea how how mass consumption is like a parasite on the humans needed to keep the cheap products coming. So devastating to realize how brainwashed we've become. I will share this.
In the States we love to complain about the DMV, but it's got nothing on the bureaucracy in Madagascar! All of these people are waiting in one line! And it's not a fast-moving line either (i.e. maybe you see this and think of an airport customs/passport line, but it is *not* fast like that is). The front of this line is in the foreground, then it snakes back and forth between every row of chairs, then two lines (back and forth) of people standing up on the right side, then the line snakes around the far back side of the room and stretches to the left outside of the photo and beyond into another room. The whole time we were there, I never saw the end of this line (for all I know, it stretches through several more rooms).
Thankfully we weren't there for this particular line, but another much smaller one in the next area over. We only had to wait about an hour and a half (and it probably would've been quicker if their network connection wasn't cut for about a half hour or more). And this was just one of the errands at government offices that we had to do this morning! I would definitely trade a quick wait at the DMV for all this, haha!
On the brighter side, we should have our visas/passports by the end of this week and then heading back to Ambilobe very soon!
We had a very fun experience yesterday! A man we met at a local church last weekend is in charge of hosting a weekly English teaching kids' show for the Madagascar national television station. He asked Matimu to come be a guest on the show and to help teach some lessons. So yesterday we went downtown to the school where he teaches and records the videos. It was mostly improv and Matimu did a great job! They recorded about 6 short episodes during that time, and Lora, David, and I even made a quick appearance on the last episode. The production quality seemed a bit low, but it'll still be a lot of fun to watch Matimu on national TV here. The episodes with Matimu will begin airing next week (Wed at 4:30pm with a rerun every Sat at 4:30pm) on the Malagasy National TV station (TVM), and should run for about 5-6 weeks. Matimu was very excited to be on TV and it was a fun experience for all of us. (While Matimu was filming and I was watching, Lora was having a Q&A with the older students from one of the classes... we can see that the quality of English teaching at this school is really good!) Now we just need to find some friends here with a TV, so we can watch the show when it first airs!
(And if you're friends of ours in Madagascar, even a different part of the country, and you have a TV, you should really try to watch this sometime when it airs! Matimu would love to hear that you saw him on TV!)
We've made it safely to Madagascar! About 19-20 hrs total, definitely our quickest flight ever. We arrived yesterday afternoon (local time) and it was a safe and smooth trip, so thank you to all of you for your prayers. Most of us have some jetlag to get over, but we hope it'll be a quick transition. We plan to stay here in the capital until we receive our visas, which we hope will only take 2-3 weeks (the process lately has been much faster than in the past). So please pray that it's finished quickly, with no unfortunate surprises, so that we can return to the north and get resettled there.
We had a great time in DC (and a short visit to NYC) this week. And we also loved the time we spent this week with our friend's family and we were blessed by their very generous hospitality. Now we're waiting at the airport and ready to leave for Madagascar again! Please pray for us for safe and smooth travel and for a breakthrough in reaching the Antakarana people.
Safe travels, you guys - it was so super-great to see you while you were here!
🙏 for your travels and for getting settled back into your Madagascar home! We’re so thankful that we crossed paths with you this summer!
Safe travels and blessings to you and your family.
Safe travels!! 🙏🏼
Tongava soa indray !
Soava dia!