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Dear friends,
I flew into Ft. Lauderdale from Atlanta late on Friday night (May 20) following an interesting, albeit challenging week at a MTW “Training the trainers” seminar where I discovered just how little I know about teaching, or rather about the way adults learn. It was a humbling experience as we went through the various theories and techniques of “andragogy” (adult learning, as opposed to pedagogy). For the past few years I’ve wondered about the learning style of our Antillean students who are from an essentially oral culture. It’s difficult to get them to read—the ‘normal’ way we learn in our Western academic tradition—but they’ll listen to me talk for hours. Hopefully, a few of the notions gleaned at the seminar will help me to improve my technique in the classroom.
It was almost midnight as I flopped into a taxi at the Ft. Lauderdale airport for the ride home. The driver, like 85% of the cabbies in S. Florida, was Haitian. His name was “Moïse” and he spoke wistfully of the country he left 20 years ago. I asked him about his family. Unlike the French who are excessively reserved
when it comes to personal matters, Haitians will openly discuss family life,
religious beliefs, political views etc. He asked me how I knew Haiti, so I told him what I do.
Moïse was clearly proud of his biblical name but equally proud of the fact that he has six children by three different Haitian women. “C’est la tradition chez nous” (It’s our tradition) he explained matter-of-factly.
“Have you ever stopped to consider what God thinks of that ‘tradition’?” I asked him. That remark was met with silence.
I wasn’t home but a few days before I had to leave again (on May 26) for Guadeloupe and Haiti. For the Guadeloupe visit, I accompanied Roe S.
a devoted Cuban-American brother from Miami who needed a translator for a ministry he’s started organizing concerts for a Christian musical group on various
Caribbean islands. The gig on that French island was the fruit of an encounter with Alain whom he’d met months ago in Dominica. Alain, an equally zealous
brother, works at city hall of the Guadeloupe town of Bouillante organizing inter-island cultural activities. The Lord’s ways are often convoluted. The
bottom line was an occasion where several hundred folk from St. Lucia, Dominica,
Martinique and Guadeloupe got together for a concert given by three different Christian groups and where it was my privilege to translate and to share a few words.
I left Guadeloupe on Air France on Friday (May 27) and flew to Haiti for the second installment of an Old Testament survey course for some thirty eager Haitian ministry students who have formed their own ‘seminary’ in the Port-au-Prince suburb of “Carrefour” where they meet every Saturday. We had thirty students for the classes which started at 8:30 AM and went through until 2:30 with only a brief pause for lunch. After reviewing the preliminary material (on canonicity, inspiration and authority of the Word etc.), we went through the basic themes of the Pentateuque which none of the students had ever completely read
through. I tried to show them that the whole Bible speaks implicitly, if not explicitly, of God’s holiness and man’s need for a Savior. That’s the essential
meaning of the elaborate Old Testament sacrificial system.
As for Haiti itself: Nothing much seems to change in a place where millions of people continue to struggle to survive in a state of squalor and misery that defies description: thousands of people sitting or squatting by the roadside in mounds of rubbish (there’s no trash collection) in the stifling heat, seven days/week with a handful of mangoes, sugar-canes, charcoal, or other various sundries upon which depends their very survival. It’s gut-wrenching.
Arriving home late Sunday evening, I resumed the reading and correcting the last of 33 master’s dissertations for Haitian students of a FLET master’s program. Next on the schedule is a series of classes in St. Martin (July 3-9) on “leadership”, a
subject requested by the students themselves; after which Aline and I leave for
a month of ministry in France July 20-August 15. There’s never a dull moment.
On the home front, the major Mailloux family news concerns the
engagement of our daughter Anaïs (27). The wedding will be in California where
both Anaïs and fiancé Eric live and work. The date is fixed for October 1, but already preparations consume more time and money than most men would deem necessary. Fortunately, under Aline’s prompting, we’d been saving for our daughter’s big day for years.
The “Gorilla” to whom I’ll be handing our “Stradivarius” is Eric J., a strapping 6’1” blond-haired, blue-eyed Viking (of Danish + German ancestry) from St. Louis. “He’s much too pretty to be smart,” joked my younger sister upon seeing his photo. Eric works as an engineer with Boeing in L.A., so he’s hardly an idiot,
I reassured her. In fact, he seems a most worthy claimant to the hand of our princess, fitting very nicely in the select sweet-spot of the three overlapping circles of spiritual, intellectual and physical compatibility. We’re pleased to welcome him into the family and are eagerly anticipating the joyous union of this rare virgin couple.
The occasion has given us opportunity to reflect on subject of marriage itself—a major theme of the Bible which both starts and ends with a wedding.
From Adam’s quintessential betrothal of Eve, to the Feast of the Lamb, the entire Book might be viewed as an elaborate wedding invitation with everything in between leading to, and announcing the final Consummation—His bride’s eternal ravishment as alluded to in the transcendental physical union of the “Song of Songs”. “This is indeed a great mystery” as Paul says (Ephesians 5:32).
Our daughter’s impending nuptials has stimulated some reflection about
the meaning of love and marriage, as it did for Russian Jewish peasant farmer
Tevye in the classic film “Fiddler on the Roof.” What is love? What is a sacred covenant? The answers are as inscrutable as women are mysterious. But after 33 years with Aline, I still get occasionally twitterpated when I hold her hand. Still, I think the French writer St. Exupéry put it best: “L’amour ne consiste pas à se regarder face à face, mais à regarder tous les deux dans la même direction” (Love is not so much looking at each other face to face, but looking both in the same direction). We gaze at His star together on the road to the Celestial City. Voilà tout.
Marc
Praise: 1- For safe travel and encouraging response by the Haitian students in Port-au-Prince. 2-For continued health and the Lord’s provision for our work.
3-For the joyous news about our daughter’s forthcoming wedding.
Prayer: 1-For the wise use of the Lord’s resources. There are so many needs in the French-speaking world that we don’t always know where to concentrate our efforts.
2- For the ministry during our forthcoming aforementioned trips to St. Martin and
to continental France.
3-For the spiritual welfare of our immediate and extended families.
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