My freezing cold body sunk down into the hot water, and I sighed out all the stress of sleepless nights and long days of travel that come with flying and driving with babies. I was now taking the first hot bath I had had in over 1 year! It felt magnificent, and after I soaked, I dried off in a fluffy white towel, as I stood on a lovely bath mat, made of woven organic cotton and dyed various colors of blue. I couldn’t believe how clean, and white and beautiful everything was.
It was 1:52am but the entire family was still wide awake. We were wandering around in a daze looking at and touching things like we had never seen them before. None of us could sleep. I had already tried tucking myself between the crispy white sheets spread tightly across my master bedroom bed, but nothing was working. I felt out of place, in this spacious, lovely decorated, house that looked like it had come straight out of a magazine.
White walls, curtains over the windows, carpets, lamps, sparkling chandeliers, paintings, soap, a dishwasher, a fridge…I couldn’t believe they even made fridges that big! It was all so pretty, and so big, and so surprisingly unfamiliar.
We had left Vanuatu nearly 36 hours ago, and we had just arrived for our first night home in Canada. I tried so many times to fall asleep, but the silence all around me felt like a great big black blanket, that I wished I could throw off me. The familiar sights and sounds of our home in Vanuatu had kept me company for the last 13 months, and now I was missing them desperately.
Where were those noisy crickets and frogs that kept me awake at night? Where was the steady beat of the ocean surf, coming and going? There was no village music drifting through the warm tropical air, no whirring fans blowing off the mosquitos from our feet which stuck out of our damp sheets, or drunk men laughing outside, no dogs barking at every person that walked by all through the night.
I sighed, and cried, and prayed, reminded myself that God is the Master Planner and it’s He who knows all things and eventually my exhausted body succumbed to sleep. In the morning, I told Eric I thought we should hop back on the plane and go home. By home, I meant back to Vanuatu. He agreed immediately. Half of the kids said no, the other half said yes, but the bank account was the real thing that stopped us from turning around.
A couple hours later, real bacon was sizzling in the pan, filling up the house with an aroma we had only dreamed of. My daughter caught me drinking a bottle of maple syrup which had screamed my name when I discovered it in the fridge. Before long, my house was filled to bursting with the squeals of children who my heart had ached for this last year. When coming home, we had decided to keep it a surprise from everyone, just for the fun of appearing out of nowhere. The tears and amazed squeals from cousins was totally worth all the work it had been to keep our secret!
I had long visits, in a language I understood, with my best friends and sister, and I was reminded again of the real reason that I had missed Canada so much. It wasn’t the house, or the cars, the computers. It wasn’t even the strawberries, bacon or maple syrup, it was the people. The same thing that had stolen my heart in Vanuatu had my heart in Canada, and now I felt so unsettled, not knowing who I was or where I belonged.
I found my daughter holding back tears in the corner, and I wrapped my arms around her, and we cried together. Cried because we had left home, and cried because we had found home.
$22,000 USD is what it cost our family to fly to Vanuatu. Then we paid an additional $4500 in Visa fees to stay as long as we did. We both knew that if we were going to go back, it would take another monumental effort, a lot of hard work and a fair bit of faith. Faith was starting to come a bit easier to us nowadays, as living day to day really has a way of making you dependant on God and His goodness and wisdom, but we still struggled with it.
I sat on my best friends couch, giggling like little girls, and it felt as though we had never been separated. When she asked me why I had decided to come home, I tried to explain all the reasons that had made up this life changing decision, but my mind suddenly went blank. I honestly couldn’t remember why we had decided to come home. ‘To go to the dentist’, I lamely explained.
When I came home that day, I asked Eric to refresh my memory on all the reason why we had left paradise. He reminded me about our two daughters that had already left Vanuatu ahead of us, and about working- like that thing people do to earn money, and about my health, and about a dozen other reasons that sounded so convincing when I had booked the tickets a couple months, but that hardly seemed critical now.
I admit, I am afraid. I am afraid that I might be the same person I was when I left. I am afraid that I’ll get busy, and start caring more about things and less about people. I’m afraid that I won’t know how to minister to Gods children, because they are all around me in great big houses, with families that look so content. I am afraid that everything that happened on that tiny island will fade away, and with it all the love and adventure and memories will be gone.
Faith is the great healer of fear. I feel like a little child learning something for the first time. Falling again and again, unsure of how to go forward without all the pain of repeated failures. Faith is such a small word for such a big lesson, and I pray that God will send me an extra dose of it to navigate these next few months with my family.
‘I cry unto my God in faith and know that He will hear my cry’
Hundreds of trees of every shade of green surrounded our little home on the beach. The giant nabunga tree was visited daily by children climbing it or hunting the cobra constrictor snakes that lay hiding inside. The palms were overloaded with coconuts that we used for our meals. Mangos dropped by the dozens each day from the mango tree and were gathered up by kids, neighbours and friends who filled their bags to overflowing with the tasty treats.
In November I discovered that it was I who was the fool. I woke up to the birds singing loudly outside one morning and when I peeked through the bedroom window I
When I asked the local villagers the name of this glorious tree that had just come alive in my garden, they said it was called the “Christmas Tree”. All year it just simply waited. Waited for it’s time to bloom. And while I secretly criticised it for it’s empty bare branches, it knew all along that it was something much more.
I bent down and picked up the delicate, rich blossom studying the black and yellow and red so intricately woven into the shape and colors of a flower. 
When all the earth trusts, and obeys God so completely, why am I so impatient and filled with doubt?
After they have dried off they’ll come inside our house to eat ice cream and popcorn and watch an inspirational movie about being godly men. I’m not sure why we never seem to attract girls around here, but with these young men we’ll chat late into the night and then just when we are so tired we think we can’t stay up any longer, the good looking group will grab their things and in the dark of night with the stars and the moon as their light make their way to their various homes.
At night you can take a cold shower under the stars- not because we don’t have hot water, just because it’s usually not working. But thats okay because once you’re clean you’ll just get sweaty and hot within half an hour of coming out of the shower and you won’t even be able to remember that you took a shower at all.
If you’re a mom, you’ll probably help me cook, clean, teach school and do laundry, but it’s okay because we have the best helper ever (a full time house girl) which makes the chores easy and quick.
The whole family will give when there is something to give and help when there is someone to help. Because here giving 1 sheet of metal, or a rat trap, or a bar of soap, or a bag of rice is received with such gratitude and thanks that you just want to keep on giving, and nothing you give is too little and nothing you give is too big.
There are dozens of tiny islands to explore, some covered in turtles, some with white sand beaches. For a few dollars we can do down to the dock together and pay a fisherman to drive us wherever we want to go. Then we can spend the day exploring a new place. We might hike to a waterfall where we’ll go swinging off a rope swing and splash into crystal clear water, or perhaps we’ll drive to that giant Nabunga tree that is so big 30 people can all climb it at the same time and get lost in it together!
At first when you come you might think you are bored and hungry. Your kids will probably say something desperate like “there is nothing to do here, I’m bored” or “you can’t just eat fruit for lunch mom” But when your body gets used to the slow pace of island life and a diet full of vegetables and fruit, you will realise it’s just what you’ve been missing your whole life. Within a week you will start to appreciate the island time, quiet space, the clean air, the chemical free food, the interesting company (the Proffitt’s are not very normal), and all the sunshine and water that you desire. Chances are you’ll lose weight, because all that healthy food and exercise agrees with mostly everybody.
If you get sick don’t worry, there are strange doctors who can feed you any manner of teas and herbs picked from the jungle for a nominal fee. And if those don’t work you have your choice of Chinese medicine men, $2 hospital doctors or in a pinch you can pay $100 and visit an Australian doctor (boring but safe). If you prefer to diagnose yourself that works too. Pharmacies don’t require a prescription for any drug and normally when we come across something we haven’t seen before we just march into the pharmacy and ask what they would suggest. Slathering ourselves with strange creams and eating pills that have labels written in either french, chinese or bislama.
If that isn’t enough excitement, there is always the possibility of earthquakes, cyclones, volcanos, dangerous bugs, and tsunamis that are ever present. And on top of all that you would get to see a different culture of people who are so happy.
The kids and Eric were walking down the beach when they found a path that led to a village through the bush. They ended up buying some island potatoes from them but when it was time to go home the entire village full of children followed them. For the next few hours they played soccer in the field.
They followed us to the waterfalls when we went hiking and were waiting for us till well past dark every night if we ever ventured out anywhere. 
At the end of every night Eric would load up the truck with everyone and drive them home. It was sometimes 10 or 11 o’clock at night when kids were sprawled out all over each other exhausted from hours of playing. Some nights they just walked themselves home dissappearing into the blackness without a sound.
They came up and showered us with shell leis, necklaces, fruit, potatoes and a woven mat. The momma’s said to me “you fed our pikininis everyday and now that makes you their momma too, so we bring you presents” Everyone cried as we left this magical bit of paradise and said goodbye to our new friends. It was truly an amazing, fantastic, unforgettable experience and I now have ALOT of new children!
8 dogs wandered in and out of church today as we sat down inside and outside for our classes. There weren’t any pigs which was nice because they can be awfully noisy. The lady in front of me picked out lice from a little girls hair and dropped it to the ground just as the sacrament water was being passed around. Sacrament is something we do in our church to remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made for us when He gave His life for us. We have young men who pass around trays filled with little cups of water that has been specially blessed. Each person who has entered into baptism has the opportunity to take a small cup of water and drink it in remembrance of the blood of Jesus.
The seams on the wooden pulpit I was standing behind were all coming apart and the wood was swelling in the joints, but nobody cared because they were just happy to have a pulpit at all. The church building that we were under was a patchwork of tin and grass and plywood, but it was okay because they were just happy to have somewhere to worship outside of the elements. I could have given a talk in Chinese and nobody would have minded. Now in front of them, they just all looked at me with caring kind faces, smiling and nodding as I went off in English.
I might cry, or talk too fast or too slow, or too loud or not talk at all and it wouldn’t matter. In fact, yesterday a girl got up to speak at a baptism and just stood there staring at us for ages. Nobody minded or was impatient, and eventually when she whispered words into the microphone that none of us could understand we all just smiled.
Because here, WHO you are and WHAT you are is good enough. And God provides the sun and rain and the fruit on the trees and the fish in the oceans and there is no reason to complain or wish for anything more.