One of the challenges in raising children abroad is passing on one’s own cultural heritage. Drex isn’t going to get American History at school. What better way, therefore, to spend what is probably my last summer reading stories to my own children—after a rich twenty-four year career —than reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer with Drex. Even as Drex has gained from Tom a broader sense of his own cultural identity he has found comfort in their sympathies: an abhorrence for the “restraint” of “whole clothes and cleanliness,” their distaste for Sunday School, “a place Tom hated with his whole heart,” and their affinity for fishing: “While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river bank and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch, and a small catfish—provision enough for quite a family.”
I would have said such exploits were for another time and place had I not seen a similar performance by Drex and his Uncle Butch last week in the Algarve. This was Butch’s first visit to Portugal and he wasted no time dispelling our myth of the elusive Portuguese fish. A storied fisherman, he reads water like ordinary people read maps. Where I see sun sparkling he sees structure: sand bars, shelves, pools. And he sees fish, powerless to resist his bait. He and Drex caught them “at will.” Almost as soon as they cast they’d begin backing up, reeling them onto the beach. “Thirty seconds without a fish! What’s going on?” Drex complained at one point. Thirty-one fish in all; all very tasty. Butch was pleased; Drex was beside himself.
Back here at home, one of the benefits of living in the center of a major European city is the summer street festivals, like Lisboamágica, Street Magic World Festival, today in its fifth and final day. At Drex’s insistence we’ve seen all fifteen magicians, some several times. Drex has been practicing tricks at home and has assumed a more theatrical bearing, generally. I have found the magician’s twenty-minute acts inspiring, too: what I need to do is develop a little repertoire of children’s stories I can relate and illustrate in Portuguese and English on the streets of Lisbon. I could make balloon animals—as many of the magicians did—until I’ve attracted enough children for stories. I could top them all off with a winsome version of the Greatest Story Ever Told.
The Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip I’m leading to Mozambique is just over two weeks away. You can meet the team and get a taste of what we’re in for at Bringing Together Worlds Apart. Please pray that God would fill the believers on our team with His Holy Spirit, that we might minister His love to everyone with whom we come in contact. Pray He would give us words and means to communicate the Gospel in ways people understand. Pray for safety and health. Pray Debbie and Drex are well while I’m away.
We appreciate your prayers more than we can express and more than you’d conclude based on how infrequently I’ve solicited them here lately. That is an omission for which I beg your pardon. The Lord bless you this week.
