Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Last week I (Dan) went to Baltimore, Maryland to attend the Summer Conference for the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.Estela didn't want to stay at home alone while I was out, so she invited Chantal, a ten year-old girl from New Haitian Mission Baptist Church, to spend the week with her.Estela first met Chantal about three years ago when she was helping with the Sunday school at New Mission.Since that time, Chantal has visited our home on numerous occasions.
Born in Nassau to a Haitian immigrant mother and a Bahamian father, Chantal's situation is not much different from that of many other Haitian-Bahamian children.Chantal's father is indifferent to her existence, only occasionally giving money to her mother to help support her.So Chantal and her mother are almost totally dependent on whatever odd jobs or temporary employment that her mother is able to find.This summer, things are a bit better for Chantal's mom as she has been working a steady, full-time, 8-4 job since sometime last spring.One small problem, though:During the summertime when Chantal is not in school, her mom has difficulty finding someplace to leave her when she goes to work.The solution, at least for last week, was obvious.Estela needed someone to keep her company while I was out and Chantal needed a babysitter.Or, in the words of Chantal, "We sort of both baby-sit each other."
A big part of my childhood summers was our weekly trips to check out books from the local public library.Since we don't have a lot of stuff for kids to do around our house, I decided to go to the Eastern Public Library here in Nassau a few days before my trip and check out some books for Chantal to read while spending the week at our house.Having been to the library before to do research on Bahamian history and culture for my own classes, I really didn't expect to find much.I wasn't disappointed.
After explaining to the librarian that I wanted to check out children's books for a ten-year old, she showed me to the back corner where a couple of well-worn bookcases held the entire children's collection and pointed me to the shelves which held the age-appropriate books that I was looking for.After about five minutes of perusing the handful of available titles, I selected two very tattered copies of Nancy Drew and two not much better looking copies of the Bobbsey Twins.Probably more than Chantal could read in a week, I thought, but the main thing was to keep her from getting bored.
When I went to the front desk, the librarian had me fill out the appropriate forms and pay a deposit for a children's library card.(Even though most people actually think that I'm an adult, I was required to take out a children's card since I was checking out children's books.)"By the way," I asked, "how old do the children have to be to get their own library cards.""I don't know," replied the librarian, "Old enough to read, I suppose."
"Really," I asked, "Do the children usually check out books on their parent's cards?"She just looked at me and shrugged.Okay, I thought, obviously checking out library books isn't a regular activity for the average school kid.
When Chantal arrived at our house on Sunday evening (I was scheduled to leave for Baltimore early Monday morning), I told her, "Don't think you're just going to sit around watching television all week."I pointed to the stack of library books and said, "I expect you to read all of these books cover to cover and write a one-page book report on each one before I get back.""Yes, sir," she replied (Bahamian schoolchildren have impeccably good manners).
When Estela dropped me off at the airport the next morning, Chantal's last words to me were, "Good-bye, Pastor Daniel.Have a nice trip.I already read the first half of Nancy Drew."When I called Estela on Thursday afternoon, she said, "Chantal already finished all her books.Now she's going to be bored for the next two days until you get back."Mental note to self: next time, check out at least one book for each day I'm going to be gone.
As an undergraduate theology professor, one of my biggest challenges is trying to teach students with very poor reading skills.Most of my students are often surprised that I not only expect them to read whole entire books from COVER TO COVER, but that I actually expect them to read two, three, or sometimes even FOUR whole books for a single class.The problem is that very few were prepared for the rigors of college level reading in their previous public schooling and fewer still had parents who instilled them with the kind of reading habits that would make them successful in school.Indeed, the pittance of a local public library testifies to this fact.Had I tried to take Chantal to the library on a weekly basis, she could easily finish off the whole entire children's section by the end of the summer.
Even at the college level, our commitment to fostering education through reading is not much better.Atlantic College, the institution where I teach, has neither a library nor even a collection of Bible commentaries available for our theology students to use.
For theological education to be successful in preparing future leaders for Bahamian churches, we need to be sure that the next generation of leaders is being properly prepared at the lower levels of the education system before they even enroll in theological studies.Checking out library books for a ten-year old girl might be a step in the right direction and, hopefully, has made at least a small difference in one life.But that is not enough.What Chantal really needs is somebody who can take her to the library to checkout books every week, every summer.And of course, there are thousands of other children here in Nassau, Haitian and Bahamian alike, who need to have this same opportunity as well.What do we do?As with most of life's problems and challenges there are no easy answers.All I can say is that the seemingly innocuous events of this past week have given me much to think about.
PRAYER REQUESTS
• Estela and Mme. Nadine Alexie, president of the women's group at Emmaus
Baptist Church, will be traveling to Green Lake, Wisconsin to participate in the International Consultation on Ministry to Women in Prostitution, August 5-13.
• Estela and I will be traveling to La Romana, Dominican Republic to spend some vacation time with Estela's family, August 18 - September 8.With twelve nieces and nephews and a new grandniece (8 months old), we should be plenty busy.
• We are preparing to wind up our ministry here in Nassau so that we can depart for our year of home assignment in the States by December, hopefully BEFORE Christmas.We'll be based at Crossroads American Baptist Church in the Denver area and hope to concentrate the bulk of our deputation efforts on ABCRM churches, so please pray for them as they prepare to receive us.
• Jose Norat and Raul Ruiz, our area directors for Latin America and the Caribbean, will be visiting Nassau the week of September 20th to meet with our national partners, evaluate our ministry, and explore the possibilities of a second four-year term of service here following our home assignment.Our future in the Bahamas, to a large extent, hinges on the outcome of these meetings.Pray that God will make our next step clear.
RECOMMENDED READING
When one of my former students (who clearly appreciates my love for reading) saw this book at the Judson Books' table at the Progressive National Baptist Convention's Mid-Winter Meetings here in Nassau last January, she promptly called me up and told me to get over to the conference center so I could buy a copy before they left.For those who want to learn more about the Baptist history of the Bahamas (not to mention Haiti and Jamaica), this is a good place to get started:
"Pioneer Preachers in Paradise: The Legacies of George Liele, Prince
Williams, and Thomas Paul in Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Haiti" by Alfred Lane
Pugh (2003)
The following description is taken from the back cover of the book:
This book, "Pioneer Preachers in Paradise," is about a few of the unappreciated, forgotten or unknown influential men of Baptist history.Three of them, their lives, influence and legacies are given extensive coverage.
• George Liele became a Baptist preacher under the auspices of white Baptists in the English colony of New Georgia.He organized the first independent Baptist Church for slaves and free blacks in Savannah and became the first black Baptist to preach on the tropical island of Jamaica, eventually establishing the first independent Baptist churches and church schools.His letters to an English publisher pleading for assistance resulted in the arrival of British missionaries.Three of the seven national heroes of Jamaica are Baptist preachers, all directly influenced by Liele.
• Prince Williams, a self-baptized preacher and follower of a John the Baptist religious sect in Long Island, emigrated to the Bahama Islands from Spanish East Florida.Landing on a beach near Paradise Island, he preached on the streets and organized the first continuous Baptist chapel in Nassau, the "Mother Church" of all Bahamian Baptists.Today, Baptists constitute the most numerous Christian denomination on that island nation.
• Thomas Paul was the son of free blacks in Exeter, New Hampshire who became the organize and pastor of the First African (a.k.a. Joy Street) Baptist
Church in Boston, Massachusetts and the organizer of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City.He not only encouraged slaves and free blacks to emigrate to the new independent nation of Haiti but, with the assistance of the Baptist Missionary Society of Massachusetts, was the first African American Baptist missionary to preach and teach there.
This book deftly explains how the legacies of these pioneer preachers and the others who followed them contributed to the development of the culture of several of the Greater Caribbean Islands.
ALFRED LANE PUGH taught history and courses relative to the African American Religious Experience at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and University of Pittsburgh.He has served as the senior pastor of four Baptist churches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida.He has preached and lectured at churches, colleges, universities, and seminaries throughout the United States, Caribbean/West Indies (especially Jamaica, the Bahama Islands, and Haiti), Scotland, and South Africa.A member of the General Board and
National Ministries of the American Baptist Churches, USA, he and his wife,
Cleora, reside in Lauderhill, Florida.
This book is available for $14.95 plus shipping and handling from
http://www.judsonpress.com or
http://www.judsonpress.com/catalog/details.cfm?BookCode=1163
THANK YOU!
As always, we greatly appreciate your prayers, cards, letters, e-mails, and financial support for our ministry.
Serving Christ in the Bahamas,
Daniel Schweissing
Daniel and Estela Schweissing
American Baptist Missionaries in the Bahamas
E-Fax:928-222-6398
E-Mail:dan@haitianministries.net
estela@haitianministries.net
Visit our website at http://www.haitianministries.net
Subscribe to the Haitian News Update at http://www.yahoogroups.com/subscribe/HaitianNewsupdate
"Se pou toupatou sou latè yo rekonèt gwo pouvwa li."Sòm 72:19