It is strange changing hemispheres during certain seasons.
The day before I arrived in Sweden,
where snow had cloaked the pine and spruce
of the forests with a heavy blanket, I was eating breakfast in the cockpit on Elin in Richards Bay South Africa,
wearing shorts and t-shirt, watching
vervet monkeys coming up the beach preparing for their morning raid on the waterfront. The young were practicing their circus-style acrobatics as they went. In
Sweden it had been cold and snowy for a
long while. Riding the bus home to Orebro from the airport in Stockholm, I watched deer timidly emerging
from the forest into the snow covered
fields in search of food. I was struck by the contrast both in the demeanor of the wildlife and the
profound differences in climate and
landscape. It was like experiencing two totally different worlds within less than 24 hours, a little
surreal.
It’s been a very long
time since we’ve sent out a proper newsletter,
but in our own defense we have been moving around a bit since April, when we left Mackay. I did a quick
calculation of miles travelled since
then and estimate we have sailed roughly 9,500 miles, flown 31,800 and driven about 500. I like playing
with numbers so I went ahead and totaled
all the miles we’ve travelled since we began this crazy journey back in 2014. We’ve sailed
about 20,100, flown 31,800 and driven
4,000 for a total of about 56,000.
It feels pretty good
to not have to move anywhere for a while, and it feels really good to be in Örebro (Beatrice’s
birthplace and where she and I were
married and lived from ’92-’95).
Another striking
contrast to the raw third world simplicity in parts of Africa is the opulent old world charms of
Europe, especially as the holiday lights
and decorations begin to emerge and the cozy warmth of being in doors surrounded by family and
friends is cast against memories of
struggling against the elements on Elin in a difficult stretch of ocean faced with some, at times,
very trying circumstances. I’m so glad
to have gone through that though, and the tremendous burden I’d felt prior to leaving for
Mauritius in preparation to sail, without
the rest of the family for the first time, to South Africa, has been replaced by a wonderful peace and a
joyful acknowledgement that God has yet
again mightily stretched and then strengthened our faith and simultaneously has knit us together
with other believers and used us to
mutually bless one another.
A detailed accounting of all the ways God has blessed us in
the last half year would take much more time than we have
here, but I will try to provide a brief
overview with the hope of bringing those of you who are interested at least partially up to
speed.
Our voyage from Mackay to Darwin was mostly uneventful and
marked with some very pleasant days and
nights spent in the Whitsunday Islands, Airlie
Beach and Townsville and some quite fast and pleasant sailing up around the top of Australia and on to
Darwin where we did some work on Elin
and provisioned for the upcoming long transit of the Indian Ocean. The first three weeks of that passage
were rather difficult in that the winds
were light and sporadic and the Indian Ocean was living up to its’ reputation for being predisposed
to big, unpredictable swells, which
makes life onboard difficult and uncomfortable. Because of the forecast for no wind for several days,
after the third week, we diverted to
Christmas Island and were glad we did. The provisioning there is much better than at Cocos and
Keeling where we had planned to go. We
were on a mooring while at Christmas, though, and it was quite rolly almost the entire time we were there. A
verse from Isaiah 54 kept reverberating
in my mind most of our stay. The phrase “storm
tossed and not comforted” was running through my thoughts as we rolled incessantly back and forth on our mooring and
I asked God why it had to be so.
According to the locals it is usually calm in Flying Fish Cove, where we were moored. It seemed to me
that God answered my question within the
same verse I’d been thinking of, and the ones to follow, but I’d not been considering those
words: “I will rebuild you with stones
of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli. I will make your battlements of rubies your gates of
sparkling jewels, and all your walls of
precious stones.” Is 54: 11-13. God was reminding me that the difficulties in our lives are
reasons to rejoice because it is through
them that He forges character and holiness and beauty into us.
While we were there, one day Gabriella went down to the
beach and collected some shells and sea
glass, colorful glass which had been tossed
and tumbled by the sea. After years of such rough treatment they’d become smooth and beautiful like
little jewels.
When we left Christmas Island for the 2500 Nautical Mile
stretch to cross the broad expanse of
the Indian Ocean the sailing was pretty smooth
and fast as well. One day reading in Jeremiah a verse jumped off the page and I immediately thought that
it would be applicable to our time
together in Sweden. “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way
is, and walk in it, and you will find
rest for your souls.” Jer 6.16
We stopped at
Rodriques Island and though our stay was brief we made many new friends and have stayed in touch
with most of them. We’d planned to sail
straight from there to Richards Bay South Africa, but as many of you know we had a catastrophic
failure to our steering over a hundred
miles off the shores of Mauritius and had to divert there for repairs after also breaking our emergency
tiller and spending a night adrift in
high seas.
Though I was greatly disappointed at the time and saddened
that as a family we would not have time
to reach Africa together (we needed to be
in Sweden by early August for the kids to start school) or to visit and hopefully serve alongside our friends at
Hope Farm outside of Durban, I knew God
had a plan and I would just have to hold my horses and see what it was. As it turned out God’s
plan was much better than mine. Shocking
right….
We attended a church our second Sunday on Mauritius and met
the pastor and quickly became friends. I
continued attending church there after Beatrice
and the kids flew to Sweden. Pastor James had recently written a book about worship. I bought it and
started reading it before leaving for
Sweden to rejoin the family. Pastor James came to the apartment I was staying in and prayed
with me the night before I left. We spoke
about the book a little as it had already begun to impact me.
“I didn’t write it because I wanted to write a book,” James
said, “I wrote it because I felt the
Holy Spirit was leading me to write it.”
He said something else that has stayed with me as well –“God is not looking for those who are gifted or well off
or blessed; He is looking for true
worshippers.” If we’d gone to Mauritius for no other reason, it would have been worth it for me in light
of how profoundly my understanding of
and attitude toward worship have been transformed through that one simple book. I have a wholly
renewed grasp of the power and blessing
of worship and how it is so masterfully designed by our awesome, omnipotent Father to shape,
inform and mold our understanding and
knowledge of Himself and also what a potent weapon it is in our spiritual battles. During our
stay on Mauritius we also created some
wonderful memories together as a family, visiting different parts of the island and we made
some more good friends. And, as it turned
out, we had reached Africa together as a family, a fact I stumbled across browsing the internet one day
(after Beatrice and the kids had flown
to Sweden) where I found a Wikipedia page stating that Mauritius is in fact part of the continent of
Africa! I flew to Sweden August 6th.
There is a joke that goes “I love summer
in Sweden; it’s the best day of the year.” That’s somewhat overstated though. There are at least three days that
are summer-like in Sweden normally. The
truth is we got to enjoy quite a stretch of warm weather (what we in Colorado would call an Indian
Summer) which was just an extension of
the more or less non-stop summer weather we had enjoyed since about May of 2014. The six weeks we had
together, before Beatrice and I returned
to Mauritius to prepare Elin to sail for South
Africa, were very special. We spent much of the time at the cabin by the
lake (Hjalmaren, Swedens fourth largest Lake) where we usually stay when we
come for visits in the summer. For me it was a time of deep spiritual renewal
as God continued to develop my understanding and appreciation for worship and
intimacy with Him. I don’t know that I
have ever felt closer to God. Meanwhile Joshua and Gabriella were beginning to integrate into Swedish society
and now, as I write these words, I can
say joyfully they are both absolutely thriving in their schools and in the Youth Group at Immanuel
Krykan where we attend church on
Sundays. This week they are spending every night there with the rest of the youth for a week of service.
Through a very
special set of circumstances, which seemed to be Gods’ handiwork, Beatrice has begun working with
Open Doors Ministries https://www.opendoors.org/ a ministry to persecuted Christians all over the world. She gets to work alongside
friends, is very engaged in the
meaningful work and deeply grateful for the opportunity.
I sailed with one
crew from Mauritius, up over the top of Madagascar , stopping briefly at Nossi Be, and onto
Richards Bay South Africa, which gave me
ample time to reflect on the amazing things God had done in our lives over the last two years and how
He had indeed brought us to a
“crossroads” where each of us was now going in a different direction. The details of that new dynamic in
contrast to the proximity and intimacy
we had enjoyed nearly every day of the last two
years was so stark that, for me, it caused a sort of shock. For several days after departing Mauritius and then
again after our stop in Madagascar I was
almost overwhelmed at times with feelings of
nostalgia, a sort of bitter sweet longing for something that I knew belonged to the past. Any little item on the
boat could trigger that emotion as I
remembered some special event or moment and
simultaneously realized that a very special time, a significant chapter in our lives, was now past and it
would never be the same again.
There is only one
thing to do in such circumstances – look forward. I had to will myself to do so, but in time I
was able. I began to pray for Africa, my
purpose there, Beatrice and her work with Open Doors and Joshuas’ and Gabriellas’ school and
church lives.
My time in South Africa was wonderful beyond my wildest
expectations. Our friends at Hope Farm,
who had undergone a very traumatic season
involving over one hundred refugees they had invited onto their land to help and then had to flee from, were able
to return to their property about a week after I arrived in
Richards Bay and I was able to visit and
do some work with them as they begin their restoration efforts. Had we sailed straight to South
Africa as we had planned this would not
have been possible, proving yet again that Gods’ timing is always perfect. I also have made some good
friends in and around Richards Bay and,
because of one of them, unexpectedly was able to visit a bush camp near Sodwano Bay and a
magnificent game reserve where we saw
all sorts of Gods’ marvelous creatures in the wild. There are few places where Gods’ creativity is so
boldly on display more than in Africa.
Now, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Sweden,
I feel overwhelmed with the abundant
blessings and grace God has lavished upon
us. It really is tremendous what He has done and I will never tire of praising Him or thanking Him for His
great goodness to us. I wish I could
share it all more exactly, but I have already rattled on far longer than any newsletter has
justification for. If your still with us
then you must have a sincere interest in what we are doing, and for that we are truly grateful. You will
also understand that this, for us, is
more than just a newsletter, it is a sort of
historical document designed to help us remember how richly our Heavenly Father has blessed us.
To that point please help us pray that God will help me in
going a step further now and that I may
use this time allotted to me (about three
months before I plan to return to South Africa) to write a much more thorough accounting of all the lessons
and experiences we have been so richly
blessed with. Whether these writings become a book or just a detailed account our grandchildren can
enjoy someday seems almost
inconsequential to me; what matters is that I do the writing. Pray also that we shall continue following
our Lord whole heartedly.
Finally, please… please tell us your concerns and prayer
requests so we can hold you up in
prayer, which we feel is at the very heart of
our ministry!
May God bless you
and keep you this Holiday Season!!!
Kenny, Beatrice, Joshua and Gabriella Shoemaker
