In Summation...

Hello everyone! Lucas and I have been searching for our new home and, as part of the search, I've been e-mailing mid-wives. As a passing note, everyone we've spoken to about our future has been so amazing! If you are one of those people and are reading this, thank you so much!
Anyways, one of these midwives is thinking about doing mission work with her family and asked us a few questiona about our experience. We realized that the e mail we wrote sums up the cultural side of what we have learned so far. Here is is:

"We are not exactly missionaries as we are with the United
States Peace Corps, but I think that the experience is very similar.
We are serving in a rural outer island. There are so many incredible
things about living where we do, and it's the hardest thing that I
have ever done as of yet.

There are FOR SURE places in the world that are racked with sorrow and
grief that are unfathomable (I'm thinking of places like Haiti or
Sudan).

Where we live is rural (no electricity, no roads, no running water, 30
hours on a cargo boat to the capital) for sure and pretty incredible.
People mostly live off their gardens in a seemingly idylic island
paradise--there is no genocide, no hunger, and no guns. People take
care of each other--a child is absorbed by the tribe if the parents
can not take care of him/her, the elderly and folks with special needs
are taken care of... all really special and cool. Obviously nothing
like haiti or sudan whose problems are so in your face and clear...
BUT....

there are problems.

I think what makes it hard (especially for the sensitive) is that you
really get to know your neighbors, for better and for worse. Lucas
has to hang out with men he knows beat their wives, rape children, or
in other ways have really different values than he does. In America,
you can choose who you live with and who you associate with, but in a
village setting; there is no escape. Sometimes, it's the underlying
social issues that are harder to deal with than the poverty...In so
many ways, i've re-defined what i think of as poverty. And there's
the injustice from other nations that screw over the poor. I think
it's really hard because you really start to see all the other issues
that contribute to the problems and it makes you so so angry at the
injustice of it all."