Returning to the Emerald Island

A Letter from Jan Heckler, serving in Madagascar

April 2018

This was just my fourth time to arrive in Madagascar after a lengthy stay in the United States. It is always amazing to me to cross over the Atlantic Ocean to Paris in just a matter of a few hours.

It took my father about six very long days to get to the U.K, zigzagging across the ocean on a boat full of seasick GI’s, all the while dodging U-boats. Each time I land in France to catch the flight to Antananarivo, I remember my father’s stories about his stay in England, his landing in Normandy and those hedgerows all “down there” somewhere.

For some reason, I also nearly always remember my second father, Charles Dewald, whose own father was a Presbyterian missionary in Ghana. However, his chance to serve in mission came about 100 years ago when a letter home did not travel at close to the speed of light. Charles’ father lost his sight in one eye after a severe bout of malaria that caused him to return home.

After stepping down from the Airbus A340 to the tarmac at Ivato airport in Antananarivo, friends are there to help collect my luggage and take me to my home away from home. There, my cats Missy and Grace are always waiting. And the bittersweet emotions of looking forward to seeing the many people I know and love here in Tana while still grieving the separation from all my friends and loved ones back stateside flood me once again. It is a strange and always ambivalent feeling.

Still, arrive I do and my cats — once they pick up my scent and familiar cues — are grateful to see me. Missy crawls all over me for the next two or three nights, awakening me with her paw touching my face often as if she is reassuring herself that it really is me and that I really am back. She peers directly into my eyes and purrs. It is good to be together again!

Foremost among those I desire to see as soon as can be arranged are the three other members of the EBMI Project core team — Vololoniaina Rasoavelonirina (a.k.a. “V”),

Herimampionona Rasoanomenjanahary (a.k.a. “Mampion”), and Diocletienne Benaverana (a.k.a. “Dio”).

These three are the heart of the EBMI Project. V is the Deputy Project Administrator and oversees day-to-day operations. Mampion and Dio are the project’s two Sr. Teacher-Educator/Coaches (TECs) who supervise TECs as they train teachers. All three perform quality assurance activities as well.

All three of these people are a real delight to work with, and it is always an experience of unbridled joy when we finally are able to reunite. I often remind friends and congregations that I and not my/our indigenous partners am the big receiver in our mutual giving and receiving partnership. People like V, Mampion, Dio, and Pastors Mamisoa and Yvette are palpable reasons why.

This core team of individuals, working only with my itineration-assignment-invoked “distance” consulting, struggled against a myriad of factors that worked against them to achieve an overall average score on cumulative final exams (all grades and subjects) that still exceeded 90% correct! They achieved these spectacular results despite:

• the country’s worst bout of the Bubonic & Pneumonic Plagues in more than fifty years last (North Hemisphere’s) autumn;
• a month’s closing of schools to help halt the spread of the diseases;
• training three new TECs; and
• the school system’s frantic demand, once reconvened, to “cover” all first term curricula in the term even though the term had been shortened by more than 30%!

On this occasion, I bring the core team good news from the U.S. Two additional external helpers are reinforcing the team working on the EBMI project. First, Rosemary Mitchell, Sr. Director for Mission Engagement and Support for World Mission and a certified fundraising executive (CFRE), indicated that she will be working with V and me to help identify a major funding partner so we can move forward with “roll-out” (when the training of large numbers of teachers begins) in the EBMI Project. Second, Rickey A. McCallum heard the same calling and has likewise joined our growing team. Rickey, the Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Engagement at the University of Tennessee and a member of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, TN, is a strong supporter of this ministry and the EBMI Project.

It is a great reward to be able to work with V, Mampion, Dio, the rest of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (the FJKM), Rosemary Mitchell, the rest of the extended Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and people like Rickey McCallum on this project. Imagine being a part of a multi-year effort whose fruition will mean improved education for thousands of children year after year after year in perpetuity. Well, open your eyes! Because you who read this are a part of it — a huge part!

When you talk and write about this ministry, donate to it and pray for it, not only do you become a necessary ingredient of the EBMI Project, but you also help other things this mission co-worker does with our partners here. These things include helping to empower women, to protect children and to build the capacity of our partner church.

Please consider supporting our ministry in Madagascar. Thanks be to God for the privilege of serving, and many thanks to all of you who already support and accompany me in helping to transform the hope of today into the realities of tomorrow.

Jan Heckler
ANTANANARIVO