Threads of Time

A letter from Jan Heckler serving in Madagascar

June 2016

It’s the kind of pullover blouse many women like—a loose-fitting, cotton-blend V-neck with 3/4 length sleeves. Comfortable. Matches well. At the time I bought it, I had no idea what all it would go through with me. In fact, the only things I recall that survived the last 17+ years of mission preparation and work (and the 25 moves in and around five African nations and the U.S. while serving God and country) are my old (NKJV) Bible, this blouse, and me.

I wore the blouse when I sold my home with its fenced backyard, its Japanese magnolia, rabbits, chipmunks and birds. It was with me when I gave up my belongings as well; furniture, wardrobe, a small but beloved art and book collection, and most everything else you would consider an integral part of one’s domicile and refuge.

Giving those things away was one of the hardest things I’d ever done . . . at least up to the moment after I’d done it. Then curiously, the Lord “turned my heart” and as the private nonprofit truck drove off with the last of my belongings, I suddenly felt a wave of unexpected relief! Hard to imagine, I nearly levitated when the weight of ownership was removed. In fact, contrary to conventional understanding that I might’ve been the owner of these “things,” it became apparent that it had been these things that had been owner of me. One of the first of many rewarding lessons taught me by my Lord, I soon would know that happiness was not tied to the number or kinds of things one possessed but rather in the depth and breadth of one’s relationship with God.

Peace Corps chum Chris Shaw takes a moment to record his visit with me while I was in residence at MTTC.

At first I found that there were no mission positions available through PC(USA) World Mission that required my skills and experiences. So I applied to the United States Peace Corps. Nothing to take lightly; the Peace Corps had lost 308 volunteers in service from the time President Kennedy founded it by executive order in 1961 to the time I applied, and was rejecting two of every three applicants it received. The extensive vetting took weeks to complete. But with the Lord’s help, I finally was selected to go to Zimbabwe to work at a college in Esigodini 30 miles ESE of Bulawayo. So I made my goodbyes to family and friends and, with a brief detour to say “so long” to my sister and her girls in Delaware, I headed off to Washington to join up with the other “Zim-13s” to fly on to Harare on August 28, 2001—just 14 days before the infamous assaults of 9/11.

Little did we know that the world would change forever when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a plane full of die-hard American patriots who just refused to go easily into that good night. We were being trained in the city of Gweru at the eastern edge of the Matabeleland when word would finally reach us: “America is under attack!” My Bible, blouse and fellow Zim-13s were just about all of physical America I had to hold on to as we tried to make sense of things, to put “Humpty” back together again.

The experience ended when Zimbabwe President Mugabe disposed of us much as he had done with others before us. Keeping with a tradition he began against the Ndebele tribe in the mid-80s, he let loose his hooligans to pick on us indiscriminately and with impunity. In the end, more than half of us were physically attacked or bodily threatened. One of us was kidnapped. One murdered. 308 had sadly become 309 right in our midst.

Finally we were evacuated just before Thanksgiving, only 11 weeks since arriving. Still, the training and experiences were rich and thanks to that I now at least appeared “qualified” when it came to returning to sub-Saharan Africa a few months later. The blouse somehow made “the cut” and found a place to be carried along each time.

Montfort Teacher Training College (MTTC), circa 2004. It is located ~10 miles ESE of Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi, lying between that bustling city of 2 million and the Mulanje Mountains near the border with Mozambique.

I next journeyed to Montfort Teacher Training College near Nguludi, Malawi, where I helped educate new teachers for two years. This was where we first began field-testing elements of evidence based methods of instruction, or EBMI. For two years we used EBMI to train teachers and grade school learners at Montfort Demonstration School, a primary school nearby the college. Despite warnings by the headmistress and teachers that Malawi girls could not learn math, EBMI gained a 2,600 percent improvement in girls’ math performance. The findings of Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968) showing the effects of teacher expectations were replicated yet once again.

After Malawi I was assigned next to Katima Mulilo, Namibia, and the Caprivi College of Education. There we continued field-testing essential elements of EBMI and again achieved outstanding success over the next two years. The blouse, still bearing up, somehow continued with me during these years as well; and my Bible? Well, its pages only got more curled every morning throughout.

The nature of my work in mission changed a bit after Namibia. For a second time I applied to PC(USA) World Mission (WM), but again we were frustrated due to a hiring freeze caused by a budgetary shortfall. So at WM’s suggestion I took advantage of an invitation I had to volunteer at the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, where I consulted with their huge Teacher Development Programme.

Friend Genet Adame joins me in a tearful good-bye just minutes before I head to the airport to leave Addis Ababa, Ethiopia after two and a half years working in mission with and many others at the Ministry of Education (19 DEC 2008). The blouse miraculously continued on! (photo by ‘unknown’; permission granted; taken on/about 19 DEC 2008 in Addis Abba, Ethiopia.)

Although we tried to mount a demonstration of EBMI while there, my work at the ministry simply would not allow it as my involvement with a five-donor nation/World Bank funding project to improve the quality of education in Ethiopia was the ministry’s top priority. Still, I was able to provide material help in gaining the $417 million to help improve education, so the time was well spent.

Returning to the U.S. by early 2009, I worked hard to finish researching and writing the pre-service teacher training text, Teaching Methods That Really Work!—Evidence Based Methods of Instruction (EBMI). Although I was slowed by some serious injuries when I was hurt in a bad fall, I still was able to finish the book by mid-2010, when it was finally published.

Finally the Lord smiled on a third attempt to join forces with the PC(USA)’s acclaimed World Mission program, and I was accepted into the ranks of some of the finest mission personnel to be found anywhere on the globe. The EBMI Project, however, was not the reason for my assignment to Madagascar. The PC(USA)’s partner church, the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, or FJKM as it is commonly abbreviated from the Malagasy equivalent, had requested assistance in building its organizational infrastructure and capacity, and so I was invited to serve as an external consultant to its leadership.

A year and a half later, at our partner church’s behest, we were invited to demonstrate EBMI at one of FJKM’s 723 nationwide schools. Because of the exceptional results of that two trimester demo in 2014, FJKM invited the PC(USA) to begin helping them with the lengthy, complex task of “retooling” nearly 3,000 teachers to master and adopt these methods to improve the quality of education their schools are providing.

We continue to train trainers and fine-tune the system as we try to raise the funds necessary to begin training a large number of teachers. I’m so pleased to report that with 11 semesters of completed work by four EBMI-certified teachers (as part of our training trainers process), their classes, with nearly 300 learners, have averaged more than 90 percent on cumulative final exams to date!

Taken during my last visit home (OCT ’14) by friend & colleague Michelle Lori. The blouse and bible continue to find a place wherever I go and remain with me now. (Photo by Michelle Lori in early October 2014, outside PCUSA/World Mission national offices in Louisville.)

Throughout this fairly continuous effort to improve teachers’ access to effective methods of teaching and as my old blouse continues to fade, my belief has only grown more interwoven with the fabric of my experience, one tailored by my Maker’s hand to make me more ready for the next work no worse off for any of the wear.

Your gifts of prayer and financial support, like the thread and needle, tie us together and make our mission more complete, causing it to be shared by a large and growing community of faith. I thank you for your gracious gifts. Still, more is needed if this work is to continue. A good fund-raising year for World Mission in 2015 staved off the shearing of our ranks and permitted us to continue here in Madagascar. I invite you to continue in your financial commitment to this ministry, indeed with an annualized commitment, so that the work of EBMI will become a reality for those who need it. Thanks be to God for the privilege of serving these 17 years, and many thanks to each of you who supports and accompanies me as we loop and wind our way, our strand of time sewn together in love and faith.

Jan Heckler
Antananarivo
Have Faith . . . Will Travel