I’ve seen a quote from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables several times over on my social media recently: I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. The background is a pleasant fall scene that includes perfect pumpkins and trees changing colors. It just looks so lovely and I can imagine the cool weather and spicy smells that accompany the scene. But it also reminds me that we don’t experience such seasons where I live on the equator.
We don’t experience the seasons caused by the tilt of the Earth since we are just a few degrees south of the equator. We have almost the same number of hours of daylight all year, with sunrise and sunset only varying by about a half-hour. It doesn’t get cold and since we’re high enough in elevation, it doesn’t get brutally hot either. We do have rainy season and dry season, but those are even misnomers since a tropical rain forest is sufficiently wet all year. We don’t have any of the seasonal clues that time is passing by and that the holidays are approaching.
Instead, we usually have the school calendar giving us the clues of progression with the term break indicating it is almost time to be thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year we don’t yet have that. But, I am still so very glad to be in a world with Octobers. Since July travel restrictions have prevented missionaries from returning to serve. But, it looks like that might change in October. A dear friend and fellow teacher has a booking for mid-October, along with two key aviation families and a tribal church planting family. This route is more promising than the ones we’ve seen in previous months that have all been cancelled. Everybody on the flight already has permissions to get into the country, which also makes the situation look more hopeful. They could be here and out of quarantine by the end of the month! Yay for Octobers!