Raising Sons on a Desert Island (Udo and Berni Lüsse)

What would you think about raising two very active boys on a desert island?  Find out how one couple approached this next on MemCare by Radio.

Welcome to another edition of MemCare by Radio.  I’m Scott Hollinger and I’m glad that we could be together once again. 

Today we have Udo and Berni Lüsse with us. Udo and Berni served with Trans World Radio from 1966 until their retirement in 2006.  They served all of those years on the small, isolated island of Bonaire located in the Dutch Caribbean.  Today they’re going to share with us their perspective on raising their two sons Christoph and Dietrich on Bonaire.  They have a lot of great insights and a very common sense approach to how to raise kids.

Bonaire, as we have always said, is a beautiful island and it was difficult in the beginning.  It was difficult in the sense that at that time when the boys were born, I didn’t speak all that well English and I didn’t know, for example, I’d never seen a diaper pin in my whole life.  Now, of course, we have Pampers, but there it was all cloth diapers and I was a bit scared.  My family was away, but the ladies were really great and Bonaire is a wonderful island for children to grow up. 

There was a lot in nature to enjoy during free time when they had the afternoon off from the school.  Things leant themselves to have a happy time, and we tried to use the things the island offered for the boys to have fun with.  Of course they needed an education and so they went to the public schools but they learned with the early things wind surfing; they learned to dive, of course to snorkel and to swim and to enjoy the beauty of this island.  Bernie of course has a much closer view of all the nature factors so she spent much more time with them together on these issues while I was in the studio, at the  transmitter, and different places to work.  This was also a wonderful thing that the mission understood.  The first place of the mother was in the home, and with the children.  We really appreciated that factor and that she could really spend quality years with the boys before they had to leave the island. 

I would like to go a little bit back also.  The boys were basically raised there -- their first years in Tera Kora. That opened a lot of doors with the people because people like children and not very many white children had lived there.  So they were a good bridge to the people on the island.  Through the boys we got to know very many people.  We got to know teachers.  We got to know just scads of people even when they were grown up which enriched our lives, but first of all a very good contact in that community and also the beginning of learning the Papiamentu language.  So, the boys themselves really, really enjoyed Bonaire, enjoyed all the life there, had very good Antillean friends even when they came down in later years.  They teamed up with their friends there, and they had lots of kids in the mission, and they liked school!  What kids really do enjoy school?  Especially boys when there is a whole ocean out there to explore and so on.  But all of that, though even at times difficult, was a very good experience for the boys and their horizon has broadened in a way that it could have never happened anywhere else.  Another great advantage growing up in a foreign country is that children very easily learn languages.  And so, kids just grow up with the learning or speaking different languages which then opens up great opportunities later in life. 

So when you look at where your two sons are now they’re men, they’re married.  They have families.  In terms of what they are doing today, is what they’re doing today a direct reflection or as a result of growing up on that island of Bonaire?

Our older son Christoph, and both are living in Califournia now, has a great love for the country. He lives in the country.  He has a donkey and four goats.  On Bonaire for the first time he was confronted with a Downs Syndrome child and he never saw that as anything special but now he is a Special Education teacher, teaching college-age children in a special program, and I think that possibly the love for that was laid already on Bonaire.  The younger son -- I do not see it that obviously. Yes, but their lives have been formed definitely and Dietrich has come back after college to work on Bonaire.  All of that has helped him greatly in what he is doing now and in his work, helping in the church and with everything that he is and does.  We’re very, very grateful for that.

Udo – This ‘international thing’ is staying with them.  They’re in the plans of increasing their family and they’re planning to adopt a little baby boy from Ethiopia.  So this is a plus for us to see how the Lord is leading in the lives of our boys who had to leave the island at the early age of 15 and 17 years of age.  But finding parents here in our place, and school educators who loved them and showed them the love of the Lord, they today both follow the Lord Jesus Christ, which for us is the most important thing.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to spend a few minutes with us.  I’d like to thank Udo and Berni for sharing with us some of the lessons they learned while they raised their sons Christoph and Dietrich to adulthood.  I trust this time has been an encouragement for you as well.