The Coffee Shop Opens

For more than two years Philip had dreamed of a coffee shop where the older children could learn catering, business, and service from the ground up — the building, the coffee-making, the baking, the buying of stock, the serving of customers — until his own role was only advisory. In November they finally opened, converting a derelict bathroom block; Wud and Tine outdid themselves in the build and the girls did the painting. On opening day the children baked cake and invited the Moken as their first guests — then promptly vanished, too shy to serve their own people. It happened only once. They now serve readily, and having found the cake too dear for villagers, they reworked the recipe to sell at a small, affordable profit.

Alongside it Philip set up an aquaponics experiment, fish tanks feeding the garden, and told the laughing children who teased him for always changing things that this is exactly the lesson: when something doesn't work, you change it until it does. But the dearer milestone was quieter. He and Wud attended Operation Christmas Child training, which spurred the young man to begin taking action among his own people — Philip's long-held dream of the Moken ministering to the Moken beginning to come true. "There is still a lot of water to flow in the sea before it is realised, but this is a big step in the right direction." A grief tempered the joy: Oden, the foster son who had returned earlier in the year, did not come back after the holidays, his family requiring him to work the boats and support them instead of study.

At Christmas, held on 28-29 December, Wud and Tine, the two oldest foster sons, offered to teach the younger children the story of Jesus and run the whole performance themselves — Wud reworking the play so the children spoke more. They played games the older children organised, ate together, watched the Jesus film, and went house to house by candlelight, singing their hearts out and praying for each family. Only twelve of the village's forty-two families came, which grieved Philip; but the transformed attitude of the children gave him great hope. "This," he wrote, "was one of the best Christmases so far."