I don’t cry, but if I did, now would be a good time.

 When we moved to M-ville at the end of 2010, we had no idea that it was a place characterized by conflict.  We joined a solid team with 3 other families, and worked in a well-established community development project that had been running since 2004.  It truly seemed that our move from the remote mountain village of Lal (where we worked 2007-2009) to M-ville was a wise move.  It didn’t take long however, before insecurity gathered a lot of our attention.  The international troops were in a very active campaign of night and day operations in the areas around our city.  The city itself started to host some heated protests in response, and our team had to tighten our security restrictions, and that affected the team dynamics in a big way.

As security deteriorated our teammate families started to disappear.  One family had planned to leave in July, and they bumped that up by one month and were gone in June.  Another had planned to be in M-ville for at least another year, but they made a sudden decision and were gone.  For several months after that the last family hung on, and we thought they would stay because they had been in M-ville since 2005.  It became clear however that they were no longer well in M-ville, and by October all 9 of the children that were “little t’s” playmates were all gone. 

After the other families left we went through a period of doubt, but then we emerged to enjoy our best season in this country.  At first we considered leaving as the last of our teammate families were leaving.  We still had a German couple and a single American woman as teammates, but we knew that we would go through some tough challenges without the support of other families.  After prayer and consideration, we decided to stay, as we knew the season would only be 5 months, after which we would be going home in the spring to have our next baby.  There were challenges not having a community of foreign families, but we also grew close to our local colleagues and friends.  “Little t” regularly had local friends come play in the mornings, “T” got to know her neighbors and language tutor better, and I enjoyed relating with my staff not only as colleagues, but as friends.  We went into those months thinking it would be a season of “making due”, but after growing closer to the people around us, we left M-ville with the hope that we could return after 6 months and pick up right where we left off.  In order to do that, we would need the company of one other family.

One of the first tasks on our minds when we landed in the states in the spring was recruiting another family to join us in M-ville.  Less than a week after landing in Denver we were driving across Wyoming to meet with the family we had in mind.  We had heard that this man and wife, who had served with our organization in our country before, were interested in coming back and bringing their young family to M-ville.  Spending the day with them in April was shockingly encouraging; they were genuinely interested and fully prepared to return, and they sounded very interested in checking out M-ville.  We had brief contacts with them over the summer, and as the fall approached plans were materializing for the other family to visit M-ville in December.  We wanted to move straight back to M-ville in October or November, but we conceded that we would allow the other family to visit it and make their decision first, so that we were not putting undue pressure on them.  Still we felt that we could not wait until December or January to return, so we arranged to temporarily live in another family’s house in the big city in the north.  Leadership of both of our organizations affirmed our plans, and many leaders here were telling us to rest assured that the other family would be joining us in M-ville.  Things were looking good, but, it was all about to change quickly.

Just days before our planned departure from the states, a single boy’s act of violence in M-ville upset everything.  On a special Friday morning a 14-year-old boy left the main mosque in town after finishing the holiday prayers.  He was in the thick of the crowd of men when he pressed the button on his suicide vest.  They say the bomb was extremely powerful, as it killed 45 people and wounded 50 more.  A number of police officers, and the local chief of police, were among the dead.  Perhaps those were the target, but also among the dead were ordinary men and boys.  In the first contact I had with my local colleague, he said that the city was eerily quiet, 3 men from his street were dead, and the husband of one of our newer local staff was also gone.  It hurt to hear how close this had come to the people that we care deeply about.  The pain of the new widow was unimaginable, and the concern of the whole city was reason to grieve.  The best way I can help you understand this incident is to say that it would be just like an Easter morning service being bombed.  If that happened in your community, wouldn’t it suddenly feel like nowhere was safe?

In a way, the mosque bombing didn’t affect us, but in another, it definitely did.  You might be thanking God that we weren’t in M-ville that day, but if we had been there, we would not have been harmed, because we would not have been anywhere near that mosque on that holiday.  Not all matters of insecurity are alike, and this one had no intent of harming foreigners, it was an attack on the local police and local community.  That being the case, in the aftermath I wished I could have been in M-ville to grieve with and counsel our staff.  Unfortunately, at the exact time I was wishing I could be in M-ville, our leaders were planning to make a decision that we would not be able to return to M-ville. 

Four days before our departure from the US we received a call from our central office saying that they had serious concerns about insecurity in M-ville, and that we should not count on returning there as quickly as planned.  The timing could not have been worse.  We wrestled briefly with the thought of postponing our trip, but decided to follow through with the plans to return, albeit with an unprecedented lack of confidence about what was next. 

The day after we arrived in the capital city, we were in a meeting with the other family and our organization’s key leaders.  After more than a year of hoping, discussing, and planning, this was the first time that all of us could gather in one place.  Until this day the attitude had always been one of “hoping and planning for the best”.  Finally we gathered for the first time, just one flight away from M-ville, and the attitude had definitely changed to “let’s be real”.  The sudden and dramatic change in attitudes has been hard to get over.  It felt like we were right in between the two attitudes, because we had lived there, knew the tenuous nature of security there, and yet we felt called to return there because we had seen a way and a value in continuing to move forward.  It also felt like the new family had been given too optimistic, even too naïve a picture of M-ville before they came back to our country, and then after they arrived they became aware of the more challenging aspects about M-ville, and quickly caved to the conclusion: “we can’t do this!”

Without a family to join us, our hope to return was doomed.  Leaders passed the decision that no families will be placed in M-ville for at least 2 years.  They say that our organization will continue to support the projects in that province by sending singles or couples without kids… but I look around and think, who?  There is no one currently available to support the community development project; I was that person. 

Today or tomorrow the local staff in M-ville will hear that we are not allowed to return there.  The local project manager will have to face his fear: he’s been left without foreign support as the end-of-year responsibilities in donor-relations draw near.  Will he be able to secure funding for projects for the next year?  The field team will be wondering what we expect them to do as the power brokers across the province are changing, and they face threats of violence if they do not coordinate with all of them.  The women will wonder if they are headed for unemployment if the insecurity continues and the men deem the female team “unnecessary”.  The point is not that I could prevent any of these tragedies, but that I would prefer to be with these brave men and women as they have to face the new risks and challenges of this “post-foreign military” period.  For our staff there is a significant temptation to despair right now.  If they do not conduct their work safely enough, someone could get kidnapped or killed.  But if they withdraw from all the insecure areas (which coincidently are all the needy areas) then their project will lose viability, lose funding, and they’ll all lose their jobs.  To keep the work in M-ville going is in essence a fight against despair.  I so deeply desired to be a part of that fight.  I wanted to help them puzzle through the challenges, to keep finding a way.  Maybe the risks would have become too much, and the project would have to be closed, but if I were there I could at least bring their employment to conclusion with honor.

What we will do next is undecided, and our varied considerations are the content for later blog posts.  Today my point in writing was to express, if not vent, the emotions of this unfortunate change of plans, this closing of a door.  I can’t move on and care about anything in this country if I haven’t first registered how much I cared about the people I was working with in M-ville, how much it grieves me to think of their pain, their loss, and their fear, and how badly they need a Savior.  Clearly I’m not that Savior, but it would have been nice if I were allowed to take my family back there and point to Him.

WASH Social Marketing – the ongoing challenge with Biosand Filters

 It’s time for another post about Biosand filters.  I started writing about these in January 2011 with this simple introduction:

http://positivechangebythepeople.blogspot.com/2011/01/intro-to-biosand-filters.html

I went on in the following months to write several more times about our work with the Biosand Filter, and if you’re real interested you can read the whole thread here (from newest to oldest):

http://positivechangebythepeople.blogspot.com/search/label/Biosand%20Filters

Well, one of the points that came out clearly in last week’s WASH forum is that our donor organization (that put on the forum) wants us to keep trying to get our Biosand Filters to sell in the private market.  The new concept is; “WASH Social Marketing,” which is closely related to another key concept: “Demand-Led WASH,” which is the opposite of “Supply-Driven WASH.”  Are you getting lost in the concept slogans?  Basically, the idea is to move away from plopping down free solutions (supplies), but instead stimulate social interest and demand in something that the local market can produce and sustain.  Yes, we agree with this, but, (sigh) it has been more difficult than planned.

Perhaps our biggest challenge is that we could not control the practice of other NGOs that distributed Biosand Filters (BSFs) in our province in the past 2 years.  They have distributed thousands of BSFs free, without training, without follow-up support, and without monitoring and evaluation.  As a result, many BSFs cracked in transportation and broke a brief time after use.  Many of the BSFs had been installed incorrectly, or could not be maintained because no one knew how.  One village said, “forget the sand filtration” and emptied their BSFs so that they could be used as gravity water spouts to clean dirty diapers!  This is a classic aid project that has failed everywhere but on the written report that says the distributed X filters.  So sad for the people that needed clean water and didn’t get it.  Now because there are so many broken and useless filters around, we do not have as much interest from communities, even though we do extensive monitoring and evaluation and over 90% of our filters are still in service. 

Another big challenge has been that marketing promotions have been difficult and confusing.  Some communities have misunderstood our attempts to promote an independent factory, and believed that we were somehow profiting from the filter sales at the factory.  Clearly, we are now at a point that promotion must be done by the independent factory mason, not by our NGO project staff.   The question is, will he rise to the occasion and work hard to sell his product?  He hasn’t needed to yet, because the orders that the project buys from his factory have been enough to sustain him.  As we push for more private market growth, we’ll have to shrink our orders from him, and encourage him to go after the additional sales he needs.  We have marketing resources we can give him: business cards, posters, radio ads, even a glass-front BSF.  Hopefully he will take our resources and be encouraged to go out and promote the BSF to communities that really need them.  I’m sure this is not the end of the BSF story…

Freedom is meant to be put to use

 I’m reading an excellent book right now titled “Good News About Injustice” by Gary Haugen.  I would recommend it to any of you.  Today I want to share an excerpt from the book, and then add my comments:

“A preacher once asked me (and the rest of the congregation) to consider a scene that has stayed with me ever since.  He asked us to recall the story about the feeding of the five thousand.  The disciples brought complaints about the hungry multitude to Jesus, and he responded compassionately by blessing the bits of food from a boy’s lunch- five loaves of bread and two fishes.  ‘Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.  They ate and all were satisfied’ (Mt 14:19-20).  The speaker then asked us to imagine a scenario in which the disciples just kept thanking Jesus for all the bread and fish – without passing them along to the people.  He asked us to imagine the disciples starting to be overwhelmed by the piles of multiplying loaves and fish surrounding them, yelling out to Jesus, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!’ – all the while never passing along the food to people.  And beneath the mounting piles of food, the disciples even could be heard complaining to Jesus that he wasn’t doing anything about the hungry multitude.”  (Haugen, page 115).

A stunning picture isn’t it?  Prior to telling this story the author tries to convey that sometimes we pray and wish that God would do something about the ills of the world, but we don’t realize that we have a role to play; we need to use the gifts and abilities he gives us to join him in serving and helping others. 

The quote I copied strikes at the point of material surplus, and we can easily take that and think, “we are blessed with more than enough, we should give.”  I am personally so blessed that a number of people accept this conviction and then support us financially to do our work of service here.  The author takes the story a different direction, however, and points out that we can do something with our surplus of freedoms as well.  He tells the story of a 12-year-old Filipina girl who is raped, and although there are witnesses and an arrest warrant, the offender is not imprisoned because he has connections with the local police.  We can quickly say that this would not happen in America, because of the well-established rule of law our free country provides.  We have a lot of freedoms that much of the rest of the world does not enjoy.  Perhaps I could say that if the fish of Mt 14 were freedoms, we would be covered in a stinky heap.  The disciples recognized that the fish they were given were meant to be passed on.  The work of justice, just like the work of charity and service, is recognizing that what we have been given enables us to meet needs of others; we are to pass on the blessing.  Unfortunately I think justice often gets left behind, because unlike charity and service, justice can require more difficult interventions.  Consider it though, we’re dripping with freedom, shouldn’t we be determined to: “Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow”? (Is. 1:17)

The news

The first week of my solo trip is nearly over, and I have had a great time.  The WASH forum went extremely well, and I will summarize my learning points soon.  For this post, I’d like to briefly share some of what is going on here, both good and bad.

Let’s start with the bad, so that you know it will end on a brighter note!

The bad news is that several of the brothers or believers are struggling through some difficult situations.  One of them has been caught lying to try to get ahead.  Another has claimed that he is experiencing persecution and needs money to move to another part of the country.  Friends that have been working with him more closely believe this is also a lie and attempt to get quick cash in order to pay a debt.  A third brother has been behaving badly in response to missing a job opportunity, again because of lies.  He is not owning this mistake, instead he is blaming the other brothers, and he has even threatened in anger to cause persecution to fall on those brothers.  All three of these situation (that are a bit interwoven) are very sad, and something to pray about for sure.

On to better news:

For the first 4 nights of my time here, I stayed in a house with several local staff, and we had some great discussions.  There were no believers among them, but as I suspected, being away from their home community and in a safe place with me, we had some unusual and interesting discussion.  One of them said that he has announced recently to the rest of the office staff that he will no longer pray, because he feels that god is not close to him at all.  Another one said that he was 20 years behind on his prayers, and he was not going to attempt to make up for that lost time.  These are just two examples of the interesting discussions we had, which I cannot go into with much more detail here.  It was very encouraging to spend those evenings with them; it was great to see that we do, in fact, as foreigners have quite a significant influence on the people that we work with over months and years.   Even people that act calloused and hard when we are in their home community and they are surrounded by such a culture of suspicion and conservatism, they soften up and reveal the influence we have had on them when we have some time away from home with them. 

Another exciting news was that I gained a positive friendship with one of the men I translated for over the course of the weeks’ meetings.  We had never met, but by the last day he trusted me enough to confess his faith to me, and ask me to remember his family in prayer.  I found something bold and powerful in his confession of faith, and hope and trust that his walk will be boosted by taking that courage.

Yet another encouragement from the past week was that scripture stories were shared during our meetings, and the spiritually-wide-ranged audience received them well.  Participants from a neighboring nation (where there is an acknowledged population of believers) included the story of the prodigal son, and one other parable, in their presentations on the ethics of our work.  Pray that those subtle messages can sink down deep in the hearts of those that needed to hear them.

The last news for today might be considered good or bad, or perhaps an opportunity for either.  The talk among foreign teammates here is that the country to our west is going through a period of religious curiousity about end times.  Their leader has made some bold statements, which if carried out, would cause cataclysmic violence.  Apparently this has caused the public there to press their religious leaders with eschatological questions, and that has become a big theme in religious teaching.  This has filtered over the border to us here, where students and youth are asking foreigners these questions as well.   Like I said, is this good news or bad news?  Let’s pray it is opportunity for very good changes in the individuals who are inquiring.

That’s all the news for now, stay tuned…

Why I’m leaving my family for the next 3 weeks

I thought this blog post would be important for 2 reasons:

1-    to communicate to you what I’ll be up to for the next 3 weeks

2-    to remind myself that there were reasons and a purpose behind the decision to leave my family at home and travel for 3 weeks.  This second reason is useful right now because I’m having a hard time with the thought of being apart from my kids and wife for this time.

When I land in our country I’ll spend the first week in a regional WASH forum.  Remember WASH means Water, Advocacy, Sanitation and Hygiene.  30 engineers and practitioners will gather, hosted by a major donor organization, to discuss and learn together.  This will be useful for the project we work with because, as local staff move into greater leadership, they need to build a network of working and learning relationships with other local organizations.  I am excited about this forum because it will bring together staff and leaders from several organizations that I am not familiar with yet.  My hope is that the local couple that will come from our project to join me at this forum will be courageous enough to admit the challenges we have faced with marketing of Biosand (water) filters, and Community-Led Total Sanitation.  Now that our project is local-led, I really need the key staff like this couple to take ownership of our weaknesses and glean from the advice from others on how to improve.

After the WASH forum, I’ll remain in the city for a week of meetings with development colleagues.  It works very well for us to meet after we are together for the WASH forum and before the winter.  The discussion will mostly be focused around how we will divide responsibilities and face the challenges of being without a Development Support Director.  Our DSD left in the summer after a devastating year (lost both of his parents back home), and his role will not be filled until next spring or summer.  Until then, foreigners that work with individual projects, like I have, will have to try to keep things running smoothly.  Hopefully the decisions and actions that come from this week will be beneficial over the next 6-9 months.

In my last week away I will be going up to M-ville, where we worked the last 2 years.  It will be a multi-purposed trip to say the least.  I’ll be responsible for monitoring all the roles and functions of the development project and resolving any troubles there.  I’ll also be paying attention to what is going on in the orthopedic workshop project and the micro-hydroelectric project, in case either of those becomes my responsibility in the future.  What I’m most looking forward to doing is reconnecting with staff and friends.  I hope security is good so that I can take some home invitations. 

What I must not forget to do while I’m in M-ville is repack some trunks of our belongings to send to the city that we’ll be living in over the winter.  We lack the teammates we need to go back to M-ville this fall, so we will be living in a furnished house of another American family while they are on their home assignment this winter.  Unfortunately we did not really think or plan for this possibility when we packed up our house and put it all in storage in the spring.  So I will have to spend some time opening all the trunks and sorting through to find the ‘treasures’ that my family and I can’t live without.  I hope that kaka is able to work in our yard on those days, I look forward to spending time with him.

When I begin my trip home, I’ll make a 1-night stop first in the town where we will be moving.  If I time the shipment of our trunks right I will be able to receive them and unpack a bit.  Even if that doesn’t happen, I’ll be able to see the house we will live in and take some pictures for my curious wife.  After that brief stop I’ll begin the race home: 40.5 hours of domestic and international travel.  The bright light at the end of that tunnel will be seeing my family at the airport!

The summer joke

I really want to delete the last post, “The summer intent”.  It seems like a joke that I said I would blog more over the summer, and then I miss an entire 3 months.  I don’t have much to say for myself, I’d rather just get on with writing, and hopefully you’ll enjoy following my writing as we begin a new season. 

The summer intent - more blog posts!

My blog has been very sparse this year, but I have a lot of things on my mind these days, so my intent is to post more this summer.  I am going to try to get back to writing short, semi-complete thoughts, rather than contemplated masterpieces (that I never reach, no matter how I try).  My hopes is that this will interest you in joining me in dialogue.  Have I said something that resonates with you?  Comment!  Have I brought questions to your mind?  Comment! (whether or not I can answer them doesn’t matter!)  Have I pushed you too far?  Comment and chew me out, I can take it!

"Help us get something out of it"

I cringe every time I hear someone in a church pray, “help us get something out of it” (meaning the sermon or lesson).  I remember this being said back in high school, and I’m sure I prayed this myself.  I wonder how far back this type of thinking goes? 

Why do I cringe?  Well, why do we go to church?  If it is merely to “get something out of it,” then it sounds like we are going for ourselves.  If we are only going to church for ourselves, then we are likely to compare the value of church with the value of the other things we do for ourselves.  If we begin to operate by this comparison, (whether we specifically think it through or not) church will eventually lose, because there are better ways to meet our personal preferences and stimulate our human senses and needs than going to church.  Think about it, how do we spend our time, if it’s up to us, and it’s entirely for us?

            - Working, because it earns money.  There’s no money to be made at church.

- Eating, because it gives us strength.  Sometimes there’s food at church, but if you’re picky at all, you have a better idea of where to get the food you prefer.

- Sleeping, because we need rest.  You can sleep in a pew (many do), but you’ll be more comfortable in your bed, sofa, or hammock.

- Seeing friends.  Many of us have friends at church, but some don’t.  Those that have friends might prefer to socialize at a quiet coffee shop or in the comfort and privacy of a home.

- Reading or learning.  There’s always opportunity to read and learn in church, but again, personal preference can tell us that we’d have a more productive time listening to a favorite podcast or reading a book of our own choice.

- Entertainment.  Some churches have very entertaining worship and media.  Much of it fits a style; if the style is yours, stay, if not, go somewhere else?  If we chose a church based on music or service style, then it is hard to criticize a person who chooses to forego church, and instead religiously attend movies, concerts, plays or comedy clubs that better suit their style. 

When someone prays, “help us get something out of it” at church, it sounds to me like they’re not content or satisfied.  Perhaps they keep attending out of raw determination, or perhaps they drift and decide the comedy club on Saturday night and a Sunday morning snooze sound better to their soul. 

Why do you go to church? 

What is church?

I’m not going to essay my answers to those questions, but I want to mention a couple of themes that I believe rise against the prayer to “help us get something out of it”.  Here’s my themes: Worship, Service, and Offering.

My themes do not mean that we owe something to God (we all know that’s a horrible motivator to go to church!)  My themes mean that we are in a reciprocal relationship with our creator and sustainer God.  Both God and us grow in fulfillment of our relationship, when we both feed it. 

Would you ever, on a date with your spouse, say, “Honey I hope I get something out of this time I’m spending with you.”  How would that go over? 

We go to church not just to “get something out of it”.  We go to worship, we go to serve, and we go to offer ourselves to our God and a body of believers in him.  We go because it’s a relationship that is much more meaningful than the meeting of our needs.


*author's edit added 2 days later:  I want to clarify that my intent in writing this post was not to criticize anyone who has prayed in the manner I have discussed.  I have admitted that I have also prayed in this way, and recognized that my attitude was wrong.  I cannot insist that everyone who prays certain words has a certain attitude.  Different hearts and attitudes are housed within similar words and phrases that we share in communication.  However, we say things for a reason, and what we say tells a lot about us.

Is there a healthier attitude behind the phrase "help us get something out of it" being prayed at church?  How do we guard ourselves from praying with a consumerist mindset... how do we guard our hearts against selfishness?

Welcome the immigrant, part 2

What makes it hard to welcome immigrants?  If it wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be writing about it, so go on, think of why it’s hard to welcome immigrants…

Let’s see… they look different, they speak different, they eat different, they work different, they live different, they worship different.  In addition, some are here illegally, costing us a lot, and we don’t know which ones are here legally and which illegally.  What else?  Some have snuck into our country and blown up stuff in terrorist attacks.  I’m sure there’s more, but does that at least suffice as a summary of reasons why it’s hard to welcome immigrants?

 So what should we do?  I guess that depends who the “we” is.  I hear some people talk as if we have the power to keep immigrants out, when really that requires political process and government policies.  That is a broader, less personal “we”, and not one that we can quickly or easily influence.  My question is, what should the personal “we” do about immigrants?  Our personal options are limited, and that can be frustrating to us sometimes.  It’s too expensive to personally round up the ones we suspect to be illegal and deport them, we probably don’t trust the law process to actually get rid of them, so I guess we can either kill them, or let them live.  Since the result of killing them is undesirable (going to jail), we settle for the lesser of two evils and let them live, frustrating as it is.  I’m making this dramatic on purpose.  My point is that personal frustration from involuntary tolerance can grow and become an issue much bigger than the matter that caused the frustration.  How does the old saying go, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?”  Well, don’t let hate for immigrants or foreigners grow wild, just because you know some are here illegally. 

If you’re struggling with holding a grudge against immigrants, ask yourself, “what would it take for me to not hold this attitude against them?”  You can’t make them disappear, we already covered that in the last paragraph.  Would you agree that it would help if they would assimilate more into American culture and values and life?  We all get frustrated over language barriers, and we get annoyed by people that don’t seem to understand “the laws of the land.”  If they would just be more like us, right?  Some immigrants do assimilate very well, others don’t.  WHY?  There’s plenty of factors that determine this, but I believe one of the biggest ones is whether or not they feel welcomed and cared about. 

Now here’s the whole point that I’ve been leading up to:  You have a powerful influence on immigrants.  You can influence them to love Americans, or hate Americans.   It’s pretty easy to influence immigrants to hate Americans, just ignore them, suspect they’re illegals, mutter slander about them, turn the other way when they’re approaching, you know, anything that portrays that they’re not welcome.  It’s not any harder to influence them to love us, but it takes a different attitude and approach.  So many immigrants come from cultures that value hospitality.  Then they come to America, and they never get an invite into an Americans home.  In college my wife used to take a whole armload of flowers to east African bazaars and hand them out to the women working there.  Many of them said they’d never been welcomed like that by an American. 

Whether or not an immigrant feels welcomed by Americans sets them on a path of building their attitude about us.  If they feel welcomed by us they will be more open to learning who we are.  If they know we care, they’ll share their struggles with us, and we can minister into their lives.  If they do not feel welcomed by us, they will be hardened by feeling like an alien.  A person that feels unwelcomed and insecure in a new setting will seek solace by looking backwards at their home culture and religion for guidance.  Many Muslim women who did not veil their heads or faces in their homelands have decided to veil after they reach America, because they don’t trust a culture that didn’t welcome them, and they became more conservative and devout to Islam as a way to cope with their insecurity.  Shocked? 

We have an influence on immigrants, and this is a powerful opportunity to change the world, as it comes to us.  Want to curb the growth rate in the number of mosques in America?  Respect Muslim immigrants, invite them to your home for a meal, and let them see that they can find people that respect and care about them outside of the religious identity they’ve had since birth.  Invite the person in to your home, and you are giving them an opportunity to look out of the religion that you fear.

Scary?  Sure it is, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever done.  Let’s say you work with a Muslim, or see one regularly.  Warm up to a house invitation by beginning to greet him or her every morning with a handshake, and ask them how their family is.  Make eye contact, show you care, stick around for their answer, listen to them.  If this person never warms up to you, don’t give up and generalize all Muslim people as cold or mean.  Try again, and keep trying, and you will help turn feared foreigners into people that you and me can say, “I’m glad they’re here, they have taught me something, and I’ve had a positive influence on them as well.”

Welcome the immigrant, part 1

We were driving through Des Moines, IA recently when I read the following on a billboard, “I was a stranger immigrant, and you invited me in. –Matthew 25:35”  I caught that it was a church that paid to put that billboard up, but I can’t remember which church it was, nor does that matter to me.  What they have done is taken an often forgotten bit of Scripture and flagged our attention to it with a perfect contemporary example of what this passage is getting at.  I like it.

Look at the passage with me (Matthew 25:35-40):

For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

Actually you should read the whole of Matthew 25:31-46, but what I want to share today is clear in the five verses I copied above.

If Jesus walked through your town, what would you do?  Pull out all the stops and treat him like a king right?  If he needed anything, you wouldn’t ignore him.  We would all want to let him know how cool we think he is, and how much we appreciate him, and if there was time, we might even share a favor we want to ask of him.  Considering who Jesus is, and the power he has, we would all want to get close to him to see what he’s going to do next.  He’s got so much to offer; it would be kind of nice to have him pop out a personal miracle for us, wouldn’t it?  Is it starting to sound like relating to Jesus would be like relating to a celebrity?  You know, someone that you think you know because you’ve read the tabloids, and if you ever saw them on the sidewalk you’d try to act as cool as possible to try to grab an autograph?

Then along comes Jesus’ words to us in Matthew 25, and we have a sudden reminder that Jesus seems to identify more with the losers than with the celebs. 

Why does Jesus identify with “the least of these”?  Who are “the least of these”?  I could be wrong, but I think “the least of these” must include the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.  I would say the immigrant fits right in on this list.  What I find in common on this list is that these are all people that will get in our way of our busy, important lives.  They will slow us down, and cost us something they probably won’t be able to repay.  It’s easy to begrudge that, and avoid people like this, because it’s a lot nicer to have a well-ordered life, the life that we feel we have earned… that we deserve.

If Jesus walked through my town, I admit that I would first be thinking along the lines, “what could he do for me?”  Nevermind that my needs are nothing in comparison with the needs around me, I would think first about my own situation, and what I would love to gain from an encounter with that guy that can do it all.  I am assured that Jesus loves me, so naturally I would expect that he wants to do something nice for me.  The last thing I would expect is for him to come to me and say, “I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m cold, I’m sick, and I’m in trouble with the law, help me!  Can you see yourself being rocked back on your heels if this happened to you?  It would be a shocker if Jesus came and personally identified with desperate human needs like this, wouldn’t it? 

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Who forgives?

If you follow my blog then I assume that you are at least somewhat aware that last week a soldier went off base and murdered multiple villagers, mostly women and children.  I don’t know what that story has done to your heart.  From the news coverage from the soldier’s country I gather that there is a sense of sadness for this soldier and his family.  Perhaps everyone finds it hard to believe that this man committed these awful acts, after all, he was raised in a country with higher standards, part of a fighting force with strict orders about the treatment of civilians.  To that end, it might have been encouraging to read the articles in the past 2 days, after the soldier’s name was revealed.  Along with his name, several stories were told about this man’s past traumas, and his current family.  By the time I finished reading those articles, I saw him as a man, not just a murderer.  Perhaps the same has happened for you, and perhaps we would agree that this information and perspective change helps us not lose hope in the war, in our soldiers, etc.  Pause for a minute, however, and consider the remaining family members of the murder victims.  They have just buried their wives, daughters, and children, including a child the same age as my boy that you all love so much.  There wasn’t a makeup artist that could hide the bullet hole in that child’s head; that is the last thing that the remaining family members saw when they put that child in the ground.  Pause.  What does that family feel?  Does that family care about the story behind that soldier? 

If only, right?  If only we could explain to this family that the soldier had suffered head injuries, and been on too many tours, and was wading through some family troubles back home.  If only we could help them see the man, as his loved ones knew him, before he became known to the world as a murderer.  Wouldn’t that somehow provide some solace for their broken hearts?  Maybe not.  Maybe their wounds are too raw. Maybe for a while the only thing that makes sense to the families of those victims is violent revenge.  That’s unfortunate isn’t it?

If only.  If only we in the west would inquire and learn more about the lives of the people that are labeled terrorists.  If only we would sort out the differing motives of the different organizations, to see that few are a global threat, and the rest have only domestic agendas.  If only we would ask questions about the situations into which these organizations were birthed, and understand the amount of turmoil and traumas those people have been through.  If only we would see them as people: husbands, fathers, brothers of people that would probably break our hearts if we met them face-to-face and heard their stories.  Wouldn’t that somehow make us more concerned about the amount of civilian causalities our troops cause there?  Maybe not.  Maybe 9/11 wounded us too much to see other perspectives.  Maybe for a while the only thing that makes sense is violent revenge.  That’s unfortunate, isn’t it?

Forgiveness sucks.  I mean it’s hard.  Much easier to believe our rightness and our victimization justifies our unforgiveness.  If the other side can’t see us as human, why would we bother to see them as human, right? 

Then one day a man came along and told people, “love your enemy.”  Some of his listeners blew wine out of their noses when they heard him make that joke.  Wait, he wasn’t joking.  In fact, he lived love for his enemies.  Take these examples:

He empathized with the sinner.  He knew why people did what they did, and addressed their hearts rather than punishing their sins.

He walked with the people that did the very sins that He commanded them not to.  He gave them a chance; He got to know them.

He forgave everything that they backwardly, purposely, spitefully, ignorantly did to Him, even though it literally killed him.

Who then is more equipped to forgive an enemy?  Followers of this man, or those that don’t yet believe or follow Him? 

Yes we would all love our enemies to come groveling to us, and we can try to force that with all the wealth and might of the world, but how can we say we follow the Savior if we don’t obey his commands?  How can we say we obey his commands if we don’t love our enemy?  How can we love our enemy if we don’t try to understand them, empathize with their traumas, and forgive them for their offenses to us?

Reflections on protesting

It seems we have made it through the protests and unrest here.  The last blog I posted was definitely the most dramatic day of that week for us.  The next day there was also a protest in front of the main UN office, but no one got hurt.  The day after that we were all back at work.  Now that some time has passed I want to share some of my reflections on the past week, and this whole aspect of life here:

-Going through the day I described in my last blog post, I did not feel any fear.  The next day when I read some new articles I quickly thought, “wow this sounds pretty scary.”  Does that indicate that we’re naïve here on the ground?  I don’t think so, I think it indicates that the news is becoming increasingly sensational.  At the same time, I think we continue to adapt more to this place, and that helps us keep level heads about what is going on, and how to not only stay safe, but well.  I won’t say much on this or you’ll think we’re frogs in the boiling pot.

-I was not, and still am not, alarmed by children chanting, “death to America.”  It surprised me, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I knew those kids, and they knew me.  The next day my wife and son walked the street, chatted with kids as they went along, and had a nice time out.  It has really hit me how impressionable kids are.  If kids that know us and enjoy interacting with us on a regular basis suddenly absorb hate messages against us, that tells me they’re impressionable.  This has made me think about how important it is for us to be here offering counter-influence.  By counter-influence I mean that we live in front of them, and speak with them, disproving the messages they hear that make our people group seem like an enemy.

-I was also in the bazaar 2 days after I wrote last, and had a nice conversation with a couple teenagers.  Usually teenagers here are awfully rude, but these two wanted to find out how the protests had been for me.  I made it clear that I’m not with the army camp, rather I live in a local house and work only with locals in an office that serves poor communities.  Then I could see that they were not going to argue with me, on the contrary they seemed interested in my opinion in how to stop the conflict.  They remarked about how foolish it was for their neighbors to join the protests and lights cars on fire.  “What’s the point of that?” they asked.  I’m always encouraged to talk with moderate, sensible young men, but even more so in the wake of the heated protests.

-When I learned the reason for the Qur’an burning, it raised a serious question and concern.  I decided my staff’s answer was going to be an important gauge of my willingness to keep working in this country.  I do this sometimes.  I pick an issue or an incident that I have a strong opinion about, and gather opinions from my local staff, and use this as an indicator of our common ground (or grounds for me to consider cycling the staff out and getting a new team!).  This time the issue was: can they differentiate between the pastor who burned a Qur’an as a statement last year, and the army men who burned the Qur’ans that were found with notes between prisoners this year?  I was pleased with the results from my informal inquiry.  All of the staff I talked to acknowledged the difference in motives.  The sharper ones also said that it was good that the Marines confiscated the Qur’ans that had been inscribed, because it is also not allowed to write in a Qur’an at all.  Then they suggested that the better outcome would have been if the foreign soldiers had turned over the books to the government.  If this would have happened, the government could have made a very strong religious-political move against the insurgency, saying that they are not really Muslims because they desecrate the Qur’an by writing in it.  Unfortunately this did not happen, who would have cheered for the foreigner troops had they turned the books over to the government, are upset with the troops for taking the matter into their own hands and improperly disposing of them by burning them. 

-My last reflection is that I am astounded by the readers’ comments on the American news articles covering the Qur’an burning protests.  Public fatigue for a decade long military intervention is understandable, but now the comments are growing stronger and more hateful.  That’s unfortunate, because that’s not going to help anyone.  If you’re tempted to jump on the hatewagon and wish that this country would implode and obliterate all it’s people so that it is no longer a bother to the west, please talk to me when I get home, I want to have discussions with folks like this.

If you had spent Thursday with me...

It was a busy week.  Normally I like to reflect and write on key themes in my time here, but with the current state of things I can’t keep up with the reflections, and if I don’t begin writing, I will lose memory of what has gone on.  So, conclusions can come later, today I’ll just write you a rough account of how my day went yesterday.

5am:  The neighbor’s cat is in heat again, and her yowling has woken me.  Quickly Dave and his family and his villages’ situation comes to my mind (read “The Mudslide Story”), and I spend some time thinking about it and trying to decide what should be done.  A week prior I had been to the NATO camp to meet with a USAID rep and ask them to get involved.  There were lots of reasons why they couldn’t get involved, of course.  I have been waiting for weeks for the UN disaster management cluster meeting to happen, and it is scheduled for this morning.  I really don’t want to go to a meeting on my weekend, especially after a 12-hour day yesterday, capping a 60+ hour workweek.  I doubt that this group of organizations will have any positive response for Dave’s village.  Still I have all these reasons in my head why they should do something, not least of these being their mandate for humanitarian assistance.  So, I better go, in case there’s a chance I can successfully lobby them to give aid.  I give a last thought about how our supporters back home would probably be happy if we just bailed out Dave and his family, and I cringe at the thought.  Maybe I’m wired all wrong, but it’s harder for me to think about saving one family and leaving the rest of the village at risk, when I believe there is a better way to respond so that all at risk are helped, and the causes for their vulnerability are dealt with as well.  But for that, I need the help of bigger aid organizations, so it’s settled, I will go to the meeting this morning.

9am: I remember that we’re under tightened security after the Qur’an burning, so I better make some calls and find out if there’s anything going on.  I call a couple sources and our team leader, everything seems peaceful, so I can go to the meeting.  I call Dave and ask him to pick me up and drive me to the meeting at the governor’s conference room.  He’s thrilled to hear that I’m going to take his case to this meeting.  What have I set him up for?  There’s no promise that anything will come from this meeting. 

10am:  I arrive at the governor’s compound, and have to pass security.  Two guards interrogate me in the local language, search me thoroughly, give me dirty looks (all the meanwhile letting several local man with turbans walk right in).  Should have brought my ID I guess.  I get to the conference room: 49 empty chairs, and 1 guy from another NGO.  A meeting agenda was waiting on the table, written only in the local language, so I poke through it with my 2^nd grade reading ability.  When am I going to find the time to learn to read better?  15 minutes later, they all start to shuffle in.  When there are nearly 30 around the table, the vice-governor shows up, taking the place of the governor who was run out of town (or so the rumor goes).

10:30am:  The vice-governor is well into his explanation of the survey of 120 families that are homeless because of flooding, and my phone starts to ring.  First it’s my local colleague, telling me that protests have broken out in town, going around the park.  Then my team leaders calls and confirms the protests.  Then it’s Dave, my driver, who had been waiting on the street between the governor’s compound and the park, in our white NGO vehicle.  He says that the protesting crowd is targeting white NGO vehicles, smashing windows and lighting them on fire.  Being warned of this by the police, Dave took off, put promised to come back for me with our red vehicle.  Around the room, others are becoming aware of the protests, and the leader of the meeting addresses it by saying, “yes there’s protests targeting NATO and other associated foreigners, they won’t come here.”  1 Italian man and I are the only foreigners in the room.  Alright well, my driver is gone, they say it’s safe here, I guess I just sit tight here.

The meeting goes on, but it does not go well in my opinion.  Although this cluster is called “Disaster Management”, the only topic the leader wants to discuss is the immediate response for the 120 flood-victim families.  I try to empathize and imagine what it would be like to have my home destroyed by a rush of water, and how tough it would be especially now while the nighttime temps are still in the 20s.  Everyone agrees something must be done, but the vice-governor is not satisfied with the specifics, so he calls for a round robin, and each person around the table states how their organization will help.  One by one the NGO leaders offer food, blankets, tents, and clothes.  The UN groups offer to help with the collaboration and transportation.  One NGO rep says that he does not have anything to offer, and he gets completely chewed out and told to come up with something.  The Italian has a translator, so he doesn’t have to talk.  Now it’s my turn, so I give it my best in the local language, “Honorable leaders, I represent a small NGO that does not typically engage in relief activity because it complicates our development work.  However we are prepared to do a variety or resilience-building and damage control activities such as rock flood walls, to prevent the number of flood-destroyed homes from increasing.”  I thought I had done alright, but the vice-governor shook his head and said that we needed to keep our attention on the immediate need, and not these other things that are done every year in places that don’t need it.  I didn’t argue, and I knew that my chance to lobby for disaster mitigation for Dave’s village was also not going to happen.  The meeting went on, but never reached the point of considering how to keep the number of 120 homes from growing in the coming 3 months when more floods are likely. 

After the meeting ended I chatted privately with a couple guys that I knew, to ask them if they could help with Dave’s village.  When they heard it was a village at the foot of a hill they quickly said, “Well, in that situation we view it as a human cause.  Those people have dug into the mountain to make their walls, so they have brought the danger upon themselves.”  I briefly argued the point that the majority of flood-damaged houses are built on marginal land that should also be zoned for no buildings.  Ha, land-zoning, this country is a long way from that.  I also urged them to remember that disasters prevented saves more lives than these blanket and tent distributions in the aftermath.  It seemed they didn’t have ears for me. 

11:45am:  Meeting is done, now how do I get home?  I call my driver, he says town is a wreck, but is trying to get back to me.  I call a couple other informants, they give me enough info that I trust I can get out of the gov compound and away from the park quickly.  I tell the dirty-look guards to have a nice day, blend into a group of men my age on the sidewalk, fold my hands behind my back and walk just like they do until I reach the corner, see my driver, jump in, and we’re off.  The bazaar is crazy busy, lots of police trying to appear to be doing something, rickshaws weaving in and out of traffic, carts with oranges and chickens and yarn and hairbows trying not to get hit while crossing the road, and fortunately, we don’t see anyone that appears to be protesting.

1pm:  Got home, had a nice lunch with my wife while the boy was being watched by the neighbor (the one with the cat in heat… hmm I guess I better not poison her cat if she babysits my kid).  Now I’m going over to pick him up, and my guard and the one from next door are having tea in my yard.  I greet them, ask them what the morning gossip is, and they point to the sky.  A big Apache helicopter roars over us, toward the NATO camp.  We all look toward the camp and see a thick, black plume of smoke going up from the camp.  They ask me what is going on.  I say, in the basest of terms, “how should I know?”  Went home and put the boy down for his nap, and thought for a while about whether we should prepare for something to happen.  Prepare for what though?  Normally when we think evacuation, we think that if it gets really bad, we can always evacuate into the camp, but now it’s the camp that is on fire.  Hmm, what is plan B?  Lay low I guess, and have a bag and a car ready to split out of town if we have to.

2:30pm:  I’m working in the yard with my guard.  We’re just finishing the disassembly of my homemade swingset when I get a call from our team leader.  She says that the protestors had broken into the first parking lot in the NATO camp, smashed up some cars, and lit them and a fuel tank on fire.  That explained the black smoke.  She said the camp itself hadn’t been breached, and no one had been killed, although at least a dozen young men (protestors) had been injured and hospitalized.  What now?  It seemed to be over, although there were now rumors of meetings between the big mullahs and the government to decide what would be a fitting protest for tomorrow. 

3:15pm:  Driver Dave is back to help me move some big things out of my yard and into the yard we will be moving into.  For one of the trips I ride in the back to steady the load.  As I get out of the gate I see a couple of the cute little kids from next door.  They greet me politely and with smiles as always.  Then another boy from my street, not more than 7 years old, comes toward me yelling “death to America” over and over again.  I don’t pay him any attention.  The other kids all along the street hear him and join in.  The group of yelling, chasing kids grows for the whole 200-meter trip.  What do I feel right now, in this moment?  I look at the kids, and I see kids.  Not just any kids, but the kids I have seen and interacted with for the past 15 months.  I know them, they know me, I know they’re not going to do any harm to me, but why are they saying this?  I remember the words of an older teammate that I respect very much.  He once told me that in insecure places, the best way to understand the sentiment of the religious leaders is to listen to the children.  I think this friend was probably right, but still, these kids are not going to do anything to hurt me, they haven’t picked up rocks.  We reach the destination and I get off the back of the truck and just talk to the kids as if they weren’t yelling and acting angry.  Their yelling stops, they return to playing, and I go about my work with Dave and my guard. 

3:30pm:  We’re still working at moving some things between the yards (from within, not on the street) when a mix of firecrackers and AK-47 fire goes off outside the gate of the new yard we are moving into.  The other 2 guys and I head to the back of the yard where there is another exit.  After a minute the firing stops and just the hollering of young men continues.  My guard tells me that the office guard just returned from the bazaar and reported that people there were really stirred up.  I make his concern crack into a smile when I say, “So now is not a good time for me to go get a haircut, I really need one?” 

6:30pm:  To end the day I spend a half hour in the sauna.  I review the day in my mind.  It went differently than I expected, but I’m not upset.  I didn’t get much done, but nothing too bad had happened, and that was good.  It’s hard to know what tomorrow will hold, but I don’t feel that being nervous or afraid will do anything.  Despite all of these things that seem so unfortunate and out of control, I feel at peace and alright with being here. 

30 hours later:  It’s now Friday night, and for those that might have been concerned about what Friday would bring, it was a quiet day.  A little more gunfire on the streets, and definitely some protests took place, but not like yesterday’s attack on the camp.  The longer we are here, the more we learn to just stay inside when things are questionable, and not freak out when anything happens, because just as quickly as these incidents spring up, they die back down just the same.