Sometimes it’s not all about money

Every week, sometimes a couple times a week, my phone begins to buzz, and the familiar name of a local friend shows on the caller ID. I call him Tom. Tom has a talent for calling at the worst of times: putting the kids to bed, in a meeting with local staff, or in the bathroom! Tom is persistent, enthusiastic, and loyal, and I like him because of that. For the past months he has been repeatedly asking me to find a job for his friend, Zed. Zed has been out of work for a long time, and he lives in this new city that we are now in. Unfortunately I have no ability to create or open a job for him right now. After each request, Tom begrudgingly accepts this unfortunate reality. Last week Tom said, “Zed wants to meet you, where can he meet you?” I knew this was coming, yet it made me anxious to think of hearing all the petitions of this friend of a friend. I could tell that this was important to Tom, and Tom has become important to me, so I named a time and place to meet Zed. --- It’s mid-day outside the park, and I’m looking for Zed so that we can sit down to a nice plate of rice and meat at a restaurant, my treat. We find one another and I lead him into a restaurant, but before we sit down on the cushions he says, “this is a problem, we can’t meet here, it is much safer to meet at your office.” So, we take a 20-minute walk back to the office, and I try to buy some kebabs along the way, but Zed keeps refusing to eat. This is a bit disappointing, since I was looking forward to a nice lunch. We finally reach the office and sit down, and Zed begins to tell me his story. --- Zed is a poor man, so poor that he has not been able to get married. Let me spell out the significance of this: in this culture, marriage is paramount. Without marriage there are no children, and without children there is no, shall we say, social security. In this culture, children are much more than progeny, they are the sustaining of a family’s name and honor, and they are the only hope an older adult has of being able to retire, rest, and die in dignity. When a man is approaching 40 years old and says he is too poor to marry, this is basically a declaration of an emergency. --- So there I am in the office with a jobless, wifeless man… a man whose friend has diligently advocated that I give a job to, but for whom I have no job to give. Wish you could have been in my shoes? --- I patiently listen to the story of Zed, and what he describes is a pretty awful situation, but he does not move on to a clear statement of request. Breaking a long pause, I begin to delicately explain the nature of NGO job posts. I told of how I started working with 100+ local staff, and that I could not prevent it when nearly 90 of those lost their jobs. I told him of the conservatism and ethnic suspicions in my next project, tensions that created high risk for bringing people from his ethnic group on staff. I told him of the growing risks for locals working with NGOs, including increasing kidnappings. Then I was just moving to the conclusion of how I did not currently have any jobs to offer him, when he interrupted me. --- “Excuse me, but you’ve misunderstood me,” Zed said, “I didn’t come here to talk about jobs of money. That’s not the point. I came because I want you to pray for me, and remember me. I need to know that you’ve heard my situation, and are praying for me through this hard season.” --- The room was quiet for what seemed like an hour. I sat and recalled Zed’s story through a new frame of reference, and was aghast at his hardships, in light of his sincerity. Then Zed broke the silence again, “sure, if you had a job, I would take it, but that’s not why I wanted to meet you. I’m not without options. I could stand in the bazaar with other day laborers and get some work now and then. I could join the police and make a decent wage. I’m not that concerned about this, what I’m concerned about is how to keep my heart and faith strong, and how to keep running this race.” Indeed, in the story Zed told me when we first sat down, he made mention that his heart had been transformed 3 years earlier. I didn’t mention that to you earlier in this story, because I didn’t fully trust his words, until he added a demonstration of that transformed heart. After the above statements from Zed I realized, alright, this guy is for real. --- So we prayed. I prayed over every matter that Zed had mentioned, and he prayed for me and praised God for our encounter. --- A couple days after Zed and I met, he left town, headed back to the village he came from, hoping to spend the winter with genuine friends. I’ve talked to him only a couple times since, but I’m sure we’ll meet again. Maybe next time I’ll have one of those risky jobs to offer him.