Changing the World, One Tuna Sandwich at a Time

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On February 7, 2015

In Other

I seem to have always wanted to reject the ordinary.

As a child, my favorite color was green instead of pink.  I refused to wear the stylish clothes my mom bought me, in favor of old hand-me-down dresses.  I didn’t wear a single pair of jeans until I was about sixteen.

When we moved to Liberia when I was six, I wholeheartedly embraced my identity as a Third Culture Kid.  I was thrilled to be different.  Some missionary kids struggle with not fitting into their home cultures; I reveled in the fact that I did not fit in.

I was determined not to live an ordinary life.  In high school, I volunteered to help with a Bible study for disabled kids. I spent summers at a camp for inner-city kids.  I was determined to Change the World.  I wonder now if my motivation was less about loving people and more about my fear of being ordinary.

I was terrified of suburbia and mini-vans.  I am thankful that God in His graciousness is allowing me to spend my life in Africa.  But I’ve discovered that even here, where adventures are much more common, the Ordinary still creeps in.

I’m in that place right now.  We’re involved in ministry that is still trying to get it’s toddler feet on the ground.  My husband spends the bulk of his time studying and preparing for classes.  We have very few cool, exciting stories to tell.

New relationships are coming slower than I want.  Language is coming slower than I want.  I am trying to figure out this new world of having all my children in school, and how I am supposed to divide my time and what I should and shouldn’t commit to.

And every day I make meals and fill water bottles.  We do homework and pick up toys and I do some accounting for our ministry, and I help in my kids’ classrooms, and I go to HOPAC board meetings.  I am busy…..but it is all ordinary.  Even power outages are a routine.

I find myself restless and discontent.  I want more.  I want to do more; I want to be more; I want to accomplish more.  I feel like I must be doing something wrong.

We look for visions from heaven, for earthquakes and thunders of God’s power, and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people near us.  If we will do the duty that lies nearest, we shall see Him.  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, February 7)

Once again,  I must knock down the idol of Being Different.  Am I where God wants me to be?  Am I doing what God wants me to do?  Then I must embrace the Ordinary.  Pick up the toy; make the tuna sandwich; love the person in front of me.

Even though I’ll always like green a whole lot more than pink.

Mungu ni Mwema.

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On February 3, 2015

In Other

Recently I read here that World Bank development indicators have placed Tanzania the fifth most dangerous place in sub-Saharan Africa for a woman to give birth (out of about 50 countries).

So it was a happy day to visit my friend, Esta, and her brand new baby boy, Emmanuel.  Baby and mama are safe and sound, after a few scares and months of prayers and bed rest and a c-section.

(This picture doesn’t accurately reflect her joy!)

He has the best dimples ever, but he slept so much I just couldn’t get a picture of them.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  

Mungu ni mwema.  God is good.

Comparing Lasagna and Tarantulas

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On January 31, 2015

In Other

Emily sat in my kitchen last week and watched me make ricotta cheese for lasagna.

“Wow,” she said, “I sure wish I could do that.”

“Well, first of all, it’s ridiculously easy,” I told her.  “But second, you wouldn’t have been able to learn out in the village.  You are too busy living in a house without running water and killing tarantulas.  Besides, out there you don’t even have access to fresh milk or to an oven to make lasagna.  You win the prize for living in Africa.”

“Not compared to Michelle,” she responded, referring to a new friend of ours.  “In Congo, she had to cook over charcoal, and she gave birth to her first child in Africa.  She wins the prize.”

Emily has been my very good friend for 12 years, so this exchange was all light-hearted.  But it led to a deeper conversation.  Why do we always have this tendency to compare?  Why do we always judge our spirituality, or our effectiveness as a mom or wife or housekeeper, by looking around at others?  And why is a harder life necessarily equated with a more spiritual life?

In Africa, we expatriate wives compare each other’s living conditions.  In America, maybe it’s ministry commitments or school choices.  We make unnecessary martyrs of each other and ourselves, when really we need to just get about the business of obeying God with what He has put in front of us.

To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is a very different thing.  No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.  No saint dare interfere with the discipline of suffering in another saint.  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

Can we simply come to the conclusion that God has called us to different lives, and that we are all gifted differently?  That each of us will have our own good things and hard things in the lives He has called us to?  My measure of success, and my measure of spirituality, is between God and me, not me and Every Other Woman.

Even though I’ll always admire Emily’s tarantula-killing skills.

———————————————————————————

Emily and her family stayed with us this week, which is always super special because our friendship goes back to our first year in Tanzania.  We adopted our kids at almost exactly the same time, and they are all best friends.

They also are starting an extremely cool new agriculture project, which you can check out here.

Grace and Caleb have been friends since we brought them home, so I had to throw in my most favorite picture of them, when they were two years old.  

Yesterday:  Caleb and Grace, age 9

When God Doesn’t Show Up

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On January 27, 2015

In Other

Our dog Frodo ran away while we were on vacation.  Our gardener, Paul, was looking after Frodo while we were gone.  He opened the gate only one time that week.  When he did, Frodo bolted.  This was very uncharacteristic for Frodo, so it totally took Paul by surprise.

Paul was devastated.  He looked awful when we came home.  He spent days looking for Frodo.  We put up fliers and offered a reward.  We prayed God would bring him back.  But now it’s been a month, and there’s no trace of him.

More bad news came our way.  We’ve been working for years to adopt a fourth child.  There’s an empty place in our family.  We were thrilled when we found a Tanzanian friend familiar with the Social Welfare department who was willing to advocate for us.  Recently he gave us the unfortunate news that even he has not gotten anywhere.  They are steadfastly refusing, even though we’ve proven a fourth adoption is legal.  There is no one else we can appeal to.  It seems hopeless.  We are coming to grips with the fact that it may not happen.

There’s other hard things.  The list is long, but some are at the front of my mind.  It’s been exactly one year since Jeremiah died.  We have a sister with a hematoma.  We have close friends who at this moment are standing on a precipice, waiting for God to show up.  If He doesn’t, the fall will be disastrous.  Too terrible to think about.

Why didn’t God answer our prayers to bring back Frodo?

Why hasn’t He given us a fourth child when there are millions of orphans in this country?

Why did he allow Jeremiah to die?

If we lived in a world of random chance, then these events would be understandable.  They wouldn’t make sense; they would still make us sad and mad, but we could chalk it all up to the whims of the universe.

But I don’t believe in a world of random chance; I believe in an all-powerful God who created everything that is, and I believe He is good and every event has purpose.  Yet when dogs run away and children languish in orphanages and babies fall out of windows, it’s easy to wonder about whether that all-powerful, good God actually exists.  Or that He actually cares.

So how do I reconcile my faith in a good God with the horrors of this world?  When I pray and beg and all I get is silence?

All of us, every single person in this world, believe some things on fact and some on faith.  It’s up to each of us to discern which parts are worth staking our lives upon.

For me, it starts with the facts:

First, I look around me and I see a Designer’s watermark on DNA and leaf-cutter ants and glow-in-the-dark jellyfish.

Next, I look to Jesus, and I am convinced that his resurrection is one of the most verifiable facts of history.  And since it can be verified, then that means I can believe everything Jesus said, and it means I can trust the Bible.

Then, I look into the Bible and I see that it mirrors what really is going on in my soul.  I see that it gives a reliable portrait of history and an honest description of humanity.  It has the ring of Truth.

Finally, I check out the other options.  No other worldview comprehensively explains the simultaneous beauty and evil in this world.  No other worldview offers a solution to humanity’s insatiable thirst for redemption.

When challenged as to whether he would leave Jesus, Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  I get that.

Since I’ve got the facts cemented in my soul, then I can layer the faith on top.

I can trust that God is in control.

I can trust that He is good.

I can trust His promises:

….that I can’t see everything He sees.

….that sometimes He’s got a bigger plan than I can imagine.

….that He knows better than I do.

….that He will work everything out for good.

I can trust that even when it looks like God isn’t showing up, that doesn’t mean He hasn’t.  It just might not fit my time frame or my expectations of what showing up is supposed to look like.

The longer I live my life, and the more I am challenged to live out that faith, the more I am shown that what I believe is True.  My faith (on a foundation of facts) actually transforms into more facts as experience confirms over and over again that what I believe is trustworthy.

And that’s why, when faced with lost dogs, or adoptions that won’t happen, or a dear friend who still mourns her Jeremiah, I can trust my God in the dark.  Where else would I go?

Our Struggle Is Not Against Flesh and Blood: The Plight of Tanzania’s Albinos

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On January 21, 2015

In African Worldview

(witchdoctor advertisement in Dar es Salaam)

In Tanzania, albinos are regularly kidnapped, murdered, and their body parts used in witchcraft rituals.

It sounds like the plot to a horror movie.  But it’s real.

Albinism is rare worldwide, occurring about 1 in 20,000.  However, in Tanzania, for some unknown reason, it occurs much more often–1 in 1400 or maybe even more.  And as you can imagine, in Africa, a person who lacks any skin or hair pigmentation sticks out a whole lot more than in light-skinned countries.

Sticking out is only one of their hardships.  They also struggle with eye problems and a prevalence of skin cancer.  But most horrifying of all, somewhere along the way, some people got an idea from the pit of hell that albino body parts can make you rich or successful or irresistible.

And the West gasps in horror and comes in with its answers.

Education!

Awareness!

We need to tell those poor ignorant Africans that albinos are people too!

Except then you find out that albino body parts sell for hundreds of dollars, and corpses are worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Consider that the average income of Tanzanians is less than $1000 a year.  Consider that traditionally, albino murders go up during election years.  So who’s paying for these atrocities?  Kind of flies in the face of the “poor ignorant African who just needs to be educated” theory.

In the West, we are all about rationality and science and education, aren’t we?  And we think that’s the answer to cure All The Problems In the World.  People just need to listen to logic, right?

Maybe instead what we need to do is educate ourselves about worldview in the majority world.  It’s true that many Africans aren’t educated.  But the reality is, many of them are, and they really don’t care about the western version of rationality and science.

They know that animistic spirituality has power.  And they want it.  In America, we decorate with ghosts on Halloween and watch freaky supernatural movies and laugh because it’s all just pretend.  After all, isn’t that what science has taught us?  Or can we consider the possibility of what Africans have long known…that there actually is power in witchcraft?

A couple of weeks ago, a four-year-old albino girl was kidnapped from her home in the middle of the night.  Enough anger went up that the Tanzanian government decided to solve the problem by banning all witchdoctors.  A literal “witch hunt” will begin next week.

This law will probably have the success of U.S. Prohibition in the 20’s.  Or of the New York City ban on soft drinks.  Has a law of a nation ever succeeded in changing the heart of man?

I once saw a video of an organization in Africa who is trying to help communities with the problem of jiggers (bugs that lay eggs in people’s feet).  “People think jiggers come through witchcraft,” the spokesperson said.  “But we are educating them.”  Yeah.  Good luck with that.

Why do you think Ebola spread so fast?  Because west Africans believe that if they don’t prepare dead bodies properly, their spirits will come back and haunt them.  You can “educate” about germs and clean hands until you are blue in the face, but it’s hard to argue against ghosts. 

I mean, just think about it.  If somebody came to you and earnestly said, “Your seasonal allergies are caused by evil spirits,” would you give them the time of day?  Of course not.  Because in the West, we believe everything is Always About Science.  Just as we won’t be convinced by their animism, they won’t be convinced by our science.

Because they know better.  They are not stupid.  It’s not all their imagination.

Yeah, there’s germs and genetics.  But Evil is real too.  It has power.

Have we forgotten?

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Education isn’t what is going to protect the lives of albinos.  Nor is banning witchdoctors.  Instead, Africans need to be transformed by the One who has crushed Evil’s head, and allow His Reality to change their Reality.  Because that’s where the real power comes from, and with it, hope, courage, and love for others, which are all things witchdoctors can never offer.

And maybe, for us Westerners on the other end of the spectrum, who are always convinced that it’s just about science and education, we need to open our eyes to the Reality that there’s Something More out there than our eyes can see.

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