Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Nick's new job

Although we are back from Africa, Nick is still part of his international fellowship. He is rotating in areas that will continue to give him skills useful overseas: dentistry, ultrasound, trauma, and burn care. He is working approximately normal hours every week (woohoo!!!!!) and doesn't have call very often, so he has taken to... being lazy (just kidding!) ... redoing the house we will be moving into. His project last weekend was to put on new doors. Let me give you a little visual for what I mean by "redo."


He's in what will be the laundry room and storage closet. To the left is a closet frame he and a very gracious friend worked on before we left for West Virginia and Africa this summer. The house was actually built as a duplex, but has since been changed into a single-family dwelling. So this room originated as a kitchen. It was about 20 degrees and snowing while he was working, so Nick used some kind of turbo space heater to keep from freezing.


This was an old living room. It had an interesting glass window which looked into, we assume, a daycare play area. Like the art work? We will paint over it :) The old play room will be Moriah and Charlie's room. They love sharing a room and will probably do so for as long as is socially acceptable. The old living room will be a nice guest room with its own entrance. "It's own entrance" sounds kind of fancy. Don't be fooled. Fancy is not exactly what we're going for. Definitely livable, hopefully enjoyable, but not fancy. Investment property? Um, sure. Depends on what kind of investment you're talking about... 

Here is the fanciest part of our house though- the new front door and the fireplace. The fireplace was also helpful for keeping Nick manageably warm.


You can see we have some work cut out for us... cheesy pun intended. We plan to move in towards the end of June, when Nick is finished with the international fellowship and before he starts at a non-profit clinic in Wichita. So we have quite the work ahead, but we're excited. Several other residency friends, many of whom will be working at the same clinic, have already moved into the neighborhood. Our friends, Drew and Lindsay, bought the green gem of a house next store. Others are literally a zip-line-ride-across-a-creek close.

Our move is part of a cool journey, one that started shortly after we were married. Nick and I talked often about the "Love your neighbor as yourself" statement of Jesus' that is plagiarized as the Golden Rule ;) As we talked about how to be doers of that command, we felt God challenge us to choose our neighbors carefully. So we have been on a journey of trying to live in places not because of what we can afford, or because of how much space we want, but in places where we think God wants us to be neighbors.

And so begins the blog-umentary of our reno process and move. Someone is tired just thinking of it :)


Friday, January 23, 2015

The Second Most Important Oven in Niger

I asked Anna* if she wanted an oven. She replied with a "Yeah, but they didn't give us much notice for the sale, and I haven't had time to save money." I told her if she had an oven she could make her delicious homemade bread for other short-term workers at the hospital. She made us amazing homemade rolls and bread in our home each week. We usually gave away about half to the compound bachelors or other short-term missionaries who didn't have someone baking bread for them. The compound housing committee was offering old appliances to workers for a good price the coming weekend. As we continued to talk, she asked to borrow money from us and have it taken out of her salary each week. We talked about it, prayed about it, and decided we were excited to help her.

With an oven, she was well on her way to having a home business. She still needed several other important things: a gas tank, pans, measuring spoons, a roller, etc. These things may seem insignificant but none of them could be bought locally or at an affordable price for her. We only had about 4 weeks before we left. We wanted to help her make this happen, but wanted to be really careful not to throw all these things at her carelessly.

You probably think we wanted to avoid being taken advantage of. When people receive handouts upon handouts, they often develop an attitude of entitlement: they feel they deserve what they are given, or feel what they are given is not good enough. I want to offer my theory on entitlement. It has developed over time... from a year in a poor village in Thailand and several years getting to know inner-city Wichita.

When God created man, he created man and woman to work. To take a fruitful garden, rule over it, and subdue it. To take resources He gave them through the earth and provide food for themselves and their offspring. Work is good. I believe God created work, in part, to be dignifying: it just feels good to be able to take care of myself and the family God has given me. And it's enjoyable to be creative - taking something that seems ordinary and making it special. God gives us natural resources and the mental and physical capacity to maximize those resources so they produce something that works for us.

For example, my husband earns money for food, and I take the food and make it into regular, nutritious meals for my family. I can do this, and I usually do. Let's say our situation changes, and I, in fact, am not able to provide for my family. Lack of money, lack of physical capacity, lack of mental capacity, whatever. Legitimately, I have had times where I was mentally incapable of wrapping my brain around putting food on the table for my family. Thankfully, we have been in a position during those times where Nick could either grab take out or get cereal for himself and the kids while I took a time out.

I usually feel some guilt and shame when this happens: "What is wrong with me? Why can't I handle my life right now - it's not that complicated?" But Nick has always been very reassuring and gracious, and the Lord has always restored my sanity in a short time. But if I had continued to live there - unable to get my family regular, nutritious meals - I would have started to feel increasing guilt and shame. Dealing with guilt and shame is not easy. We do a lot of things to cover these emotions up or brush them off - get defensive, blame someone else, make excuses. This is where I think entitlement comes in. I think people start to feel and act entitled because it is easier to handle than guilt and shame. If I am ashamed I can't mentally handle feeding my family, I may start to act like I deserve for Nick to order us take out every night so that I don't have to cook. It's easier to handle my resentment towards Nick than my shame of my mental incapacity.

When we continue to take care of people's needs for them, I believe they tend to develop guilt and shame. When people legitimately cannot take care of their needs, they do not need to feel guilt and shame. If we come alongside them in a helpful, careful way, we can meet their needs or assist them in meeting their own needs in a way that appreciates God's design for work. We can encourage them to deal with any guilt and shame by looking to their God and Savior, not to the world, to see what He thinks about their lives and purpose. But when people can legitimately meet their own needs, or when we are not careful in coming alongside them in a way that appreciates God's design for work, I believe the guilt and shame increase and often lead to entitlement.

With Anna, we were more concerned about not inadvertantly shaming her than about her taking advantage of our help. She is fully capable of providing for herself and her family. Truthfully, she is a much harder worker than I am. (Try doing all your family's laundry by hand - in the 100+ degree sun and with chronic anemia - and then pounding your grain by hand, feeding your goats, carrying water for your family, and then doing all this for someone else's family. Then let me know when you need a break!) I also know that Anna, because of where she lives, has so fewer resources than I do. Food doesn't grow well, produce is scarce and expensive, and no one has found valuable minerals in Galmi to mine. So I want to help her better provide for her family. But in a way that honors her ability to work hard and conserves the joy it gives her, not in a way that dismisses these things. Also, I want to be really careful, for her sake and mine, that I don't have a savior mentality**... If only I gave Anna what I had, she would be okay. If only I helped her, her life would be better. God provides for my needs, and I need to remember that He is the one providing for hers. He may very well ask me to share the plenty I have with her, but I am certainly not her savior. The plenty I have is from Him anyways.

So, yes, we could have easily thrown out $200 to get her bread business up and going. And doing so, truthfully, would have been quite easy. But, no, I did not want her to feel like she had a new business because someone gave it to her. So, before she had her own supplies, she came over to make bread and tortillas with our oven. We sat down together pricing out all the ingredients and how much a batch would cost to make. We measured bags of flour so she would know how many bags she would need to buy each week. We walked around the compound taking bread orders together to boost her confidence in doing it by herself. And we prayed for God to help us find a way to get gas, a rolling pin, pans, an oven thermometer. In exchange for our gas and ingredients, she left some bread with us and sold the rest. The look on Anna's face as she delivered her delicious bread to people was priceless.

Who could resist delicious rolls from this gorgeous smile?!?


She saved money to buy her own ingredients and some supplies we could find locally and inexpensively. God answered our prayers for hard-to-buy things in creative ways, which was fun to watch! She was grateful for our help, sure, but I really think she saw God, not us, as the providers. She repaid and worked off her loan for the oven, and started brainstorming ideas about how to save money for the gas after we left. Our surprise to her the day before leaving was a gas tank. We checked around with missionaries who had been there much longer than we had, and the gas tank gift was reasonably similar to a cash gifts families usually give their workers around the holidays. What a perfect way to thank the precious woman and dear friend who spent so much time caring for our family.

We hear from our friends that she continues her weekly orders and delivery. So if you are ever passing through Niger and want homemade rolls that may be getter than your grandma's, make sure to be around on Monday evening when she takes orders :)



*Due to recent events in Niger (you can google it) and because families we know are being affected, I am working on changing names in my blog.

**This idea comes from When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself. It's also a great read for learning how to love poor people well.


Friday, January 9, 2015

Niger: Pizza ovens and People's lives

We decided on a "stay-cation." Nick and Parker had been working for about 3 months without any time off. They asked for a four-day weekend, so we were deciding what to do. In case you couldn't tell from pictures, Niger doesn't offer much in the recreation department. We could have chosen to spend the weekend in another rural town in Niger, but packing up two kids and food just to have different red soil and African thorn trees to see didn't seem too appealing to me. So we chose to stay put and do some things we had wanted to do for awhile, but hadn't had the time. Like go for a long walk through the fields. Like fly our kite with Anna's son, DJ. Like sleep in. And for Nick... build a pizza oven. Hundreds of hours watching YouTube videos and reading articles were finally culminating in an actual pizza oven. The process was intense.



A hospital translator connected Nick with a brickmaker so he could learn about mixing clay soil and where to find it. A guy from the compound shop helped him find a pile of rocks he could transport to build the base.


Another guy knew another guy who would sell Nick some straw and millet chaff so some of the clay would have more structural integrity.

Hausa people are big on greetings. There are 3-4 standard questions you almost always ask when you meet someone on the road. "How's your morning? How's your work? How's your tiredness? How's your family?" During this oven-making process, the greeting Nick and I often received was "How's your oven?"

The hospital and missionary housing compound had 3-4 guards working most of the time. ("Guards" is a bit of an exaggeration, they were mainly there to keep away door-to-door trinket sellers and to kill snakes. Both of which they did well!) All the guards stopped by at least once on their rounds to check out the oven and compliment Nick's work. One of our favorites even helped Nick for a few minutes. The shop guys started coming by as well.




The local people are very grateful for missionary doctors coming to offer health care for people who need it so badly. And they have high admiration for health care workers since most local people have not finished high school, let alone post-graduate school. But when they saw Nick could work with his hands and make something from the ground, they had a respect for him that no degree could bestow. I'm going to differentiate between admire and respect. I don't know what Webster's has to say about it... but when I admire someone, I think what they are doing is impressive.  However, when I respect them, really respect them, I think what they are doing is legit. Hopefully you catch my drift?

The 4-day weekend was close to the end of our time in Niger, but it was a clear turning point for our relationships with local people. Our language had really taken off, and Nick was doing work the Hausa people could finally relate to. Don't get me wrong, the medical work was amazing. Nick saved countless lives with his training and some basic medicine. And that's important. Jesus healed people, and He has given Nick training that allows him to do the same. And while we want Nick to use his training to benefit people's lives, we didn't go to Niger just to buy some people extra time on earth. We went because Jesus has changed our lives. He has given us peace with our Heavenly Father and a joy beyond anything this earth can give. He has given our lives purpose by calling us to build His house, His "kingdom" that will last forever. And we want to see Jesus change Hausa lives, too. We want to see Jesus change American lives for that matter: the lives of our kids and parents and siblings and neighbors. But Nick has a profession that is needed in countries across the world - countries where there aren't very many people who want to see Jesus change lives. Countries where most people have no idea that Jesus does change lives, or that God even cares about them enough to want good for them.

We weren't in Niger nearly long enough to see lives really changed for good by the gospel. But we went for training so that someday we are better equipped to go to a place and see that very thing happen. Lives may be impacted by doing medical work in Jesus' name, but lives won't be changed unless we really enter the world people are living in and live it with them. While medical work may get us to a place, building a pizza oven seems more likely to get us into people's hearts and lives, the places where respect is earned and where the life-giving life of Jesus can take root and change a person.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

When People Become Precious (written Nov 30, 2014)

I remember writing a blog post with this exact sentiment when I left Thailand after a year to come home and get married. I may have even titled it the same. Today was one of those days. One of those days when being here, away from family and close friends, away from our favorite foods and yummy coffee drinks, one of those days when being here was easy. 

DJ
A gracious friend checked out a mission car in order to drive our family to the hometown of Anna, our house help. She was leaving for the weekend to go to the wedding of an extended family member. I asked her if I could come along. She was really surprised I was interested, but very excited. Her hometown is in the “bush,” which is the African way of saying the “boonies,” so it took a bit of planning to make it work. Anna went early and stayed late to help with preparations, so we drove her husband and "adopted"* son, DJ, with us. The groom was DJ's older brother.
Waiting for the wedding

We didn’t see much of the wedding, just the women dressed up in their best and some of the men drumming and dancing. But we saw probably every member of Anna’s extended family within a mile radius (a long distance when walking on sandy roads with flip flops!). And it was worth every step. Anna has become so dear to us. She feels like my Hausa Prang, for those of you who know of my dearest friend and sister in Thailand who was in our wedding. It was so special to be able to meet Anna's dad and sister and grandma and cousin… and cousin and cousin. It was so special to show her that the people who are important to her are important to us. And to have another shared experience that gives us even more of a connection.




















We had to leave early so our friend, Deb, could drive us home before dark. Before we got in the car, Anna gave me a big hug. Not just an awkward “I-know-you-Americans-do-this” hug, but a strong one. In the car, Moriah can’t see Anna through all the people crowded around the vehicle so she hollers out “Where’s Anna? Where’s Anna?” Anna can see Moriah craning her neck and waving eagerly. As we pull away, Anna is visibly choked up. Hausa people do not choke up often. They say “You can cry in your heart, but not in your eyes.” Kids are chasing our car, and Anna keeps walking with them. Now her face has broken out into a huge smile with her teeth shining bright against her dark face. She is waving happily.

My heart is overwhelmed with all kinds of feelings - joy, sadness, privilege. Joy for being able to catch a glipmse of Anna’s childhood and see her family. Sadness for the impending goodbye that is coming in under two weeks. Privilege at being able to know such a special women and being able to call her our friend and sister.


I was describing our day to a fellow missionary and said, “These are the moments when you say ‘This is why we’re here.’” Then I said, “Actually a better way to describe our day is that these are the moments when being here is easy.” 

Leaving Starbucks and fast food and jeans and putting on head coverings and scarves and long skirts... we need to do these things if we want to have meaningful relationships with people here. And all these things are hard. When the people here become precious to us, however, that changes everything. All these things become easy when people become precious.

I thought about being in heaven one day, standing with Prang and Anna both. How did I get to be so fortunate that God would allow me to know such precious people? I’m sad that our lives are intersecting only for a season, but grateful that because of Jesus, our relationships can have significance for eternity. Relationships. They are the only investments that offer dividends when we leave this world**. Our relationship with God, and our relationships with the people He has given us to love.  If we invest wisely, and by the grace God gives us through His Spirit living in us, our dividends will be fellow worshippers with us in heaven, and more friends to walk with on that glorious day when God makes all things new. All things new. Jesus told us not to store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but to store up for ourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust cannot destroy and where thieves cannot break in and steal. My Starbucks gets cold and my Brahm’s shake gets warm, and our mutual funds can be wiped out in an instant. But my Anna? She will be singing and dancing forever at the feet of Jesus. And I will get to be there with her. Even if she has better rhythm than I do. 





*I use adopted in quotations because adoption within Hausa culture resembles our understanding of the concept, but also has differences. Hausa adoption usually seems to happen within an extended family. Also, the adopted child seems to maintain the biological identity. For example, DJ’s biological parents were introduced to us as his parents, and his biological brothers were introduced to us as his brothers.

**I fondly credit my dear friend and mentor from my time in Thailand, Jim Larson, for this line of thinking from Matthew 6:19-21.






All photography credit goes to Deb Berruti