When you’ve been walking around in 90+ degree heat, get home, and there is no cold water to drink. When you are woken up at 4:30 every morning when your “little brother’s” alarm goes off. When everybody and their mother asks you why you are single and tries to find you “Mr. Right.” When you feel guilty for having the money to go to town and watch a movie. When you are constantly asked for money, because you are white, so obviously you are rich (and compared to most people, you are). When you feel like you will never be able to live up to the missionary who was here before you, because apparently she was perfect. When you are walking alone and a white couple pulls over to lecture you about how it is not safe to walk alone in the township. When you see every man approaching you or walking by you as a potential threat, no matter how hard you try not to. When your friend, who is a single mom, looks sadly in your eyes and tells you she doesn’t believe in love anymore. When everybody around you is speaking a language you don’t understand, and you hear your name and know they are talking about you but they refuse to tell you what they are saying. When a 14 year old girl shrugs and mumbles that she will be alone at the institution over Christmas, because not even her extended family members will take her in. And when you realize you have no idea how to comfort her after a lifetime of everybody who is supposed to love and care for her abandoning her. When the music in the taxi is so loud in the speaker right behind you that you can feel it pounding in your head-for an hour ride. When you visit someone’s house and they expect you to eat cow intestine. When the little girl next door is nearly kidnapped and you realize there is crime all around you. When conversations seem to grind to a halt due to your own introvertedness and the other person’s limited English proficiency. When people keep admonishing you to be safe and you want to cry out “since when is following Jesus safe?!!” Ask the early disciples and church fathers.
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to go on to the heights.” Habakkuk 3:17-19
*In case any of you were concerned I was painting too rosy a picture of incarnational ministry. I believe in incarnational ministry (part 2 coming soon), but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
Julie, Thank you for your honesty and transparency. I can literally say I know how you feel. I know I haven't experienced it in SA but I have in so many other places. My heart resonates with each of your statements. BUT please know that over time it does change or at least our perspective is changed in the midst of it. As you learn the language the culture and how to live with the differences and realize the beauty in them you will see that these things, that are so difficult to live in daily, are the very things that make incarnational life so worth it. It does take "revolutionary patience" and a clear view of the hope and the future that is promised us. That hope is often the very essence of our ministry as we hold on to it AND express it to others where there seems to be no hope.
ReplyDeleteThere is so much more to say about this but I am glad you are experiencing these things. They will teach you so much and literally "carve out room in your soul" for Jesus to fill with a more perfect love and more peacefilled hope. It will take time, alot of it. but what you are experiencing is very normal for someone crossing into another culture. I sometimes compare it to the space capsul as it returns to earth and literally burns in as it comes back through the atmosphere. That crossing of a culture from one into the other is a burning away at our own assumptions, cultural tendencies and most importantly our imperfections and sin. Hold on, God will continue to take you on a deepening journey and in the end it will have been worth it all.
Wow, Ju! It sounds like you are learning so much in so little time, and yet it does take time to learn how to respond to each of those situations. Stay in the Word and ask your Heavenly Father for answers. Experience God! He will talk to you! Sometimes, the hard part is waiting for His answers!
ReplyDeleteDad and I are home again so if you have time this Friday to Skype . . . call.
Mom
Just caught up on your posts. Thanks for sharing. Love you!!!
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