Greetings from Dakar! Our journey started Friday the 3rd, when we were deposited at the airport at 3pm by Tim Haley of Christ Fellowship Church in Fallston, MD: thanks for the ride, Tim!
We didn't have a long wait and boarded well before 5pm (departure time was 5.40), but then... we waited. We were informed that the computer which controls the fuel gauge and fuel distribution on the plane was malfunctioning and would have to be fixed. They had already moved out from the terminal and eventually had to taxi back in to another bay. They rebooted the computer involved, then all the computers, then they "rebooted" the whole airplane, i.e., they turned off everything for about 10 minutes. While we waited we found our friend Julie Adamson (whom we had somehow missed in the departure lounge) and enjoyed chatting with her. The a/c was running onboard, so we were not uncomfortable, but we had nothing to eat or drink except water during the 6 hour wait. For some reason, they did not activate the entertainment system either. Finally, around the time they got it fixed (or "came up with a fix" I should say, b/c they never did fix that computer and actually did a work-around), they decided to serve us dinner while refueling at 10.30pm, so we took off after 11. Then all went well and we arrived as scheduled in exactly 8 hours. Hurricane Earl presented no problems whatsoever, although they flew due south a bit further than usual before heading across the Atlantic, just in case.
One thing I want to mention is that the passengers were all very gracious while waiting. We were all frustrated, but no one got nasty or mean or gave the crew a hard time.
It's more humid here than even in Baltimore, but the temperature is about the same. We'll live. We are enjoying the hospitality of Alex & Amet DaSylvio-Fall. It was great to worship at Dakar Academy today with Danielle, Susanna, and many other friends. Lord willing, we will head to Kayes on Wednesday or Thursday in our own car.
Thanks for your prayers and good thoughts as we travel!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Puppy Love
We’ve always had cats around the house and in general I still prefer cats. They take care of themselves, they are very clean and they don’t slobber. I do hate the litter box, but that’s a small thing. The one thing I could wish is that they were more affectionate. We’ve had the occasional friendly cat, but for the most part ours have been typically aloof. I’ve heard all the suggestions and claims that the earlier a cat is handled, the friendlier it will be and can tell you scientifically and empirically: it ain’t so! We have had some mother cats who had twice or even thrice annual litters, and with four children in the house, you better believe they were handled almost from Day One. But our percentage of affectionate felines is no higher, and perhaps much lower, than anyone else’s. Sigh.
I’m pretty picky about dogs, on the other hand. For me to like a dog, it has to be small to medium sized (no miniatures, please), short-haired, and clean around the mouth so it doesn’t have spittle on its chops all the time! I would prefer a breed which gets along with cats (not a hunter) and is quiet.
We got Chester, a 3y.o. dachshund, from homegoing missionaries about a year and a half ago. He is small, short-haired, and does not drool (check, check, check). But dachshunds are hunting dogs, so he has chased off all our cats. And he does bark a lot.
But I can live with that because he is so affectionate and cuddly and cute! He came into our Empty Nest and filled my mother’s heart with joy. Corny, I know, but besides being away at boarding school, college and work most of the time, my children are at an age when they don’t like to hug much. It’s just not their Love Language… but it’s mine and I miss it terribly! So Chester is filling that hole in my heart. He’s poorly trained and disobedient, and before we had him neutered he ran off all the time, but he has calmed down a lot since then, and will do almost anything for a cookie.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Quote of the Week... about LOST
A funny summary from the "815 Sentences About LOST" blog by a critic who has never watched the show:
“As both “Lost” the series as well as 815 Sentences About Lost draws to a close, it may seem blasphemous that someone who has never seen a single, solitary episode of “Lost” would write an entry attempting to briefly summarize the plot of “Lost” for this website, but that is exactly what I intend to do. Following a plane crash, a bunch of strangers find themselves stranded on a mysterious desert island. Among the stranded are Matthew Fox, some dude named “Sawyer,” that serial killer guy who stalked Lindsay Dole on “The Practice,” that Asian guy who played the Wolfram and Hart lawyer on “Angel” who eventually got turned into a zombie and Gunn chopped his head off (spoiler alert!), that other guy who sold Larry David pot one time on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and a bunch of other people. Pretty soon the castaways discover that they’re not alone on the island, which is also inhabited by another mysterious group of people called “The Others” as well as a monster. So the plot turns into something along the lines of “Lord of the Flies,” only with grown up people instead of psychotic children and, of course, the monster. There is also some conspiracy of how all the castaways ended up on the island, which is mostly revealed via flashbacks filled with really obscure and annoying clues and number references which “Lost” fans can discuss with other “Lost” fans on internet message boards. I don’t know, it all sounds like something of a headache if you ask me, although I’m sure I’ll probably watch the whole thing on DVD some day. Anyway, if you asked me to predict what’s going to happen on the series finale of “Lost,” my guess is that it all turns out to be an intricately wound sequence of events which takes place in some autistic kid’s snow globe. The end.”
- Despite never having seen a single episode of “Lost,” Stacey Nosek fancies herself a pop culture writer. She spends her days in West Philadelphia and writes for Pajiba and Litelysalted.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Quote of the Week
We are violently propelled into the world with blood and pain and few of us will die with the dignity for which we hope and for which some pray. Whether we choose to think of life as an impending happiness broken only by inevitable grief and disappointments, or as the proverbial vale of tears with brief interludes of joy, the pain will come, except to those few whose deadened sensibilities made them apparently impervious to either joy or sorrow.
PD James, The Private Patient
What do you think?
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Hard questions...
[Faith ‘n’ Begorrah, Part 2]
When I wrote previously about the faith healer who came to our town in March, I promised to follow-up with a post on the theology of faith healing. What was I thinking??? Certainly I have not figured out “how it works,” at least from my perspective.
I need to say up front that I tend to be a cessationist. This is the name given to those who believe that the Sign gifts of the New Testament (tongues, miracles, healing, prophecy) ceased after the completion of the canon, the Scriptures. Therefore, theologically I am outside the Pentecostal or charismatic camp.
However, as in so many things, there are degrees of cessationist. For example, Harold Camping of Family Radio believes that all charismatics and Pentecostals are deceived by Satan and not saved at all! Happily, he represents the farthest extreme of cessationism and few share his viewpoint (however, his influence through his radio stations is frightening).
Some would accuse cessationists of not believing that God answers prayer, but that is a misrepresentation of the viewpoint. I, for one, believe that God still heals and performs miracles today, but that he does so in answer to prayer and not through the power of a gift transmitted through a specific person.
Unlike many cessationists, I have come to believe that God may still speak to unbelievers through dreams and visions to draw them to Jesus Christ. Admittedly this is based more on experience than on systematic theology (although Joel 2.28-29 certainly talks about dreams and visions in the End Times). It seems as though God will speak to a person through a dream who does not have access to the Word of God. The testimonies of those who have experienced this is usually of seeing Jesus and being told to seek out and believe the Bible. This is how many Muslims come to Christ.
When I wrote previously [see http://jenniferabowers.blogspot.com/2010/03/faith-n-begorrah.html], I talked about the West African acceptance of the supernatural as a normal part of everyday life. Therefore in the churches it is quite natural to accept that God still works miracles today. Believers, even pastors, are not theologically sophisticated for the most part, to question whether this should happen through the agency of a person. If God has anointed someone to do such a work, why not? When some of my Christian lady friends were telling me about what they saw in the meetings, my face must have expressed some skepticism because one of them said, “Jeneba (my Malian name), what do you think of all this?”
Oh, my. Did I want to really get into this with them? I finally answered them honestly. The women I was talking to were pastors’ wives. Two of them have chronic illnesses for which they have prayed for relief for many years. One has a handicapped child they have prayed for God to heal for over a decade. So I said, “I’m not saying God doesn’t heal through Pastor Michel. I really don’t know. But I look at you, devout Christians married to servants of God. For many years you have prayed for healing while serving him faithfully. Now, if Michel came along and God healed you through his intercession, I would have to ask myself, Why? What was wrong with your prayers?” They nodded and acknowledged the sense of what I said.
Then one of them told us a story: “I went to my mother’s village recently to help with the harvest. The first evening when I was settling in, someone said, ‘There’s a mat over there and water, so you can do your salat (ritual Muslim prayers). I told them, ‘Oh, I don’t do salat. I’m a Christian.’ The response was immediate and surprising. ‘Really?’ they said, ‘Tell us what that means! We don’t know what a Christian is and we want to know.’ It seems that a sick woman from a nearby village had traveled to see Pastor Michel, and returned healed. All they knew was that Michel was a Christian and healed with the power of Jesus, but they didn’t know who Jesus was. Word got around that there was a Christian woman in the village and several evenings after work in the fields was done, they gathered round to ask me all about Christianity. Once or twice they kept me up until 3am!
‘Then they told me about a crazy woman in the village. She hardly ever slept. She would get up in the middle of the night and wander off in the bush. So her people were exhausted, either from searching for her out in the bush, or from sitting up late to make sure she didn’t wander off. They asked me, ‘What can be done?’ so I told them, ‘I don’t claim to be a healer like Pastor Michel, but I can pray in the same name as he does, in the strong name of Jesus.’ So I did. She had been put to bed, so I stood in her doorway and prayed for her. When I got up in the morning I went to the latrine to wash, and I could hear people outside saying, ‘Where’s that Christian woman?’ I came out and said, ‘Here I am.’ They said, ‘Look, the crazy one, she’s still asleep! She hasn’t slept through the night in ages!’ It got to be 9am and they said, ‘She’s still sleeping!’ I told them she was probably exhausted from not sleeping for so long, so they should let her be, and she slept until noon. Now they want someone to come to their village to preach the Gospel.”
Praise the Lord! If Pastor Michel’s ministry made people curious about Jesus Christ, then it is properly bringing glory to God. However, not everyone perceives that what he does is in the power of Jesus. He proclaims it clearly, but in the excitement of what is taking place, some people miss that and just focus on him and the events.
I was in a store the week after the crusade and the clerk said to me, “I believe in Michel. You do, too, don’t you? My back was hurting when I went there and now it feels better.” I was quite uncomfortable with the terminology “believe in Michel” and was caught off guard, so my response was not very clear. Knowing that we leave soon for four months, I wanted to go back and leave him with a tract or something. So on Saturday I gave him a Gospel of John. I said, “You told me you believe in Michel. Well, all that he did was in the name of Jesus, and this will tell you about Jesus.” His response surprised me; he had not gotten the Christian connection at all! He said, “Michel did all that in the power of Jesus? He was a Christian?” I assured him that was the case, and he said, “Well, then Jesus must be pretty powerful! I’m definitely going to read this.”
Then he asked a hard question, “Well, if Michel believes in Jesus, and you believe in Jesus, why can’t you pray for people and they get healed?” Gulp. Good question. I replied, “I do pray for people to be healed. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. But sometimes God gives someone a special gift like that to bring glory to himself. He wants Jesus to be glorified, so he gives someone like Michel the power to heal in his name. It’s all about Jesus.”
So, maybe that’s my theology of faith healing! Like many people, I still confess a certain skepticism about the healing of potentially psychosomatic illnesses (like this guy’s back, in fact). But if Jesus is lifted up and it draws some to him, I can live with my doubts.
When I wrote previously about the faith healer who came to our town in March, I promised to follow-up with a post on the theology of faith healing. What was I thinking??? Certainly I have not figured out “how it works,” at least from my perspective.
I need to say up front that I tend to be a cessationist. This is the name given to those who believe that the Sign gifts of the New Testament (tongues, miracles, healing, prophecy) ceased after the completion of the canon, the Scriptures. Therefore, theologically I am outside the Pentecostal or charismatic camp.
However, as in so many things, there are degrees of cessationist. For example, Harold Camping of Family Radio believes that all charismatics and Pentecostals are deceived by Satan and not saved at all! Happily, he represents the farthest extreme of cessationism and few share his viewpoint (however, his influence through his radio stations is frightening).
Some would accuse cessationists of not believing that God answers prayer, but that is a misrepresentation of the viewpoint. I, for one, believe that God still heals and performs miracles today, but that he does so in answer to prayer and not through the power of a gift transmitted through a specific person.
Unlike many cessationists, I have come to believe that God may still speak to unbelievers through dreams and visions to draw them to Jesus Christ. Admittedly this is based more on experience than on systematic theology (although Joel 2.28-29 certainly talks about dreams and visions in the End Times). It seems as though God will speak to a person through a dream who does not have access to the Word of God. The testimonies of those who have experienced this is usually of seeing Jesus and being told to seek out and believe the Bible. This is how many Muslims come to Christ.
When I wrote previously [see http://jenniferabowers.blogspot.com/2010/03/faith-n-begorrah.html], I talked about the West African acceptance of the supernatural as a normal part of everyday life. Therefore in the churches it is quite natural to accept that God still works miracles today. Believers, even pastors, are not theologically sophisticated for the most part, to question whether this should happen through the agency of a person. If God has anointed someone to do such a work, why not? When some of my Christian lady friends were telling me about what they saw in the meetings, my face must have expressed some skepticism because one of them said, “Jeneba (my Malian name), what do you think of all this?”
Oh, my. Did I want to really get into this with them? I finally answered them honestly. The women I was talking to were pastors’ wives. Two of them have chronic illnesses for which they have prayed for relief for many years. One has a handicapped child they have prayed for God to heal for over a decade. So I said, “I’m not saying God doesn’t heal through Pastor Michel. I really don’t know. But I look at you, devout Christians married to servants of God. For many years you have prayed for healing while serving him faithfully. Now, if Michel came along and God healed you through his intercession, I would have to ask myself, Why? What was wrong with your prayers?” They nodded and acknowledged the sense of what I said.
Then one of them told us a story: “I went to my mother’s village recently to help with the harvest. The first evening when I was settling in, someone said, ‘There’s a mat over there and water, so you can do your salat (ritual Muslim prayers). I told them, ‘Oh, I don’t do salat. I’m a Christian.’ The response was immediate and surprising. ‘Really?’ they said, ‘Tell us what that means! We don’t know what a Christian is and we want to know.’ It seems that a sick woman from a nearby village had traveled to see Pastor Michel, and returned healed. All they knew was that Michel was a Christian and healed with the power of Jesus, but they didn’t know who Jesus was. Word got around that there was a Christian woman in the village and several evenings after work in the fields was done, they gathered round to ask me all about Christianity. Once or twice they kept me up until 3am!
‘Then they told me about a crazy woman in the village. She hardly ever slept. She would get up in the middle of the night and wander off in the bush. So her people were exhausted, either from searching for her out in the bush, or from sitting up late to make sure she didn’t wander off. They asked me, ‘What can be done?’ so I told them, ‘I don’t claim to be a healer like Pastor Michel, but I can pray in the same name as he does, in the strong name of Jesus.’ So I did. She had been put to bed, so I stood in her doorway and prayed for her. When I got up in the morning I went to the latrine to wash, and I could hear people outside saying, ‘Where’s that Christian woman?’ I came out and said, ‘Here I am.’ They said, ‘Look, the crazy one, she’s still asleep! She hasn’t slept through the night in ages!’ It got to be 9am and they said, ‘She’s still sleeping!’ I told them she was probably exhausted from not sleeping for so long, so they should let her be, and she slept until noon. Now they want someone to come to their village to preach the Gospel.”
Praise the Lord! If Pastor Michel’s ministry made people curious about Jesus Christ, then it is properly bringing glory to God. However, not everyone perceives that what he does is in the power of Jesus. He proclaims it clearly, but in the excitement of what is taking place, some people miss that and just focus on him and the events.
I was in a store the week after the crusade and the clerk said to me, “I believe in Michel. You do, too, don’t you? My back was hurting when I went there and now it feels better.” I was quite uncomfortable with the terminology “believe in Michel” and was caught off guard, so my response was not very clear. Knowing that we leave soon for four months, I wanted to go back and leave him with a tract or something. So on Saturday I gave him a Gospel of John. I said, “You told me you believe in Michel. Well, all that he did was in the name of Jesus, and this will tell you about Jesus.” His response surprised me; he had not gotten the Christian connection at all! He said, “Michel did all that in the power of Jesus? He was a Christian?” I assured him that was the case, and he said, “Well, then Jesus must be pretty powerful! I’m definitely going to read this.”
Then he asked a hard question, “Well, if Michel believes in Jesus, and you believe in Jesus, why can’t you pray for people and they get healed?” Gulp. Good question. I replied, “I do pray for people to be healed. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. But sometimes God gives someone a special gift like that to bring glory to himself. He wants Jesus to be glorified, so he gives someone like Michel the power to heal in his name. It’s all about Jesus.”
So, maybe that’s my theology of faith healing! Like many people, I still confess a certain skepticism about the healing of potentially psychosomatic illnesses (like this guy’s back, in fact). But if Jesus is lifted up and it draws some to him, I can live with my doubts.
Monday, April 19, 2010
You know it's Hot Season in Mali when...
Recently my friend, Sharon, in Bamako started a discussion thread on Facebook by posting as her status: “You know it’s hot season in Mali when…” I think you’ll find the responses enlightening:
…you don't need a towel, you air-dry in less than a minute.
…you take showers with your clothes on so you can have the illusion of cooling as your clothes dry.
…your ankles sweat.
…even the Malians say, “Boy, it’s hot.”
…you are showering your kids and they scream, "No, it's too hot. Turn on the cold water." You reply, "This IS the cold water!"
…you can bend candles into any fancy shape you want.
…you wear a wet towel as a shawl.
…you refer to a day where it doesn’t hit 115F as “cool.”
…your clothes feel like they've been freshly ironed when you put them on.
h/t Sharon Goertz
We often hear the question, “How do you stand that heat?” especially when people hear that we live in one of the three hottest cities in the world, only 50 miles from the edge of the Sahara, where the temperature-in-the-shade can top 125F/51C. We want to cry, “We DON’T stand it. We complain a lot. We leave for the whole month of May. We do crazy stuff (see above) and it still doesn’t help!”
Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in hearing about some of our coping strategies.
WATERBEDS: When waterbeds became popular in the 70s and 80s, someone decided they were the solution to a missionary’s problems in hot climates. I remember people telling us we HAD to get one. After all, if you can get a good night’s sleep, it goes a long way toward helping one cope with the strains of the day (which is true). So we got one. How do you say ***raspberry***!?!
I have since become convinced that this waterbed promotion was a conspiracy by waterbed manufacturers to advance sales. All their soon-to-be-dissatisfied customers were moving overseas, so they had nothing to lose.
The problem is that water tries to equalize itself with the air temperature. For a large body of water, like an ocean, the difference remains significant, so you can still have a cool dip in hot weather. But a relatively small body of water, like a mattress, quickly approaches the ambient temperature. Even if the room cools off at night, the warm water is contained in a huge rubber “bottle” which releases heat slowly – a month or more after the end of hot season, but certainly not in a few hours!
We’ve heard funny stories about people trying to cool down their waterbeds. One family bought blocks of ice at the local ice house, siphoned out some of the hot water, and refilled it with the ice water. A time consuming, temporary, and ultimately futile effort at best. They had to choose either to H.ave a Life, or play with the waterbed.
We used to soak towels, and lay on top of them, with other wet towels on top of us, wearing as few clothes as possible, with fans pointing at us. This worked for about 20 minutes at a time before the towels dried out (our humidity is less than 20% most of the time, so the air just sucks up that water!), and it made the bedroom smell mildewy much of the time.
Ironically, in cool season (Dec.-Jan.), the water would become so chilly that we shivered and were in danger of hypothermia (which is why waterbeds are sold with heaters in the States – who knew we would need one here?).
Finally we bought an inch-thick foam mattress for the waterbed. On top of that, we place a sheet, then a bedspread, then another sheet. This makes the bed sleepable in all seasons but defeats the original purpose!
SHOWERS: Did you notice how many people in the responses at the beginning referred to showers? Don’t be surprised if you come to my house and I answer the door dripping wet – if it’s not sweat, then I’ve just taken a shower fully clothed. It’s even more effective if I can sit in front of a fan afterwards.
SLEEPING OUTSIDE: We might have avoided the waterbed fiasco altogether if we had investigated how the local people tolerate the heat. Quite simply, they move outside to sleep at night. It’s even better for those whose houses have a flat, concrete roof to sleep on.
We have a locally made bamboo bed frame on our back veranda, with a thick foam mattress, and a mosquito net suspended on wires above -- although in the very hottest time we don’t even need the net because it’s so dry there are no insects. When it’s really hot we also bring a fan outside and go to bed in wet clothes.
FANS, SWAMP COOLERS, AND AIR CONDITIONERS: We have lots of fans, but when it gets really hot they just blow hot air. However, they aren’t too bad if your clothes are wet.
A swamp cooler is an evaporative cooler or humidifier, common in the American southwest, that blows air through water. We have a portable one which is helpful at siesta time. Some of our friends have mega-units which cool big rooms or even the whole house, but we haven’t made such an investment yet.
We don’t have a/c either, but Jim dreams of eventually getting a split for the bedroom. We do have it in our car though, which is nice when it works.
SWIMMING: There’s a great swimming spot on the river about 10 miles out of town and we enjoy going out there, especially when our kids are home. Not far from there is a rocky area with swimming holes and waterfalls which stay quite cool even in hot season, and we love to explore there as well. During Spring Break we sat on a flat rock under a waterfall which was a fabulous experience.
For years we dreamed of having a pool in Kayes, and finally a big hotel installed one. That has been a great relief as well, although it potentially has the same problem as the waterbed. It’s a relatively small body of water which absorbs heat. Last year the pool got to 98F/36C in hot season! This year, however, they drained it to make repairs before it got hot, so it was refilled relatively recently and has not achieved ambient air temperature yet.
VACATION: This is the ultimate solution to Beating the Heat: leave town. We save up all our vacation time and head west to the coast of Senegal for the month of May. Interior Senegal is just as hot as Mali, but the coast is quite pleasant (besides the obvious benefit of being close to our children). And in just 15 days from now, that’s what we’ll be doing.
But until then, I’m here today, gone to Mali…
PS As I was finishing this, yet another friend here, Tim, posted his Top Ten Reasons to Love Hot Season in Mali:
10. Working late at the office takes on a whole new significance - Free AC.
9. The Malians finally agree with you when you say it is hot.
8. If you have problems deciding what shirt to wear, no problem. You'll be wearing at least 3 today.
7. A chance to practice your Fahrenheit-Celsius conversion with big numbers like 41 or 46C (106F or 114F).
6. For those of us who have no hot water heaters, we can finally take a hot shower!
5. It's a great time of the year to do swamp cooler maintenance.
4. Everyday household tasks become an extreme sport.
3. Clothes have that wonderful "fresh out of the dryer" feel when you take them out of the closet.
2. The oven is automatically "pre-heated", and hey - most food is already pre-cooked.
1. A daily occasion to regale your facebook friends with complaints about how hot it is (just as they are expressing joy that it is finally getting up to 70F!)
h/t Tim Tillinghast
…you don't need a towel, you air-dry in less than a minute.
…you take showers with your clothes on so you can have the illusion of cooling as your clothes dry.
…your ankles sweat.
…even the Malians say, “Boy, it’s hot.”
…you are showering your kids and they scream, "No, it's too hot. Turn on the cold water." You reply, "This IS the cold water!"
…you can bend candles into any fancy shape you want.
…you wear a wet towel as a shawl.
…you refer to a day where it doesn’t hit 115F as “cool.”
…your clothes feel like they've been freshly ironed when you put them on.
h/t Sharon Goertz
We often hear the question, “How do you stand that heat?” especially when people hear that we live in one of the three hottest cities in the world, only 50 miles from the edge of the Sahara, where the temperature-in-the-shade can top 125F/51C. We want to cry, “We DON’T stand it. We complain a lot. We leave for the whole month of May. We do crazy stuff (see above) and it still doesn’t help!”
Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in hearing about some of our coping strategies.
WATERBEDS: When waterbeds became popular in the 70s and 80s, someone decided they were the solution to a missionary’s problems in hot climates. I remember people telling us we HAD to get one. After all, if you can get a good night’s sleep, it goes a long way toward helping one cope with the strains of the day (which is true). So we got one. How do you say ***raspberry***!?!
I have since become convinced that this waterbed promotion was a conspiracy by waterbed manufacturers to advance sales. All their soon-to-be-dissatisfied customers were moving overseas, so they had nothing to lose.
The problem is that water tries to equalize itself with the air temperature. For a large body of water, like an ocean, the difference remains significant, so you can still have a cool dip in hot weather. But a relatively small body of water, like a mattress, quickly approaches the ambient temperature. Even if the room cools off at night, the warm water is contained in a huge rubber “bottle” which releases heat slowly – a month or more after the end of hot season, but certainly not in a few hours!
We’ve heard funny stories about people trying to cool down their waterbeds. One family bought blocks of ice at the local ice house, siphoned out some of the hot water, and refilled it with the ice water. A time consuming, temporary, and ultimately futile effort at best. They had to choose either to H.ave a Life, or play with the waterbed.
We used to soak towels, and lay on top of them, with other wet towels on top of us, wearing as few clothes as possible, with fans pointing at us. This worked for about 20 minutes at a time before the towels dried out (our humidity is less than 20% most of the time, so the air just sucks up that water!), and it made the bedroom smell mildewy much of the time.
Ironically, in cool season (Dec.-Jan.), the water would become so chilly that we shivered and were in danger of hypothermia (which is why waterbeds are sold with heaters in the States – who knew we would need one here?).
Finally we bought an inch-thick foam mattress for the waterbed. On top of that, we place a sheet, then a bedspread, then another sheet. This makes the bed sleepable in all seasons but defeats the original purpose!
SHOWERS: Did you notice how many people in the responses at the beginning referred to showers? Don’t be surprised if you come to my house and I answer the door dripping wet – if it’s not sweat, then I’ve just taken a shower fully clothed. It’s even more effective if I can sit in front of a fan afterwards.
SLEEPING OUTSIDE: We might have avoided the waterbed fiasco altogether if we had investigated how the local people tolerate the heat. Quite simply, they move outside to sleep at night. It’s even better for those whose houses have a flat, concrete roof to sleep on.
We have a locally made bamboo bed frame on our back veranda, with a thick foam mattress, and a mosquito net suspended on wires above -- although in the very hottest time we don’t even need the net because it’s so dry there are no insects. When it’s really hot we also bring a fan outside and go to bed in wet clothes.
FANS, SWAMP COOLERS, AND AIR CONDITIONERS: We have lots of fans, but when it gets really hot they just blow hot air. However, they aren’t too bad if your clothes are wet.
A swamp cooler is an evaporative cooler or humidifier, common in the American southwest, that blows air through water. We have a portable one which is helpful at siesta time. Some of our friends have mega-units which cool big rooms or even the whole house, but we haven’t made such an investment yet.
We don’t have a/c either, but Jim dreams of eventually getting a split for the bedroom. We do have it in our car though, which is nice when it works.
SWIMMING: There’s a great swimming spot on the river about 10 miles out of town and we enjoy going out there, especially when our kids are home. Not far from there is a rocky area with swimming holes and waterfalls which stay quite cool even in hot season, and we love to explore there as well. During Spring Break we sat on a flat rock under a waterfall which was a fabulous experience.
For years we dreamed of having a pool in Kayes, and finally a big hotel installed one. That has been a great relief as well, although it potentially has the same problem as the waterbed. It’s a relatively small body of water which absorbs heat. Last year the pool got to 98F/36C in hot season! This year, however, they drained it to make repairs before it got hot, so it was refilled relatively recently and has not achieved ambient air temperature yet.
VACATION: This is the ultimate solution to Beating the Heat: leave town. We save up all our vacation time and head west to the coast of Senegal for the month of May. Interior Senegal is just as hot as Mali, but the coast is quite pleasant (besides the obvious benefit of being close to our children). And in just 15 days from now, that’s what we’ll be doing.
But until then, I’m here today, gone to Mali…
PS As I was finishing this, yet another friend here, Tim, posted his Top Ten Reasons to Love Hot Season in Mali:
10. Working late at the office takes on a whole new significance - Free AC.
9. The Malians finally agree with you when you say it is hot.
8. If you have problems deciding what shirt to wear, no problem. You'll be wearing at least 3 today.
7. A chance to practice your Fahrenheit-Celsius conversion with big numbers like 41 or 46C (106F or 114F).
6. For those of us who have no hot water heaters, we can finally take a hot shower!
5. It's a great time of the year to do swamp cooler maintenance.
4. Everyday household tasks become an extreme sport.
3. Clothes have that wonderful "fresh out of the dryer" feel when you take them out of the closet.
2. The oven is automatically "pre-heated", and hey - most food is already pre-cooked.
1. A daily occasion to regale your facebook friends with complaints about how hot it is (just as they are expressing joy that it is finally getting up to 70F!)
h/t Tim Tillinghast
Thursday, April 15, 2010
There's no place like home... but where is it???
My son asked me recently if after 25 years in Mali , I’m more comfortable here than in the U.S. America
I’ve been thinking about what factors contribute to both our feelings.
For me, the amount of time spent in Mali Africa , my personality, habits, and worldview were firmly established. Furthermore, it’s not as if I moved to Mali
Also, I have lived as an American in West Africa . Although I have contact with Malians every day, I don’t live like they do. If you came into my house, it would be very familiar to you, with running water, flush toilet and the usual kitchen appliances. We have TV and our kids have a Game Cube. We only got regular electricity 11 years ago, but before that we had solar panels and batteries. Should I feel guilty for that? I don’t because in my case it has been the key to my longevity here. I don’t know long I could have stood “roughing it” in a Malian lifestyle. One friend compared this to running a marathon vs. a sprint. The sprinter puts in his all for a short distance and then quits, because he is finished. The long-distance runner must conserve his resources in order to arrive at the Finish Line. Short term workers may “go native” and immerse themselves totally in the culture. It’s harder for career missionaries to do so if they want to last. (I want to note here that I know career missionaries who are much more immersed in the local culture than I am, and I have the utmost admiration for them. I am simply stating my personal limitations.)
For these reasons, I am still much more American than Malian and look forward to retiring in the USA
Benjamin, on the other hand, says he is much more comfortable in Mali USA Dakar Academy
However, I have to add, with all due respect to Benjamin, that the Mali he relates to is no more the Mali
Having said all that, I haven’t even gone into the whole thing of how MKs can never answer the question, “Where do you come from?” Should they give their passport country or the place they grew up; Mom’s hometown, or Dad’s? Because they have spent so many years at boarding school, my kids aren’t always sure whether to say Mali or Senegal
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Wednesday without Words... a day late
Living in the Third World does not necessarily mean doing without.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Quote of the Week
"Until I went to the dorm, I didn't know that pancakes and waffles were breakfast food."
Benjamin Bowers, MK from Mali who grew up eating them for supper.
Benjamin Bowers, MK from Mali who grew up eating them for supper.
Monday, March 15, 2010
FAITH 'n' BEGORRAH...!
We had a faith healer in town last week. A very interesting phenomenon which has raised a lot of questions for me, both culturally and theologically.
He was here for three nights and on the second evening the stadium was Standing Room Only. It was such a mob that they basically had to cancel the meeting due to crowd control issues. Now, there are no more than 250 Protestant Christians in Kayes (pop. >100,000); perhaps a few more Catholics, but this was definitely a Protestant event. Everyone else is either animistic Muslim or Islamic animist (however you prefer to express it). So how did a meeting of a minority religion draw so many, especially since getting people to attend a Bible study or visit a church is like pulling teeth?
It's all about POWER. This preacher, Pastor Michel, has a successful healing ministry. That means he has power from Somewhere, and frankly, people don't care if it's from God or the Devil or something else, if they can get close to it or get a piece of it. This may seem strange to the western mindset, especially if you are not familiar with the Flaw of the Excluded Middle (a term coined from but not to be confused with the Law of the Excluded Middle in logic). The Flaw of the Excluded Middle posits that the Western world view has a blind spot that makes it difficult for many Western missionaries to understand, let alone answer, problems related to spirits, ancestors and astrology. The Western two-tiered view of the universe typically leaves out an entire dimension seen quite readily by people of non-Western cultures. We acknowledge the material universe, and those who are some kind of believer usually accept the existence of a high supernatural plane including God, angels, the Devil, and perhaps demons. For many non-Western cultures, however, there is a middle, unseen plane which exists in this world which may include spirits and ancestors, as mentioned above, as well as genies and powers which can (perhaps) be appeased by charms, spells and fetishes.
(For more information on The Flaw of the Excluded Middle see http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=v&id=3263&fto=970& .)
Here in Mali the Excluded Middle is a vital part of life. We see it in the charms people wear and attach to their babies, or hang in their gardens. One of my friends has cowrie shells braided into her hair. You would probably think they were pretty ornaments, but I know they are jiginiu, "little hopes," designed to ward off evil spirits. She also uses cowrie shells to tell fortunes, which people take very seriously.
A few years ago the police in Senegal busted up a gang of burglars who had perpetrated a chain of house invasions against expatriates (including us) and rich Africans. The leader of the gang had over 50 fetishes attached to his body (some said to be effective at warding off bullets!) and the police were careful to cut off and burn every last one lest they help him to escape.
Some years ago a plane crashed in Timbuktu. Of 50 passengers and crew there was one survivor. She was taken to the capital to be hospitalized, where they had to put her in a private room (instead of a ward, which is all most people can afford) with a guard at the door. Why? Because if she was the only survivor, there must be something different about her, she must have access to some power or medicine, and if one could only touch her... So to avoid her being mobbed, she was sequestered. Another time people here in Kayes were hurrying to see a man who never went to the bathroom. Yes, I know that sounds funny, but supposedly he never needed to urinate or defecate, and since that meant he was privy to some supernatural power, people wanted to touch him or sit in the circle of his influence. (I told my informant that I was sure he was sneaking off to the latrine late at night, but she just laughed at me).
Certain people have powers as well, depending on their caste in society. The wives of blacksmiths are said to be able to do certain kinds of spells. Griots, the "town criers" for want of a better word, are also powerful. Even though pure Islam discourages such meddling with the occult, there are marabouts, who are basically Muslim shamans. (By the way, I recently learned the former president of Mali, Moussa Traoré, overthrown in the coup d'état of 1990, is not only out of prison and pardoned, but is pursuing a second career as a Big Time Marabout in Bamako!)
Pastor Michel is also in danger of being mobbed wherever he goes. Therefore, the Malian chief of state, President Amadou Toumani Touré (popularly known as ATT, just as we have called certain American presidents colloquially by their initials, such as FDR & LBJ) called the local authorities to arrange a place for him to stay and a security contingent of national guardsmen to surround and protect him. (Can you imagine Pres. Obama personally calling out the Guard for a Benny Hinn crusade?!?)
So even though Pastor Michel may indeed have power from God to heal, people do not come to him because they believe in his God or have any intention of converting to his Christian faith. They want to get close to POWER. And so they came in droves, most bringing their sick loved ones, but many attending just to be there and to see a miracle. I was told that mentally ill people were brought in from all the surrounding villages. Whenever he prayed for them, white birds rose up from the crowd, into the sky. Were their demons being released this way? Don't ask me (I told you I haven't figured out the theology yet)!
I don't yet know the statistics on how many people were healed and of what illnesses. I am told that a few people prayed to receive Christ. I hope it's true and I will be asking in a few months if any of them come to church.
Lest I sound too hard-hearted or cynical, I want to say that I have a great sympathy for the Malian people in this area. Most Malians are sick all the time. They have a poor diet and live in a dirty environment and can't afford medical care, so they often wait until their health becomes a crisis before dealing with illness. We had a conference in Kayes once, with pastors and their families coming from outlying villages. Every one of them sought medical care while they were here in the city; they were all dealing with chronic complaints to some degree. This was quite an eye-opener to me. So I can empathize with people's desperation to find a solution of some kind, even if it's one I do not understand or agree with.
As to the theological questions raised by this ministry, this has become very long and that will be the subject of a future post.
Interestingly, on the weekend after Michel's crusade, I visited a friend in the very neighborhood where the meetings were held. Yet I was greeted at the door of her compound by some middle school-aged boys who said to me, "Christians aren't welcome here. Christians are bad." So after the excitement passes, life returns to normal, and I'm here today, gone to Mali...
He was here for three nights and on the second evening the stadium was Standing Room Only. It was such a mob that they basically had to cancel the meeting due to crowd control issues. Now, there are no more than 250 Protestant Christians in Kayes (pop. >100,000); perhaps a few more Catholics, but this was definitely a Protestant event. Everyone else is either animistic Muslim or Islamic animist (however you prefer to express it). So how did a meeting of a minority religion draw so many, especially since getting people to attend a Bible study or visit a church is like pulling teeth?
It's all about POWER. This preacher, Pastor Michel, has a successful healing ministry. That means he has power from Somewhere, and frankly, people don't care if it's from God or the Devil or something else, if they can get close to it or get a piece of it. This may seem strange to the western mindset, especially if you are not familiar with the Flaw of the Excluded Middle (a term coined from but not to be confused with the Law of the Excluded Middle in logic). The Flaw of the Excluded Middle posits that the Western world view has a blind spot that makes it difficult for many Western missionaries to understand, let alone answer, problems related to spirits, ancestors and astrology. The Western two-tiered view of the universe typically leaves out an entire dimension seen quite readily by people of non-Western cultures. We acknowledge the material universe, and those who are some kind of believer usually accept the existence of a high supernatural plane including God, angels, the Devil, and perhaps demons. For many non-Western cultures, however, there is a middle, unseen plane which exists in this world which may include spirits and ancestors, as mentioned above, as well as genies and powers which can (perhaps) be appeased by charms, spells and fetishes.
(For more information on The Flaw of the Excluded Middle see http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=v&id=3263&fto=970& .)
Here in Mali the Excluded Middle is a vital part of life. We see it in the charms people wear and attach to their babies, or hang in their gardens. One of my friends has cowrie shells braided into her hair. You would probably think they were pretty ornaments, but I know they are jiginiu, "little hopes," designed to ward off evil spirits. She also uses cowrie shells to tell fortunes, which people take very seriously.
A few years ago the police in Senegal busted up a gang of burglars who had perpetrated a chain of house invasions against expatriates (including us) and rich Africans. The leader of the gang had over 50 fetishes attached to his body (some said to be effective at warding off bullets!) and the police were careful to cut off and burn every last one lest they help him to escape.
Some years ago a plane crashed in Timbuktu. Of 50 passengers and crew there was one survivor. She was taken to the capital to be hospitalized, where they had to put her in a private room (instead of a ward, which is all most people can afford) with a guard at the door. Why? Because if she was the only survivor, there must be something different about her, she must have access to some power or medicine, and if one could only touch her... So to avoid her being mobbed, she was sequestered. Another time people here in Kayes were hurrying to see a man who never went to the bathroom. Yes, I know that sounds funny, but supposedly he never needed to urinate or defecate, and since that meant he was privy to some supernatural power, people wanted to touch him or sit in the circle of his influence. (I told my informant that I was sure he was sneaking off to the latrine late at night, but she just laughed at me).
Certain people have powers as well, depending on their caste in society. The wives of blacksmiths are said to be able to do certain kinds of spells. Griots, the "town criers" for want of a better word, are also powerful. Even though pure Islam discourages such meddling with the occult, there are marabouts, who are basically Muslim shamans. (By the way, I recently learned the former president of Mali, Moussa Traoré, overthrown in the coup d'état of 1990, is not only out of prison and pardoned, but is pursuing a second career as a Big Time Marabout in Bamako!)
Pastor Michel is also in danger of being mobbed wherever he goes. Therefore, the Malian chief of state, President Amadou Toumani Touré (popularly known as ATT, just as we have called certain American presidents colloquially by their initials, such as FDR & LBJ) called the local authorities to arrange a place for him to stay and a security contingent of national guardsmen to surround and protect him. (Can you imagine Pres. Obama personally calling out the Guard for a Benny Hinn crusade?!?)
So even though Pastor Michel may indeed have power from God to heal, people do not come to him because they believe in his God or have any intention of converting to his Christian faith. They want to get close to POWER. And so they came in droves, most bringing their sick loved ones, but many attending just to be there and to see a miracle. I was told that mentally ill people were brought in from all the surrounding villages. Whenever he prayed for them, white birds rose up from the crowd, into the sky. Were their demons being released this way? Don't ask me (I told you I haven't figured out the theology yet)!
I don't yet know the statistics on how many people were healed and of what illnesses. I am told that a few people prayed to receive Christ. I hope it's true and I will be asking in a few months if any of them come to church.
Lest I sound too hard-hearted or cynical, I want to say that I have a great sympathy for the Malian people in this area. Most Malians are sick all the time. They have a poor diet and live in a dirty environment and can't afford medical care, so they often wait until their health becomes a crisis before dealing with illness. We had a conference in Kayes once, with pastors and their families coming from outlying villages. Every one of them sought medical care while they were here in the city; they were all dealing with chronic complaints to some degree. This was quite an eye-opener to me. So I can empathize with people's desperation to find a solution of some kind, even if it's one I do not understand or agree with.
As to the theological questions raised by this ministry, this has become very long and that will be the subject of a future post.
Interestingly, on the weekend after Michel's crusade, I visited a friend in the very neighborhood where the meetings were held. Yet I was greeted at the door of her compound by some middle school-aged boys who said to me, "Christians aren't welcome here. Christians are bad." So after the excitement passes, life returns to normal, and I'm here today, gone to Mali...
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Quote of the Week
CICERO: No man can be brave who thinks pain is the highest evil,
nor temperate who considers pleasure the highest good.
What do you think?
nor temperate who considers pleasure the highest good.
What do you think?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Trials and Tribulations of Travel in West Africa, Part I
I have a love/hate relationship with traveling anywhere in the world, but especially here in Africa. On this side of “the pond” it weighs out a bit heavier on the “hate” side of things because it involves a lot of waiting, not one of my strong points; e.g.
- Waiting to leave. (Bush taxis don’t leave until they are full; this is only 7 passengers, but it may involve a wait of many hours or overnight to get that last passenger. Sometimes I’ll buy the last ticket to move things along, but if there are two or more empty places, I usually can’t afford to buy more than one.)
- Waiting for officials at roadside police posts to inspect ID cards or merchandise so they can extort bribes. (They don’t bother Americans, but in spite of international agreements allowing free travel between African countries, local officials will find a pretext to charge a fine to each traveler from a different country.)
- Waiting for repairs. (From a flat tire to a broken chassis, we’ve seen it all!)
- Waiting to arrive at my destination. (The 500 mile trip to visit my children, for example, is an all day voyage; we have spent as few as 11 hours and as many as 45 [!] depending on road conditions. Currently, I am happy to say, most of the road is in good repair or at least being worked on.)
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Quote of the Week... on Childhood
-Brian W. Aldiss
What do you think?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Short Term Pros and Cons: An Epistle
My cousin, Drew, who is also in what he calls a “do-gooder” profession ;-) sent me this link to an article called The End of Service Trips? by Tim Ogden:
http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/the_end_of_service_trips/
The author challenges the value of overseas service trips (such as missions trips) in terms of value for dollar. He says, “My epiphany on the pointlessness of such trips came while spending a month volunteering at an international NGO’s famine-relief operation in Ethiopia. Despite my good intentions it was abundantly clear that I had no useful skills for the situation.”
He also sites an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, The 'Great Commission' or Glorified Sightseeing? by Evan Sparks. Sparks, who has himself taken numerous short-term missions trips, is even more critical: “The billion-dollar question, however, is whether they're worth the cost. Are short-term missions the best way to achieve the goals of Christians? Critics argue that sightseeing often takes up too much of the itinerary, leading some to call short-termers ‘vacationaries.’”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359398873721053.html?mod=djemITP
My husband maintains that the value of such trips is the exposure of Americans to how “the other half” lives. He feels that every American church member should make such a trip to the Third World. Andy Crouch, executive producer of Round Trip, a documentary film-based curriculum designed to improve church service trips, echoes this sentiment: “To experience the absolute poverty in parts of the developing world, to see people who couldn’t possibly be doing anything more to escape poverty, can be a transformative experience. It begins raising systemic questions that don’t necessarily get raised when you see the relative poverty in the United States. It’s very important for people in the rich world to be exposed to absolute poverty and I don’t know how you do it without an encounter with a real person.“
But Ogden responds, “Evidence suggests that these trips have no lasting impact on the participants, however.” Sparks cites Calvin College sociologist Kurt Ver Beek, who surveyed U.S. [short-term] missionaries who built homes in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. “After coming down from a post-trip ‘high,’ the short-termers did not evince much change in their lives. Only 16% reported ‘significant positive impact,’ including in prayer, friendships and financial giving.”
Sparks says further, “Indeed, if you were to ask an economist about short-term missions, many of which involve such manual-labor projects, he would have a simple answer: Ditch the traveling team members and send a check. A career missionary knows better what manual labor needs to be done on-site, and he can hire local laborers for much less money than what flying in unskilled Americans requires. Using local labor contributes to the local economy and avoids perpetuating a culture of dependency and powerlessness. A career missionary is also fluent in the local language and culturally aware, so he can be more effective at evangelism, discipleship and social-justice ministries.”
So where do I stand on this issue? Firmly straddling the fence! The above statement is correct about providing employment to and empowering locals. Yet we want short-term teams to come here, to see what our lives are like, and to meet the people in whom we have invested ourselves. We believe that long-term missionaries are often called through such an experience (though I have no empirical statistics to back my claim).
As for the advice above for people to stay at home and send a check, things just don’t work that way. I remember a time when we were building a church, and a builder’s team came from the States. The local pastor commented, “With all the money these people are spending on travel, we would have more than enough to finish the building.”
What we told him was that if those people had not come, they would not have sent us their money instead. If they paid for the trip themselves, they would have simply spent it on another trip. If the members of their church contributed to help them, it was because of the participation of people they knew. Contributors get more excited about the involvement of a person they know than about a building project. If they can’t go themselves, they feel good about enabling someone else to do so. There’s not as much vicarious satisfaction in buying a brick.
Crouch suggests, “The trips only make sense if they are part of a comprehensive program of changing peoples attitudes and behaviors. Evidence is shockingly clear that a single trip has no impact. No matter how well you do a trip, especially when you’re talking about teenagers, they are at such a high-velocity developmental stage that I don’t think any single experience is going to have an ‘impact.‘...If you want to see any lasting change you can’t have the trip end when people get back, or even after that one meeting where everyone shares their pictures. The organizations that have thought about this the most and are doing the best job are making these trips part of a much longer engagement with the issues. For instance, there’s one organization that requires a year-long commitment and the trip occurs in the middle—they meet just as often after the trip as they do preparing for it. What we need to do is go out and have our world rocked and then come back and in a sustained way make some real commitments to change and be held accountable for enough time for those changes to sink in. The grooves in our culture are too deep for us to escape from without that level of commitment.“
We have been impressed by a program of the Cooperative Missions Network of the African Dispersion (COMINAD), called Adopt-A-Village. http://cominad.com/
Adopt-A-People has been a popular concept in missions circles for the past decade or longer. This means “that a church, congregation or fellowship group makes a serious commitment to do all they can to reach their adopted people group by working in partnership with the mission agency of their choice.” http://www.adopt-a-people.org/ One criticism of this approach, however, is that it is too big. It’s hard for people to feel intimately involved with a whole tribe of people.
So COMINAD (and others) came up with the idea of allying a single church with a single village. In the COMINAD model, members of the American church visit the village annually, or more often, so they are returning to the same place over and over again. Pictures are taken of each villager, and each member of the US church commits to pray for one of the villagers. The villagers also receive pictures of their prayer partners. The American church also agrees to support a church-planter to live in the village. He will build relationships with the local people, and work or farm alongside them. There may be development projects eventually, but the focus is not on financial benefits, but rather on relationship.
As an African-American organization, the focus of COMINAD is on reconciliation: reconciliation with the descendants of their African brethren who sold them into slavery centuries ago, and reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. They say to the Africans, “We all know that our ancestors could not have been captured as slaves without the participation of the local people. [Here the villagers nod their heads and/or avert their eyes.] But what they intended for evil, God intended for good (Gen. 50.20). When our ancestors went to the United States, they learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ so we can bring that back to you.”
This more focused approach on a smaller group of people, with repeated contact, has proven fruitful for COMINAD and other organizations.
Finally, our daughter, Ruthanne, and son, Benjamin, both went on overseas summer trips with Teen Missions International. We are very impressed with this organization as well. For the same amount of money that a young woman in our church was paying to go help missionaries in Costa Rica for two weeks, our kids had two weeks of “Boot Camp” training in Florida, then a month or more of work in their country, followed by a week of follow-up debriefing. We would recommend TMI highly and would love to get one of their groups to come here as well! www.teenmissions.org
If after all this, I have not discouraged you about short-term missions, here are a few helpful links!
Reconciliation Ministries International:
http://www.RMNI.org
Christ for Humanity:
http://www.christforhumanity.org/
Teen Missions International:
www.teenmissions.org
The Alliance for Excellence in Short Term Mission:
http://www.aestm.org/
Christianity Today’s ST mission site:
http://www.roundtripmissions.com/
Short Term missions database/search engine:
http://www.shorttermmissions.com/?STM=0a041825abfa34c137309bced555bb09
United World Mission’s short term opportunities (note: these are for one-to-two year terms, as recommended in the Ogden article):
http://uwm.org/ex237/
And oh, yeah, don't forget about us:
malibowers@gmail.com
Further reading on this issue:
Churches Retool Mission Trips: Work Abroad Criticized for High Cost and Lack of Value By Jacqueline L. Salmon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070402233_pf.html
http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/the_end_of_service_trips/
The author challenges the value of overseas service trips (such as missions trips) in terms of value for dollar. He says, “My epiphany on the pointlessness of such trips came while spending a month volunteering at an international NGO’s famine-relief operation in Ethiopia. Despite my good intentions it was abundantly clear that I had no useful skills for the situation.”
He also sites an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, The 'Great Commission' or Glorified Sightseeing? by Evan Sparks. Sparks, who has himself taken numerous short-term missions trips, is even more critical: “The billion-dollar question, however, is whether they're worth the cost. Are short-term missions the best way to achieve the goals of Christians? Critics argue that sightseeing often takes up too much of the itinerary, leading some to call short-termers ‘vacationaries.’”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359398873721053.html?mod=djemITP
My husband maintains that the value of such trips is the exposure of Americans to how “the other half” lives. He feels that every American church member should make such a trip to the Third World. Andy Crouch, executive producer of Round Trip, a documentary film-based curriculum designed to improve church service trips, echoes this sentiment: “To experience the absolute poverty in parts of the developing world, to see people who couldn’t possibly be doing anything more to escape poverty, can be a transformative experience. It begins raising systemic questions that don’t necessarily get raised when you see the relative poverty in the United States. It’s very important for people in the rich world to be exposed to absolute poverty and I don’t know how you do it without an encounter with a real person.“
But Ogden responds, “Evidence suggests that these trips have no lasting impact on the participants, however.” Sparks cites Calvin College sociologist Kurt Ver Beek, who surveyed U.S. [short-term] missionaries who built homes in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. “After coming down from a post-trip ‘high,’ the short-termers did not evince much change in their lives. Only 16% reported ‘significant positive impact,’ including in prayer, friendships and financial giving.”
Sparks says further, “Indeed, if you were to ask an economist about short-term missions, many of which involve such manual-labor projects, he would have a simple answer: Ditch the traveling team members and send a check. A career missionary knows better what manual labor needs to be done on-site, and he can hire local laborers for much less money than what flying in unskilled Americans requires. Using local labor contributes to the local economy and avoids perpetuating a culture of dependency and powerlessness. A career missionary is also fluent in the local language and culturally aware, so he can be more effective at evangelism, discipleship and social-justice ministries.”
So where do I stand on this issue? Firmly straddling the fence! The above statement is correct about providing employment to and empowering locals. Yet we want short-term teams to come here, to see what our lives are like, and to meet the people in whom we have invested ourselves. We believe that long-term missionaries are often called through such an experience (though I have no empirical statistics to back my claim).
As for the advice above for people to stay at home and send a check, things just don’t work that way. I remember a time when we were building a church, and a builder’s team came from the States. The local pastor commented, “With all the money these people are spending on travel, we would have more than enough to finish the building.”
What we told him was that if those people had not come, they would not have sent us their money instead. If they paid for the trip themselves, they would have simply spent it on another trip. If the members of their church contributed to help them, it was because of the participation of people they knew. Contributors get more excited about the involvement of a person they know than about a building project. If they can’t go themselves, they feel good about enabling someone else to do so. There’s not as much vicarious satisfaction in buying a brick.
Crouch suggests, “The trips only make sense if they are part of a comprehensive program of changing peoples attitudes and behaviors. Evidence is shockingly clear that a single trip has no impact. No matter how well you do a trip, especially when you’re talking about teenagers, they are at such a high-velocity developmental stage that I don’t think any single experience is going to have an ‘impact.‘...If you want to see any lasting change you can’t have the trip end when people get back, or even after that one meeting where everyone shares their pictures. The organizations that have thought about this the most and are doing the best job are making these trips part of a much longer engagement with the issues. For instance, there’s one organization that requires a year-long commitment and the trip occurs in the middle—they meet just as often after the trip as they do preparing for it. What we need to do is go out and have our world rocked and then come back and in a sustained way make some real commitments to change and be held accountable for enough time for those changes to sink in. The grooves in our culture are too deep for us to escape from without that level of commitment.“
We have been impressed by a program of the Cooperative Missions Network of the African Dispersion (COMINAD), called Adopt-A-Village. http://cominad.com/
Adopt-A-People has been a popular concept in missions circles for the past decade or longer. This means “that a church, congregation or fellowship group makes a serious commitment to do all they can to reach their adopted people group by working in partnership with the mission agency of their choice.” http://www.adopt-a-people.org/ One criticism of this approach, however, is that it is too big. It’s hard for people to feel intimately involved with a whole tribe of people.
So COMINAD (and others) came up with the idea of allying a single church with a single village. In the COMINAD model, members of the American church visit the village annually, or more often, so they are returning to the same place over and over again. Pictures are taken of each villager, and each member of the US church commits to pray for one of the villagers. The villagers also receive pictures of their prayer partners. The American church also agrees to support a church-planter to live in the village. He will build relationships with the local people, and work or farm alongside them. There may be development projects eventually, but the focus is not on financial benefits, but rather on relationship.
As an African-American organization, the focus of COMINAD is on reconciliation: reconciliation with the descendants of their African brethren who sold them into slavery centuries ago, and reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. They say to the Africans, “We all know that our ancestors could not have been captured as slaves without the participation of the local people. [Here the villagers nod their heads and/or avert their eyes.] But what they intended for evil, God intended for good (Gen. 50.20). When our ancestors went to the United States, they learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ so we can bring that back to you.”
This more focused approach on a smaller group of people, with repeated contact, has proven fruitful for COMINAD and other organizations.
Finally, our daughter, Ruthanne, and son, Benjamin, both went on overseas summer trips with Teen Missions International. We are very impressed with this organization as well. For the same amount of money that a young woman in our church was paying to go help missionaries in Costa Rica for two weeks, our kids had two weeks of “Boot Camp” training in Florida, then a month or more of work in their country, followed by a week of follow-up debriefing. We would recommend TMI highly and would love to get one of their groups to come here as well! www.teenmissions.org
If after all this, I have not discouraged you about short-term missions, here are a few helpful links!
Reconciliation Ministries International:
http://www.RMNI.org
Christ for Humanity:
http://www.christforhumanity.org/
Teen Missions International:
www.teenmissions.org
The Alliance for Excellence in Short Term Mission:
http://www.aestm.org/
Christianity Today’s ST mission site:
http://www.roundtripmissions.com/
Short Term missions database/search engine:
http://www.shorttermmissions.com/?STM=0a041825abfa34c137309bced555bb09
United World Mission’s short term opportunities (note: these are for one-to-two year terms, as recommended in the Ogden article):
http://uwm.org/ex237/
And oh, yeah, don't forget about us:
malibowers@gmail.com
Further reading on this issue:
Churches Retool Mission Trips: Work Abroad Criticized for High Cost and Lack of Value By Jacqueline L. Salmon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070402233_pf.html
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Quote of the Week
"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." Logan Pearsall Smith
What do you think?
What do you think?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wednesday without Words
I couldn't figure out how to attach these photos to my previous post, so here are some samples of Malian "uniforms."
Cloth Heaven
Tomorrow I’m going to a wedding, and with any luck, I’ll be wearing the same dress as most of the other women there (and it’s not because I’m a bridesmaid)!
One thing that is very different here from back home: In the U.S. if a woman walked into church or the office wearing the same dress as another, the reaction would be great chagrin. Not here! Fabrics come and go in popularity, and everyone will buy the same print to have an outfit made, so you often meet people wearing the same thing. Additionally, for events like weddings or holidays, groups go out of their way to buy the same material and wear it together. It’s called a “uniform.” In fact, every year the Malian Association of Evangelicals puts out a Christmas design so that we all go to church on Dec. 25 wearing the same thing.
The textiles are one of the most fun and interesting aspects of Malian life. Brilliant colors and designs guarantee that life in this often-brown (due to the dust) country is never dull. Interestingly, many of the best-quality fabrics are manufactured in the U.K. and Holland, where they have textile industries entirely for export to Africa consisting of loud cotton prints which no European woman would be caught dead in.
Ready-made clothing is rare here. You buy the fabric you like and take it to a tailor. Unlike in North America and Europe, a trip to the tailor is not an expensive luxury. It’s an everyday necessity and quite affordable, and a common profession among men.
Some of the patterns I’ve seen over the years in church, in shops, or on the street:
- Lots of florals and geometric designs.
- Numbers and letters.
- Soccer balls.
- Disembodied fingers.
- Chickens (one of the first uniforms I ever had had chickens, roosters, and chicks on it, with lines of eggs all around. UG-LEE).
- A hand holding a spray can, with a triangle of spray being squirted.
- Eyes.
- Insects.
- Leaves.
- Matches.
- Badminton raquets & birdies.
- Neckties.
- The backs of ladies’ heads showing hairstyles.
- One Sunday in church, I saw a shirt covered in laptop computers.
- I also saw a lady with a large safety pin design on her dress, where the tailor had rather unfortunately located a pin across her buttocks so that it looked like she needed it to keep the seam together!
- Images of people, such as the president of Mali, the First Lady, or perhaps a popular imam (Muslim preacher) and of course, Barack Hussein Obama! One of my Peace Corps friends boasts two different BHO outfits.
If you want to see a sample of African Obama fabric, check out #6 in this gallery:
Monday, February 8, 2010
Quote(s) of the Week... on Friendship
Next Sunday is Friendship Day in Honduras, so we missionary ladies celebrated yesterday. In case you think that's strange, we only meet for prayer once a month, so since it was within a week, one of our Honduran colleagues suggested we honor our friendships this time.
We all brought a little gift to exchange and some of us brought quotations or thoughts related to friendship. Here's a sampling:
"A friend is someone who dares to ask the hard questions." (Marian H., SIL)
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.'" (C. S. Lewis, author)
"Only God can be a perfect friend, for he has promised, 'Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.'" (Rose L., ReachAcross)
"I've discovered a way to stay friends forever --
There's really nothing to it.
I simply tell you what to do
And you do it!" (Shel Silverstein, author of The Giving Tree)
Friday, February 5, 2010
Humbled by Respect
Marcie Harris & I are doing a women's leadership seminar this weekend in Bambara. We have invited all the pastors' wives from our town, plus at least one women's leader from each church. Last night was the opening meeting and there were 9 women; we will continue all day today and are hoping to get a few more.
I was thinking what a humbling experience this is. If I were invited to a seminar by a foreigner speaking heavily accented, broken English, purporting to be an expert on some subject, would I attend? I'm not sure I would. Yet these women come willingly. Why?
1. Because I'm a missionary. Most of them, or their parents, came to faith through missionaries, so there is an inherent respect for us.
2. Because there is a dearth of good Bible teachers in this land. In America we don't need foreigners to preach to us because there are so many fine 'native' Bible scholars. Here one takes whatever one can get, and with gratitude!
3. Because I'm white. Yeah, not very PC, huh? But the fact is that despite Malian resentment of colonialism, they accord to us a lot more respect than they do each other.
So may I not take this for granted, nor waste this opportunity. May I respect and honor them as they do me.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Quote(s) of the Week
[I've been away with limited Internet access for two weeks, but now I'm trying to get back on track with my "blog schedule."]
"Over the years, slowly but surely, we have painted ourselves into a corner on a whole range of issues, where we can no longer say or do what makes the most sense to us, but only what is considered to be politically correct."
-Thomas Sowell
"Our founders understood that the ability to express our differences publicly was democracy’s substitute for violence."
-DeMint & Woodward in 'Why We Whisper'
"We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless."
Sen. J. William Fulbright
What do you think? Comments welcomed.
"Over the years, slowly but surely, we have painted ourselves into a corner on a whole range of issues, where we can no longer say or do what makes the most sense to us, but only what is considered to be politically correct."
-Thomas Sowell
"Our founders understood that the ability to express our differences publicly was democracy’s substitute for violence."
-DeMint & Woodward in 'Why We Whisper'
"We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless."
Sen. J. William Fulbright
What do you think? Comments welcomed.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
11+ Charities Collecting Donations for Haiti
FROM THE DESIRING GOD BLOG:
January 13, 2010 | By: Abraham Piper | Category: Recommendations
If you're looking for an organization to channel your money through for Haiti—and you probably should be—here are some options.
1. Compassion International
2. Feed My Starving Children
3. Food for the Hungry
4. World Vision
5. World Relief
6. Samaritan's Purse
7. Love a Child
8. Northwest Haiti Christian Mission
9. Compassion Weavers
10. Mennonite Central Committee
11. Water Missions International
To these I would add: Crossworld, an evangelical mission agency working in Haiti for over 50 years.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Through the Eyes of a Newbie
In the interest of sharing some insights about Malian culture, I want to defer to our friend, Annie Pettit, who spent the holidays with us. Annie teaches high school math at Dakar Academy and is a very good friend of Danielle. We always enjoy "seeing" Mali through the eyes of someone who has never been here before, so I am going to give you the link to her blog for today's Malian Life & Culture entry:
http://anniepettit.blogspot.com
Her three most recent entries are about her visit here.
http://anniepettit.blogspot.com
Her three most recent entries are about her visit here.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Quote of the Week
Hey, I'm on a roll, lol! Even tho I just posted my "rebooting" message, it's Monday, so I'll share this cutie which my Facebook friend, Shirley O'Neill, posted today (btw, Shirley & I were close friends in HS, lost track of each other for decades, and have reconnected thanks to FB. Say what you want about wasting time on these social networking sites, but they can be a real blessing!!!):
"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
- P. J. O'Rourke
"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
- P. J. O'Rourke
Rebooting the Blog...
It's embarrassing to look at my blog and see how long it's been since I've posted anything. A few weeks ago I changed the name -- it was at first called "My Non-Political Blog" b/c so many of the blogs I've seen are political, but really that name was supposed to be a "place holder" until I thot of something more original or catchy. Finally, I changed it to the old phrase which we first heard from Ken Durst, Here Today... Gone to Mali.
My biggest problem, I suppose, has been writer's block -- a whole year's worth, from the look of things! Then I saw a format which my colleague/Facebook friend, Mali-Anta, follows:
* Sunday – Quotes for the week
* Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
* Wednesday without words – Malian photos
* Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
* Saturday – Book reviews
I like the idea of some kind of structure; it saves me from having to agonize over what to write. So here is what I will try:
*Sunday/Monday: Quote of the Week (I collect quotes all the time, this will give me something to do with them for once!)
*Monday/Tuesday: Malian Life & Culture
*Wednesday without Words (WWW): Pictures
*Thursday/Friday: Book Reviews
*Friday/Saturday: Current Event Commentary or Personal Journaling
I may not post on every topic every week, and as you can see, I don't want to commit to an exact day for each post (only WWW wouldn't work on another day!). I will probably also post our monthly prayer letters as they are published, b/c they too give a glimpse of our lives.
And all this is assuming anyone even reads this!
My biggest problem, I suppose, has been writer's block -- a whole year's worth, from the look of things! Then I saw a format which my colleague/Facebook friend, Mali-Anta, follows:
* Sunday – Quotes for the week
* Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
* Wednesday without words – Malian photos
* Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
* Saturday – Book reviews
I like the idea of some kind of structure; it saves me from having to agonize over what to write. So here is what I will try:
*Sunday/Monday: Quote of the Week (I collect quotes all the time, this will give me something to do with them for once!)
*Monday/Tuesday: Malian Life & Culture
*Wednesday without Words (WWW): Pictures
*Thursday/Friday: Book Reviews
*Friday/Saturday: Current Event Commentary or Personal Journaling
I may not post on every topic every week, and as you can see, I don't want to commit to an exact day for each post (only WWW wouldn't work on another day!). I will probably also post our monthly prayer letters as they are published, b/c they too give a glimpse of our lives.
And all this is assuming anyone even reads this!
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