26May

All Moved In

FILED IN Atlanta Life | Updates Comments Off

As I type this, my family is all soundly asleep in our new home – a small apartment in Atlanta. It has been a crazy six weeks, but we are here and our things are unpacked. The kids were able to spend a few days at school; Jeff is accustoming himself to work from home and I’m in a sort of waiting.

You see, we are here but classes will not begin until the last day of August. I passed my NCLEX exam and am a nurse, but I can’t seem to find a job and am not sure it is the best use of my time to get one. I can get internet on my laptop sometimes from “free wi-fi” places, but I cannot make any updates to the website. So, I’m waiting.

Don’t worry, I’m not the type to be bored. It is just that this doesn’t feel much like the life I was leaving for.

About a week before the move I was enjoying a long walk thinking about the difference in what people perceive as a life of “missions” work, and the reality of it. Many people become very excited when they learn about what I do and why I am in school. They share about their desire to travel to far off places to do good deeds – it does have a certain romantic ring to it.

The reality of it is a little less exotic and a lot less romantic. We just moved 800 miles away so I could be trained for the job I am about to do. We had to sell a house we were comfortable in; we had to let go of half our possessions, we had to leave everyone we know behind; Jeff had to give up his job. And now we face a very long, lonely summer while we do our best to make new friends and wait for the fall to begin. And all this just to do it again in four years – all to leave everything we have been a part of to pursue the next piece of the puzzle.

I think romanticizing is common in just about every part of life. We see the people who have things we want to have and we don’t think about the pain and work it took to get there, we just see what they have. We want to be thin, but don’t want to exercise and change our eating habits. We want to understand more, but we don’t want to do the research and reading. We want to be a better friend, but we don’t want to give up any more of ourselves.

You may or may not be called to serve in Africa – and the truth is it doesn’t matter what you are called to. It only matters that you are faithful to that call. Do what you can now, however small it seems. Educate yourself with books or journals. Spend time with the people you feel called to serve. Chose to do one thing differently today that will get you a small step closer to your calling. My journey to serve in Africa began over 11 years ago, and it will take me at least another four before I am able to begin what I am called to do. It doesn’t happen in big leaps – it happens in small steps, the small steps you take every day.

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29Jan

To Give, or Not to Give

FILED IN Guatemala 2010 Comments Off

Before I left for the trip to Congo, Jeff was gathering as much information as possible about the do’s and don’ts of international missions work. He has so many missionary contacts it was easy. One story shared with him was a heartbreaking reality check on the unintended impact of every thing you do on a mission trip.

The friend explained his organization has a policy that nothing is to be given to the local people from participants on trips. They understood that when Americans witness the poverty of developing countries the first response is almost always guilt for the abundant life lived in the United States. This guilt causes the traveler to give away nearly everything they brought with them on their trip or even hand out money to the local people.

While the organization will accept items for donations which they can then distribute through the local churches, they do not want personal gifts to become the norm. Not only does this set up a culture where the visiting missionaries are seen as a source of material items, it can actually leave the locals worse off than before the missionary came.

At one of their locations, travelers are encouraged to employ the services of a laundress – an act which provides an additional customer to one of the local women. “Consider the traveler who hires a local woman to do his laundry. He can easily pay the set fee, and because he wants to feel he’s made a difference he overpays her. $20 USD is nothing to him, and he can leave the country feeling like he had done a good thing. But what he doesn’t realize is that $20 USD is an enormous amount for this woman — she can live on that for two weeks or more, which she does.”

“But when the money is spent, she must return to work. But by this time her regular customers have had to find a new laundress. She now has no money, and no regular customers. Her situation is worse than before the traveler hired her.”

Asking why she doesn’t save the money — continue working and use the money to improve her situation — is to ask her why she is not American. She lives her life working for the money she needs to live every day. If she does not need money she does not need to work.

This concept is so foreign to Americans, but explains in painful detail why culture will change the impact of what you do. Your generous gift may not be helpful at all. To be truly effective at meeting the needs of families in developing countries, you need to be able to look beyond your cultural norms to understand the potential consequences of your actions.

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