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You've come to the end of the story, and we have arrived safely back in Canada. Thank-you for faithfully following our experiences in Mozambique!

Some of you have suggested that I should publish this blog and use the proceeds to continue the micro-enterprise development program in Mozambique that has been started over the past year.

Thanks to your suggestions, we have revised the blogs into a book format, which is now shipping! Please visit www.StevenMKuhn.com for more information, and to order your copy today!

Thanks again for your support over the past year.

Steve and Laura.

Quiet Confidence

Reflecting on today's departure from Mozambique adds a certain depth of understanding to a much more significant departure that took place some 2,000 years ago. Imagine the contrast that an honestly reflective Jesus would have seen: the gulf between his perfect self and the young, imperfect church that he created.

Jesus' ministry lasted all of three years. Three years to identify, train and mentor a small band of misfit fishermen and tax collectors to share an incredible story of salvation with an unbelieving people. Three years to build the ultimate in self-sustaining and self-propagating ministries.

Imagine the disciples' fears as Jesus began to foretell his departure: "We're not ready for you to leave us," they surely would have complained. "Can we please go over those parables once more, just to make sure that we understand them?"

"Jesus, can you please edit this early manuscript of the gospels? If you don't have time to read them completely, at least read the red-ink parts, just to make sure we've captured your words properly."

Their fears ran deep, and they were well-founded. Even the Rock upon which Jesus chose to build the church, his disciple Peter, was woefully and completely unprepared. Peter's disappointing last act with Jesus involved drawing his sword in a fit of uncontrolled anger and chopping off the ear of the servant of the high priest who was arresting Jesus.

This is the rock upon which God will build his church.

Shortly afterwards, as Jesus is facing his day in court and the crucifixion plan is irreversibly set into motion, Peter denies knowing Jesus. He denies being a disciple of the Most High God to none other than an unthreatening, harmless little girl standing in a doorway. "But I'm not ready to assume responsibility as the Rock," Peter must have protested to Jesus.

Jesus had predicted Peter's failures, and yet chose to follow through with the plans of the Father despite the protestations of those who followed him.

In fact, the only disciple pleased about God's timetable might have been Judas Iscariot, eager to receive his thirty silver coins for having betrayed our Saviour.

And yet God didn't revise his schedule. He didn't delay the crucifixion just a couple more weeks to make sure that everyone was prepared for His Son's departure.

Jesus knew that it was time for him to go, and had a quiet confidence that, in his short ministry, he had set the wheels in motion for the world to hear of his wonderful story -- and knew that, without his departure, the disciples would forever remain pupils, never making the leap to teachers and fishers of men. He left, trusting His disciples to make mistakes, to learn, and to stumble through. And today, 2,000 years later, their legacy remains: a large yet imperfect church that worships a most perfect God.

Jesus' own ministry was no less than the salvation of the world, and he had the confidence to leave it in the hands of a flock of flawed followers. Learning from His example, I too can have the confidence to leave the ministry that I have worked to build over the past year in the hands of Mario and Samuel.

So here you are, Mario and Samuel, I hand this program off from one cracked pot to another. My airplane awaits.

Once Again, An Empty House

Despite constant change, life has a way of going in circles. There is a first time for everything, but even many of these firsts feel strangely familiar. We are back at one of those moments today. Back at the beginning of the circle.

By the end of the weekend, furniture will have been moved out of our apartment, sold in order to fill a deficit in our fundraising account. Laura and I will be living amidst barely more than a few stray dust balls recently exposed to the light of day.

For Laura, school finished this week. We are standing in the wake of an exodus of foreigners: diplomats returning home for summer vacations, business men and women returning to head offices, missionaries going home to raise more money.

Our stomachs are overflowing with the bounty of farewell dinners, some hosted by us, some held in our honour. We are sad to leave behind so many people whom we did not even know a year ago. Many people have asked us about plans to return, but we offer no promises. Perhaps we will meet again. Perhaps only in heaven.

We have been eager to finish well; eager to maintain motivation and energy right up to our departing moments, but our minds are drifting back home. It has been difficult to kindle new friendships that we know will be difficult to sustain in such a short time.

And we are only too aware that, for the Mozambicans that we leave behind, their stories started long before we arrived and will extend far into the future. We will soon be forgotten by all but our closest friends, replaced in body and memory by a new set of missionaries with different perspectives, different backgrounds, different ways of doing things. Perhaps missionaries from North America; perhaps missionaries from Africa.

We are ready to return home, though not entirely ready to leave this home. And we realize that the home we return to will not be the home we left a year ago -- not because it has changed, but because we have changed. Because we have spent the past year being transformed in the crucible of God's hands.

We have been living a life that, despite our best efforts, slide presentations and photographs will never completely convey. Our friends and family will never completely be able to relate to the stories we share. And our friends and family have continued to live their lives over the past year as well. Their own stories have continued on, and we are all faced with the task of weaving these two divergent stories back together.

In just a few days we will experience another shock as we once again splash the crisp, cool water of our home culture on our faces. And have the freedom once again to brush our teeth with the convenience of tap water.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And He is the same in Mozambique as in Europe as in North America. His constancy is the foundation that will keep us anchored as we prepare for yet another transition.

A Show-Off by Any Other Name...

I recently had a discussion with a Mozambican brave enough to make himself vulnerable to me. And wise enough that I want to share his insight with you. At great risk to someone born into a relationships-based culture, he leveled the following criticism towards me and my kind: "Missionaries," he asserted, "are show-offs. Sometimes I think the only reason they come here is to show off."

Our conversation was interrupted, which gave me nearly 12 hours to think about what he meant. To reflect.

And then, the next day, I shared with him the substance of my reflection. "I think I know what you mean," I said. "We come here, we feel like we've given up a lot to do so, but here I am with a maid who cleans my house one day a week, a car in my driveway, imported foods on my shelves. This is all showing off, isn't it? But," I added, slipping into a slightly defensive tone, "I don't think that missionaries come here in order to show off. I think they come here not realizing that they are showing off."

I was swiftly told that I had missed the mark. "We don't care about those sorts of things. Plenty of people here can afford them. Maybe 'show-off' wasn't the right word."

But the confidence to confront that he had wielded the night before was gone, leaving me again to search for the meaning of his words. This time, I found that meaning on my bookshelf, and it turns out that 'show-off' is appropriate, though in a more spiritual sense than I had been thinking. These are the reflections of Donald C. Posterski:

Missiologists are now referring to "the coming of the third church." The first thousand years of church history were under the aegis of the Eastern Church, in the eastern half of the Roman Empire; the second millennium, the leading church was the Western Church. But in the third millennium the church will be led by the Third Church, the Southern Church--the church in the Two-Thirds World. Samuel Escobar reflects, "There is an element of mystery when the dynamism of mission does not come from above, from the expansive power of a superior civilization, but from below, from the little ones, those that do not have the abundance of material, financial, or technical resources, but are open to the prompting of the Spirit" (Enemies with Smiling Faces, pp. 164-5.)

Just because I come from the West does not mean that my relationship with these people in Africa can be unidirectional. We often learn that giving is generous and that taking is selfish. That's true of material wealth, but the reverse is often true of things less tangible, such as knowledge and understanding: to be constantly the giver of knowledge and understanding is not only selfish, but also arrogant. There is nothing greedy about sitting down and trying to take -- to listen and learn -- a thing or two as well.

Bryant L. Myers, veteran of World Vision and professor of transformational development, expresses the idea that we Western missionaries need to work on developing bidirectional relationships in this way:

The non-poor, and sometimes development facilitators, suffer from the temptation to play god in the lives of the poor, and believe that what they have in terms of money, knowledge and position is the result of their own cleverness or the right of their group. ...[A]fter all, it is fun playing god in the lives of other people (Walking with the Poor, pp. 14-15, 115).

However "fun" it might be, I don't believe that missionaries in general suffer a deficit of good intention. Most make a huge personal sacrifice in an attempt to build the Kingdom of God. The trouble is, despite the silly advice given from a mother to protect the fragile ego of a child, it's not always the thought that counts. Intentions are hidden. They're invisible, and the result is that harmful acts, backed by good intentions, are still harmful acts.

This young African was trying to tell me that we Westerners have become spiritual show-offs, inflicted with a powerful dose of spiritual superiority. We've become the Pharisees of our day, off on a mission to point out everyone else's flaws, liberated to share our vast knowledge and understanding, but without realizing that Jesus beat us to Africa.

Some of my African colleagues have a far superior understanding of theology than I do. And they have a closer walk with Jesus than I do. They know that those who try to walk by themselves in Africa quickly stumble and fall. In the West, we have the crutch of consumerism to cushion our fall, so we often don't even notice when we're flailing in the dirt.

They don't always agree with me on the finer points of theology, but didn't the apostle Paul accuse the wealthy people of the church of Corinth that their understanding was "but a poor reflection as in a mirror"? That the reflection is poor is important, yes, but equally so that it is a reflection. Reflections are backwards. Those words always sting me back to humility whenever I think that I've been bitten by a bout of spiritual superiority.