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.

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.

A Fractured Understanding

Later today, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor will be awarded the $1.5 million Templeton Prize for his lifetime's work of arguing that problems such as violence and racism can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual dimensions.

This award will come as a surprise to many who draw a sharp line between the secular and spiritual realms. Many Christians in the West compartmentalize our lives in this way, limiting prayer to spiritual problems and our own intelligence and hard work to solving "real" problems. Atheists dismiss prayer as a psychological exercise at best.

"We will pay a high price," Taylor says, "if we continue to allow this muddled thinking to prevail."

Taylor's work would be received by most Africans as being, well, obvious. He might as well have won a boatload of cash for arguing that the sun is hot or that the rain comes from clouds.

Africans readily accept the role of spiritual influences and causes underlying physical events. Many access traditional spirits for protection, divination, and healing from witchcraft.

Several people have impressed upon us that these practices are "very, very common," and every time I'm struck by the emphasis that they use. A Mozambican woman with whom Laura works was bold enough to say that easily 95% of people still practice traditional beliefs. "If they say they don't, they're probably just hiding it."

Mario's mother recently asked to borrow money from him to buy a goat to bring to a sangoma. He wouldn't lend it to her, but faces pressure to abide. Sangomas often ask for goats or chickens. They use the heads and feet to make healing potions, and keep the good meat for themselves. It's a good deal for the witch doctor, Mario thought. They're well-fed.

Africans who engage the services of such traditional spiritualists are often looking to detect and cure physical or spiritual ailments, looking to foretell or alter the future. Perhaps they want to identify and punish someone who has committed a crime against them.

The practice is pervasive, though often hidden beneath society's veneer. I've heard stories of Christian ministers consulting these practitioners in an attempt to secure leadership positions within their churches. I've heard similar stories of government leaders.

This inclination towards seeing the world in its unfractured reality leads African Christians to be very spiritual people, and leads Africans of many faith practices to be keenly interested in discussions of gods and spiritual powers -- often moreso than the Western missionaries who have come wanting to teach them.

Some African traditional practices, like divination and witchcraft, are clearly inconsistent with Christianity, just as those of us in the West who rely on rugged individualism rather than on God are similarly inconsistent.

That notwithstanding, African Christians struggle to see why some Western missionaries preach that reliance on God is incompatible with healing using the natural restorative properties of tree roots and bark, while these same missionaries can themselves pop a Tylenol Gelcap to soothe their own aches and pains. Africans wonder whether Westerners dance dangerously close to an idolatrous devotion to science, while Westerners believe that tradition-adhering Africans are themselves tapping their toes clearly in the polytheistic danger zone.

Each group, focused on the faults of the other, believes that its own practices are safely within the acceptable bounds of Christianity.

Charles Taylor is onto something. But it's not enough to look at the world through our own physical and spiritual lens: we must try to look through our neighbour's as well. Even those of us, like Charles Taylor, who acknowledge an integrated spiritual-physical world, lack the wisdom of God. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.

Kings of the Hill

Laura and I took a day off work to have Julie show us around the orphanage where she has been living, and share with us what she has been experiencing in her weeks here.

In addition to housing some 350 orphaned children, the staff at the Iris Ministries centre in Zimpeto conduct several outreach programs, ministering to teenagers living on the street, ministering to patients in the depressing Central Hospital, and ministering to the people of all ages who -- believe it or not -- spend their days rummaging through burning and rotting piles of garbage at the city dump.

Laura and I rode with Julie, in typical Mozambique style, on the back of a flatbed truck to the dump. Once there, we encountered dozens of grown men, women and children on the top of the acres of smelly, smoking mess. Many walked bare-footed, seemingly oblivious to the shards of broken glass and smouldering wires protruding out of the heap.

Some industrious people were making piles of metal to sell to a recycling plant on the edge of town. I'm told that each worker has his or her own territory on the dump; his or her own corner of hell to sift through.

One man we stopped to talk to carried a small plastic bag. Scrap ends of bread collected from the dump were visible through the bag's translucent plastic.

I really don't understand how people can find things of value here. The garbage that is trucked onto the site comes from the dumpsters that have already been picked through while sitting on the city streets. These people find their daily bread by picking through whatever trash remains after what I had thought to be the poorest of the poor have taken their fill.

So prolific are the people making their living atop the garbage dump that certain social infrastructure has sprung up to support them. Some enterprising individuals have set up a small market selling food and cold drinks as if it were the cafeteria of a standard workplace. One person operates a cellular-based pay telephone booth under a faded orange umbrella.

Life on the garbage dump is decidedly normal for these people. They don't know anything outside of this harsh daily routine that leaves the children looking younger than their age and the wrinkle-scarred adults looking older than theirs.

The outreach program is intended to share the gospel and a small meal with those experiencing physical or spiritual hunger pangs. These people live spiritual lives, if not squarely Christian lives. Nobody would reject the offer of prayer, and nobody failed to show up for the offer of bread.

One man had initially indicated that he couldn't come to the little hillside church for bread because he couldn't leave his things in the dump for others to steal. He later reappeared, his belongings stuffed into a small flower-patterned duffel bag that had surely been discarded by at least one previous owner.

Another person, a time-worn woman who had taken time out of her scavenging to speak with us, wanted to pray for us instead. More than half of the people who we spoke with professed that they attend a nearby church, pointing in directions just over this hill here or that one there.

Julie, who had come to Mozambique with a heart for children, was taken by some small boys at work on the dump. One of these boys was Fernando, who was spending his morning collecting a few items before heading off to school. Julie watched in amazement when Fernando saw the man carrying the translucent sack of bread scraps whom we had spoken to earlier: though just a small boy wandering a garbage dump, his heart was soft enough to pull a bun from inside his shirt and offer it to the hungry man.

Bruno, a small boy not befitting of his strong name, was less talkative. Where we met him on top of the dump, he barely opened his mouth except to gently squeeze out his name as if floating on a whisper. I asked him if he knew about the small caniço church at the bottom of the hill, and invited him to return with us for some singing and some bread. I didn't expect him to come.

I had mistaken his shyness for reluctance. He braved a smile when we saw each other in front of the church later that morning. I asked him if he had ever been to this church before. "Yes," he replied simply. He offered few other words.

I told him that I had never been there before, which makes it his church, and makes me his guest. He grabbed my hand and pulled me in the front door, and we sat together on a caniço mat laid out on the church's hard floor.

He said only one other word to me the entire time. Pointing to the other side of the church, he said, "Julie." A friendly face that he had remembered from on top of the dump. Julie was over there, sitting with Fernando. Like Bruno, he had decided to come to church as well.

Laura sat in a third corner of the church, weighted down by what seemed like half a dozen young girls sitting or leaning on her lap. One of them wore Laura's sunglasses upside down on her face. All of them wore the smiles of children being loved.

The rise of international child trafficking prevents the orphanage from taking children off the garbage dump and giving them decent shelter, food and education, but God's compassion -- and that of people like Julie who travel around the world to love forgotten children -- mean that the children of the dump are valued as the children of God. That, after all, is their true identity, albeit too often hidden underneath the sooty garments of reality.

Blessed Are The Poor

I have for months had a question tucked away in my back pocket, waiting for the right opportunity to pull it out. Asking it bore an element of risk, I thought, because it might convey a lack of understanding or sensitivity. After all, isn't the answer obvious?

While in Nampula, I took the opportunity to pull the question out and lay it on someone who makes less in a month than I have ever made in a day since graduating from university: do you consider yourself to be poor?

"No, I am not poor. Of course, I am not rich either. To be rich would be to not have to worry about where my next meal was going to come from."

Never having had to worry about where my next meal was going to come from, I realized that poverty is definitely relative. Who in Canada, having made less than $1,000 in the previous year as the head of a household, would not consider him or herself to be poor? As he continued speaking, I became more and more intrigued by his reflections.

"I was rich once, you know."

He went on to describe for me that he used to live as the personal assistant for a wealthy foreigner here in Maputo. He earned a salary of slightly under $150 per month, but was also given accommodation and access to his patron's refrigerator. He had a life free of worry. A life of wealth.

"And being rich," he had come to realize, "is boring."

"I remember once when I didn't cook for an entire week," he explained to me. "I just ate these soups that my patron had in the cupboard, the kind where I just had to pour in boiling water, and had ham sandwiches grilled in a sandwich maker."

(I thought quietly to myself at that moment about all the times that Laura and I have picked up the telephone and ordered in food because we were just too tired, or couldn't be bothered, to cook something as simple as a grilled sandwich -- because that would be too much work.)

"But I was often lonely, just looking after his house while he was away on business."

For this one Mozambican, life's objective is not riches. It is being in positive, meaningful relationship with neighbours. It is being able to live up to his God-given potential which, he learned, is not sitting around babysitting a house that sheltered him from worry. A little bit of worry, he seemed to be suggesting, is the adventure that adds spice to life. The spice that keeps us relying on God rather than ourselves.

And in that moment I was more sure of this one fact than I have ever been in my life: that the objective of my international compassion ministry should be to equip people so that they are able to live up to their God-given potential, not simply to provide food for the hungry.

The poor are not those who cannot afford a Jaguar, or even a jalopy. The poor are those, with or without their jalopy, who are barred from realizing the potential that God has created within them.

The Widow's Mite

I asked several groups to rank in the order of importance to them the three components of a typical village-based savings and loan program: savings, credit and something called the "social fund." I was surprised to hear that, in each instance, the participants cited the social fund as being the single most important aspect of the program.

This was not intuitive for me: we had begun researching these types of groups as a way of eliminating some of the barriers to micro-enterprise development created by microcredit lenders and other organizations. I had thought that credit would be the most important, followed by savings (but even then, that savings only existed to provide sufficient capital for the credit program), and then the social fund a distant last.

The social fund (we might call it a benevolent fund) is not only a small self-insurance fund, but a way to build social cohesion within the group and community by allowing members to respond quickly to emergencies.

"The social fund is most important to us," one woman explained simply, "because through it we can help one another."

Here's how the fund works:

Every week when the group comes together to deposit savings, each member is required first to make a small deposit into the "social fund." The group decides how much is appropriate, but 1 metical per week (about $0.04) was typical. This social fund grows slowly, increasing by perhaps $1 a week.

If someone isn't able to scrape together the required contribution, they could simply make a double contribution the following week.

The social fund adds a degree of complexity to the program that I wasn't sure was warranted by its meager benefits. To be honest, I thought that the idea was a little silly. Meeting after meeting, the women and men who participated in these groups chipped away at my erroneous assumption. Had it not been for their overwhelming enthusiasm, I would have suggested scrapping the peripheral program as a needless distraction.

I dared ask a question that would never occur to me at home in Canada, but seemed obvious from my then-vantage point sitting on a caniço mat under a shelter built with mortar excreted from termites and a leaky thatch roof: is it difficult to save one metical per week?

The tone of the lady's voice who responded suggested that her answer was obvious: yes, of course it is. "But," she continued, "contributing to the social fund is a habit. I put aside enough money every week, just like I do for food."

The group collectively decides when to draw on the fund. All of the women I spoke with lit up when they recounted their ability to purchase medication for a neighbour's sick child, or to make simple funeral preparations for a deceased spouse, or respond to other unexpected events.

These families, living in rural southern Africa, are so poor that they could not otherwise afford a trip to a hospital room that would save the life of a child, even if that trip costs under $1.

These groups are community-based, not church-based, and many members are not Christians. Some are Muslim, others hold traditional beliefs. Regardless of their beliefs, the members of the group demonstrated over and over again what it would look like to have God's kingdom realized here on Earth.

Yes, every week through these groups, God's Kingdom is made real in rural Africa by women and men who can scarcely afford to eat, yet can spare an extra mite to help a neighbour in need. Every one of them makes their deposit hoping that they can help a neighbour, but knowing that it could very well be their own family that requires emergency aid this week.

The Price of the Church

A knock came at our door this morning from Samuel, one of the men to whom Glenn and I offered a job as a coordinator of our micro-enterprise development program. He stopped by to discuss some of the position's details.

Salary, it turns out, is a sticking point.

Some Mozambicans have an expression for jobs that don't pay very well. They pay the price of the banana. Bananas are cheap and so, I presume, are those employers.

There's a lesser-known expression, too. The price of the church. Apparently in the grand hierarchy of employment, the church is even cheaper than the banana.

It's that way for good reason. People are supposed to work for the church not for the promise of riches, but because they have a passion for the work. They accept such jobs because they feel a calling from God and willingly accept the sacrifice.

Sure, my conscience says, but that can't become an excuse for the church to abuse its employees, especially when the purpose of our program is to develop Mozambicans' economic well-being to ensure that hunger and illness are distant memories.

Besides, we want to allow them sufficient time and motivation to operate their own micro-enterprises, like Samuel's barber shop, so that they are received as credible, knowledgeable micro-enterprise trainers. We also don't want to cut them off from all other economic activity, knowing that this year's salary is backed by a promise, and next year's is backed by a hope. Nothing, until we have sufficient money in the bank, can be backed by a guarantee.

So what is a fair salary in a third-world country? We are offering a salary of 2,500 meticais -- or a little under $100 -- a month which is, apparently, the price of the church.

I don't have access to a proper salary survey to benchmark against, but I do know what some others are paying. I have only enough information to know that we're offering neither the highest nor the lowest of salaries.

And we're offering a high enough salary that nobody ever quotes it in the context of defining the poor. Extreme poverty is usually defined to be those people who earn something less than $1 per day. Half of the world, the same sources usually quote, live on less than $2 per day.

At $100 a month -- $3.29 a day -- our salary is, according to Samuel, higher than what entry-level government jobs are paying in Maputo. And, to be clear, Samuel wasn't arguing for a ten-fold increase, but a ten- or twenty-percent increase, not unlike anyone at home trying to squeeze out a slightly higher salary.

I have no illusions that this salary is anyone's idea of a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's not going to leave anyone in Africa hungry or homeless, either.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that I approached the conversation in cavalier fashion. What moral footing do I have to argue that with the man sitting across the table from me in my $650/month apartment? Looking through my lens, I have made a huge sacrifice to live in Mozambique. To him, I am still a king, albeit perhaps one who relinquished a crown jewel or two. How can I look Samuel in the eye and argue that $100 a month is a good salary?

I've just closed the door behind my guest, and am feeling emotionally spent. I'm feeling a little bruised and beaten, not because Samuel was even remotely abusive or impolite. The bruises have been inflicted by my own conscience, battling the merits of offering a salary the size of which, I admitted to Samuel, would leave me starving to death.

Christmas in July?

It can't be December yet. It can't be.

There's a strong wind blowing today, but not the usual Canadian crisp breeze coming down from Santa's workshop. It's more like the thick air blowing from a hairdryer.

It's hot outside. The kind of hot that requires two showers a day. Africa hot.

And yet, Christmas is coming.

We unfolded a small artificial Christmas tree over the weekend. It has some garland and ornaments, but no lights. It's a sad little Charlie Brown sort of tree. But it reminds us that Christmas is coming, just as it reminded our apartment's previous tenants for Christmases past.

We're thankful for the Christmas CD that we were sent from our friends Ray and Christine. We'll probably wear it out this year reminding ourselves that Christmas is coming.

At church on Sunday, there were no advent wreaths, no candles, no carols.

How will I be sure Christmas has arrived if I don't even have to wear my wool hat when I go outside?

In the Christian church, the four weeks prior to Christmas comprise the season of Advent. The season of anticipation and preparation for the coming of the baby Jesus. The King Jesus.

My usual prompts are conspicuously absent. The weather, the commercialism, even the religious symbols. Maybe this year we'll be able to focus on preparing our hearts rather than our homes.

There is always something to distract us from the preparations of Advent. Sometimes it comes in the form of a packed shopping mall. (There's nothing that saps my patience like trying to park at a shopping mall on a Saturday in December!)

For Martha, it comes in the form of the preparations themselves. The straightening, the tidying, the scrubbing. The incessancy. Distracted by making everything just so.

For us this year, it will be the heat. And the distance of family.

And yet, Christmas is coming. Jesus is coming.

Answered Prayer: Relationships

By Laura

Before leaving Toronto, my prayer was that I would develop meaningful relationships while here in Maputo, especially with women, and that I would feel a sense of living in Christian community.

Women are relational beings. When blessed with friends with whom they can share their joys and frustratrations with no fear of being rejected, they feel able to thrive, able to really be themselves. In the book Captivating, John Eldredge shares this thought: "Whatever else we know about women, we know they are relational to their cores. While little boys are killing one another in mock battles on the playground, little girls are negotiating relationships... This is so second nature to them, so assumed by women, that it goes unnoticed by them. They care more about relationships than just about anything else."

I am just like any other woman, and so my prayer was to be able to develop deep relationships. As a Christian, it is also my desire to be able to share with and learn from other Christians; to the able to grow closer to Christ by being stretched and encouraged by other believers.

God has answered both of these requests through one very special group of women. Ever since my first week here, I have been a member of a women's Bible study group. I say a 'member' because these women accepted me and made me feel like I had always been a regular participant even my first time out. They are missionaries, mostly from the United States, from all different organizations. We all have several key things in common: we have left comfort, family and friends to be in Maputo, Mozambique; we love the Lord Jesus; we are trying to serve him here; and we have a lot to learn.

What I have enjoyed the most about these women is their acceptance and openness. They share about frustrations and discouragement. All in the group have experienced these, but there are always those have seen the other side and can offer encouragement, support, and wisdom. They also share about the things they have learned over the weeks about themselves or God or both. They share about the difficult, humbling lessons, as well as the joyful, uplifting lessons.

We just finished a study by Beth Moore called 'Believing God'. I had never heard of Beth Moore, but she is a very popular speaker/author in the southern United States. We would watch her talk for an hour on DVD (although the word 'talk' is deceiving -- she is very animated!) and then we would complete a workbook with readings and questions throughout the week. When I first heard Beth Moore, I admit I was skeptical (the word 'animated' is perhaps not strong enough.. :), but I have thoroughly enjoyed this study. She has a humble spirit, great faith, and provides wonderful insight in a captivating and humourous way. I have learned so much and it has stretched my perceptions of God and what faith can be. The study is based on five principles that appear simple, but have far reaching implications if truly believed:

1) God is who He says He is; 2) God can do what He says He can do; 3) I am who God says I am; 4) I can do all things through Christ; 5) God's Word is alive and active in me.

I feel that I still have a long way to go before I am really living my life in the truth of these statements. But I am encouraged to know that God cares more that we set our eyes on him and keep moving forward, than how long it takes to get there!

We have not yet started our next study (it takes a while to acquire materials in Mozambique) so in the meantime we are meeting to share and sing and pray. Praise God!

Debunking the Fallacy of "Limited Good"

Some people might be wondering (though nobody has asked) why I spend so much time learning culture and language while in Mozambique. After all, if we're only spending a year here, wouldn't success be easier to come by if I just focused on the task at hand?

The reality is that success will not be possible unless I learn the culture of Mozambique as fully and completely as possible. A cultural lesson that I learned this week highlights this fact.

The people of Mozambique ascribe to a concept called "limited good": that everything, whether tangible (such as wealth) or intangible (such as happiness) is in limited supply, and that one person having an abundance of anything means that someone else will be lacking in it.

All facets of life are seen as zero-sum. If I have more health or wealth or happiness than my neighbour, he will perceive that I have stolen his share of it.

At first thought, this seems like a strange idea. Free-market capitalist societies have as a central tenet that wealth is in unlimited supply; that it can and is created (albeit not distributed evenly) every day.

(Armchair economists viewing the world from the left or the right of the political spectrum will forever argue the veracity of this point.)

Upon further reflection, one must admit that the idea of limited good lurks just beneath the surface even in our own culture. It rears its head in the form of jealousy when a colleague gets a coveted promotion, or when a neighbour buys a shiny new car, or when a friend is publicly recognized for a good deed.

The theory of limited good has profound implications for our chicken farming strategy, and for economic development projects in general. It makes no difference whether or not the theory is true; because people believe it, their actions will be shaped by it.

If our project is to be successful, we need to create the conditions necessary to avoid both jealousy on the part of those who don't participate, and a deliberate undermining of success on the part of those selected in an effort to avoid standing out from the pack.

The collective nature of African culture prevents individuals from wanting to distance themselves from their neighbours. Those who do find success may fear recrimination from jealous family and witchcraft-practicing neighbours.

Chicken farming in Mozambique is a good idea with plenty of winners. Consumers will have access to a better diet. Producers will have more wealth to help their family survive and to spend at their neighbour's fruit stands and bakeries.

Prosperity, without greed, has a multiplication effect that allows everyone to win.

* * * * *

While we may debate the limits of tangible goods, we should never doubt that the intangibles -- things like happiness -- are in limitless supply. God permits -- indeed, God wants -- all of us to live good and righteous lives.

If the concept of limited good is applied to these intangibles, it serves only to drive a wedge between ourselves and God in an effort to preserve harmony among people. If instead we could recognize that "good" is not a commodity in limited supply, we would all be better neighbours and global citizens.

If the people of Mozambique could realize that good begets good, they may be more motivated to lift themselves out of the proverbial muck.

Church-Raising in São Dâmaso

This weekend, Laura and I decided to venture out of the city. It's always a bit of an ordeal since beyond the edge of Maputo all but the main roads are paved with loosely-packed sand, so we have to borrow a vehicle with four-wheel drive to make the journey.

Our destination was a small church in a community called São Dâmaso, about 45 minutes outside of Maputo. The church's two leaders are men whom I met during our micro-enterprise training in Khongolote a couple of months ago. They invited us to visit, so we decided that doing so would be a great opportunity for us to see Mozambique from a slightly different perspective.

For the past two years, the church in São Dâmaso has operated out of a small building on rented land. Earlier this year, they purchased their own land nearby and -- because caniço is a wonderfully portable construction material -- took the church apart, carried it down the street, and reassembled it on their newly-acquired property. A group of five people from Oregon who were here visiting this week helped with the project.

The labourers took the opportunity to install more durable posts and roof struts so that, over time, they can replace the church's caniço walls with concrete blocks to make their building more permanent and weather-resistent.

Some of the caniço wall panels needed to be replaced, but in a society that wastes little, the old walls still had value. Nelson, the church's leader, wanted to put them to use to enclose his outdoor washroom. We hoisted them onto Nathan's Land Cruiser and delivered them to Khongolote, where Nelson lives with his wife and children in a small home built by an international aid agency after Mozambique's floods in 2000.

* * * * *

Relationship and community are immensely important attributes in Africa, and the home is an important focal point of these relationships. In fact, there’s a saying here that if you don’t know my house, you don’t know me.

At the conclusion of the church meeting in São Dâmaso, every single member in attendance, bar none, walked to the home of a woman who was too ill to attend this week. They crowded into her living room, spent 15 minutes in song and prayer to show their support and hope for healing, and then parted ways.

Their act of kindness required an investment of only 15 minutes, but I'm sure it brightened that one person's entire day.

The Limits of our Generosity

Every day, we witness so many people in great need. Africa has justly earned its billing as the Earth's poor continent. We struggle with what the appropriate response might be: how can we help? How should we help?

Not a day goes by without several people asking for money. Sometimes it's people knocking on our car window at a traffic light. Often it's people trying to be productive by asking if they can guard our car, or wash it.

Yesterday, a man who noticed that I was a regular at the language school called out to me in English, "Boss, tomorrow you wash my car?" (I'm pretty sure he meant the other way around, but maybe I should bring my rag and bucket today just to be sure.) I replied, "Of course."

One man who recently washed our car did so with the same rag and bucket that he'd been using for days. When he was done, the car looked like he had smeared around the existing dirt and added a little of his own for good measure.

We get our car washed often.

There are so many people looking for help. Many people aren't lazy; there aren't many jobs to be found, and the country is struggling to catch up on educating a population frozen in time by civil war.

At home, we often found ourselves screening people before giving them money. If you're asking for my money, you had better look like you're going to spend it on food, not alcohol.

As Westerners, we often prefer to give anonymously through large charitable organizations that will make sure that our contributions are being put to good use. Doing so also gets us an accounting of our year's generosity and a tax receipt so that we can get some of it back.

The Bible challenges us to give without judgment. It challenges us to give to anyone who asks, without evaluating whether or not their need surpasses an arbitrary threshold that we have established in our minds. It challenges us to give, even if the asker may not use our gift in a way that we would consider to be appropriate:

"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:42)

That sounds a little bit off-culture, doesn't it? Our culture teaches us that, being the possessors of our wealth, we have the right to make the final determination about who needs our benevolence and who doesn't.

African culture flips this on its head. The person requesting something plays a major role in determining whether his or her need is greater than that of the potential donor. If someone is asking me for money in Africa, it's not only because they have a great need for it, but also because they've concluded that my money would do greater good to them than it would to me.

And almost without exception, they're right. Here, the poverty is so gripping. When we walk our trash out to the dumpster, there are always a couple of men who quietly take our bags from us. They've sorted through the dumpster and taken anything of value: any rotten fruit or moldy bread that may have been discarded. They'll look through our bags, too, before they place them in the dumpster.

Imagine having to live off of the refuse of the world's poorest.

Nobody deserves to live that kind of life. We've decided to bring along some extra fruit or bread whenever we take out our garbage. These men have yet to thank us for it, but we don't do it for our own reward.

If I have one less dollar, or one less loaf of bread, or one less banana, it has very little impact on my life. If the average Mozambican had one more of any of these, it would mean that she could feed her children today. Economists call this marginal benefit.

We're still struggling with how we can help, but for now we've decided that African culture and Christianity are in agreement on this point: if someone asks us for something, let's give it.

And Christianity would suggest that we should do so back home in Canada, too.

Celebrating at T3 Church

On Sunday morning, Laura and I commemorated several firsts and a farewell: our first time going to church in T3 (a suburb of Maputo), our first time sitting in a church service that lasted over three hours (3 hours, 35 minutes, if you count from the time it was supposed to start), and a farewell celebration for Bruce and Mabel Callender, who have been living in Mozambique building churches for 10 years. This was their last Sunday before retiring.

The video makes apparent the great level of appreciation and admiration that the Mozambicans have for Bruce and Mabel for their help through much hardship over the past decade.

The community was also celebrating because that morning was the first time that the church had met in their new building. They had previously been crowding into a smaller caniço structure next door.

(Today also marks the first time that I've tried video editing, using the "video" mode on our still camera and the free software that comes with Windows, no less. Move over, Hollywood!)

Laura had the idea of posting some video footage of this morning's service. What a great way to open the window into our world just a little wider. Please let us know if the video has worked for you -- if it's an effective tool, we could try to extend the experiment a little further.

So, whenever you're ready to glimpse today's African celebration, pop some popcorn, throw up your feet, and roll the clip -- today's feature is about 35 seconds long.

Khongolote

This past Sunday was an exciting day for us because it marked our return to the church in Khongolote that we helped to build two years ago. We got to see it completed and being used for the first time.

Khongolote is best described as a suburb of Maputo. It is an area of very dry, red clay that the government set aside to relocate victims of Mozambique's severe flooding in 2000.

The satellite photo to the left shows the Khongolote property, and provides a flavour of this African suburb. It was taken three years ago, so doesn't include the new church building (to the lower right of the marker pin is the tent that the community had been using as a church building). Pictured above the marker is a preschool attended by over 100 children. I was on the site this morning working with Melvin Kelly (a construction engineer colleague from Northern Ireland) and two Mozambican nationals -- Belarmino and Carlos -- creating a sketch plan for a kitchen that the Mozambicans will build on the site in the coming months, funding permitting.


More Than A Church

This week, I have been working with several Mozambicans -- Raul, Ricardo and Alfredo (shown in the picture) -- on an experimental two-week long business training program for a group of 18 or so Mozambicans who expressed an interest in a pilot training program. (My role has been to encourage and support from alongside the leaders -- there are several good reasons for not standing up and doing the business training myself (aside from my lack of fluency in Portuguese), but I'll write more on the philosophy of sustainability in a future blog entry). It's exciting to me that the church in Khongolote has provided the stage for these two weeks of training.

We've also been conversing with Banco Opportunidade -- the local microcredit lending bank run by Opportunity International -- about the possibility of providing business loans for this group of trainees. Several months ago, my thinking about microcredit lending revolved around originating loans, but the reality is that I am only here for a short time and want to create persistent change. I've realized that I can have a greater impact by partnering with existing organizations and empowering Mozambicans, rather than reinventing the wheel at every turn -- and making mistake after mistake that others have already learned from.

Once these two weeks of experimentation have been completed, Glenn and I will evaluate its successes and failures, and will hopefully have inspired a couple of Mozambicans to start their own businesses in the process.


Homes in Khongolote

Driving to and from Khongolote every morning this week for the training sessions has provided me much time for questioning Raul, who has become my "cultural champion." Raul Manhica is a 28-year-old man who is living in Maputo with his older brother and family. Raul was born in Inhambane, a province just north of Maputo, until his parents were killed when he was just two years old. I wanted to ask more about his parents -- my guess is that they were killed during the country's civil war -- but the topic of conversation shifted to other things.

I asked Raul many questions about the housing in Khongolote as we drove through the village. I learned that the people who live in Khongolote are generally able to own their own homes, which are simple clay brick structures with tin roofs (stereotypically African reed-construction housing is still popular in Mozambique, but not in Khongolote, where there are no swamps for reeds to grow).

A basic starter home in Khongolote costs about $4,500 to build, for which you would get one or two bedrooms, a living area and a kitchen. The brick work would remain uncovered, and the washroom would be out back.

A fancier home, with an indoor washroom and plastered and painted brickwork (similar construction as the Khongolote church pictured above) could cost twice that much.

(Minimum wage in Mozambique was raised this year, to US$57/month for general labourers, and US$40/month for agricultural workers. Of course, many people are not fortunate enough to have jobs in the formal economy.)

The "M" Word

Laura and I debated using the word “missionary” in our blog (as we did in the last entry). It’s the word that OMS International uses to describe the work that we’re doing, Laura reasoned. True, but it’s also a loaded word that has been misused in the past and is politically charged in the present – particularly in the United States, where we’ve been staying these past few weeks.

It’s difficult to be a Christian in a world that is too often dominated by conflict framed as “holy wars” between Christian and Muslim: the principle actors in these conflicts give both Christianity and Islam a bad name.

We’ve been at OMS headquarters for new recruit training where most people, unlike ourselves, are preparing to be “career missionaries.” So who are these people? What exactly is a Christian missionary? Glad you asked.

There are about 18 people here, including:

• A grandfather, who is going to Japan to serve as a maintenance worker for the missionaries in Japan. His wife is going to serve as the treasurer for the office.

• A single girl with a communications degree, who is going to write promotional material for a Christian radio station in Haiti.

• A young man with a gift for photography, who will travel the world to document the field work that OMS is doing.

• Laura will be teaching math and science to classes of high school kids in Mozambique.

• I’m going to be creating a micro-enterprise development program to help the poor feed themselves.

The word “missionary” is used to describe all of this work because these people are motivated by their Christian faith to help others around the world. Christian scriptures quote Jesus as saying, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

The attrition rate for new full-time missionaries is very high: we’ve been told that up to 40% don’t finish their first term. Some quit because of an emergency back home, an emerging health issue, or because of a lack of funding. The most frequent reason for which missionaries quit is because they couldn’t get along with the other missionaries in the field. Missionaries’ stress levels tend to be high as a result of working in a culture that is not their own, often in a language they don’t know well, all without the close support of family and friends.

Even though we’re not full-time missionaries, OMS asked us to attend a series of training workshops that they have created to better equip us for working in the missionary team where we’ll be going – that’s what we’re doing in Greenwood, Indiana. The first week was spent on a workshop called “Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills,” which focused on refining confrontation, conflict management, stress management, and communication skills. The second week focused on issues pertinent to cross-cultural integration: health requirements, language training, and an exploration of the characteristics of different cultures.

We have gotten to know each of the other 16 participants. Most are American, with the exception of a fellow from Northern Ireland and his Brazilian wife (going to Brazil), a Belgian (going to Spain), and us Canadians. Roughly half the group is in their 20s, and the rest range in age from 30s to late 50s (two couples are proud grandparents with photos in tow). We’ve become good friends with another young couple in particular who will be teaching English and American culture at a university in Asia for the coming year.

* * * * *

The week that we travel to Mozambique has finally arrived. Our journey begins Friday morning (July 28), with the plane’s wheels lifting ground at 6:00am. We will reach our final destination – Maputo, Mozambique – at 7:55am (Ontario time) on the following day. After 26 hours in transit, we’ll most likely need a nap.

An Organization of Professional Volunteers

We have been spending the past couple of weeks in Greenwood, Indiana, at the “world headquarters” of OMS International. On Tuesday, Laura and I were invited to president David Long’s house for dinner, so I took the opportunity to sharpen my understanding of the unique challenges faced by this organization.

OMS considers itself a “faith-based” organization. What they mean in plain language is that nobody draws a salary from the organization (imagine the low overhead costs!). Each employee – of which there are over 200 in several dozen countries around the world, plus another perhaps 30 or 40 at headquarters – is responsible for raising his or her own salary through donations. This applies to everyone from the president to the mailroom clerks.

Imagine your employer approaching you and asking that, in addition to all of your job responsibilities, you are also required to knock on doors asking people to donate your salary year in and year out.

I asked Mr Long how he motivates and directs employees, given that their paycheques don’t come from their employer. He told me that he and his board of directors must treat the organization’s employees as if they were volunteers.

Imagine the dilemma that Mr Long would face if he were required to dismiss an employee for underperformance, since recruiting replacements is so challenging: an employee performing half his duties is better than the position sitting vacant for the months or years required to recruit someone willing to fundraise their own salary.

An Employee’s Perspective

The night after our visit with Mr Long, we were invited to dinner with an employee, so I asked him his thoughts about needing to raise his own money.

He understood why I was questioning the strategy, but didn’t mind it himself. He came to the organization with a sales background -– he was formerly a sales executive with IBM -– so he was used to asking people for money (and used to being rejected).

A member of the Canadian board of directors likened the mentality of the employee to an investment broker: donors will purchase “shares” in the employee, who is in turn responsible for “investing” the donors’ money in the development of people’s lives overseas. In that sense, the organization’s accountability to donors is more direct than in an organization that fundraises centrally.

Most employees accept this as a way of life; as we have discovered, it is not uncommon for people to spend their entire career with OMS International. On the other hand, Laura and I know of one person who recently resigned because he was unable to find enough people to contribute towards his living expenses year in and year out.

At first glance, it would seem that such an organization would be forced to take whatever recruits walked in the door, and to some extent that’s true – but only highly-motivated people want a job so much that they are willing to fundraise their own salary.

...but does it work?

When I examine organizations, I do so with an eye towards determining what I would do if I were in charge. I draw easy parallels between OMS and World Vision: the latter being a Christian organization with remarkably similar roots, but which has grown to be a US$1.5 billion organization with over 22,000 employees worldwide, thanks in part to its strategy of central fundraising.

There are certainly both benefits and costs to OMS International’s unique approach to fundraising. For me, the jury is still out on this one.

* * * * *

The kind folks at OMS have put us up in an apartment shown in the photo to the left. It's more than adequate for our needs -- and is a short walk to the main headquarters building where we've been having our training (more on that in the next posting).

The only issue that we've needed to work around is Internet access. Since the only access is in the main headquarters building, which is locked off-hours, we had trouble accessing it for the first couple of days. We've resolved that problem by purchasing a cheap wireless card for our laptop. Now we can access the Internet whenever we want -- by sitting on the sidewalk behind the headquarters building, where I am right now. Good thing it's summer.

Baptist Church in Indianapolis

This morning, Laura and I decided that we would attend a Missionary Baptist church – we didn’t (and still don’t) know anything about that particular denomination, except that its adherents are predominantly African American. Visiting them seemed like good training for our immersion into Mozambique.

Our first option was Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church: 2349-51 Keystone Ave, Indianapolis. It took us about 30 minutes to get to approximately the right area of town, and another 30 minutes to realize that we couldn’t find this mystery church.

Those last 30 minutes of driving around opened our eyes to a lot of poverty in the United States – especially in the neighbourhoods where African American churches are located. Either we don’t know the same breadth and depth of poverty in Canada or, at least, it’s more hidden in high rise complexes of public housing.

Our second option was Greater Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church: 1962 Columbia Ave., Indianapolis. It was a bit easier to find – we found it about 20 minutes away from the neighbourhood where Mount Moriah wasn’t, though the two neighbourhoods were similar: very narrow paved streets without curbs; old and poorly-maintained housing with wood siding, often unpainted. Broken windows were commonplace.

We arrived five minutes after the time posted on the wooden sign on the lawn, but were still the third and fourth people to arrive. We were greeted warmly at the door by some folks assigned to do so, and again inside by “Sister Johnson”, a lovely lady with a 17-month old little girl in tow. The leaders had us singing before the pianist arrived, and reading scripture before the preacher arrived. By 30 minutes into the service, most people had walked through the door: perhaps 40 in all; all were African American.

We would have liked to take a picture inside the tiny church, but were sensitive to the worshippers whose lives we were entering: we wanted to be received as participants, not as tourists visiting a museum display.

The choir was very “Baptist” in its passion – loud and enthusiastic – though the tuning wasn’t perfect and the first soloist sharp and nasally. The last time we heard singing like that was at the Khongolote church outside of Maputo, Mozambique! It’s fascinating to see African culture in the United States – realizing that these aren’t the sons and daughters of immigrants, but of people kidnapped out of their villages for the slave trade. Some may have come from Mozambique, though my impression is that the descendants of slaves don’t typically know from what country or tribe they have come.

The congregation was much more reserved than the choir. A few people clapped; some called out in response to the preacher or choir. Most sat relatively still and listened.

The preacher’s message, though it lasted 30 minutes, was a simple, one-point thesis using heart language. He spoke of “expecting the unexpected”, and talked about how everyone has fallen on hard times at one time or another – like having the electricity cut off, or receiving an eviction notice. He said that those of us who haven’t just need to keep living, and we will. Everybody said amen.

Despite the readily-apparent poverty of the congregation, an offering was collected three times: once for “mission” (probably inner-city work), once for the general fund and a building fund, and a third time as a gift to the preacher. The men were also reminded of their $10 per month “obligation”, and the entire congregation was reminded several times of the $25 “requirement” for the Pastor’s anniversary fund. Their poverty certainly didn’t restrain their sense of generosity or duty to the work of God.

The church finally let out at 1:35pm – two and a half hours after its scheduled starting time. The congregants had to rush home for lunch: evening worship was scheduled to start at 3:30pm.