Sorry for the slight delay again in posting.  I’ll make this one good to make up for it.

As the incoming Regional Coordinators for Europe and the Middle East, one of our big responsibilities will be to watch over the spiritual, physical, and emotional health of our missionary personnel on the field.  We call this “member care.”  After having been in the system for 10 years this June, I have learned that Member Care is a very important thing.  Yet it is often something that is not very present for missionaries.  We are hoping to make sure that every missionary in our region feels loved and cared for.  And you can help.  More on that later.  But first, let me share some reasons why being a missionary is one of the most stressful jobs in the world.

People underestimate how stressful it is to be a missionary (especially people wanting to become missionaries). On the Holmes/Rae scale which measures stress, a very stress-out person has a score of 300 and is in danger of having physical ailments from stress.  The average missionary has a score of 600! It is a draining job in many ways and here are some reasons why:

1. It’s a 24 Hour Job. Pastors and missionaries are on call 24 hours a day.  You never know when people will need you.  And when they need you, you have to be there.  The job doesn’t go from 9 to 5.  You are always “the missionary” or the “pastor.”  There’s never a time when you can just hang it up for a while and be yourself.  When I used to work in insurance (or deliver Pizzas), I clocked in and clocked out.  When my job was finished, I never had to think about it again.  Not so for pastors and missionaries.  It’s constant. That is exhausting.

2. Everything is Spiritualized. Because being a pastor or a missionary is primarily a spiritual job, everything becomes spiritualized.  Every thing, ever decision, every conversation, every relationship is inherently deep.  Everything is spiritual and that is exhausting.  You are dealing with issues that have eternal consequences.  And when conflict arises, that is spiritualized as well which becomes in-congruent.  Who is on God’s side?  So when, for instance, the pastor and the head of the church board have a conflict, it doesn’t just become personal—it becomes spiritual.  That is exhausting.

3.  It’s a People Job. Like being a social worker or a psychiatrist, being a missionary or a pastor is always a people job.  You are dealing with people’s pains, hurts, and deep emotions.  You can’t just type into a computer like when I had a data entry job.  You can’t just pack boxes and check out mentally, like when I worked in a warehouse.  In ministry, it’s always emotional all the time.  That is exhausting.

4. Living in a Different Worldview. So both Pastors and Missionaries have stressful jobs.  But being a missionary adds something even more stressful.  When you are a missionary, not only are you on-call and at work for 24 hours a day, you are always living in a different culture with a different worldview 24 hours a day.  A pastor may move from rural Alabama to Seattle and experience culture shock, but he is still operating in the same worldview.  A missionary moving from the USA to South Korea or Kenya is operating under a completely different way of framing reality.  There’s no escape.  And just because you are in a first world country doesn’t make it any easier.  One of the hardest countries for missionaries in the world is Japan.  Japan is modern, has McDonald’s, and is safe–however, there will never be a second that you live in Japan where you will not know that you are not Japanese and no one thinks like you.  That is exhausting.

5. The Pay is Terrible. Today’s missionary is expected to have quite a few skills and have a pretty good education (which means carrying student loan), but the actual pay is pretty awful.  Rarely does the salary keep up with inflation because who is going to give missionaries raises?  There’s kind of the assumption that you should be poor if you are a missionary.  So you are given a very high stress job and asked to take on the pressure of a low salary.  I recently visited a mission agency in Toronto and found out that their missionaries make 3 times what ours make.  It is still not a lot by the world’s standards, but it is a lot more than we make.  It’s hard to think of another job which requires so much responsibility, is so taxing, and pays so little. You can see why love-offering are such an important thing, but more and more, churches don’t even bother to do that for missionaries.  You are guaranteed to never get ahead.  It’s always a recession in the missionary life.  That is exhausting.

6.  Fundraising pressure. If your job is to be the fundraiser for a major university–say Iowa State–everyone knows that you have a very difficult job.  You have to perpetually find money for your university so you are constantly courting donors and needing to convince them that Iowa State is worth their financial investment.  Anybody hired for the fundraising job at Iowa State would know, “I am taking on a stressful job and financial pressure will follow me even out of the office.”  Now imagine that not only do you have to raise money for Iowa State, but you have to raise your own salary just to get paid–every year!  That’s what a missionary does.

Now imagine that the missionary must do special projects or some kind of mission work to make sure they stay financially supported?  But where do they get that money from?  That’s right!  They have to raise that too!  So not only do you have the pressure of your salary, but everything you might need to do in your job must be raised too.  And if you don’t make it, you are out of a job AND you feel like you spiritually let everyone down including God.  That is exhausting.

7.  It’s a travel job. Everybody knows that a traveling salesman has a stressful job.  He’s on the road for days at a time, in the car, in hotels, and in transit every moment.  There’s lots of time away from the family.  There’s sitting around in airports, flight delays, lost luggage, bad hotel rooms, and a constant sense of homelessness.  The missionaries have to do all of that too, but they do that when they are “back at home” in their country “resting!”  So when you are not living your exhausting job in some other worldview, you come home and live out of a suitcase.   It’s tough for the traveling salesman, but for the missionary, the whole family is expected to come.  I hope your 3 kids like long car drives and long airplane flights, because if not, you are in for a very long nightmare.  What if one of your kids has a personality that doesn’t travel well?  And as you travel, you don’t get to see your family in the USA much, it at all.  And when you do, you have to make the visit short because there are 100 other people you have to see.  Keep in mind if you don’t see the people financially supporting you, you may be in trouble. The kids may not only have to have to be pulled out of school, but they will have to move to a different culture now!

What people see are the exotic pictures of your children next to giraffes in Africa, or by the Pyramids, or at the Eiffel Tower.  It all looks so exciting and exotic.  It is, at times.  But along with that nice trip to the African Game park come about 50 other trips to the Motel 6 in Ogallala, Nebraska.  That is exhausting.

8. Vacation guilt. So if the missionary doesn’t get to rest on the job and doesn’t get to rest back in the USA, when does the missionary go on vacation?  Well, going on vacation means having to find some neutral sight (not in the USA, not in your country) to really get away.  But it will probably be in some other country and look exotic (like a beach in Thailand, or a game park in Zambia, or country getaway in Hungry).  But this still requires being in a foreign country and having the stress of figuring everything out (that’s why I liked vacations in Australia and New Zealand.  At least you had the language that you didn’t have to deal with).  But if the missionary does take a trip to one of these places, it can look ostentatious.  “The missionary is on a beach in Acapulco?  I wish I had that life!”  No, you probably don’t.  Then there is the unspoken things that come with the job–such as the sense that as missionaries you must be the lowest of the low and you must suffer like the poor of this world.  So who are you to enjoy Acapulco?  Vacations often equal guilt.

And missionary retreats (when missionaries get together) are often held in pretty modest places.  Some cheap retreat center with bunk beds, for instance, because how would it look for the missionary retreat to be in Acapulco?  But the retreats themselves are often times when the missionaries do a lot of crying, sharing, grieving, and processing.  It’s too bad that they also have to worry about bed bugs and communal toilets.  But there’s guilt and you really can’t take a vacation.  That is exhausting.

9. You must give until you can give no more ethos. Along with that last one is that underlying assumption that you must be Mother Teresa constantly.  That it is a betrayal to your job if you ever feel like you need to do something selfish, like take a nice vacation or buy a nice TV.  Certainly living in a nice home to make your 20 year stay in the country inviting is out of the question.  A missionary recently told me that when he went to a retreat for burnt-out missionaries, the facilitator said, “We don’t care about the work you’ve done for God, what we care about is what working for God has done to you.” Wow!  I instantly got tears in my eyes.  That is a question nobody asks.  Being in a job where you are expected to be the epitome of the constant giver is draining and ultimately defeating.  That is exhausting.

10. Things That Don’t Make the Newsletters. Then there’s the fact that many things do go wrong on the mission-field.  But people don’t really want to hear about that.  They want to hear about the souls saved, the buildings set up, and the exciting ministries developed.  If those things are absent, you aren’t doing your job well.  So the missionary amasses a bunch of pains and disappointments.  They become “things that don’t make it in the newsletters.”  This is one of the reasons why I believe missionary retreats are very important.  Few can relate to those things that don’t make the newsletters.  That is exhausting.

11.  “Jesus will take care of it.” And of course, when problems do arise, there is a quick answer for the missionary.  “Jesus will take care of it.”  After all, we are the missionaries and should be super-close to God. Whatever problem comes along, Jesus will solve it.  Of course things are often not solved and many things go wrong.  The missionary doesn’t feel free to verbalize that they are disappointed or that things may not work out.  That shows a lack of faith and who should have the most faith?  The missionary.  But in actuality, the missionary often sees, more than most people, the things that don’t work out.  That is exhausting.

12.  The children live in transition. Through it all, the missionary may be needing to raise their kids.  They have to raise their kids in a foreign culture, and yet their kids start taking on many of the characteristics of that new culture (they become Third Culture kids).  But your kids will never be truly at home in either your culture or your new adopted culture.  In many cases, you are not just changing schools (which many American kids go through), but once again, it’s changing cultures and worldviews.

Your children are often having to say goodbye and they are often the odd man out.  They may not understand certain cultural things as well as the kids in your new country because they are not natives.  Yet, they are also probably highly intelligent and articulate which means they have few peers.  And their experiences traveling the world make them even less likely to be able to relate to their peers.

They often have to say goodbye to grandparents, cousins, friends, and life is one big transition.  Meanwhile the parents look on with guilt wondering if the benefits outweigh the costs.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE

So now it doesn’t seem so hard to believe that a missionary scores 600 on the stress test (double what a very stressed out person would score).  I often say about the missionary life that “the highs are super high and the lows are super low.”  If you are a person that can’t handle those kind of extremes, then this is not a job for you.  Neither is it for people that can’t handle constant upheaval in their life.  Take the Goldman’s in Russia.  Every 3 months the whole family has to leave Russia for weeks at a time because of visa issues.  The two parents and the 3 kids.  Constant upheaval.

I also often say that “you are on the front-lines of what God is doing in the world.”  Yes, that’s true and exciting.  But it is still “the front-lines” as in a war.

As Regional Coordinators we want to make sure that our missionaries in Europe and the Middle East are very well-cared for.  And we want your help.  Over the coming months, we will be educating all of you about how you can help in our Member Care.  There are many things you can do.  We will give you tons of ideas.  It could be anything from e-cards on birthdays, to gift coupons, to making sure that your missionaries are staying in a decent place when they come visit you.

We hope to see you, and your church groups, and your youth groups help us with this.  One of the reasons we have to do this is because the number of missionaries has been decreasing for a long time.  If we want to keep the ones we have and have more in the future, we will need to make sure our missionaries are cared for.  It will be fun.

I’m still not back in the posting routine as you can see.  But it should be getting better.  It really has taken this long—2 months—to get our feet back on the ground.  We envision coming back to the USA and having substantial down-time to rest.  But what inevitably happens is that there is a lot to keep closing out, a lot to re-open, and a lot to set up for the future and it eats up a lot of time.  It’s been a weird couple of months, but also relaxing in a strange way.  Busy, harried, and also relaxing.  I think the relaxing part just comes from the slower pace of life in the USA.  Even when busy, it is just less of an assault on the senses day to day than in an East Asian megapolis.

We’ve been busy laying the foundations for the next move and over the coming weeks, I’m going to be doing a series of posts discussing some of the issues we are processing as we head into our new job.  There’s more than I will ever be able to write in the diary, but I’ll talk about some of the stuff in upcoming entries.  We’ve got some very exciting things that we hope to roll out in the coming months and years.  We shall see. Anyway, posting should be speeding up on the diary.  And later in the year, we hope to get everything even more interactive.  Details being worked out.

In other news, I learned yesterday that my friend Alan McD is on the ground in Haiti as we speak.  Here’s praying that he and his crew stay very safe and get done what they need to get done.

“Show me the boy at 7 and I will show you the man,” the Jesuits used to say. Long before modern psychiatry, people were smart.  And some of the smartest people that ever lived were Jesuits.

The idea the Jesuits had was that people are who they will be by the age of 7.  Their personality types, their character, their nature–all of it is fully formed and will not deviate much in their lives.  It’s not that people can’t make choices and go through phases in life.  Maybe a kid discovers drugs as a teenager, makes a mess of his life for 5 years, cleans up, and lives a normal life.  Maybe he finds religion.  Sure, that stuff happens.

But the Jesuits believed that while we don’t know exactly the path a child of 7 might take, the possibilities of what he can and can’t do are pretty narrow.  So much is formed by that age, that you really have a good sense of who that person will be as an adult.

In about 1963, some British filmmakers decided to follow a group of 7 year olds around.  The idea was to show how class-differences affected the children.  That was the purpose of the documentary.  They came back 7 years later to check up on them and were amazed by how the kids were basically exactly who they were at 7.  They continued making the movie and decided to track the people every 7 years and film it.  They came back at 21, at 28, at 35, at 42, and most recently at 49.  The most recent movie is called “49 Up.”  Jamie and I watched it a few years ago.  In a couple of years “56 Up” will be made.

What the movie reveals is that people really do stay the same from the age of 7.  Yes, people make different choices. They have tragedies, some struggle with mental illness.  Things happen.  But that core personality stays the same.

Marco turned 7 today and we decided that we will start filming him every year on his birthday and ask him 7 questions. Here were his responses.

1) How old are you?

Seven.

2) Where are we? (Last year it was Egypt and next year it will probably be Europe).

Anderson.

3) What do you think of God.

I think he did a great job making the world.

4) What do you think of your parents?

Oh, I think they are wonderful! (leaves his seat and jumps into Jamie’s arms and gives her a hug).

5) What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be in the army.  A commander in the army.

6) What is your favorite toy?

Well, I really like all-things Star Wars.

7) What is the best thing in your life/What do you most like to do?

I like to learn.

We finished and then he said:  This will be interesting because my answers will change as I get older.

Yes indeed it will.

Happy Birthday Son.  We love you and are proud of you.

Sitting here in Hartford’s airport waiting for my flight.  I’m reading about Haiti.

Here’s an excerpt from the Serpent and the Rainbow regarding Haiti’s brutal history.

In this section it is 1801 and the French are on the attack.  The Spanish colonized Haiti and turned the people into slaves.  The French added more Africans and made the whole place a slave factory that generated more income than the United States at the time.  The Haitians revolted (the only successful slave revolt in history.  Napoleon then sent his soldiers to defeat the slaves:

“Common prisoners were put to the torch; rebel generals were chained to rocks and allowed to starve.  The wife and children of one prominent rebel were drowned before his eyes while French sailors nailed a pair of epaulettes (a military ornament) into his naked shoulders.  Fifteen hundred dogs were imported from Jamaica and taught to devour black prisoners in obscene public events housed in hastily built amphitheaters in Port-au-Prince.”

Everyone should have a mentor–Someone who comes alongside of you at a key moment in your life and gives you encouragement, direction, and unconditional love.  I’ve been blessed to have many mentors in my life, but here in Connecticut, there is one that gave me the boost I needed at the right time.

In 1998, I flew out to New Haven, Connecticut to find housing for Jamie and I.  It was not easy.  Unlike the West Coast, there aren’t an abundance of apartment buildings in many places in New England. You own a house, or rent a house, or live in apartments that may be located in a pretty undesirable place.  Jamie and I had only been married a year and I didn’t really want to move my new bride into squalor.

After a few days of looking around, I was in a real panic.  It was almost time to fly back home and I still had nothing secured.  I remember getting down on my knees and praying one night:  “Please God, come through.”

And then I met Rev. Kermit Morrison (pictured above with his wife Susi).  Kerm was sitting behind a desk in his office at North Haven UMC wearing blue shorts, a white t-shirt, and his feet on his desk lounging back like a kid.  He radiated youthful energy–far more than I ever have.

I was introduced to him by a guy I met over this new things called “the world wide web.”  It turned out that Kerm, at 70, was being forced to retire by the UMC and was taking over a part time church in New Haven called St. Andrew’s UMC.

When I walked into that room I was immediately smitten.  Kerm has more personality and charisma in his little finger than a room full of people do.  Kerm isn’t the life of the party, he IS the party.  I told Kerm that I was a missionary kid moving to New Haven to go to graduate school.  “You wanna work for me in exchange for housing?”

And that was it.  Having only known me for about 5 seconds, Kerm saved my life.  A few months later, Jamie and I moved into a two story parsonage with a huge basement.  The house was in a working-class neighborhood on the border of New Haven’s tough neighborhoods and a working class area called East Haven. It was the start of a long love-affair that Jamie and I would have with New Haven, Kerm and Susi, St. Andrew’s, New England, and lots of other things.  After high school, it was probably the happiest, most carefree time in my life.   I literally have nothing but good memories of this time in my life.

Kerm was a great mentor.  He was a very well-respected pastor in the UMC, a former director of missions in Belgium, a graduate of Yale, and an excellent leader.  The church had about 8 people when Kerm and I showed up.  By the time we left it had about 75.  It had NOTHING to do with me and everything to do with Kerm.  He is a light that attracts all kinds of people.  One of those guys that is unforgettable to everyone. We just watched in amazement.  I never enjoyed church more than I did in those years.

Social class, race, ethnicity, none of it mattered to Kerm.  He was the same guy to everyone.  An intellectual, a regular Joe, a comedian, and a holy man all wrapped up into one.  When we met him he had just turned 70 and was about 3 times as strong and energetic as me.  That’s no exaggeration.  He’s strong as an ox.  As we moved in, he lifted our furniture like it was made out of plastic.

I was at one of those pivotal points in my life where I just needed someone to cheer for me; to believe in me, and to inspire me.  Kerm did just that.  And it made me desire to be that person for as many young people as I could in the future.  And so that’s what we tried to do in Hong Kong and that’s what we will try to do in our new jobs as Regional Coordinators for Europe and the Middle East.

It’s been 12 years since I first met Kerm.  He’s still full of smiles, he’s hilarious, and he’s still one of the greatest people I’ve ever met.  His body is not so cooperative anymore.  But he’s 82.  Despite the slowing, he could probably still completely annihilate me in an arm wrestling match.

I joked with Kerm, “you’ve been an important part of my life for more than a quarter of my life.  But you are so old, I’m just a blip in your life.  Do you even remember me?”

What I really meant was, “I could never give you as much as you gave to me.”  I dedicated my 2nd book to him, but that’s about all I can do.

Well, he does remember me, thankfully, and he and Susi are great friends, parents, grandparents, mentors–whatever we need them to be.  And we remember all of our friends in St. Andrew’s who still support us all these years later.  They didn’t know us at all, but just took us in and trusted us when we needed it most.

We had a get-together the other night on the shore of the Long Island Sound and reminisced about the good old days.  We would have special dinners every month (a very UMC thing) and apparently we once did a wacky fashion show and they made me show up in my “birthday suit.”  Apparently I was naked with just a cardboard cake around me.  They said that I was furious and kept telling Jamie “I’m not going to do this!”, but apparently I did. Somehow they got me to do it. I must have blocked that completely out of my mind.  Okay, one bad memory.

As we reminisced, I told them that they came along at the right time.  Just when Jamie and I needed them.

One of the men in the church said, “you guys came along at the right time for us too!”

I had never thought of it that way.  They were down to 8 people and we showed up and loved them unconditionally.  We were proud of St. Andrews and still are.

Usually when I pass through Connecticut, I visit church members, visit Kerm and Susi, and visit the old church itself–a 120 year old red brick structure on a ridiculously busy and loud street corner.  But this time, I never bothered to drive by the church.

I didn’t have to.  It’s always in my heart.  And so is Kerm.

PHOTO: A view from the window of APB on the campus of Yale University.  It’s about 45 degrees outside.

I had a great time with the good people at the Faith Promise Worship Center in Boston yesterday.  A lot of them are of Caribbean descent.  It was interesting to hear about their experiences adapting to the U.S. as well as about life on the islands of Trinidad and Barbados.  Our church in Tottenham London, England is primarily Afro-Caribbean as well.  I was there last March and posted on the diary about that.  I’ll be there again in a few weeks.  These congregations are always so warm.  You hug strangers in places like this.  I like that.

I drove down to New Haven, CT last night.  It was snowing and a bit slower than usual, but I’m glad to have made it safely.  I’ve written about my love for New Haven many times in the diary.  So I won’t go through that speech again.  Most recently in August when I was here last. It’s in the diary archives if anyone cares. To me, New Haven is a haven–a place i associate with many fond memories.

We still have a lot of friends here and this is now the 3rd time I have been back WITHOUT Jamie or Marco.  The people will not be happy.  Marco’s changed a lot since 2006, so I will have to come back sometime soon so that they can see J and M.

My classes for the week get started in about 2 hours.  I just stopped by the Yale Bookstore and picked up “the Serpent and the Rainbow,”–a book about voodoo in Haiti.  I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as I finish my current book on Ancient Mesopotamian Christianity.  It is something rarely studied because Islam extinguished almost all traces of Christianity by the year 1000AD. Today there are few Christian communities spanning from Syria to Western China, but there once was a time when there were many.

I just had a sandwich at Au Bon Pain (who cares?).  In front of me is the main library with 15 million books.  And one block down the street is where Jamie worked.  In these nooks and crannies where you can get sandwiches, coffee, or pizza, I have so many great memories of meeting Jamie for “lunch dates.”  Always very exciting.  I really hate coming back here without her.  I associate every street here with Jamie.  I have hardly any bad memories from my time living out there as opposed to every other place I’ve lived where there are plenty of bad memories to go with the good ones.  I think that’s one of the reasons I always find it a place of peace.

The only thing not perfect is the song they are playing in the APB which is by one of those Miley Cyrus-twit-wannabe’s. Time to go.

Well, that break from the road seemed short.  I’m in a hotel in Boston tonight watching the Indianapolis Colts play the Baltimore Ravens.  Jamie and Marco dropped me off at IND today so that I could make my way out to New England.

I will be speaking at a Church of God here in Boston tomorrow.  Then on Wednesday, I will be meeting with my friends from St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church in New Haven, Connecticut.  They are supporting us and have since we left them in 2000 to head off to China.  Then from Monday to Friday I will be taking a course on Cultural Anthropology, Christianity and Globalization at the Overseas Missions Study Center across the street from Yale University.  I am looking forward to this week-long course and seeing some of my old friends.  I miss school and we are allowed a to do this kind of thing once every 3 years–get an educational stipend.  You may recall that 3 years ago I took a week-long course at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.  That was very nice too.

I’m at the Marriott Courtyard in South Boston and the church I will be visiting actually meets here at the Marriott.  That is happening more and more across the world.  Churches are meeting in places other than church-buildings.  Or they meet in church buildings that belong to another church.  We will see more of this in the future.

I was just in Boston in August.  I guess that was 5 months ago, but it feels like 5 weeks ago.  I was visiting a church for the book and had a nice time at the JFK Musuem, Harvard Square, and the Charles River.  This is one of my favorite cities on Earth.  It’s too bad I’m not going to get to enjoy any of it.  I’ll hit the road tomorrow after lunch.

I got to sit first class all the way from Indiana to Hartford (via Detroit).  It’s the result of all the miles I’ve accrued over the past few years–especially the last two.  So that was nice.  The drive from Hartford to Boston was nice.  It’s about 45 degrees, but there’s still snow on the ground from those snow storms that passed through.  Connecticut is 80% woods and hilly.  When you drive across it, you don’t see anything but woods.  Unlike the Midwest or most of the country really–when you are driving on the freeway you are not passing strip malls every few minutes.  I’ve written before how New England has more of an aversion to strip-malls and excessive commercialization of their towns.  It’s gotten worse since I lived here, but it is still far less than anywhere else.  And on these drives, you don’t see towns or Targets—just nature.

My rental car was a Prius.  You know, one of those environmentally friendly cars.  It looks like a spaceship.  I literally did not know how to turn the car on.  It’s bizzare.  You hit a button to turn it on.  There’s no key at all.  And then there’s a tiny little stick shift that looks like an old Atari joystick.

I stopped to get something to eat somewhere in Northeastern Connecticut and couldn’t figure out how to turn the car back on.  I started to panic.  What on earth am I going to do?  Call my wife and have her surf the internet to find out how to turn the car on and go in reverse?  Ah…luckily there was a manual.  I envisoned myself sitting there for 1 or 2 hours trying to start it.  I think it was only 5 mintues but if felt like forever.  Mainly I wanted to get into Boston, check-in and watch the games.

The Colts have had a couple of beautiful plays.  Those Colts wide receivers are amazing.  And Peyton Manning leaves me speechless the way Michael Jordan did in his prime.

But those Ravens!  If it were not for their stupid penalties, they might even be winning this game.  It’s a textbook case on why penalties can kill a team.  Have fun watching the game film guys.

Well, next post will be from New Haven, Connecticut.

We have received word that our missionary crew in Haiti have all survived this earthquake.  We thank God for that.  But there’s a long way to go.

We are having our personnel meetings at Global Missions this week and we all listened as a letter from Haiti was read.  I won’t say who wrote it or quote it at all.  It’s personal and I don’t have permission to share it.  But as I listened, I thought about how vulnerable our friends in Haiti are right now.

*They survived, but how many of their friends died?

*How will they process the sudden death of multiple friends and acquaintances?

*What about school?  What about work?  If those things don’t exist anymore, how do you mourn the sudden loss of your school, your workplace, and the place where you buy groceries?

*Where will the water come from?  And food?

*If you have food and eat today, will you have food tomorrow?

*What if there is looting and violence?

*What if you get hurt AFTER the quake?  Can you get help or must you be extremely careful?

It was painful to hear how vulnerable our friends are and how helpless we feel being here.

The 2ND vulnerability I have been thinking about it the country’s vulnerability.  There are countries in the world that really aren’t functioning nations.  Yemen and Afghanistan are two examples of “countries” that are really ungovernable regions.  There’s really nothing there.  Nothing you could call a government.  Those societies may be doomed to poverty, but people can survive because they are tribal people.  There may be no government but there’s a tribe.  In Sudan, there is a clan–even if there’s no functioning government.

Other countries may have weak governments that aren’t very good at most things.  The Philippines and Nicaragua are good examples.  These places are not Germany, Singapore, or the USA.  Government is unreliable, but there.

But Haiti is in its own realm.  It does not have the tribal/clan culture of a place like Yemen which can help people survive poverty and chaos.  Yet it did have a little bit of a functioning government–albeit a bad one. Now, Haiti is a country that is in limbo.  There was a marginal government, but now there may be nothing.  It’s like an instant Somalia minus the clans.

This could be very dangerous.  What will provide the social cohesion.

This social cohesion is one of the things that makes religion important.  Christianity in particular is so good at creating hospitals, schools, orphanages, and a belief in the rule of law.  Even when the government breaks down in poor countries, the church can fill in and be that government-substitute.  This is so important throughout the world.  Places that we think are bad, would actually be worse without religion.

For every Al-Qaeda cell group, there are tens of thousands–hundreds of thousands of religious groups providing community and stability from the Congo to China to the Dominican Republic.

Anarchy could easily break out in Haiti.  But there will also be churches and missionaries (like our friends there) bringing life and hope.

These Photos are Amazing.  I started to shed tears at the photos of the relief workers from around the world.  You will see what I mean.

The tragedy that is unfolding in Haiti is terrible.  Apparently there had been a survey recently predicting that a 7.0 Earthquake would soon hit and that it would level Port-au-Prince.  Sadly, that has happened and this country is not equipped to handle this magnitude of a crisis.

My sister Marcel wrote me to ask me what I thought about Pat Robertson’s comments about Haiti being troubled because it made a pact with the devil.

I’m not in favor of comments like this.  Does blaming this on a pact with the devil help anybody right now?  Or does it come off as self-righteous?  Does it make the assumption that an entire country is specifically trapped by the devil?  And is it suggesting that God’s punishment for Haiti is an earthquake?

This is a logic that you hear a lot from some of the well known American televangelists.  That natural disasters in the New Covenant age are punishment from God.

If that’s the case, why do the most Atheistic countries in the world (Sweden, Finland, Norway) have the highest living standards in the world and no earthquakes, no tornadoes, no tsunamis—nothing.  Quite the opposite.  These countries rarely make the news.

Neither do the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia (the home of Islam) get hammered.  They are actually quite rich.

Why do typhoons hit South Korea (which is 33% Christian), but not North Korea which imprisons, tortures, and kills millions including Christians.

Why does the Philippines (the most Evangelical Christian country in Asia) get hit constantly by volcanoes, typhoons, mudslides and other disasters multiple times each year.

Why did Hurricane Katrina hit the Bible-Belt states and not ultra-secular New England or the Pacific Northwest?

Hmm…Perhaps it has to do with geography, geology, and climate.  “Atheistic” Sweden and Norway are in a temperate climate, have no volcanoes and are not on fault lines.  The Bible Belt gets hit by the cold air from Canada meeting the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico.  South Korea is in the line of fire from typhoons that pass across Japan, but North Korea is too far north.  The rich Gulf States have a hot, arid climate and oil.

I think you get my point.  Many factors cause a country to collapse or thrive and most countries at one time were very weak before being strong and vice-versa.  Poland, Turkey, Iran and yes, even Haiti were all once rich countries.  Ireland and South Korea were once poor.

But let’s specifically look at Haiti.  Haiti was once one of the richest countries in the Western Hemisphere.  But here are some other reasons that Haiti became poor.

1. The “Christian country” of Spain began a long period of exploitation.  They came for gold.

2. The Christian Spaniards filled the country with slaves from Africa.

3. The “Christian” French took over Haiti  (the Spanish got the Domincan Republic) and started one of the world’s most exploitative, slave states.

4. Haiti was a French colony and French colonies in the Caribbean never performed as well as British colonies.

5. Haiti lost its French subsidies by declaring independence.

6. Like many countries throughout the world, they became dependent on a few basic natural resources or crop–like sugar cane–and didn’t develop their economy.

7. Doc Duvalier was a tyrant that ushered in dysfunctional government many decades after independence.

8. Haiti was composed of African slaves from many parts of Africa damaging cultural cohesion.

9. Haiti never received industrious immigrants from China or India as much of the West-Indies did (this is a huge factor).

10. Haitians decided to strip their forests whereas their neighbor in the Dominican Republic did not.

These are the kinds of things that Pat Robertson will never talk about.  He probably doesn’t know any of these things.  Is Haiti that important to him or is it just a place of charity and condemnation?  There is A LOT of voodoo and belief in black magic in Haiti.  Yes, this kind of excessive witch-craft is damaging to society.  But cultic practices are not just the domain of poor, black countries.  Some of the countries that are becoming the most wealthy in the past 10 years, are countries where there is a lot of cultic worship. Some of the countries where Christianity is growing the fastest have cultic practices in the “Christian church.”  It all gets very murky the more you think about it.

And of course any disaster is going to have high casualties in a world where 50% of the population is urban.  There are higher concentrations of people now so earthquakes or tsunamis will claim a lot more lives. And in under-developed countries, poor construction and a poor or non-existent medical infrastructure allows for massive death tolls.

I guess one of the oddest things to me is that these same Televangelists always claim that the USA is under judgment.  So the USA which is the heart of the Evangelical movement is not okay apparently. And then when a disaster strikes a place like Haiti, then God is angry at them too.  So what country is he happy with?

My sense is that God looks into people’s hearts–and he looks at each individual person–each child of his–with his full attention and love. And the country is filled with missionaries (including some of our own) who are being His hands and feet right now as we speak.  They will do tremendous work there in the coming days.

Right now I am looking at a picture of 3 year old boy covered in rubble.  God is there with that boy right now, and I doubt that God is silently whispering in that child’s ear and saying:  “This is for that pact with the devil 300 years ago.”

A Time for Everything

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

One year in 120 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.