Last night my church had an ice cream social for a missionary that the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church supports. It was really cool to get to hear his stories about what he is doing in the Congo. With him was a guy named Jake who is a district superintendent in the Congo. We were talking with Jake about his duties. One of his duties was to visit all 40+ of his churches in a 100 sq mile area every 3 months. He told us he had to walk to each of these churches. Someone asked if the church could buy a motorcycle for him to make it easier. He didn’t speak much English so we were using a translator and after much banter back and forth he told us that the one he could use would cost $1,200. I kept looking at his face and something about his facial expressions said that he wasn’t too thrilled about what we were about to decide, which was for the church to take up a love offering to buy him a motorcycle.
I just got done reading Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker and learned several things from this book that applied to this situation. In the book they talk about being like the people they are ministering to. Living in the slums and eating in the streets were common things to Rolland and Heidi which helped them relate to the people they were ministering to. The look on Jake’s face said to me that he would rather have that money to buy vaccinations and food for the people he serves.
We kept talking about the motorcycle and I couldn’t help but think that we were pushing our westernized ways on someone. We (Americans) cant fathom the thought of someone having to walk to 40 churches in a 100 sq mile area every 3 months, but this is what they are used to. It may not be right but this is what they do in Africa. By Jake walking to each of these churches he is like the people he is ministering to. If he shows up on a motorcycle I wonder what the people will think of him. I wonder if their view and reception of him would change. If I was one of these people I would be asking why didn’t you buy food or clothing for these children here or medication so we wont get malaria.
When Jake was asked if he would take the motorcycle if he was moved to a different conference he had a wonderful answer. It really showed where his heart was. He said that he would leave it for the new district superintendent because he wouldn’t want someone else to have to walk around like he had had to.
I like life in The United States, don’t get me wrong now, and I think we could teach a lot of countries how to get out of the poverty they are in but sometimes I think we force our ways on places that are not ready for them and in doing so we make things worse than they were in the first place. We think that if we sent them a motorcycle that they could take care of more of the problems they have. But in all reality something that would help much more would be to send malaria medication and mosquito nets to help with the tremendous problem of people dying from preventable illnesses. Just because we have to have vehicles does not mean that it is what people in other countries need the most. We need to help them take care of the necessities of life before they will be concerned with the luxuries of life.
