6 – The curse and blessing of language study

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Embedding ourselves among the people we seek to serve is a core value of Interserve. This is because Jesus’ incarnation shapes our lives. Jesus became one of us. He entered our world, joined himself to a specific group of people, spoke their language, and thought their thoughts. He invites us to go in like manner to all the peoples of the earth.

Exciting, but scary.

Why would this be scary?

Well, the first thing that is scary is learning a new language. Many of us quietly dread learning a new language. Our dread is quite rational. Most of us (Americans) have never learned a second language as an adult so we have no confidence in our skills.

We are glad when there is a language school available in the country or city to which we are going. We hope that the language school will make up for all we lack. Little do we know, not every language school is well equipped to help us.

I can empathize with this fear – I faced it. I took Latin for three years and Spanish for one year in high school. I memorized all the vocabulary and grammar in order to pass with good grades; but, I never learned to communicate in either language. In addition, I learned little to nothing about contemporary Hispanic or ancient Roman cultures. In contrast, my wife grew up in Africa. Besides English she spoke French, Fulani, and bit of several other languages. She had no worries about adding one more language. It was just another adventure to her. When we actually did our language learning, she could learn in one hour what took me days. So unfair!

What also raised my anxiety level was that there was no proper language school for the Pashtu language. Pashtu was taught at the University of Peshawar; but the classes were text based like my Latin and Spanish classes. They were not designed to enable competent communication in the language. I learned vocabulary and grammar to pass a written test.

Some Pentecostal friends shared my dread of learning a second language. They hoped for the charisma of speaking Pashtu, in order to be spared years of study. They had heard of people going to Mexico and speaking in tongues and everyone in the villages understanding them. I would have liked that gift as well, but it never came. We all had to invest the seemingly endless time and energy to climb the rugged mountain called language learning.

The reality for many, if not most, overseas workers’ is that they never achieve professional proficiency in the language of their host community. They arrive untrained in how to learn a second language and they are not allotted the appropriate amount of time needed to learn. The fortunate few are given six months to study language. Many are expected to begin work right away and study language in their spare time. Consequently, most end up with a proficiency level that allows them to accomplish basic tasks; but they never end up developing a professional level of proficiency.

What helped to deliver me from fear and failure was the Toronto Institute of Linguistics (TIL). TIL was a one-month intensive applied linguistics course that provided skills to learn a second language with or without a language school. (Nowadays, Wheaton College and some other organizations offer equivalent courses.) The instructors at TIL directed us to view our task as more than learning how to speak a new language. Language was a people’s means of expressing the way they saw, interpreted, and lived coherently in their world. Therefore, learning a new language was really a passageway into seeing the world differently, seeing it through their eyes.

I may be an exceptionally slow learner, but it took me two and a half years of language learning even to find the entrance to that passageway – Lewis’ “wardrobe.”

In my second and third years of language study I lived on a short street. Every day at four o’clock I would go out and talk with two neighbors. They were seniors in high school. We would talk about politics and religion- the favorite topics for Peshawari males. They would disparage different policies of the United States; I would consistently disagree and our lively debate would ensue. The three of us thoroughly enjoyed these discussions, and it was great for developing fluency. One day, they came out of their houses and started the usual discussion, complaining about some US policy. I do not remember what the policy was, but I remember the light going on in my head. I saw their point and I could actually agree with them. At that moment I realized that I had finally found the passageway that I had been searching for, the way into seeing life from their perspective. So, in that moment, I turned to them and said, “You are right. I agree with you.”

The two of them stood stunned for a moment. Then the older of the two looked at me and said, “You do?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

Smiles erupted and a deep bond was established among us.

A new dimension had entered my life. I began to see and understand their culture from their eyes. I knew that I had so much more to learn; yet, I had found the wardrobe and that remains a precious moment in my life.

With this epiphany I realized what a blessing language learning was. It really wasn’t a curse. It was God’s way of slowing me down, enabling me to listen to and learn from my hosts in the culture.

If we only learn a different language, we will only communicate our ideas in that language. Our particular cultural understandings will continue to shape our ideas even if we use their words. Since the life contexts of our hosts are so different from those in our passport countries, our ideas are often intriguing but inapplicable to their contexts. As gracious hosts, they are too kind to tell us how irrelevant our ideas are. Yet, when we learn another way of living and thinking, then when we communicate, we are not just communicating, we are truly interacting.

The longer we are in our hosts’ culture, our interaction becomes much more meaningful, much richer, and much deeper. It also becomes so much more rewarding- for us and for our hosts.

So, let me encourage everyone to press on in language study. As you persist, one day you will discover and enter the passageway into the eyes, the ears, the minds, and the hearts of the people God has invited you to serve. When you enter that passageway, a whole new world awaits you. Moving in and out of their culture and yours will become like moving in and out of Narnia.

5 – Managing our expectations

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For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39

When we prepare for going overseas, we are encouraged to become aware of our expectations. We are told this because dashed expectations is what often overwhelms first term overseas workers, causes conflict, and even sends them home discouraged.

I remember trying to identify what my expectations were before I went overseas; but, I could not really identify them. I thought I had none, except that I expected things to go somewhat wrong. The way I discovered my expectations was when things irritated, frustrated, or discouraged me. My irritation, frustration, or discouragement revealed to me my expectations. It was at those times that the Spirit asked me to realign my expectations to the on-the-ground realities.

Not to frighten anyone from going overseas, but, few of us can anticipate how wrong things can go. I think we all try to follow the advice to be flexible and prepare our minds for any potentialities. Yet, there is no way to anticipate how wrong things can go and how we are going to react when things do go wrong.

Why is this? It is because it isn’t just one thing that goes wrong. What happens to many of us is that a series of things pile up on top of each other. It is the accumulation of these things that put us over the edge.

First, simply leaving the familiar and moving to the unfamiliar stretches each one of us. A person cannot even anticipate how much it stretches us. The usual sign that we are being overstretched is the exhaustion we feel at the end of a typical day. It may be the end of the day at work and we have absolutely no energy left over for language study. We wonder why we are so tired. Work in our passport country never made us feel this tired. It may be the exhaustion we feel at the middle of the afternoon during language study. We find we are more tired than we ever were after a full day in college or in grad school.

Second, in addition to this daily tiredness, if we, the spouse, or the children get sick, or the job we had anticipated doing does not really exist, and some of the colleagues we work with seem to have over-adapted to the culture and act in ways that appear wrong, and then the electricity vanishes for a couple of days and there’s no water for a proper shower- these are the times when we can hit the culture shock wall at full speed. Our emotional capacity to cope has been overstretched and we explode into anger, tears, or both.

It is at these times that we can feel that the Lord has let us down. We wonder what happened to the hundredfold that we should be getting since we left everything to follow him (Mark 10:28-30).

When we follow the Lord where he leads us, we have a set of unconscious expectations of God. Our expectations are not necessarily unrealistic; they are shaped by God’s promises. What blindsides us is our feeling that God has not lived up to our understanding of his promises- he has not lived up to our expectations.

If ever you find yourself down this path, know that you are not alone. Many of us have been there. Even Abram (Abraham) found himself in a similar situation.

When God called Abram, God made some powerful promises. We find these in Genesis 12:1-3:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3

God promised to bless Abram, to protect him, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed in him. Some powerful promises! Embedded in these promises was a command. God wanted Abram to leave his family, his land, and follow him into the unknown. So, Abram did. He said his goodbyes, gathered his wife, servants, and belongings, and set out for Canaan’s land.

When Abram finally arrived in Canaan’s land, what did he encounter? He encountered a severe drought. We read about this in Genesis 12:10: Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land.

Everything was going wrong! The drought was so severe that Abraham apparently questioned the viability of God’s promise to protect and bless him. With such a drought he could not stay in the land.

This drought caused Abram to question not just one of God’s promises, he questioned the viability of the others. As a result, Abram had to find a way to protect himself and his entourage. So, Abram took matters into his own hands and decided to go down to Egypt.

Sarai was uncommonly attractive, even at her advanced age. Since God was planning to give her a child he may have been keeping Sarai stronger and healthier than most women her age. This is only conjecture; but it is possible. Yet, we do know that she was beautiful. To protect himself and his entourage Abram asked Sarai to identify herself as his sister. We read of Abram’s fears in verses 11-13:

11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.”

Sarai was aware of the possible outcome of such an action. She lived in the same world as Abram. She knew that she could be married off to a powerful Egyptian man.

The very thing Abram feared happened. The Egyptians saw Sarai and were amazed; she was stunning. They told Pharaoh. When Pharaoh saw her, he wanted to marry her. We read of this in Genesis 12:14-15:

14 When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

Abram was completely culpable in Sarai’s marriage to Pharaoh. Verse 19 tells us that Pharaoh did not take Sarai by force. Pharaoh had talked with Abram and made arrangements about the marriage. We know this because Pharaoh said to Abram after he had been disciplined by God: Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife (12:19)?

What adds insult to injury is that the use of the Hebrew idiom “take for one’s wife” in verse 19 indicates that Pharaoh had consummated the marriage (compare with Genesis 6:2, 16:3-4).

Due to Abram’s lack of faith everything had gone desperately wrong. Abram had given his wife away to another man, and Sarai had gone along with the ruse in order to protect Abram.

What is going on here? What happened to God’s promises? Why didn’t God keep the severe drought from happening?

There are no answers to these questions. We are not told why God allowed the drought to happen. We are simply told that it happened and we see Abram’s lack of faith and the outcomes of his choices.

So, why is this story recorded?

First, We learn from this story that God doesn’t live up to our expectations. We are not told why God allowed the severe drought to happen. We are simply told that it happened. If it happened to Abram, it can happen to us. Therefore, when we follow God we are to give space for the unexpected.

Second, I think the story exists so we can ask ourselves how we will respond when everything seems to go wrong. Are we going to go our own way as Abram did?

This is something we cannot answer with certainty ahead of time. However, we can prepare ourselves for the unexpected by developing healthy spiritual disciplines, such as private and corporate prayer, maintaining a circumspect conscience with God and others, regular times in the Word – not just alone, but with others – and a consistent and intentional practice of depending upon God in all of life’s endeavors.

Abram’s faith could not carry him through the drought, so he journeyed away from God and downward into self-preservation mode. We know these were bad decisions because of the way Abram moves back into Canaan’s land in Chapter 13:1-4. He retraces his steps till he gets to Bethel and there he calls on the name of the Lord as he did when he first came into the land:

13:1 So ABRAM went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. 2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. 3 He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4 to the place where he had made an altar at the first; and there Abram called on the name of the LORD.

This retracing of his steps is a subtle way of indicating that Abram had gone in the wrong direction.

The outcome of this bizarre episode in Abram’s life does not make any sense to us. Even though Abram made bad decisions, God was faithful to him. Though Abram did not look to God to protect him, God watched over Abram and protected him. He struck Pharaoh’s house in order to get things back to the way he wanted.

What is perplexing is that even though Abram seems to stray, he comes out rich. In verse 16 we read: And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels. Abram not only acquires wealth, he keeps it all when he leaves: And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had (12:20).

Why does Abram wind up financially better off even when he failed so miserably?

Could it be that God wants us to learn something about himself through this story?

Psalm 139 tells us that we can never get away from God’s presence, even when we run away. In addition, Psalm 103:10 tells us that God loves us and cares for us and does not treat us as our sins deserve. So, is God teaching us through this story that when everything goes wrong and we falter, no matter what path we take he is always with us and always waiting for our wholehearted return to him?

God knows that many of us who go overseas will encounter difficulties that can test us to the core. He knows that we are not always going to successfully navigate the treacherous waters we encounter. Our faith may falter. This story lets us know that he is with us in these times of darkness. This story is to help us endure and to encourage and keep us from taking a wrong turn. It is also written so we can be assured that he is with us even if we take a wrong turn.

All of us fail in some way. If and when we do, this story lets us know that we are just like the father of our faith, Abraham. Look where God took him and see what God accomplished through him! If God can accomplish his purposes through Abraham, he can surely accomplish them through you and me.

So, let’s not be overwhelmed and feel abandoned by God in those times when all seems to go wrong. Let’s take the words that Paul utters in absolute confidence as our own:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

In conclusion, there are phases to culture shock. There is the romance phase, and then there is the shock phase. If we can through prayer, drawing on God’s grace, effectively manage our expectations and our reactions and get through the shock phase which is described in this post, then we will get to the balanced, realistic phase. What I have seen is that when we get through to this phase, we begin to experience the fruit of our calling; and life and service overseas becomes an immense privilege and a source of joy.

4 – Transformed by grace

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I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13

There is a high degree of romance associated with doing something new and adventurous. When I responded to what God was doing in my heart, I was excited about entering a new culture and experiencing a completely different context. In theory, I had been trained about culture shock, yet I was not prepared for it when it hit. There comes a time for all of us when the romance fades and we find ourselves struggling to cope emotionally with our new life.

My downshift into coping mode happened on a six-week trip to Pakistan. My wife, Joan, and I were gearing up for going to Pakistan, and I went for an exploratory trip. Joan had grown up in an impoverished Cameroonian village, and understood simple, rural living. I, on the other hand, had grown up as an upper-middle class suburbanite. I had traveled to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro (Copacabana Beach), the Bahamas, and the Virgin Islands. Though I was more than willing to live in Pakistan, I really was venturing forth into uncharted waters. Making this exploratory trip before I took the final plunge turned out to be a wise move.

Pakistan in 1984 was still quite rustic. (Over the years we were there we watched the country rise significantly.) I surprised my hosts; I was able to handle what appeared to me to be chaos on the roads, the poverty, the substandard construction, and the unhygienic conditions. For example, we were traveling with a group of Pakistanis and Afghans and we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. The tables were filthy, the plates were greasy looking, and flies were everywhere. I noticed I was the only one working to keep the flies away from the food. So, I stopped, invited all the flies to lunch, and stopped bothering them.

Yet, the day was nearing when I would hit the wall. It happened two weeks later in a bathroom. I was squatting down in a dingy, mold-covered bathroom, shivering with cold, sloshing warm water from a bucket over myself. At that moment the thought hit me: “Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? Am I going to expect my family to live like this?”

I could not see myself doing this for the rest of my life; yet, I couldn’t see myself saying no to what God was offering me either. The trauma of the moment so overwhelmed my systems that I couldn’t even process. My systems simply shut down, leaving the matter unresolved, lodged in my subconscious.

Six months later in Minneapolis, I was walking from work to lunch and the thought flashed through my mind: “I can do it.” Grace had been quietly percolating inside my subconscious for these six months without me even thinking or praying about it. At that very moment grace had completed its work and I was experiencing the result. God had worked within me what I needed to face the conditions I would encounter. I was alive, and ready to go.

I was blessed to experience this work of grace in the comfort of my passport country. Many do not have this luxury; they go through the pain on site. One colleague shared this experience: In his early 20s he had developed a successful business, ran it for a number of years, and sold it at a significant profit. He came to Peshawar with the same can-do attitude. It wasn’t long before he was scraping his ego off the floor. He didn’t have the language skills even to get himself to the bazaar to purchase basic household supplies. He felt disempowered, vulnerable, and angry.

At these times we get upset with God over where he has led us, as Jeremiah did. Jeremiah got seriously upset with God when he was released from the stocks. He had obeyed the call to be a prophet, and spoken what God had given him. Yet, the persecution and the ridicule he faced for his obedience was becoming too much for him to bear. Jeremiah voiced his grievance:

O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived,
You are stronger than I and you have prevailed (20:7).

Jeremiah was between a rock and a hard place; but what was he to do? Say no to what God had asked of him? Such an answer was impossible for Jeremiah. Yet how could he endure the opposition he was facing?

Jeremiah had to move forward the same way we find ourselves moving forward – by grace. Though we don’t read of it in Chapter 20, we see from Jeremiah’s ensuing obedience that God had worked within him, giving Jeremiah what he needed to follow. Following God into the hard places is not a cakewalk. But, as we are honest with our feelings, and as we hold on to God, we discover his grace bubbling up within us giving us what we need, not simply to survive but also to thrive. It is at this point the words of Paul take on a whole new meaning:

I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me (Philippians 4: 12-13).

3 – Strengthened to accept weakness

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May you be made strong with all the strength
that comes from his glorious power,
and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience,
while joyfully giving thanks to the Father.
Colossians 1:11-12

In the city where I lived, many people looked down upon the Christians. This is because the Christians were from a minority, low caste ethnic group, and many were poor and uneducated. Due to a lack of opportunity for upward social mobility a number of Christians worked as street sweepers and as cleaners. One would see them out sweeping the streets before dawn each morning. These jobs were demeaning. In my second year in the country I lived in a second story apartment. One day I was sweeping the stairs up to my apartment. A neighbor saw me and said: “Why don’t you get one of the Christians to clean your steps?” I replied: “I am a Christian.” He was taken aback by my response, stuttered a bit, and then said, “No, I don’t mean Christians like you, I mean the kind who do the sweeping.”

It wasn’t only the local Christians that were disdained. Many also held demeaning stereotypes of westerners. Holding these stereotypes was completely understandable. They hadn’t lived in the west; so, they didn’t know the actual diversity that exists in western communities. The information they received about the west came through movies and through newspapers. They had seen objectionable movies, read about the decadent lives of musicians and movie stars, and heard about the “growing” social problems that existed in the west- the breakdown of families, increasing divorce rates, high rates of immorality, tales of children and elderly being neglected and abused. Therefore, it was entirely natural for them to fear westerners coming into their communities, bringing social disorder.

Due to my skin tone and hair color, there was no way I could hide the fact that I was a westerner. There were times when I would get on a bus and feel the tension my presence created. Men would look at me with disdain, wipe their beards, and chant something under their breath. Once a university student spit on me. Another time a group of Arabs who were training for jihad in Afghanistan entered the bus I was on, saw me, and came and surrounded me. They yelled at me, hit me, and threatened to kill me.

Why would I put myself in a context where I could be disdained and even abused? Many of us in the US have social power and can protect ourselves from situations where we can be abused. We don’t willingly give up the social power we have. In contrast, Paul was one person who willingly gave up his social power. Why did Paul do this? He had access to a completely different kind of power- the power of God.

I taught English. Each semester I would interview potential students, 99 percent of whom were Muslim. A small portion was ideologically Islamist. They would tell me that the reason they wanted to learn English was to go to the west and evangelize for Islam. I never turned away applicants who came for this reason; in fact, I was drawn to them. The new semester would begin with the ideologues eyeing me with a certain level of hostility. After a few weeks of classes their countenance would soften. I expected this because God was with me. God himself worked in their hearts, and they gradually accepted and respected me. This was the power of God with which Paul was intimately acquainted; and for this he was willing to give up any natural power he had.

Without my presence, the selective information they received about westerners would not have been countered. Their stereotypes would not have been challenged. They would have continued to disdain all westerners and the Christian faith. Since Jesus had led me there, they had the opportunity to see that followers of Jesus did not match the negative stereotypes. They could tangibly experience the presence of God in my life, and see fruits that distinctively accompany that Presence and are universally fragrant.

In writing this I do not want to give the impression that the mistreatment didn’t faze me. There were times that I would get angry. However, at these times the Spirit would encourage me to pray for help and to forgive the culprits. As I responded, God would calm me and fortify me. His love would assist me to look past the insults and see people being human.

Looking past the ill treatment enabled me to stay there. Being there gave me opportunities to interact with those naturally inclined to disdain me. This interaction was vital. They were impacted by it; and, I was also impacted.

Through the interaction people brought me into their lives. They showed me the heartache that so many of them carried. Almost everyone I met had immense heartache. When I saw their pain, the words of Ecclesiastes became alive:

I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed—they have no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power—and they have no one to comfort them (4:1).

The writer of Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth, noticed that even though the oppressors had the power to inflict pain on others, they themselves had no power to stop or diminish their own pain. He noticed that everyone had pain and no one had comfort. This insight led Qoheleth to despair even of life. He wrote:

And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun (4:2-3 NRSV).

In contrast, when God’s love enters and shapes our hearts, we don’t share Qoheleth’s depressing perspective. This is because God’s love is unconditional, and it is impartial. God cares equally for those who oppress as well as those who are oppressed. And words are not adequate to convey this truth; it can only be perceived through a person willing to absorb oppression and not turn away, just as Jesus did.

In addition, God’s love is hope-filled. Paul describes God’s love in this way in 1 Corinthians 13:7: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God is constantly moving forward in hope. He knows better than we that the conditions of people’s lives and their resistance to his Christ are not fixed in stone; change is possible. And God draws us into having his hope-filled perspective. Paul also tells us that God’s love is able to endure all things. Since he can endure all things, he makes us able to endure them as well. Even though we intensely sense our weakness, he gives us the power we need to patiently endure things with joy.

So, those of us who believe in Jesus are a walking bundle of potential to endure hostility and abuse. We just need practice. We can look past the affronts we receive because God is within us, giving us what we need to patiently endure what we experience with joy and thanksgiving. And we find Paul’s prayer for us in Colossians 1:11-12 actualized:

May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father.