Some thoughts upon my continued reading of Amy Carmichael’s biography:
Because missionary reports generally included more about successes than failures, Amy tried to shift the weight to the other side. “More important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood…So we have tried to tell you the truth-the uninteresting, unromantic truth.”
Many people have quite a romantic view of missions. I confess that I did as we were going through the process of getting on the field. In my mind I thought we would arrive and everything would just neatly fall into place-we would live in a quaint little hut among the people. They would gather around us and be ever so eager to hear the Gospel as it spilt beautifully from our lips. I would gather the orphans and take them in and they would find a home. Although other missionaries tried to prepare us for the realities we would face nothing really could until we were living in Africa.
The stark reality hit us in the face like a ton of bricks. In giving you updates through our newsletter or Facebook page we try very hard to share our successes and our failures so you can pray for us. We strive to be transparent with you and I ask for your forgiveness if we have ever portrayed an image of ourselves that is inaccurate. Each day is a spiritual battle-we lose when we are not constantly seeking the Lord’s help and instead or trying to do it in our own strength. (That NEVER works.) For indeed we cannot remain here without you locking arms with us and lifting us up before the throne.
Living like Jesus, modeling our Christian theology with skin on to the Dinka is difficult. More often than not our failures far outweigh our successes. There are many days when we are just weary-bone tired from just living out in the bush-house work, cooking meals, learning language, raising children, discipling. Or the cultural weariness that comes from trying to understand the Dinka’s ways and customs that haven’t been permeated with the practical knowledge of Christian living. It seems we are constantly stumbling and committing cultural taboos and having to ask for forgiveness from our Dinka friends.
Our compound (where our house is surrounded by concrete walls) is always filled with locals and it is EXHAUSTING to feel as if you live in a glass house-people are ALWAYS watching (I mean the village children are literally peering in through our windows-faces pressed to the glass to see what these crazy white people are doing). I feel the burden of setting a consistent, Christian example CONSTANTLY. Even when I go for a run in the mornings, there is the constant staring at me because I am foreigner and the expectations that come with that-“You give me money” or “You give me clothes”. People are always wanting something.
When we go out to a community event, the masses stare at us and there is this constant, unspoken pressure to do things in a culturally appropriate way so as not to offend the unbelievers and be a hindrance to them hearing the Gospel-this unreached people with their centuries old way of doing things-the Dinka believing they are the elite of the human race-they have a very specific protocol of doing things (they literally have a “protocol officer” at events to show people where they are to sit-there is pomp and circumstance in everything).
And believe me, EVERY DAY I am humbled in some way. While at a community meeting the other day, the new Vice President of South Sudan just stepped up to the podium to speak and Daniella started screaming her little lungs out. EVERY eye in the place turned to me and a big Muslim man started fussing at me in Arabic, “You make that baby be quiet. Nurse her or something.” Talk about having to take a humility pill. In a society where men are the authorities, it was quite difficult as a Western woman to bite my tongue and not retort back to him that I knew how to take care of my baby-I’m her Mama after all!
My words echo those of Elisabeth Elliott in her biography about Amy Carmichael: “If it were possible to poll all the missionaries who have worked all the world in all of Christian history, it would be seen that missionary work, most of the time, offers little that could be called glamour. What it does offer, as Amy wrote to prospective candidates in later years, is “a chance to die”-or, as Winston Churchill put his challenge during WW II, blood, sweat, and tears. It offers a great deal of plodding and ploughing, with now and then a little planting. It is the promise of rejoicing, given to those who “go forth weeping, bearing precious seed” that gives heart.”
Yes, by the Lord’s grace we have been privileged to see many people baptized into the faith in the bush where we live with the Dinka. But the actual sanctification and discipleship of these new believers is indeed soul rendering and exhausting. A new believer just recently tried to commit suicide because she was overwhelmed with the her seemingly bleak future-no job, no husband, 4 kids, her ex-husband had hired someone to try and kill her, she believed she just couldn’t do life anymore. By the power of God He preserved her life and we were able to counsel and pray with her.
But these new Dinka believers must know the POWER and STRENGTH of God-not the American, toned down version so many people unfortunately say they follow-but the God who has power over demons, death, sickness, famine. It is my daily prayer that as they see us rely on the Lord and surrender everything that they too will do the same. Please pray for us as we toil through every day life here and be Jesus with skin on to the Dinka!
