I still vividly remember the loving rebuke I received from my father-in-law six weeks after I moved to Ashland, Kansas. My wife, Kaila hadn't yet arrived (she was finishing a teaching contract in the Dallas area) and I had never lived in a community smaller than a quarter of a million people; I was wading through culture shock alone. That particular day, I was frustrated because something I had said on the phone while in line at the local convenience store had been repeated (incorrectly) several times and when it came back to me, I was informed of my plans to leave town permanently, which was an absolute fallacy.
"They're eavesdropping!" I barked at Kaila's dad.
"No, they're not," he calmly replied. My father-in-law is a very wise man who has spent all 57 years of his life in a rural Kansas town. I trust his advice implicitly and he doesn't hesitate to be candid with me. "They're just concerned."
"In my world," I shot back, "If I'm not speaking directly to you and you're listening, you're eavesdropping, because I'm not talking to you!"
"Newsflash," he said. "It's not your world; it's theirs, and everything that happens in their small town is a big deal to them. What is said in a public place is public information. If what you are saying is sensitive or could be misunderstood, then say it in your car or at home. Don't say it in public. If you want to help people in that community, you'd be wise to adjust your own way of communicating. You shouldn't expect an entire community to tailor their style to fit your own. You make the adjustment or you won't be effective there."
Ashland is a town of 855 people. Its economy is driven by agriculture. Wichita, its nearest major metropolitan area, is just shy of a three-hour drive away. They have no Wal-mart and the nearest Starbucks is a two-hour drive away, which, to some locals is not far enough removed as they would question anyone's sanity who is willing to pay $5.00 for a cup of coffee.
Relationships are paramount to people in Ashland. They transcend education, social status, and professional credentials. People will make life-changing personal commitments and form risky business partnerships with generational trust as their only collateral. Though gossip has its presence, people genuinely care about each other. Having been raised in urban California, it would take me years to understand the gravity of this concept.
On June 30th, it will take about 36 hours for six of us to travel from Ashland, Kansas to Doma, Zimbabwe, a small village in the northern most part of the country just north of South Africa. The journey ends similar to the way it begins: in a car on two-lane country roads. Like Ashland, Doma is an agricultural village nearly three hours from the nearest city: Harare, the nation's capital. There is no market for Wal-mart or Starbucks. People don't seem motivated to spend over two days wages ($2.00 per day) on that fancy cup of Joe.
As one might imagine, public health and poverty look very different there. The average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 39.5 years. HIV/AIDS and malaria have ravaged the working population, leaving a country of children raising children. The national education system is very poor. In rural areas, people live completely without power and public sewage and women often walk for days to the nearest hospital, where they will sit and wait for weeks for a baby to be born.
Ashland knows no such inconveniences. It is a relatively safe community with an established hospital and though its public schools are underfunded, they are nationally recognized for academic excellence. Great OB delivery services are just a 20 minute drive away. Power and public sewage are assumed. But in some ways, the two places are the same. Both of these worlds revolve around people knowing other people.
From a practical standpoint, we are going to build furniture for orphan cottages at Eden Children's Village (www.edenchildrensvillage.org), to volunteer in their clinic and school, to deliver 100 pairs of Crocs shoes (courtesy of www.crocscares.com), and to offer training to their long-term missionaries as they help facilitate the healing of the 80% of their orphaned children who have been sexually abused and, in many cases, infected with HIV. But those are practical things; they are a means to an end. If, as my father-in-law had so wisely suggested, we are willing to learn to communicate love in the local dialect, these projects allow us to build crucial relationships with people, not so we can parachute in a rescue them, but rather so we can learn from them while helping them meet their basic needs. They have much to teach us.
Perhaps this was the intent of Richard Stearns' words in his book,
The Hole in Our Gospel:
"Salvation of the soul, as crucial as it may be for the fullness of life both
in the here and now and in eternity, does not by itself put food on the table,
bring water out of the ground, or save a child from malaria. Many of the world’s
poorest people are Christians, and their unwavering faith in the midst of
suffering has taught me much."
