Kaimosi Connection 21, APRIL 2006

KAIMOSI CONNECTION 21
APRIL 2006

Things That Are Broken

News from the Nugent Rehard family FUM
Field Staff in East Africa
Based at Friends Theological College in Kaimosi, Kenya

Greetings to you from Kaimosi! Heavy on my mind this month have been some of the difficult things about serving here. Mary Kay has ably written about both our personal and professional lives in previous editions. I've been more concerned with representing FTC well, and have written very little about the depths and difficulties of this experience. So this month, I just want to share some personal reflections. This letter may be a little longer than usual, a little more reflective. I hope it reveals a different side of our life than we usually cover in the Kaimosi Connection.

Working in international service in a poor, "developing" country that doesn’t seem to be developing never ceases to be a wrenching experience. As we feel more at home, we also feel more jarred by the realities of living in a broken economy (a broken world, really). We keep catching ourselves succumbing to an illusion, that as we become more settled here, life will become somehow normal. But it cannot be normal: we have neighbors who are hungry, a high national rate of crime in rural areas as well as in the city, a political system which shoots itself in the foot just when it seems to be on a rising tide. The paper never ceases to bring stories of the violent abuse of women and children that make our hair stand on end. I have come to the conclusion that poverty is an economic system, not a problem faced by individuals and groups. Everybody who lives in that system has a place that keeps it working--not just the poor, but also the rich who help to develop the economy and the ones who exploit it; the missionaries; the NGO workers; the high-level bureaucrats and low-level traffic police, whether honest or corrupt; the churches and civic organizations. The universal thing is that despite people’s best intentions, we all end up, despite ourselves, feeding the poverty system. Jesus told us, "The poor you will always have with you."

That bit of wisdom is far deeper than I ever imagined. It is all a sobering reminder that Christians have traditionally believed that the world is not, in fact, persistently pleasant and prosperous, but fallen, broken--more profoundly than our individual fallenness and brokenness. The comfort that I can take is that we are called to bear the gospel, "the power of God unto salvation" (Rom 1:16), the love of God that can seep through and around all the barriers we put in its way and touch even the rottenest or most abandoned heart. I have to keep reminding myself that my job is not to develop a college, uplift education, reduce poverty, or reform the church, though I hope to make a small contribution to each of these. My job is to be driven by the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:4) and to share that love in ways that can transform people, myself first and foremost. Christ taught and urged us to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, but never promised us victory over hunger and thirst, only that he would be incarnately present in the hungry or thirsty person to whom we offer some portion of what we have. Nor did he promise that the response would be a pleasant or gratifying one, nor that it would fix the underlying economic problems!

A teacher at Emma's school is leaving so that she may concentrate full-time on the project for street children which she and her husband have been building up for some time. The stories she tells about how these children end up on the street, and what happens to them there, tear at my heart, as do my own brief encounters with street children. But her dedication reminds me of Jesus' promise that he will be with us always, and at times that may be the only comfort of working amid poverty and suffering! When I consider the challenges she faces, I find myself humbled and grateful that that poverty is usually at one remove from me--I am grateful for a comfortable and exciting job, with wonderful colleagues and students, in a healthy institution. I told somebody the other day, with perfect honesty, that I wake up nearly every day thanking God for my job--not because it is a duty to be thankful, but because it comes naturally. I love the work. And I am continually blessed and sometimes deeply moved by my colleagues and friends, even when I feel despairing about people farther afield.

But the work does put me in touch with the painful side of Kenyan life. As I write this, the students are preparing for their month-long half-term break. They will go home to help their families with planting and to collect the last fee payment of the year. This is always painful, because many students find that their home churches or sponsors are not faithful to keep their promises, or find themselves unable to because of unexpected demands on their time. It is difficult and sometimes humiliating for the students to go around seeking support from friends, relatives, and church members. I sincerely wish that local churches would accept the burden and responsibility of educating their pastors, and I preach this message whenever I can. Some churches take up the responsibility with enthusiasm, but others are all promises and no action. This is discouraging to the students, and discouraging to me when I must send them back home. Yet our board and faculty have been crystal clear with me that our students and their churches do need to take responsibility for their education, and that my administrative decisions should not be governed by my pity. On the other hand, our students are blessed here--the fees at FTC are less than half those of our nearest competitor, and half of those fees are paid in the form of work-study scholarships made possible by the John Sarrin Scholarship fund. I deliberately don’t raise funds for scholarships because of this--though when extra scholarship money comes, there's always a use for it. Next month I'll tell you the story of some extraordinary students who have been helped by extra scholarship money, not to ask for more but simply because these students are extraordinary.

As I write this, I'm sitting at Mary Kay's desk in our little office at home. This reminds me of her absence, as she studies in Eldoret. It is a wonderful opportunity for her to pursue a long-held dream, and to prepare for a ministry of healing here in Kenya, but I do miss her. We are again blessed because we can spend our weekends together, and I can go up to see her one or two nights per week. In some ways, absence does make the heart grow fonder, and living at a distance has helped us appreciate and love one another much more! And as I sit at this desk, I am looking at the two photographs of our daughters, dressed in their smart red uniforms. Emma’s face radiates the natural warmth that has always been her gift. Eliza's radiates the charisma and humour that are her gifts. (She is very photogenic, as is Emma, but she is also a first-class ham, so her photograph has a special electricity to it!) Being apart from them day to day is very difficult. Some nights as I go to bed, I find it nearly unbearable. I ask God, how could it be that you have called us to work which has separated us from our children? How can that be right? How can it be good? But "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom 8:28).

This is not a pious platitude, but a profound and humbling truth which can only be discovered by experience. We, or anybody who feels themselves called by God and his purpose, wherever they find themselves in life, will find all kinds of things that don’t seem to work together for good. I think of my own parents and their lifelong struggle to be faithful, active, devoted members of their own church, only to find themselves rejected or humiliated or frustrated at the most surprising of times, and despite their faithfulness. (This, by the way, is exactly what Jesus promised!) The reminder that things work together for good forces us to appreciate the ways in which the difficulties that come from following Jesus often produce unanticipated blessings.
I look at Emma and Eliza in their school and see how very happy both of them are, how they are flourishing in a way that would have been inaccessible in Kaimosi or even in Richmond. Emma went with a group of fellow students for a retreat on Sunday, and called us afterward positively glowing about it. She told us that she and her friends experienced real forgiveness and reconciliation, from both God and one another, and that for the first time in her life she felt the power of the Holy Spirit moving and present in that group, as they prayed and shared together, worked through conflicts, and offered each other love and forgiveness. Eliza has faced some problems in "chemistry" with a couple of teachers, but as we have worked them out, the school has helped find solutions (or time and maturity have worked their effects!) and the difficulties have blossomed into blessings.

A favorite prayer of mine includes the line: "You have given all to me, now I return it." Am I supposed to return my children to God? Is this what it looks like? Surrendering my "control" over them to somebody else?

Perhaps it would be better public relations not to share these thoughts with you. But then again, the distance between public relations and truth is often a vast one. The readers of Kaimosi Connection have been faithful supporters, dear friends, and devoted partners in prayer. I hope that being faithful and truthful about some of my thoughts is a suitable return for your generosity. I don’t want to do the missionary martyr act: let me repeat that I love my work here, our children love their school, Mary Kay is learning immensely from her studies, and we all have the confidence that we are where God wants us to be. But, like you, we live in the REAL world where our blessings are often mixed, and life is more complex than PR, and God meets us at our "growing edges."

Allow me to leave you with the full text of my favorite prayer, which pulls me through difficult moments yet expresses my awe and gratitude at the wonderful moments. It was written by a sixteenth-century Christian named Ignatius Loyola, who dedicated his life to doing, at every moment, what God seemed to be leading him to do, and to do it in the simplest and most direct way he could, sharing the life of the people around him.

Take, Lord, receive
All my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, my entire will.

Take, Lord, receive,
All I have and possess.
You have given all to me--now I return it.

Take, Lord, receive,
All is yours now.
Dispose of it
Wholly according to your will.

Give me only your love, and your grace.
These are enough for me.


In love,

Patrick Nugent.