A Rainy Day

We are all one in Christ, so how come it doesn’t feel that way? It’s true that on the outside we, as people from a variety of different countries, look and act differently but those differences can be fun to explore. We try wearing different types of clothes, eating different kinds of food and speaking other languages. There are challenges to all those attempts but we get past them and even enjoy them. We believe that we have arrived at a place where we understand each other.

Then one day something happens, such as it rains really hard one morning. This is a seemingly insignificant yet very revealing event. From one perspective the rain is a major obstacle. You will get sick if you walk all the way to work in the rain so the sensible thing to do is stay at home and wait until it finishes. You might arrive at work a few hours late but that’s not important. You have stayed healthy and done your best to get to work when you can. There’s no point in letting your boss know why you are late, they will have seen the rain and understood.

However, there is another perspective at play. This perspective looks at the rain as a minor inconvenience. True, it’s difficult to walk to work in the rain so you use your umbrella, ride the bus or take a taxi. It might not be as easy as getting to work usually is but it’s your responsibility to arrive at work on time. Your boss is not going to accept the rain as a valid excuse for being late. It would be embarrassing, even shameful to arrive at work very late and then claim that you couldn’t arrive earlier because of the rain.

Both of these perspectives are valid, so what happens when the first perspective is the perspective of the employee and the second is that of the employer? What happens is a barrier goes up. Neither person understands why the other person did or said what they did. The employee is hurt and confused by his harsh employer. He can’t understand why his employer doesn’t care about his personal health but only about getting to work on time. He tries to explain that he saved his employer paying him sick time because he stayed home and didn’t walk in the rain. But his employer doesn’t understand and punishes him anyway by forcing him to make up the time he missed on another day.

On the other hand, the employer is confused by his usually hard working employee. He doesn’t understand why the rain is such a big deal. He feels like the employee is being lazy and making excuses because he didn’t feel like coming to work on time that day. He doesn’t know why the employee won’t take responsibility for his own actions. He tries to be understanding because it was raining really hard so instead of punishing the employee he offers him the chance to make up the time on another day.

This example shows how the differences between these two people go much deeper than the clothes they wear or the languages they speak. They look at life completely differently so what started out as good intentions on the part of both people, ends up in hurt, anger and confusion.

Now if these people are Christians they know they should be able to get along and work together because they are united in Christ. But what does that mean on a practical level? How do you work with someone who doesn’t seem to care about you? What do you do when you try to put someone else ahead of yourself only to have them think you are being cruel? How do you handle the power imbalance between the employer and employee when there are these kinds of differences?

I don’t have any answers, just lots of questions. Prayer and wisdom are crucial ingredients but what can we do to see past our own perspectives? How do we lay aside our view of the world and step into someone else’s shoes? How do we help them step into our shoes? How can something so impossible be possible?

Unexpected Friends

One of the things I love (and sometimes hate) about traveling is that you never know who you're going to meet. I had such an experience yesterday as I was traveling home from Dar es Salaam. I boarded the airplane and found myself seated next to an older Tanzanian gentleman. After he kindly helped me stow all my pieces of hand luggage he started up a conversation.

Not long into the conversation I shared about my line of work, Bible translation. His enthusiasm overflowed and he had many questions for me. I love talking about what I do so it was great fun to answer all his questions. I even had the opportunity to jump on my soapbox of the importance for people to have the Bible in their first language, not just their second or third.

I was also able to ask a few questions myself and discovered that this man is a wealthy business man who enjoys supporting Christian ministries where he can. As a way to help me out he offered me a ride to the bus station from the airport to save me the taxi fare. So when his wife and colleagues picked him up from the airport I was in the vehicle with them. They drove me right to the bus station and didn't let me out of the car until a good seat on a reputable bus had been secured. They even insisted on looking at the seating chart to find the best possible seat for me.

It was such a blessing to meet this man and his wife and yet an unlikely occurrence as well. As a wealthy businessman in a city three hours away from where I live, we would have little opportunity to meet. In fact many men in his position would not have begun a conversation with me. But the conversation was started and I left that flight with a new friend. I wonder how many opportunities like this I have had in the past but missed them because I was too tired or too busy to follow through. It was a good reminder to me to be aware of the possibilities, possibilities to make a friend, encourage someone, and share my faith.

Life From Another Perspective

Living in another country provides many opportunities to see life from another perspective. I encountered a couple of those moments today.

The first time occurred as I was checking Luke 4:33 with the Ikoma translators. When I'm checking the translation I read through it looking for areas that aren't accurate, aren't understandable or aren't natural ways to say something in Ikoma. In this case I was checking to make sure the translation accurately communicated that the evil spirit was inside the man and was speaking through the man. After I asked about it, one of the translators just laughed and told me people know about these types of things. He explained that people here are familiar with evil spirits and they would know exactly what is going on in this verse.

I have to admit it, I was a little taken aback. I know that spirits are very real and known here but the way he said it just surprised me. Back home, most people wouldn't say they are familiar with how demon possession works but out here it's a fact of life. It made me aware of how different our perspectives on life are.

The second moment that altered my perspective occurred during a meeting of the translation department. We were discussing a misunderstanding that had occurred a few weeks ago, trying to make the policy clear and resolve the issue. From where I was sitting, it seemed as if the Tanzanian translators did not agree with the policy because of cultural differences and could not see why it should be followed. However as the meeting went on it become clear that the real issue was how the translators had been told the policy, not the policy itself. They had been hurt by the way they were told and thought they were being punished. From a western perspective, we thought the guidelines and expectations had just been honestly explained. There was a cultural difference causing the conflict, just not the difference I expected.

I realized I still don't always know how my behaviour is perceived by Tanzanians, even after living here for two years. Everyone was involved with the same event and yet understood it in completely different ways. This happens even within our own cultures, not just between cultures. It was a good lesson for me on how to relate with Tanzanians and also a reminder that I usually only see a small piece of the picture.

Transitions

Life is never still. Changes, big or small, are always a part of our lives whether we like it or not. Since I last posted on this blog I've been through a major transition and am now poised on the brink of another. I moved back to Canada for four months for my home assignment. As great as it was to be back in my home country with family and friends, it was a bit overwhelming too. It was difficult in the little things like trying to drive on the proper side of the road or making a decision of what to buy at the grocery store. When you have had little or no choice for so long too many choices can cripple you. It was also difficult adjusting back in more major ways such as fitting in to a busy way of life and trying to connect again with friends whose lives had gone in different directions than mine. In spite of all these areas where I faced reverse culture shock, I adjusted back after a couple months and really enjoyed living in Canada again.

However in less than two weeks I face another major transition. I will be leaving Canada and moving back to Tanzania. Having just recovered from my last move this next one is producing mixed emotions. I have rediscovered all that I love about my life in Canada and am reluctant to leave it. At the same time I miss my friends and work in Tanzania and am eager to rejoin them. What do I do when both of my worlds are pulling at me and I'm not sure where I belong anymore?

Although I don't have all the answers one thing I know is that I need to live in this moment right now. I may not see my family and friends for a long time once I leave but I can enjoy my time with them right now. And although I am missing out on the work in Tanzania I can stop worrying about it and know that in time I will be back there again. There is no point in worrying about one world when i am in the other. I just have to enjoy where I am and know that despite all the changes coming, God is the one constant in my life. He is faithful and so I can face whatever transitions the future holds.

An International Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving approached this year I decided the best way to celebrate would be to introduce my friends and colleagues to a Canadian Thanksgiving. Seeing as how I am the only Canadian in the area I figured it was up to me to take on this task.

I really wanted to get a turkey this year but they are few and far between and I didn’t know if it would be possible. Fortunately, one my colleagues knew someone who had been raising turkeys and was ready to sell them. I arranged to have a turkey delivered to my office. Naturally, it was still alive and I decided a fight with a live turkey was probably not a good plan. The man who delivered it came with me and we brought it in my car to my house where he killed it in the backyard. Then my house worker was able to pluck it and clean it for me. I froze it as this was a couple weeks before Thanksgiving.

When Thanksgiving weekend came around (we celebrated on Saturday, Oct 10 because Monday is not a holiday here), I had approximately 25 adults and 11 children crammed into my little house! Fortunately we had a potluck style meal where everyone contributed part of the meal. My housemate and I had to borrow chairs in order to have enough seats for everyone. We spent part of the afternoon arranging and fitting them just right in our living room, like a puzzle. Otherwise we would not have had space for all of them. We needed every single chair too! There were people from Egypt, England, the States, Australia, New Zealand and Holland. It was definitely an international Thanksgiving!

One of the best parts of the evening (besides eating the turkey) was listening to everyone share something they were thankful for. Sometimes doing this can be a little superficial depending on what people say, but it was actually quite meaningful. It was encouraging to hear all the different things people appreciate. We all come from such different backgrounds, from different parts of the world and yet we can sit together and honour God because of everything we have to be thankful for.

Holy, Holy, Holy

Although the key terms workshop is over and things have settled down a bit in the translation department, our work with those key words continues. Yesterday I sent two translation teams out to the community to test some of those ways they want to translate those key terms.

One key term in particular stuck out to me as I was helping a translator prepare for the community testing. That word is holy. I think our first reaction if we tried to define holy would be something along the lines of 'without sin' or 'without blemish'. But when we look at some of the ways that word 'holy' is used in the Bible our definition seems to be missing something. There are holy places, like the temple, there are holy articles, there are holy people, God's name is holy etc. What is the common denominator between all these things? It's not that they are perfect or without blemish but rather that they are all set apart for God. They are holy because God is holy.

So when it comes down to the very basic definition we see that holy really has to do with the fact that God is completely distinct from everything else. He is totally unique and that is what holy means. Everything is holy only when it is set apart distinctly for God. Along with that meaning we can get other meanings, such as the idea of being blameless or sinless but only because God is sinless. Otherwise the word for 'pure' carries the idea of being sinless.

I think that many of us, myself included, sing about God being holy or his name being holy without ever really stopping to think what that means. But if someone would ask us to define exactly what we mean by 'holy' we wouldn't know what to say. This is a bit of what happened to me because all the languages we work with have no word for 'holy'. So I had to explain what 'holy' means in that context and to do that, I had to understand what it means. It was a good challenge to me to really think about some of these words that roll so easily off my tongue.

Why I Do What I Do

Recent events in our translation department have caused me to re-evaluate why am I here in Tanzania. Before I came to Tanzania I had many reasons for wanting to be part of a Bible translation project, the most important one being that I believed God was calling me to this work. But I had many other reasons along with that. I wanted to do something with my life that would last forever. I wanted to invest in people. I wanted people to be able to read the Bible in their own languages. I wanted to live in another culture and learn another language. I wanted to be a part of what God was doing, somewhere else in the world. Never did I dream how easily those reasons could be disposed of.

Somewhere along the way it stopped being fun learning another language and culture and become increasingly frustrating, feeling out of place and never able to communicate well. People didn’t always respond as I hoped and I didn’t feel like I was investing in them. It’s difficult work translating and sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever have a good translation that people can read in their mother tongue. But most of all recently, I have discovered that people who I thought were committed to this work, aren’t all that committed and it makes me question why I am still here.

I am still here because I have one reason left to be here and that is that God called me. In the end it boils down to the fact that my work out here does not depend on the commitment of Tanzanians or other colleagues. It doesn’t depend on whether people want me to be here or whether they like me or not. It doesn’t depend on my personal fulfillment or desire to live in another culture. It depends on the fact that the God whom I serve and have dedicated my life to, asked me to work here and I need to obey. That’s it.

So whether I am struggling with my ministry or in my personal life, I will stay. And I know more than ever how faithful God is and that we will walk together through these times when everything seems to be coming apart at the seams. And His will will be done.