TESTINGS AND CONFLICTS..................................................

The saying goes that Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.... and even when we are living and working for the Lord, some of those troubles dog our footsteps.  Because of sin, we have to suffer - and during a lifetime of overseas ministry, we have had our share.  However, since Dad and I both tend to be "half full glass people" (in contrast to half-empty glass people), we have been able to weather many storms and come out (without too many scars) on the other side.  The very nature of world missions contributes to encountering conflict and we need to learn how to avoid it if possible - and deal with it if it occurs!

Just this week we participated in a panel for the missions department students at TFC. The subject was CONFLICT on the mission field and how to deal with it.  I came across a helpful little book recently, and its basic premise is that there are hot country peoples and cold country peoples in the world.  The cold country people are task oriented and the hot country people are relationally oriented.  The ordinary cross cultural worker from the USA (a cold country), for example, is very task oriented. He is trained for that, and he is suddenly confronted with people in another country who are totally relationally oriented.  If we think back to some conflicts we have been confronted with, we can see how these opposing views work against each other!  Becoming relational in an African or Mid-Eastern society is so important, as all of you can attest to.  Some international workers struggle with conflicts all their lives because they never understand this concept.

Conflicts are of many kinds:  involving language or culture, with the local national church, with co-workers, both local and international; also the conflict of ideas and orientation (local vs American) and (in missions) even conflict with the home board. As international workers, we should not be surprised by conflicts we face - the NT is full of conflicts and we are constantly admonished by Scripture on how to deal with them the way the Lord intends. 

After we left the USA - to embark on a lifetime of work overseas - our first time of testing came when we arrived in Paris and saw where we were expected to live. I have described it to you before - one very small room with two double beds for the four of us to sleep, study, play and what have you?  The kitchen which we could see through a basement window was filthy - every plate of food arrived at our table in the dining room with a ring of grease around the edge.  Soon both you girls had diahrrea and there were only cloth diapers in those days.  Poor Dad - he could not understand a word being said around him and we had to also be studying French fulltime.  I am sure he must have had some times when he wondered why he had ever signed up to be a missionary! We were in that living situation for two months, and then moved into a small apartment and things were better after that. At least we survived!

We arrived at Santidougou, working with the leaders of the three local churches in that district.  The people had appointed church leaders and they had services and we joined them in worship and in learning the local language.  Former missionaries had worked in Jula instead of learning the local language, and so the church had made up their own rules and lived by them and the "white people" did not know the difference. As we began to learn the language and ask questions and understand things,  we found the church was full of crooked leaders:  people with more than one wife, even the main leader of the churches had two wives (one was his church wife so we only saw her!) and there was a great deal of beer drinking, as native beer is part of the old Bobo culture.  This all began to come out, and the fat was in the fire - as they say!  One young pastor had only one official wife himself (and he was the president of the group of pastors).  But he also helped train young girls to be Christian wives for our young men - and part of that training, it seems, was to personally instruct them sexually!  This went along all right until one young fiancé found out that his fiancée was pregnant by the pastor, and he raised a palaver on the eve of the wedding.  Dad helped them to decide that that wedding should not take place.  And it took a while to straighten out thatr conflict!

Part of that whole palaver was a convocation by the director of the mission, and all the pastors and church leaders were present with us in the Santidougou church.  The pregnant girl was also there and they called me to take her into a hut and examine her to make sure she was pregnant!  Now I ask you.... I knew when I was pregnant myself - but sure did not know about her since my language was not strong then.  But when I pulled up her skirts and checked her out, she was already several months along and so it was not hard to know she was pg!  We landed up in the midst of that conflict - and this was the incident that made the church ask if I would have an engaged girls' school at Santidougou.  This worked out better than giving these young girls to one pastor and his wife to disciple!

We went through many bouts of sickness also, and those were times of testing.  Dad very frequently had malaria when we were new missionaries.  He also had bouts of gout which were very painful and one time he even had to walk with crutches for a while!  He was delivered from that and has not had gout in many years now.  That is a very painful disease.  Sickness in Africa comes with visitors - "the white man (or woman) is sick? We must go and visit them for their sickness!"  What you really would like is to left to your misery in solitude! But what you had was a stream of sympathetic visitors, greeting you with the Bobo greetings and then sitting on the floor chatting with each other. A real social occasion for everybody - but you!  Debbi had those awful burns and so did I.  Cheryl's little black puppy bit her playfully and soon afterwards turned totally rabid!  We all had to have shots - 18 or 21 of them depending on our weight. John, you were only about four and you hated going in every day to the dispensary to get those shots in your tummy!  I had hepatitis so badly, someone packed a suitcase for me as they thought I should be evacuated to the States.  But instead I stayed right there and laid flat all day and all night until I finally got back to my normal color again!  

Personnel conflicts and testings are harder to bear sometimes than physical plagues. I will save that for next time......  In every situation - whether physical or other - God has made a way of escape and we came out on the other side stronger and wiser.....