“A.W.? How are ya? Daniel* here. Listen, I’ve got a job offer I want you to consider. Can you come by my office for some tea?”
Daniel was the middle-aged British manager of a five-star hotel in our Central Asian city. He had recently come to faith while attending the international church. I didn’t really know him very well, but I loved his story. It was just like God to bring this British man all the way to our corner of Central Asia for a hotel job so that he could hear the gospel and be born again.
I was not looking for a new job. I was happy and busy working as an English teacher while also engaged in cross-cultural church planting. But I was always on the lookout for good jobs for local believers or for other foreign believers who might move to our city in order to be Christian tentmakers.
After I arrived at the hotel, Daniel greeted me enthusiastically and offered me a chair and a cup of tea. Then he began to explain the situation.
“Right. So our hotel has a close partnership with the UN, given that their office is right next door.”
He indicated out his window to the unmarked building which was nestled into the hillside next to the hotel. So that’s where the UN offices are. I took note, thinking that I might need to visit them at some point if things got bad for certain local believers – something that did eventually prove necessary.
“Their foreign staff live here at the hotel during their six-month assignments. And we take good care of them. So they trust me and occasionally ask for my help with some of their internal workings.”
I nodded, sipping my Earl Grey and wondering where all this was going.
“Well, last month one of the vice presidents for the UN came to visit the UN office here. Problem was, someone dropped the ball at the local office so no driver was sent to pick up this VP – who then had to wait hours before finally being picked up. Well, as you can imagine, she was positively livid and gave the foreign and local staff quite the talking to. Do you know how the UN staff operate?”
I shook my head. In spite of seasons of doing relief and development work, I’d never been directly connected to the UN.
“Well, there’s a complete turnover of the foreign staff every six months. This means that just as the new foreign staff are learning how things are done, they are shipped off to another part of the world. Terrible way to run an organization if you ask me.”
I nodded in agreement.
“So it’s the local long-term staff who really know what’s needed, but of course, they’re the ones without any power to make decisions. Meanwhile, the foreign staff don’t even have time to get their heads on straight. Anyway, after the VP left our city, it was decided among the higher-ups that this type of mistake must never happen again.”
Daniel gave me a look as if he wasn’t sure if I’d believe what he was about to say next.
“They’ve created a new position for a long-term foreign employee to organize their airport pickups – and they’re going to pay this person $10,000 – $12,000 a month. Can you believe that?”
I sat back in my chair. “Wow, why would they pay that much?”
David threw up his hands. “It’s the UN. Who knows? Either way, that VP must have been very angry. But listen, they want me to send them recommendations for this job. It’s fantastic pay, of course. But the work is very very simple. They want someone to stay on top of the UN airport arrivals and oversee a team of local drivers so that all visitors are picked up and dropped off in a timely fashion. And that’s all they want them to do. They seem to be very serious on this point because they kept telling me that whoever they hire needs to completely ignore everything going on with projects and cases and such.”
“They’re even going to test people on this front during the interview,” Daniel continued, “which is why I wanted to meet with you. When you sit down with them they’ll ask you about your interest in the UN’s projects in the city. But you have to act like you know nothing and care nothing about any of it. ‘I don’t really care about food for refugees’ and all that. They’ll probably stage a phone call interruption and then ask you afterward what you overheard in the conversation. You’ll need to ignore it or pretend to ignore it. They’ll use it as a test. They told me if anyone shows the slightest bit of interest in anything other than airport pickups and drop-offs, they’ll absolutely not get hired. Once hired and the driving schedule is set, you’ll have most of the day to read, watch telly, take a nap, whatever. Just don’t poke your nose in anything else going on in the office, and you’ll be all set.”
On hearing this condition, I knew this kind of setup would never work for me, even if I had been interested. I would be way too curious about the different projects going on and way too bored if all I had to do was make sure the airport runs were happening on schedule. But what about solid believing friends back in the US still trying to pay down their student loans? Could be a Godsend for them. Maybe they could use all the extra time to learn the local language and build solid relationships with the local staff?
“It has to be a foreigner? They’re not open to hiring a local?”
He shook his head. “Has to be a foreigner.”
Listen,” Daniel continued, “I wanted to tell you in case you were interested. Or if not, maybe you could give me some good leads. They are really hoping I can help them find someone reliable.”
I thanked Daniel and told him I’d keep in touch if I had some friends who were interested. He promised to keep me updated.
“Just don’t forget,” he told me as I stood to say goodbye. “If you go for the interview, play dumb and uninterested in everything else UN-related – but don’t let them know I told you that,” he said with a wink.
I stood up to go. “See you in church this weekend?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The actual interview process kept getting delayed over the following months, much to the disappointment of those back in the States I’d texted about the job. In the end, it was too good to last. Someone with some sense and power in the UN must have found out about this wildly overpaid new position and shut it down. Good for them. When local staff were only being paid $500 a month to work for the UN, paying a foreigner $12,000 a month to merely arrange airport pickups would have been a stunning example of resource mismanagement – even if we had been able to leverage it for other believers.
Bizarre situations like this remind me that at the end of the day, secular organizations – including the UN – are just collections of people – and people are nothing if not flawed and inconsistent. People make mistakes, get angry, overreact, underpay some people, wildly overpay others, and yet somehow still manage to do important work. A couple of years later, UN lawyers were key in keeping Patty and Frank from getting deported back to the country they’d originally fled from. God can certainly use large international bureaucracies like the UN for his purposes. And they can also be bloated, foolish, and corrupt. They’re not quite the evil entities anti-globalist Christians make them out to be. But neither are they exactly agents of light like my Central Asian friends expect them to be. Rather, they’re somewhere in between.
That means they can at times be leveraged for the kingdom. A well-placed believer working on UN refugee cases in our part of the world can make all the difference for a Christian family needing to flee the country or fight deportation. I’d bet that even a believer organizing airport runs could make a difference.
Who knows? God brought Daniel all the way to Central Asia to be a hotel manager so that he could save him. He just might bring you over so you could do wildly overpaid airport runs. If you were faithful to use that money for the kingdom, then that could be a pretty great story in itself.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
*Names have been chaged for security
Photos are from Unsplash.com
Entrusted to the Dirt 