…perhaps, indeed, we should be talking not of language prestige but language charisma. Sanskrit, besides being the sacred language of Hinduism, has owed much to disciples of the Buddha; and Hebrew would have been lost thousands of years ago with Judaism. Arabic is more ambiguous: in the long term, Islam has proved the fundamental motive for its spread, but it was Arab-led armies which actually took the language into western Asia and northern Africa, creating new states in which proselytising would follow. Arabs were also famous as traders round the Indian Ocean, but the acceptance of Islam in these areas has never given Arabic anything more than a role in liturgy. Curiously, the linguistic effects of spreading conversions turn out to be almost independent of the preachers’ own priorities. Christians have been fairly indifferent to the language in which their faith is expressed, and their classic text, The New Testament, records the sayings of Jesus in translation; and yet Christianity itself has played a crucial role in the preservation of, and indeed the prestige of, many languages, including Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Gothic.
– Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 21-22
Ostler makes some interesting observations here on the effect that religion has on languages. It’s a mixed picture. Clearly, religion can be one major factor in why languages spread and how they are preserved. But as he notes, the results can be very unpredictable. The acquisition or spread of a new faith along with a new language sometimes go together. But not always.
In terms of Christianity’s posture toward which language we use to make disciples, we often forget the fact that the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament are a Spirit-inspired translation of his actual words. This is good evidence that God is a pro-translation God, modeling for us that the most important truths in the universe can indeed make the jump from one tongue to another. This apparently holds true even though the range of meanings for an individual word in a given language is always slightly or even vastly different from that of its equivalent in another language – if an equivalent exists at all. Languages are never one-to-one equivalents, and yet God provided four infallible translation accounts of Jesus’ teachings. This provides much hope for those of us involved in translation work that is definitely fallible, but God willing, still good.
Christianity’s preservation of languages through Bible translation alone is something celebrated even by pagans. But languages redeemed to serve the Church can still go awry. Forgetting that not even the language of Jesus was preserved by the authors of the New Testament as the holy language of heaven and earth, believers in certain ages have tried to elevate their own languages instead, whether that be Latin, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, or KJV English. While the desire to preserve a tongue once used mightily by God is commendable, it becomes a bad thing when a rigid ongoing use of that tongue in liturgy or preaching increasingly denies God’s people the kind of hearing that can lead to faith.
Every Sunday for decades, the gospel was utterly unintelligible for one of my closest friends who grew up in an ethnic Christian community here in Central Asia. This was not only because he was not yet born again – but because God’s word had been fossilized in an ancient form of his language that was no longer intelligible to anyone but the priests. Turns out the miracle of the new birth can only take place when the gospel is communicated in a language we can understand.
The language is never the end in and of itself. It is the means by which we reach our goal of spiritual communication. Lose sight of this and we risk losing entire people groups that once were saturated with vibrant churches and true believers.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 3k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
In the season just before we found out that Ahab* was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I was trying to help him start a small business. Ahab was a sharp man with many skills, but he had strangely gone without work for quite some time. Looking back, this should have been another warning sign. What was really going on was that Ahab was unwilling to work another real job since he believed he deserved a ministry salary – especially now that our church plant was meeting in his house. But it took some time for this to come out.
In the meantime, I tried to help him start an illegal pig meat business. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking through the legality of everything, just trying to see if the concept would work. But yes, afterward we found out that we were indeed violating a number of Islamic social and import/export laws. Alas, it was for a good cause.
I was eager to see if I could help this potential elder start a small business that would provide for his family’s needs in a climate where outspoken believers often face many hurdles to gainful employment. At that time, most locals only lived on $500 a month or less. So, a small business only needed to bring in several hundred dollars a month in profit to be significantly helpful for a family like Ahab’s.
During this first term of ours overseas, my mind was aflame with dozens of business ideas that locals could start. Many of these ideas came from noticing what wasn’t yet available in our area compared to much of the developed world. And one product that was simply nowhere to be found was pork or pig meat of any kind.
This is not too hard to understand since we live in an Islamic country. Yet I was surprised that there was almost no infrastructure whatsoever for selling pork products to the growing population of foreigners. I remember once seeing a store section in Dubai labeled, PORK – NOT FOR MUSLIMS! Our grocery stores had no such sections with intimidating signage. Every once in a while an alcohol store would sell some canned spam of some sort. But even this was a rarity.
Some of our colleagues had decided not to eat pork for the sake of witness. But since eating pork didn’t lead to any loss of relationships in our local culture, others of us decided that we would occasionally partake as a way to point toward gospel freedom, bless local believers, and simply enjoy one of God’s good gifts. But those of us who partook had to content ourselves with precooked bacon or packages of pepperoni occasionally carried over in suitcases. Once, I won an American canned ham in a white elephant Christmas game. That was a good Christmas.
However, I knew that there were abundant wild pigs up in the mountains. Many locals would hunt them for sport. Some would even cook what they killed, bragging to close friends about eating something that had been forbidden to them all their lives.
Putting two and two together, one day I asked Ahab if he knew anyone who regularly went pig hunting.
“Yes, my son-in-law who lives just over the border.”
Like many families, and like our people group as a whole, Ahab’s kinfolk treated international borders much more casually than Westerners would. After all, their people group had been living in these mountains for millennia. Empires rose, kingdoms fell, borders changed – and their people group was still there, fighting rival tribes, marrying women from those same tribes, herding livestock, robbing caravans, and trading between ancestral areas as they pleased. In fact, because of this arbitrary imposition of borders by outsiders, smuggling is still viewed as an honorable trade here. The modern state in all its rigidity continues to gain power and permanence, but for now, the older tribal and semi-nomadic ways still regularly violate its borders and thereby call its legitimacy into question.
“Brother Ahab, could your son-in-law ever bring us pig meat to sell to the foreigners here?”
“Yes… Yes, he could do that. He goes hunting all the time and then comes to visit us or we go to visit them at least once a month.”
“Well,” I continued, “I’m not sure yet, but there might be enough interest among the foreigners such that there would be a monthly demand for fresh pig meat.”
Later that night, I posted a question on one of the expat Facebook pages. “Would anyone be interested in buying fresh wild pig meat were we to start selling it?”
Now, I tend to be an optimist when it comes to business ideas, but the response I got surprised even me. Dozens of expats from at least two big cities said they would be eager to buy wild pig meat from us were we to start selling it. All of a sudden, a plan was coming together.
A few weeks later, we had our first batch of fresh mountain boar meat. These cuts of meat were for us to cook, in hopes that we could develop a good recipe to recommend to buyers.
“Did they give your son-in-law any trouble at the border?” I asked Ahab, worried about what the Islamic border guards might do if they discovered someone transporting haram (Islam’s term for defiling) meat across the border.
“No trouble at all! They asked what it was and he truthfully said, ‘Meat.’ Look at it,” he said, pointing into the cooler full of rich red slabs of mountain pig, “It looks red like cow meat, so they let them right on through.”
Here, our local language did us a favor. The most common term for animal meat in daily usage is a generic one that doesn’t distinguish what animal that meat is coming from. It could be cow, lamb, goat – or pig. The listener doesn’t know unless he asks a specific follow-up question. Even then, the common answer might be given as ‘beast meat’ as opposed to ‘bird meat,’ and the specific beast still might not be named. So, we had at least two levels of linguistic cover.
My wife and I looked up a recipe online for cooking wild pig meat and decided to try one that involved cooking the meat in a slow cooker with garlic, onions, salt and pepper, and red wine. I went down the street to the same liquor store where I had once bought vodka to try and treat a mold infestation.
“I need some red wine for cooking pig meat!” I said, the clerks shaking their heads at these wild excuses I kept giving them for why I was buying alcohol.
For the taste test meal, we invited two other local believers to come and try it with us, serving it with Dijon mustard and barbecue sauces for dipping. Even after soaking in its slow cooker brew, the meat still proved to taste much gamier than normal pork would. Yet it was tender, juicy, and still contained rich flavors that hinted at this wild porker’s distant relation to the pink farm swine so long domesticated in the West.
The foreigners would enjoy this. The local believers? Hit or miss. One of our guests liked it. The other one, unfortunately, pledged afterward to never eat pork again – a vow I believe he has kept to this day. In his defense, when you’ve been told your whole life that pork is the most disgusting and unclean thing you can possibly eat, this can be quite the hurdle to overcome. Regardless of what his tastebuds told him, his mind was convinced it would make him sick. In hindsight, we really should have started him out with bacon, not roast of feral pig. Every local believer we’ve introduced to bacon first has afterward joined us in a long-term enjoyment of this delicious meat of the new covenant.
Having found a recipe we were mostly satisfied with, we then began advertising to the expat Facebook community. The first orders were placed and fulfilled. More cross-border trips took place without any issues. New orders came in. Things were looking promising.
Unfortunately, right about this time is when other local believers started approaching us with very concerning things that Ahab was saying to them behind closed doors. So naturally, our small business efforts halted and then came to an end in parallel to our hopes for Ahab’s future leadership in the church. In the following weeks and months, it became apparent that Ahab was not who he seemed to be, but that we had a very skillful deceiver on our hands. Among many more serious things, this meant that the fledgling pig meat business would also have to come to an end.
In the years since we’ve not attempted it again. Yes, the later revelations that it was technically illegal were one part of this. But the concept still comes up every now and then. Just last week I was talking to our kids’ school director about small business ideas for the students as they learn about entrepreneurship.
“We need a decent sausage business here!” I told her. “There are no good sausages or hot dogs available whatsoever. Even if it’s only some good beef and chicken franks, I’m convinced there’s a market here for it among the expats and locals who have come back from Europe.”
“And…” I continued, “Maybe you could have a secret menu of pork sausages.”
I do know it’s not illegal here for Christians to sell pork products to other Christians, so we may yet have a sausage company here someday. But yes, this time we’d be careful to do some legal research ahead of time. We’ll also keep things simple by sourcing our feral pigs domestically. No international smuggling required – just a trusty local hunter with a good rifle and decent cooler.
And if, in the good providence of God, our illegal pig meat operation with Ahab somehow eventually contributes to a solid small business for some missionary kids, then that would be worth celebrating. All things for good. Even ill-conceived pig meat smuggling operations.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (4k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“But what if I grow up and go to prison?” my daughter asked, not for the first time.
“Even if you go to prison, Mama and I will still love you, be there for you, and be your mom and dad.”
“How can you keep loving me if I was really bad though and did terrible things? Wouldn’t that change your love for me?”
“Nope. Our love for you and our relationship with you will always be there, no matter what. You’ll always be our girl. We will come and visit you even in prison and remind you that we love you.”
“Doesn’t that mean it doesn’t matter what we do then?” piped up one of my sons, always looking for the holes and exceptions in our parental proclamations.
“No, it still matters. That steady love for you will be there no matter what. But if you live wisely, then that love will be mixed with more joy. And if you live foolishly, then it will be mixed with more sadness. By your actions you can bring us more joy or more sadness. But you can never lose your relationship with us as our son or our daughter.”
“And guess what?” I continued, “This is the kind of relationship you can have with God too, if you become one of his children through believing in Jesus.”
We’ve had this conversation a half a dozen times or so during bedtime devotions over the last year or two. I don’t think my kids are forgetting the previous conversations. Rather, I think they want to hear it again, one more time, that dad and mom will love them no matter what – even if they become felons. For my part, I’m happy to come back to this topic as often as they want to.
It’s common for us to speak of marriage as a parable of the gospel, and with good warrant. Paul explicitly says in Ephesians 5 that husbands and wives are a picture of Christ and the Church. But we don’t speak as often of parents as parables of the good news. Yet as I gain more experience as a dad I am realizing more and more what an opportunity I have to model for my kids the kind of love they are invited to have with God the Father through the gospel.
Yes, my father-love for them is a small and imperfect shadow of the reality of God’s father-love for his children. But such is the nature of shadows. They flicker, contort, and sometimes disappear altogether. But their very existence is evidence of something very real, concrete, and solid. Parental love exists because God is the Father whose very nature is love.
We often know of this relationship between parental love and one’s understanding of God’s love from the negative side of things. Countless believers struggle to rest in God’s love and grace because of bad experiences with their parents. Dig into why someone’s cognitive theology isn’t translating into their emotional theology and you’re likely to find some ‘daddy issues.’ And though they needn’t stay stuck there, this is how things naturally tend to go. Parents are meant to model for their children, in some limited but real way, what God is like. What a weighty calling.
The parallels are real. Our children are born into our families, not by their own will, but by the will of their parents. In the same way, believers are born again into God’s family not by their own will, but by the will of their Father (John 1:13). This birth brings with it a permanent identity that cannot be lost. Parents in this world may try to disown their children but they can never actually erase the reality of the relationship. God’s children are his forever. In some sense, so are ours.
We don’t have an Ephesians 5 type of passage directly telling parents to love their children as God loves the Church, that their love for their children is a metaphor of the gospel. Yet the clues are all over the Bible. God chooses to reveal himself, especially in the New Testament, as Father to his people, his spiritual children. This is one of his primary titles he wants us to understand him by (Eph 3:14-15, John 20:17, Matt 6:9). Indeed, even when we discipline our children, the Bible says we are pointing to God the good Father who does the same (Heb 4:4-11). And let’s not forget one of Jesus’ parables that perhaps more than any other displays the heart of the gospel – that of the father and the two lost sons (i.e. the prodigal son, Luke 15).
And although he never uses a maternal title, God is also not embarrassed to use maternal imagery to speak of his love for his people (Isaiah 66:13, 1 Peter 2:2-3, Matt 23:37). After all, both men and women are made in the image of God, so the natures of fatherly love and motherly love must ultimately find their source in God himself.
I said earlier that we most commonly speak of the connection between God’s love and parenting when it has gone wrong. In this, we can be comforted that God’s love is powerful to overcome even the worst parenting a person may have received. And for parents, the gospel is powerful to wash away even the worst of failures. But this possibility of healing and cleansing should make Christian parents even more eager to carry out their role as a living parable as best as they possibly can. Amazingly, our parenting may be the way in which the gospel comes to one day make sense for our kids. As we assure them and show them that they have our love, no matter what, that they can never lose their place as our sons and daughters – in this way they may come awake to the stunning offer of spiritual sonship offered to them in Christ.
“You are loved. You are safe. You are accepted. You are delighted in. You will be mine forever. You can never do anything bad enough to lose my love.” These kinds of statements from moms and dads preach through a physical parable something even more true in the spiritual realm – something that our kids may not yet be a part of, but which they are invited into.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels or rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-Romans 8:38-39
May our parenting not be a stumbling block towards our little ones delighting in God’s grace and love. Instead, may they look back at how they came to know the good news was true and find in that story the steadfast love of mom and dad – a parable pointing them to the gospel.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (5.5k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required and the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
I first heard this song a few years ago when at a gathering of other men serving in this part of the world. That particular set of meetings was deeply encouraging for me because of the powerful preaching of pastor Aubrey Sequiera, the solid church planting training from colleagues on the field, and conversations with our leadership who were eager to listen and help the team leaders of our area who were going through a particularly difficult season. I was also asked to present on the character of a leader at this gathering, which is where the post on 22 Questions that Reveal Character originally came from. In that season, I was still struggling with some anxiety attacks when teaching publicly, but God gave grace and the teaching went well (I did, however, have a teammate on hand as my backup speaker just in case!).
Ever since then, this song has been on our playlist of songs that stir up our spiritual affections. Lots of gospel truth, powerful melody, and twice as long as your typical worship song. Here are the lyrics:
VERSE 1 Lord I come, O Sovereign King All my hope is in Your hands From creation's majesty You ordained redemption's plan For Your glory's renown And Your greatness displayed Mercy came and ransomed my life from the Fall Mercy came and ransomed my heart
VERSE 2 All the righteousness in me Shows my desperate need of grace For my purest thoughts and deeds Stand to justify the grave But The Christ intervened Through the power of the cross In His death I am freed From the wages of sin In His death, I am sealed by His blood
CHORUS My soul will sing Your unfailing love My heart will bless Your name Forever my life will rest in Your grace My soul will bless Your name
VERSE 3 Now my life is not my own Jesus, use me as You please Gladly I will share Your pain Just to know the lasting peace So I give You my life That the whole world might see There is hope in the power Of Your saving grace There is hope in the power of Your name
VERSE 4 On that day before the throne When I'm standing as Your bride There my heart is welcomed home In the open arms of Christ I will join the redeemed In the anthem of grace Praise the Lamb! Who purchased His bride from the grave Praise the Lamb! Who purchased my heart!
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (7k currently needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“I’m worried about us local believers,” a new local friend said to me yesterday as we sat in a cafe dating back to the 1880s, sipping a brew made from wild tree nuts.
“We don’t know how to be steady. We are concerned with so many things and get upset so quickly and leave the church.”
“That’s not too unusual for new believers,” I responded. “And it points to one way the foreigners can help in this season. We model stability until, slowly-slowly, the local believers can also become stable.”
The ironic thing is that missionaries are some of the least stable and most transient people I know, at least in terms of physical presence. We move constantly. We take a lot of trips in and out of the country. We get uprooted by family needs or leadership gaps or security crises. At first glance, we may seem to make poor examples of being “steadfast, immovable.”
And yet one of the most important roles for missionaries in places like Central Asia is that of the stabilizer. We may be familiar with the concept of a foreign agitator, some kind of spy whose presence is meant to stir up discontent and division among the locals. Well, when it comes to our posture among the local believers, I am more and more convinced that we are to be foreign stabilizers – especially in terms of spiritual stability. To put it in terms of being on a journey, when surrounded by our younger brothers and sisters who want to sprint, grumble, fight, go off trail, give up, or go back, we simply keep plodding and modeling the “long obedience in the same direction.” We are, or should be, a lot like faithful, stubborn turtles.
When it comes to the believers from our particular region, there really is for a good many years a restlessness, a spiritual and emotional flailing around, a great struggle with steady commitment and contentment. Many stumble over the simplicity and repetitive, quiet nature of true spiritual growth, whether that’s the growth of an individual or that of a local church. Like adults with traumatic childhoods, some internal part of them tends to freak out and go on the attack when finally offered true stability – even when that’s what they most desperately long for and need.
Now, add into this mix Westerners’ expectations of speed and results and their fear of wielding spiritual authority and you get one very destructive brew. The very last thing my local friends need is a foreign missionary who himself is restless because he’s overcome by the immensity of the lostness, or, who is terrified of ‘contaminating’ the locals with his culture. Or, even worse, those willing to turn to money to catalyze some kind of ‘movement’ because they’re doing the math and realize unhappily that at the rate of fifteen believers after five years they won’t ever reach their goal of one million believers they’d set back when they were fundraising in America.
No, what will truly serve my local friends is if we set our course for faithfulness – and simply keep going whether they join us or not. In order to really help them, we must be honest appraisers of the lack of stability that is currently there, while at the same time being incredibly hopeful about the fact that Jesus really will eventually create the needed spiritual steadfastness in them. We must not depend on them when it comes to our own initial role of modeling faithfulness and healthy church, while also constantly reminding them that it is our heart’s desire that someday we will depend on them completely. We must ourselves be the stable core of the local church plant that will, Lord-willing, one day, fully thrive without us.
This kind of posture may be offensive to other missionaries. After all, it places the foreigner at the visible beating center of the work, sometimes for a good long time. In the short run, it may draw accusations of paternalism or building one’s own kingdom or not trusting the Spirit. But if the missionary takes on this role of foreign stabilizer for the sake of loving his currently unstable brothers and sisters, then time will show that this kind of foreigner-leading-by-example-as-long-as-it-takes model is actually the one that best raises up locals in the long-run. Missionaries are afraid to take charge like this because it looks bad. But good missions work should always be less concerned with optics and more concerned with what’s actually most loving for others.
This sort of model is not without its dangers, of course. But the alternative – attempting to stay in the background and using salaries to prop up locals prematurely – is far, far more dangerous. Ministry salaries follow spiritual and emotional maturity. They cannot create it.
The traditional analogy for missionaries is that we are like scaffolding – temporary, only present until the permanent structure of the indigenous Church can be built. This is a great analogy in many ways. But at least for our context, its focus on external support doesn’t communicate well the necessity of the missionary’s central stabilizing role. A better analogy might be that the missionary is like some kind of planet orbiting a star that by nature of its own gravity pulls other renegade space rocks and moons into, first, its own orbit, and then eventually into that of its sun. I’m not very good at science illustrations, so if this would never happen in the real universe, you’ll have to forgive me. But I think you see my point.
I don’t presume that every unreached context will need the same thing. Due to differences in how common grace has been dispersed, some people groups will not have the same kind of radical spiritual instability that ours do. But I do presume that there are other contexts out there a lot like ours, where missionaries have been told they are not supposed to be front and center, that this would be taking a step backward as it were, who are now confused because being the stable center seems to be the most loving and effective way forward.
If this is you, then my encouragement would be to forget what it looks like. Love your local friends by being the stable example they need. Teach, preach, lead, counsel, worship, rebuke, gather, host, visit – do the work of the ministry in a steadfast, immovable fashion. Your local friends can eventually ‘catch’ Christian stability by observing you. So, be the kind of steady believer they have never seen before. Be an example, and thereby, a foreign stabilizer.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (8k currently needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The fall rains started today. If you’ve ever enjoyed the smell of rain as it’s just about to fall, you should smell what it’s like when it’s the first rain after five long cloudless months. Simply glorious.
The fall rains, or the ‘early rains’ as they’re called in the Bible, usher in a very brief autumn in our part of the world. This typically means a month or two of pleasant temperatures and a mini, second spring for some plants. But things get downright wintery by the time the rains are done. In a very brief period, everyone goes from sitting in front of their ACs or swamp coolers to sitting in front of their heaters.
Say you happened to be a cute little mouse. The beginning of these rains would be a warm and pleasant experience. But were you to be caught in them by the end of the season, they could be deadly. The latter is what happened to Gus Gus, a family ‘pet’ for a few days and the unfortunate victim of impromptu visitors.
But before we get to GusGus’ sad demise, we must first discuss something far more disturbing – R.O.U.S.s. If you haven’t seen or read The Princess Bride, you may not be familiar with this acronym which stands for Rodents Of Unusual Size. While the rats that visited us in our old stone house in the bazaar were not quite the size of those in the fire swamps of Westley and Buttercup’s world, they were still some of the largest we’d ever seen.
They lived in the old sewers and underground pipes of our neighborhood. To be fair, one of our local friends had warned us about them when we decided to rent such an old property. “You’ll have rats in the pipes,” she said to us. “Beware!”
She was right. We knew we had a problem when we repeatedly heard loud crunching noises coming from under the sink where we kept the dry dog food. Sure enough, some large rodent had chewed through the dog food bag and was regularly helping themselves to quite the banquet. Determined to put a stop to this burglary, I installed a sturdy plastic drain cover over the open piping in the floor where our sink drained and the rats were clearly gaining access to our kitchen.
Not long after, we heard the same loud crunching. I snuck into the kitchen and hovered outside the cabinet door, listening to the rhythmic crunch, crunch, shuffle, crunch, of a large rodent that had clearly somehow made it past our defenses. I flung open the door to the cabinet. But the beast somehow evaded being spotted. Quick little rascal.
As I examined where the forced entry had taken place, I saw a large hole chewed clean through the thick plastic of the drain cover I’d installed. Impressive. We’d have to up our game and use metal instead. The exact kind of drain cover we’d need for this might take some time to track down in the bazaar. In the meantime, I knew exactly where I could buy the box wire traps that catch small animals alive. I had often passed them for sale while prayer-walking and wandering through the many alleyways of the old marketplace.
The next day, I returned from my prayer walk with one of these traps in hand. And now that we knew that the rats loved dry dog food, we had the perfect bait. We set the trap with one piece of dog food and put the rest of it up and out of reach. That very evening we caught our first trespasser. It was massive, the kind of monster rodent I remember seeing on occasion emerging from our walls in Melanesia when I was a kid – that is, before we had an escaped python that took care of that problem.
I called my wife over to take a horrified look, then realized that I hadn’t thought of exactly how I would dispose of an R.O.U.S. were I to actually catch one. I decided I didn’t dare remove it from its trap, so I’d need to somehow kill it while it was still inside. Eventually, I decided a watery death would be the most humane method of execution.
I filled up a painter’s bucket with water and carried it and the condemned rat up to our flat roof. There, I placed the trap inside the water. But the dimensions of the bucket and the trap meant that if I let it simply sit there in the water, there was about a centimeter of air left at the top of the trap. So, the rat could easily keep breathing by poking its big furry nose and teeth up out of the water. He could probably float like that for days. After all, rats are quintessential survivors. No, there would be no walking away from the necessary deed. The only way it would work would be if I sat there and held the trap under the water for several minutes while the rat frantically tried to stay alive.
I genuinely felt bad for the R.O.U.S. as he succumbed to his watery death. Yes, he was a nasty giant rat that had invaded my home. Yes, my Christian and manly duty was to kill it. But still, it was a sobering deed. And now I had a dead waterlogged rat on my hands. What should be done with the body? After staring at it as it lay on our flat concrete rooftop, I decided the best option would be to fling it by the tail into the empty lot behind our house for the benefit of the neighborhood street cats. Perhaps this could be a peace offering after our recent feuds over their early-morning antics.
The next day, we caught our second one. Another massive hairy thing, another watery death, another peace offering to the feral cats. How many would I have to dispose of like this?
A week or so passed and we had no more R.O.U.S.s. I began to hope that we had dealt with the two primary villains and that there would be peace going forward. Then, one evening we heard the trap under the sink suddenly slam shut. But this time it was no R.O.U.S. Instead, it was a tiny, quivering, cute brown mouse.
I can’t exactly explain why we humans respond so differently to mice versus rats. They’re essentially the same sort of creature. But one registers as cute and cuddly and the other, well, as the stuff of nightmares. Needless to say, the kids and I really liked the mouse a lot and wanted to keep it. My wife wasn’t so sure, thinking that cute though he was, he was likely carrying nasty diseases.
As we tried to figure out if we should keep him or not, the kids gave him a name: Gus Gus. And as any parent knows, once you name an animal, you really can no longer kill it without finding yourself with a mutiny on your hands. For several days, Gus Gus lived in limbo, hanging out in his trap/cage and being fed and admired by the kids while my wife and I waited for a chance to talk in earnest about whether we should or should not try to keep a pet Central Asian mouse.
This situation came to a tragic end one day when we were paid an unexpected visit by some neighbors. As so often happens when the realization dawns that guests are suddenly at the gate, we straightened up the central areas of the house in a somewhat rushed and haphazard manner. My wife, not wanting to mortify our guests at the sight of a rodent, put Gus Gus’ trap/cage outside the door to our flat roof.
However, as the visit dragged on, a late autumn rainstorm started. Poor Gus Gus was exposed to the elements for perhaps two hours. By the time the guests left and we brought him back inside, he was weak and shivering and clearly not doing well.
I wrapped Gus Gus up in a soft hand towel and placed him in front of a small electric heater. For a while, it looked like he might rally. His breathing stabilized and his normal coloring returned. I carefully repositioned him in front of the heater’s warmth every so often. But it was not to be. After a day or so of attempting to revive him, Gus Gus was gone, the victim of the frigid rain and unintentional mouseslaughter. The kids, of course, were not to be consoled. Gus Gus had been murdered.
Gus Gus was buried in our garden, not unceremoniously flung over the back wall like the R.O.U.S.’s. And to this day, the kids still make pitiable noises when he is remembered. Even my wife, no fan of rodents in general, feels bad about the whole affair.
I soon found a metal drain cover in the bazaar. From then on, we had no more problems with any Rodents Of Unusual Size. We did eventually get another mouse though. Another tiny little guy, Gus Gus’ cousin perhaps, took up residence in a gap in our house’s old stone walls. But we didn’t mind. We let him scurry back and forth from his little hole in peace.
As we prepared to move back to Central Asia this past summer, my kids had many questions. But one of them was, “Do you think we’ll have another cute mouse that lives in our walls?! That would be so great!”
Given that we now live in a very modern apartment building, I doubt it. But if that means we won’t have to battle any more R.O.U.S.s either, then I am perfectly okay with that.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (10k currently needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
My son recently asked me who my best friends are. I took a moment to think, then said, “My best friend in the U.S. is Reza* and my best friend in Central Asia is Darius*.” I smiled as I said it, realizing these two brothers from Muslim backgrounds—one a refugee and one a new pastor in his home city—really are two of my closest friends.
Humanly speaking, we shouldn’t be friends at all. But the gospel has done something remarkable in us, such that we now love one another with a deep and happy loyalty. For this, I’m indebted to these brothers who’ve so often pursued the relationship. I’m also indebted to my parents who modeled a deep love and friendship for the local believers they served as missionaries in Melanesia. When I eventually became a missionary, I naturally followed in their footsteps.
Yet when it comes to missions, few speak explicitly about the centrality of friendship. Of course, we might have close friends back home, our own Andrew Fullers who hold the ropes for us. Or we might value the close fellowship and camaraderie of teammates on the field. But we seldom consider how affectionate friendships of equality with locals are one of the primary goals and rewards of a life spent proclaiming the gospel among the nations.
Friendship with God
One way to describe the missionary’s goal is to see others become friends with the eternal God and his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the vertical side of friendship in missions. We shouldn’t lose sight of the scandal of this invitation. How can it be that rebellious sinners, lifelong enemies of God, are welcomed into friendship with the holy God they’ve so long spurned? Yet this is the language of the Bible.
Abraham, the father of all who are saved by faith, is called a friend of God (James 2:23). Jesus was known as the friend of sinners (Matt. 11:19). He explicitly tells his disciples they’re no longer only servants but friends (John 15:13–15).
As a missionary, I have the privilege of seeing Central Asians befriended by God. That’s my goal. It’s also my reward.
Befriending Locals
In faithful cross-cultural ministry, we invite the nations into friendship with God. However, by virtue of their new relationship with Christ, they should also become friends with us. This is the horizontal side of friendship in missions; not only does God gain new and eternal friends but so do we. At least we will if we follow in the footsteps of Paul, whose ministry overflowed with affectionate friendship toward those who believed the gospel.
Paul didn’t only give the gospel to local believers; he shared his life with them (1 Thess. 2:8). He didn’t limit himself to ministry relationships or even task-focused partnerships. In addition to being their loving father in the faith, he became their devoted friend (Acts 24:23).
We see this friendship through Paul’s constant, thankful, joyful prayers for local believers. We see it in his unembarrassed professions of affection and longing to spend time with them (Phil. 1:3–4, 8; 1 Thess. 3:6, 10). Paul truly held these believers in his heart, delighting in them in person while also doing his best to stay in touch with them from a distance (Phil. 1:7; 4:21–22; 1 Cor. 16:7). He lived sacrificially for them and allowed them to care for his needs (Phil. 2:17; 4:16). He treated them as equals, calling them brothers. He was proud of them, calling them his crown (4:1). Paul and his friends even wept with and for one another (Acts 20:37).
Problem of Self-Protection
But we must be honest about something. When you talk to local believers in many missions contexts, they’ll tell you missionaries seem hesitant to enter into this kind of close friendship with them. Many try to keep a safer relational distance from locals.
Why is that? Maybe it’s because missionaries know they’re transient. This is perhaps an act of self-protection in a lifestyle given to so many costly goodbyes. Others may struggle to befriend locals out of confusion about what healthy boundaries are. Sadly, some may quietly despise the culture or even unconsciously look down on locals. Whatever the reason, missionaries should try to understand why they’re keeping locals at arm’s length—then repent.
As one of my pastors in Central Asia recently told me, the diversity of our friendships is meant to display the gospel’s beauty. Wealthy local friends should marvel that you also befriend the street cleaner. And your fellow countrymen back home should be surprised by the depth of your friendships with local believers whose backgrounds are so different from your own.
Worth the Risk
Missionaries may be effective in many aspects of their ministry with locals. They may have solid partnerships, even a level of trust. But that’s not the same as risking the vulnerability and equality that characterizes true spiritual friendship. It’s not the same as the shared delight that missionaries have with those from their own culture. And locals can tell the difference.
However, the most beloved (and hence effective) missionaries are genuine friends with the local believers. Yes, this will make missions more costly. Sin, betrayal, and abandonment will break your heart when you’ve entrusted it to local believers. I’ve gone through seasons when I dared not risk such friendships. Too many had left, had failed, had turned on us when we needed them most. Yet I’m so glad the Lord didn’t leave me in that place but gently brought my heart back to a posture of vulnerability—and I once again tasted the sweet rewards of affection.
Some of my fondest moments as a missionary have been when my Central Asian friends and I dream together about the new heavens and earth. We talk about how much we look forward to being there together with Jesus, telling stories, and sipping New Jerusalem chai. If our friendship now with one another and with Jesus is such a kind gift—such an undeserved reward—then just imagine what it’ll be like in the resurrection.
Go Make Friends
The Scottish missionary John Paton knew the costs and rewards of friendship on the mission field. He also anticipated the joys of those friendships perfected in glory. Recounting the death of his friend Chief Kowia, he writes,
Thus died a man who had been a cannibal Chief, but by the grace of God and the love of Jesus changed, transfigured into a character of light and beauty. I lost, in losing him, one of my best friends and most courageous helpers; but I knew that day, and I know now, that there is one soul at least from Tanna to sing the glories of Jesus in Heaven—and, oh, the rapture when I meet him there!
Friendship is one of the primary goals and richest rewards of missions. I’m convinced faithful missionaries should exhibit a posture of humility and vulnerability, pursuing affectionate and mutual love with local believers. Because we don’t go to the ends of the earth only to make disciples. We also go to make friends.
I just learned this one this week and I’m so glad I did. Allegedly, it’s a saying all our locals know well. However, it does require some explanation.
In our Central Asian culture, there are a lot of honorable and repeated refusals of generous offers of hospitality. Now, when these offers are made in the honorable-hypothetical way, turning down an invitation is exactly what you are supposed to do. But when it’s a genuine offer from a friend, something clearly good and helpful, or something you would simply be foolish to refuse, that’s when this saying comes out.
The logic of this saying is that, given the choice, everyone would rather sit and eat sweet juicy melons than go out into the heat of the late summer fields and pick them. A clearer way to phrase these sentiments in English might be, “Are you actually choosing to go out and harvest melons when I’m offering to serve them to you? I’ve already done the work. Why are you denying yourself something good that I’m clearly ready to bless you with?”
There are times when self-denial and refusing others’ service or help is good, right, and noble. And then there are times when it’s just silly – or even a form of pride. True humility not only avoids taking advantage of others’ hospitality and generosity but is also willing to receive it. Sometimes we need to swallow our pride and just enjoy that good gift that is being genuinely extended to us.
I can easily picture a Central Asian mama, hands on her hips, scolding her brother who’s come for a visit, but is for some reason refusing to sit and take a minute to rest.
“Don’t be dumb. It’s 111 degrees outside. Sit and eat some cold melon for a minute.”
While this is a more informal proverb, I’m curious if it might also work for those who object that the free gift of salvation in Jesus is simply way too easy. Many here feel that salvation through faith in God’s promises is not a difficult enough road for them. They would rather walk the anxiety-ridden path of works righteousness than rest in the free gift of salvation being offered them in Jesus. Why? Because the gift is all of grace – and therefore it means they can’t feel proud of themselves for having earned it.
Don’t be a melon picker. Be a melon eater. Receive the good gifts of God.
If you would like to help us afford a solid set of wheels for driving around our corner of Central Asia (11k needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
One glaring difference from one culture to another is how locals feel free or not to comment on various aspects of your physical appearance.
“You are looking a little fuller!” said one of our local friends, a former language tutor, when he saw my wife and I again the other day.
“Maybe you enjoyed a lot of Chick-Fil-A!” he laughed. Suddenly, he caught himself, remembering that he was talking to Americans.
“I mean… for us… this is a good thing. You know what our people say? Skinny people are useless! Ha!”
It’s true. Our almost two years of recuperating in the US did what my freshman year of college and all subsequent years had failed to do – provide me with an extra 15 pounds or so. Forget the freshman fifteen, this is the furlough fifteen, the kind of thing we MKs in Melanesian knew to expect anytime one of our adult ‘uncles’ or ‘aunts’ got back from furlough. It’s nigh impossible for an adult to move back to the West without it affecting their BMI. I think this has something to do with the paucity and price of fresh produce in the US, combined with the lack of the constant stomach issues that come from living in a foreign context.
More processed food + less diarrhea = a little bit more dad bod.
“Don’t worry,” my wife and I often said to one another during our long medical leave in the US. “Once we move back to Central Asia, we’ll get sick enough to lose whatever we’ve gained.”
Either that or we’ll just sweat it off. This week had days up to 111 degrees Fahrenheit. As the locals say, Mud of the world upon my head. Summer is not letting us go just yet.
On the other hand, there is a case to be made that a mid-thirties body that is healthy and not constantly racked by stress is a body that feels free to put on a reasonable layer of warmth for the coming winter. In that case, we’ll gladly take the fifteen if it’s a sign that we’re actually in a better place than we were two years ago. I think this is likely true of my wife. Mine, however, is much more likely to be the result of too many late night American snacks.
On the bright side, at least locals will think I’m a little less useless now. And they will stop judging my wife so much.
“Why is your husband so skinny?! Don’t you feed him enough?!”
Then there was the taxi driver the other day who told me I look like a Nazi. Yep, first time I’ve ever got that one.
“You look German!” he proclaimed to me, despite my black-brown hair and dark brown eyes.
“Like the Nazis!” he continued, “They were really great, weren’t they?”
“Um,” I countered, “No, they were really bad actually. They killed lots of innocent people.”
“They were against the Jews. That’s why they were great.”
By saying this, this taxi driver outed himself as more Islamic. In fact, our people group is quite divided when it comes to their opinions about Jews and Israel. The more nationalist and secular, the more pro-Jewish they are. The more Islami, well, the more they like the Nazis.
“No,” I countered, “They were against everyone who didn’t submit to their philosophy. Not just Jews, but Muslims also, and Christians too. Any pastor who openly opposed them was arrested. And some were even executed.”
Here I was thinking of men like Bonhoeffer, whom my kids had recently been introduced to through a good audiobook.
The driver then pivoted the conversation to the failure of the leaders of his own people, much more fertile ground for conversation than discussing his admiration of Hitler (a disturbing trait among some of our locals that only comes out by prayer and fasting and the new birth).
“I look like a Nazi?!” I asked my wife as we got into the elevator, hands full with our bags of groceries. She just laughed at me.
“At least you’re a little less useless now.”
“Let’s hope so!”
I certainly don’t mind looking a little less useless. But I do hope to not look like a fascist, if at all possible. Mud of the world upon my head…
If you would like to help us afford a solid set of wheels for driving around our corner of Central Asia (11k needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Tomorrow evening we’ll board the first flight of our return trip to Central Asia. Yes, tomorrow! A lot has taken place in the last few weeks and the fast-paced developments have shifted us into quick-move-the-household mode and prevented me from writing as much as I would prefer.
In short, all of the sudden we are nearly fully funded. Many generous friends have come together to provide enough support for us to get the green light to buy tickets so that we’re on the ground a full two days before our kids’ school starts. The very last piece that we are working to raise is 14k for our vehicle (If you can help with this one-time need, let us know!).
In the meantime, we’ll be making use of our city’s over-abundance of taxis – and hopefully getting into some good conversations with them. You never know what kind of conversation you might fall into with a Central Asian taxi driver. Sometimes they may teach you some classic Central Asian poetry lamenting the pharisaical tendencies of Islam:
A wish for the days of homemade naan In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one Now for all, “Pilgrimmy pilgrim” is claimed But pilgrims they’re not, nor their bread e’en homemade
Or, they may take things in a more political direction, complaining about the corruption in their government or telling me who they would vote for if they were an American citizen (Our taxi drivers strongly favor Republicans). Many will also ask if we know how they can get a visa to the West or even secure an American wife. That will be a negative on both fronts, my dear driver.
Somewhere in there, they’ll often ask us if we are Muslims. This of course is a wonderful opening into sharing what we believe. “You know, there’s a lot of external similarity between Christianity and Islam, but at the core, their messages about how a person is saved are completely contradictory…”
I hear we may even be getting fare meters on our taxis soon, which will be a nice change from the haggling typically required before you get in one (which I am particularly bad at). Now, if we could only help them to stop driving like they’re auditioning for a Central Asian version of The Fast and the Furious.
During an especially harrowing taxi ride through the mountains some years ago, I leaned over to a wide-eyed friend visiting from our sending church and hollered, “Times like this make you glad to be a Calvinist, eh?” Needless to say, the best of all possible worlds meant that we did indeed survive that ride, in spite of several close calls with oncoming semis. That same friend is now supporting us as we go back. I have a suspicion the taxis have something to do with this.
How did a post that started as an announcement of our return to Central Asia turn into an exploration of local taxis? I am not completely sure, yet here we are.
Tomorrow we get on a plane and so conclude twenty two months of transition. We came back from the field in late 2022, pretty certain we wouldn’t be able to return. Now, because of God’s kindness to us and the faithful friendships of so many brothers and sisters, we are not only going back, but are excited to do so. We covet your prayers.
As for the writing, I am excited to continue. Moving from one world to another is always a special time of being able to temporarily see things that will soon be overlooked as normal. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for these little glimpses of the absurd and the delightful.
And, more likely than not, a post or two will come from a particularly interesting conversation with a taxi driver.
If you would like to help us afford a solid set of wheels for driving around our corner of Central Asia (14k needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
