Tag: True Stories

Mama Lost Her Gall Bladder in Turkey

“Mama, why aren’t you eating the naan and kebab?”

“Don’t you remember? She lost her gall bladder in Turkey!”

“Ohh… right…”

I honestly can’t tell you how many times this conversation was repeated among our kids during our first term. It began as a tongue-in-cheek way to tell our kids that mom couldn’t eat the same way anymore because she no longer had a gall bladder. But it took on a life of its own that eventually had us concerned that our third-culture kids might grow up thinking that people simply lose their gall bladders when they travel – like they might misplace some toy – rather than having them surgically removed. Don’t underestimate the things that can get missed in a TCK upbringing. Until I was sixteen, I thought that spaghetti was grown on farms.

The whole gall bladder saga came about quite unexpectedly. We needed to take a medical trip to Istanbul, Turkey, a year and a half after arriving on the field. There, we would visit a network of hospitals called Acibadem for our needed shots and checkups. Because of these shots, our family came to call this hospital “Ouchy Bottom.”

Before any of our medical work was done, we decided to spend a week of rest in a historic island town near Istanbul where no cars were allowed. It was a good, if very humid, week, dragging our toddlers all over the island. If you are ever traveling somewhere with toddlers where cars are not permitted, always be sure to check that your Airbnb is not a long walk uphill. Also, Turks, unlike our desert people group, seem to think that AC and ice water will make you sick, so these are not nearly as readily available as one might hope in a sweltering July.

During our week there, our daughter accidentally head-butted my wife in the eye, leaving her with quite the shiner – swollen, puffy, and dark purple. I had a lot of people give me the stink eye on ferries and around town that week, thinking that I had something to do with this. I didn’t know enough Turkish to point out the true culprit – the adorable little girl with the pigtails.

All good things must come to an end, and at the end of the week, we left the charming yet sweaty island and moved over to the mainland to commence with the medical work. The kids got their shots and my wife went in for an abdominal ultrasound, something a doctor had ordered out of an abundance of caution. While the area the ultrasound was supposed to focus on proved to be fine, the tech had also accidentally/providentially pointed it at the gall bladder area. So, we were informed that there were some pretty serious gall stones there, and that surgery would be necessary.

One of the strange contrasts between Turkey and our area of Central Asia is that while Turkey is much more developed and modern, and there’s a lot of Western music playing everywhere, there’s actually a lot less knowledge of English in the general and professional population. The doctors had good English, but to our surprise, the rest of the nurses and hospital staff didn’t. In one sense, good on them for being so confident as a people in their own language. But in an age of medical tourism, this can sometimes mean things get lost in translation – like entire organs.

In the consultation, the doctor told us the medical term for the procedure he would do, called a cholecystectomy. Then he blitzed through the scheduling and recovery pieces. My wife and I, having very limited experience with medical gall bladder terminology, thought that this cholecystectomy surgery must entail simply removing the gall stones. We had no idea it meant removing the entire organ. Our Google Translate conversations with the hospital staff didn’t clear this up for us either. Everyone assured us that we were in store for a very simple and normal procedure.

So, a couple of mornings later, the kids and I said goodbye to our wife and mother in her blue hospital gown and shower cap, still sporting her black eye.

After several hours, the doctor told me that the procedure was complete and that I could come and be with my wife when she woke up from the anesthesia.

“Mr. Workman, the surgery was a great success!” the doctor enthusiastically told me as I walked into the room. “Would you like to see the organ?”

“The organ?”

“Yes! I have it in a jar and can show it to you if you like.”

“The stones?”

“The gall bladder, of course, with the stones too. Everything went perfectly according to plan!”

I took a moment to absorb what the jovial doctor had just said. They had taken out the whole thing.

“Oh, right… Um, no, I don’t think I need to see the organ. Thank you.”

“Please excuse me for a moment,” the doctor continued. “Your wife should be waking up any minute now.”

I went over to sit by my wife and thought about the best way to break the news to her. I could let the doctor do it. But no, that was not likely to go well. The doctor was acting far too cavalier for that. I’d better do my best to break it to her gently, but directly.

A few minutes later she stirred, blinking back into consciousness.

“Hey, love!” I said in a low voice, smiling.

“Hey…”

“How are you feeling?”

“Mmm… Okay, I guess.”

“Well, the doctor said the surgery went great. No issues whatsoever.”

The moment had come. I had to tell her. I took a deep breath.

“But… they had to take out the whole gall bladder.”

My wife rolled her eyes over to look at me.

“They what?”

“Yeah, they took the whole thing out. I guess that was their plan all along.”

We both sat there in that hospital room, registering what this meant and wondering how in the world we had missed something like the nature of the surgery itself. In the days that followed, we learned that this had indeed been the medically necessary thing to do, which brought some relief. Still, had we known they were planning on removing an entire organ we would have at least done some more research about alternatives or how this surgery might affect the rest of someone’s life.

In the years since, not having a gall bladder has indeed had a drastic effect on what my wife can and can’t eat, meaning we’ve added that particular organ to our growing list of things we look forward to being made new in the coming resurrection. We do laugh about how it all went down, but it’s a laughter tinged with some sadness also. Our bodies were meant to have functioning gall bladders to help us enjoy the great variety of God’s good foods. Now my wife’s was gone, perhaps still in a jar somewhere in Istanbul, another casualty of the fall.

Despite being the place where we lost mama’s gall bladder, we still love Turkey. A very special part of my calling took place there during a prayer meeting in 2008. My wife and I spent a couple of wonderful days there during our first vision trip to Central Asia as newlyweds. Where else can you can drink chai on a ferry as the sun sets on the Bosphorus, watching the light play on the spires and even more ancient domes of the Hagia Sophia? Or drink some good Japanese cold brew in historic Chalcedon?

Yes, despite misadventures like this one, part of our hearts will always be in Turkey. And now, one of our gall bladders also.

*Spellcheck has made me aware that Americans are supposed to spell gall bladder as one word, gallbladder. But having grown up overseas, I’m with the Brits on this one, so gall bladder it is and shall remain in my writing.

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Chickens, Checkpoints, and Zombie Lawyers

“You’ve got to save me, sir.”

“What’s the issue, my brother?” the politician said over the phone.

“I was driving from desert city to mountain city with my chickens for sale. I had all the official paperwork ready. I passed the last checkpoint for desert city without a problem, but they wouldn’t permit me through the first checkpoint of mountain city.”

“I see.”

“I asked them why and they just said, ‘We’re not letting you through.’ So I turned around to go back to desert city, but now they wouldn’t allow me through that checkpoint either! Now I’m stuck in no-man’s-land, me and my chickens, between these two blasted parties. What can I do?”

“Well,” responded the politician, “The only thing you can do is try to get some barbecue supplies, and start roasting those birds for lunch.”

That is a real conversation that happened recently, as reported by the politician. He was on a show TV show ranting about the absurdity of our region’s checkpoint system and the indignities it thrusts upon the normal people of the region who are just trying to live and make a living. My friend, Adam*, told me this story yesterday, then later sent me the clip.

“Bro,” he said, laughing on the line, “One time I was in a bus going through that same checkpoint. When they stopped us, I was the only one they made get out. You know, ‘Come with us, Mr. Adam,’ and all that. Anyway, they took me over to their little plastic shed and sat me down to ask me some questions. They made me empty out all the contents of my bag and kept asking me if I had any guns on me, trying to act very concerned about security. Then the guard talking to me up and leaves the room – and leaves his AK-47 on the chair right next to me!”

“He gets back to the room and tells me they didn’t find any gun after all. So I said to him, ‘Well, I found a gun for you, the one you left for me right here on this chair!'”

These checkpoints didn’t used to be there. After all, these two cities and the surrounding areas they control belong to the same people group. But in previous decades there was a civil war between the two parties that control these cities, and the checkpoints went up. There are now around eight of them on the two-and-a-half hour drive from one city to the other. Any time tensions flare up between the political parties, the checkpoints get more onerous, the politicians and bureaucrats using them to enact their personal vendettas against one another.

The particular checkpoint area Adam was telling me about is where the front lines of these two tribal-mafia-style political parties meet. In between them is a no-man’s-land, perhaps half a mile long. There’s a small cement mosque in this area intentionally painted in the colors of both of the political parties, but it’s not fooling anyone. This is no longer technically a war zone, but it could become one at the drop of a hat. In the meantime, it seems designed to just make things harder for everyone.

You’ll probably be waived through the last checkpoint as you leave one territory, but then be greeted with at least the suspicious body language of a soldier leaning in your window wanting your ID, what you were doing in that other city, and just what exactly you plan on doing in our city. There’s even a linguistic element to this, with both cities having different dialects, perhaps comparable to a Scottish vs. Texan accent. They seem to enjoy placing guards at these checkpoints that emphasize these dialect differences for some kind of Shibboleth effect. In the beginning it was very confusing for me, but after a while it became a sort of challenge to see if I could not only understand their questions but even respond in the right dialect. When we got it right the guards would be so charmed by these goofy Americans attempting their dialect that they would usually just wave us through. We eventually found this even more effective than the otherwise sound principle of “speak English to the men with guns.”

“Our moving truck was stuck in that no-man’s-land for hours one time as well,” I told Adam. “When we moved from mountain city to desert city we had a lawyer who told us not to worry about the paperwork, because he’s got patronage.”

“Oh no, you had a zombie lawyer!” Zombie is one of Adam’s favorite terms for someone who is essentially an inside member of the very corrupt bureaucracy of his country.

“Yes, well this zombie lawyer told us that because his sister was so important in the government, instead of paperwork, we should just give him a call and he’d work his magic to get us through the checkpoint. Well, he was wrong. They let our moving truck through one of them, but not through the other, and it was stuck there for hours.”

“In the end, the only way we got through was by calling in a favor from Ahab*. Remember him?”

“No! The snake?”

“Yep, the super deceptive guy who split the church. Well, someone called him because his brother is somebody important in the secret police. So, with the help of both of these very shady men we finally got our stuff through. It was a nightmare.”

“Bro, the zombie lawyer and the snake, that’s a bad day. Maybe it would have better to just have a barbecue, like the chicken guy!”

I am so grateful for friends like Adam who can help me laugh at the absurdity of it all.

I have also become more thankful for the common grace of open roads within the same country. My local friends are amazed to hear that you could drive for hours and hours in the US and through multiple states and never have to stop for a checkpoint. I remember hearing the bad news during the Covid culture wars that blue states were talking of putting up vaccine checkpoints at the borders of red states, and suddenly blurting out to the radio, “No, no, no, you do not want to start that game!”

We laugh about our checkpoints, but they can be an expression of the banality of evil. Sin makes people fools. And evil uses systems full of fools to make things complex and annoying that should be simple and easy. It’s like a system-wide equivalent of the demon-possessed man, Weston, in Perelandra, when he decides to wear Ransom down by simple repetition of his name over and over again.

“Ransom… Ransom… Ransom… Ransom… Ransom… Ransom…”

“What!?”

“Nothing…”

“Ransom… Ransom… Ransom.”

But foolish systems like this don’t stop at mere nuisance. They can actually contribute to oppression of the poor and of hard-working laborers. Why should that chicken farmer be prevented like that from doing work that serves his family and serves his neighbor? It can even hinder gospel work. As Westerners, we navigate these checkpoints relatively easily. But our Latin American colleagues are given a much harder time since they physically resemble those from an enemy people group. We’ve even had to factor the risks of these checkpoints into contingency conversations with local believers, in the chance that they would someday need to flee from one city to another.

One Christmas, we decided to try to use the checkpoint system to do some simple seed sowing. We got a bunch of small, fancy chocolate boxes, one for each checkpoint. The plan was to give one out with a small portion of scripture each time we were stopped and to tell them that today was the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, our savior. As is customary on any big holiday, we would hand over the gift with a hearty “Congratulations!” Or, literally-translated, “May you be holy!”

The Muslim checkpoint guards really didn’t know what to do with us, but we at least succeeded in providing them with something unusual to talk about later, some chocolate to eat, and perhaps some scripture that would sit on their shelves like a spiritual time bomb. Most don’t know that Dec 25th is Christmas, thinking that New Year’s Day and Christmas are the same thing. The guards didn’t give us a hard time that day, instead smiling bemusedly as they waved us through.

Perhaps my favorite checkpoint story came late one afternoon. We pulled up to the checkpoint, the kids asleep in the back seat, my wife nodding off in the front.

The guard leaned in, looked at me, looked at my wife, and then squinted hard at me.

“Tell me, brother, what exactly are you doing with that foreign woman?”

I couldn’t help smiling as I explained to him that that foreign woman was actually my wife, that we were both foreigners, et cetera, et cetera. To this day, it’s a line my wife and I will recite to each other, one way the absurd checkpoint system has now contributed to our family’s lore and oral tradition.

So I guess the checkpoint system hasn’t been all bad. But it’s mostly bad. And I hope they do away with it all someday – and that they didn’t make that poor guy have to barbecue his chickens.

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*Names changed for security

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Burying the Talents of the Great Rewarder

A number of months ago I was reading the parable of the talents to my kids at bedtime. There was nothing unusual about the night. I was leaning against the doorframe to the bedroom they all currently share, Bible open in my hands. The lamp was turned off in their room to help them settle down and I was relying on the hallway light for my reading. The plan was simple as always. Read a little bit, discuss a little bit, sing a song or two together, pray, give kisses and hugs goodnight, and finally, navigate multiple attempts to get out of bed again for various and sundry reasons. It was a typical night, not the kind of time I would have predicted for the conviction of the Spirit to fall.

We were almost finished our reading through the book of Matthew and that night had come to chapter 25, verses 14-30. The parable of the talents will be well-known to most of you, but if it’s not you can read it here and I’ll also post it below. The summary is that a master leaves on a long journey, entrusting three servants with three very large sums of money (called talents). The first one receives five talents, about 100 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. The second receives two talents, about 40 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. And the third receives one talent, roughly 20 years’ wages. The first two servants spend the following lengthy period investing their master’s money and both double the amounts they received. The third servant goes off and buries the money he received. When the master returns, he affirms the faithfulness of the first two servants and then rewards them with both increased authority and joy. But the third servant explains that he played it safe and merely stashed his master’s money away. He says he did this because he knew his master’s character to be harsh and stingy. The master, in turn, strongly rebukes him, telling him that if he knew this he still should have at least put the money in the bank, where it could have collected interest. He then commands that the one talent be given to the first servant, and that the wicked servant be cast out into the “outer darkness,” essentially into hell. The parable ends with the third servant losing even the amount that he had preserved, while the first two servants receive even more than the enormous amounts they had ended up with.

This is a parable I know well, and have read dozens and dozens of times. But for whatever reason, when I read it this time (and read it for my kids, no less, not for me), clarity and conviction fell hard. The familiarity of the passage meant that I’d never really understood the whole bit about the master’s character. But I suddenly realized that this was at the very core of the parable. The wicked servant says of the master, “I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Essentially, “You are a stingy, exacting man, so I didn’t risk doing costly work that would go unrewarded. I played it safe and stashed your money away.” In Middle Eastern culture, then as well as now, stinginess is viewed as one of the very worst vices.

I was struck with a question I’d not thought of before. What was the servant doing all those years when the other servants were busy trading for the increase of their master’s wealth? Presumably, looking out for his own wealth. And why? Because he did not believe that it would be worth it to risk spending all those years and all that sweat, only to have his master come back and take it all from him. If he invested for his master, he would labor and sacrifice and risk, and for what? A stingy master? No, thanks! He would instead do the minimum, follow the letter of the law, try to serve two masters. His master had given him this money to keep safe, so he would do that – and no more.

The other two servants seem to have had a radically different view of their master’s character. We see this from their actions. They do spend a long time using what their master had entrusted to them to generate even more wealth for him. How are they able to do this? Well, the parable tells us that they are faithful. In one sense, this is enough. Faithful servants seek to obey their masters above and beyond what they are asked, as if they are working as unto God, not unto men. But it seems that the whole back-and-forth about the master’s character is giving us a clue that the other servant’s must not have believed that their master was stingy and harsh. Rather, they must have believed that in the end, their master was a rewarder. The end of the parable shows us this was indeed his true nature. But also consider how often Jesus speaks of heavenly rewards in the book of Matthew alone (5:12, 5:46, 6:1, 6:2, 6:4, 6:5, 6:6, 6:16, 6:18, 10:41, 10:42). Then, take the radical statement from Hebrews 11:6 that to please God, one must believe that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. No, this faith in the master’s character is the difference between the two servants’ faithful risk and the other’s wicked self-interest.

These truths cut to my heart because I was in a long season of doubting God’s character. After seven years of costly ministry on the field, preceded by seven years of costly ministry in the US, I felt like we were in shambles. We had worked hard for our master and even seen what he had given us multiplied many times over. A few dozen had come to faith, a church had been planted, hundreds had heard the gospel, missionary teams had been strengthened and served – tens of thousands of words had been written. But our health, our faith, our finances, our prospects? These all looked pretty bad. My heart had settled into a posture where I was counting up the cost, and feeling like God was harsh and stingy. I was no longer open to risking for God in the same way, instead feeling like I needed to take care of myself and my family’s future. Sure, I knew I would keep doing the essentials – trying to pray and read my bible, trying to write, trying to encourage others, doing bedtime devotions with the kids. I wouldn’t get rid of the talent entrusted to me – but I just might bury it.

“Is this really what I think of God’s character?” I thought to myself as read the cynical words of the third servant to my kids that night. “…a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed…”

I finished the parable and paused in my reading, quiet, sad, and somehow grateful to feel the sharpness of the Word after a long season of numbness.

“Dad?” my oldest son asked, wondering about my extended silence.

“Huh?… Oh, right. Um, what song should we sing?”

“The fruit of the Spirit’s not a coconut!” piped up our youngest. Ah, yes, a classic.

We proceeded to finish the bedtime routine, but I knew I would be chewing on Matthew 25 and this train of thought for some time to come. Deep down, I had felt that there was a part of me that still believed that God is not stingy, but instead a generous rewarder. That everything, absolutely everything, would be remembered and reflected in that eternal weight of glory being prepared for us. But this faith had been slowly buried under shovel-fulls of sorrow, self-pity, and spiritual fog.

In the following months the theme of God as a rewarder, and the resulting joy of those who out of this truth risk and suffer (and are therefore the most fully alive of any of us), jumped out at me from passage after passage. I saw it shouting at me from the Beatitudes, from Hebrews 11, from 2nd Corinthians 4, even from grumpy Naaman the Syrian risking seven dips in the muddy Jordan. I remembered how it was the truths of the coming resurrection that shook me out of seasons of spiritual depression in the past – one of the reasons I had initially chosen to highlight that theme in my blogging. Slowly, the faith to risk because of God’s character returned, until I found myself one night hearing my wife telling me she was now ready to attempt a return overseas. In fact, she was playfully kicking me while she said this, asking me what was taking me so long to join her.

There were a number of powerful truths that combined to open my heart again to risk again, whether that means ministry overseas or back again in the States someday. But the first life-giving blow came from the parable of the talents, from a seemingly-normal bedtime with my kids, and with it the resolve to no longer doubt the character of my master.

He is the great rewarder. His commendation awaits. I must not bury his talents, but invest and risk them. Risk them all.

[14] “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. [15] To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. [16] He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. [17] So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. [18] But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. [19] Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. [20] And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ [21] His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ [22] And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ [23] His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ [24] He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, [25] so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ [26] But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? [27] Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. [28] So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. [29] For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. [30] And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 25:14-30

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When Leonard Cohen Tried to Hijack Communion

Here’s a leadership skill we don’t speak of very often: how to shut someone down who’s trying to take over your meeting or church service. Everyone in ministry who has tried to lead meetings has seen the need for this ability at least once or twice. A participant has their own agenda, and whether its conscious or not, they are going to assert themselves and try to overrule the leadership’s plans for this particular gathering. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the smaller your church, the easier this can be to do. When this happens, it’s a particular test of both the leader’s wisdom and spine.

I’ve seen some pastors who are very gifted at this. Some divisive brother stands up in a member’s meeting and the leader knows he’s going to try to platform something he’s been arguing about with the pastors. So, the pastor issues a quick rebuke and command to sit down. And amazingly, the man obeys.

Needless to say, I do not have this particular manifestation of the Spirit. I lack the force of personality and charisma to respond in this way. Yet I have still faced my own share of others trying to hijack meetings I’m supposed to be leading. One week, a visiting Central Asian believer started a heated debate in our church service, claiming that we were unfaithful for serving grape juice instead of wine for communion – and this in an Islamic context. Another man aggressively tried to change the language of our Bible study mid-meeting to one that served him better. Never mind it was the weaker language for everyone else in the group. Yet another man (a visiting leader no less) forcefully coopted the man with the guitar and made our church vigorously sing several more worship songs at the end of the service because “that was what would please Jesus.”

We learned the hard way to never mention a church picnic until the very end of our meetings because the ensuing heated discussion about where to go, what food to prep, how to buy such food, and who should be invited would inevitably get out of hand. If you are new to this blog, you need to understand one thing about our Central Asians. They take their picnics very seriously.

As I said, I’m not very gifted in publicly shutting down disruptive people and getting the meeting back on track. But as with any act of service to the church, sometimes you need to do it anyway, regardless of gifting. In all of the situations above, I did my best to muddle through it, trying to balance gentleness and respect on the one hand, and firmness and authority on the other. Knowing that I lack natural authority in these settings, I’ve learned that much of the work needs to done outside of the meetings to build spiritual authority – via grace-based respect, trust, and loyalty with the other believers. This is so that they will follow a gentle leader in a tense moment when a strong charismatic leader would seem to be more effective. It’s also very helpful to have established the purpose and agenda of the meeting clearly and publicly beforehand so that you can more easily head off any unexpected attempt to take over.

Sometimes attempted hijackings are unintentional, and simply come from the toddling faith of new believers. My wife and I were laughing about one of these situations just the other day, a situation that involved (of all things) a song by the late Canadian singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen.

Our church plant had gathered in a nearby cabin to hold a Christmas service. Gathering like this allowed us to have an “indoor picnic” as it were, even though the weather outside was frigid. As part of this half-day gathering, we also held our weekly service, in which we would take the Lord’s supper.

My teammate and fellow temporary elder had preached, focusing on the Magi’s visit to Jesus, so that meant it was my week to lead the service. As I introduced the communion time, and walked through our three conditions for participation (faith, baptism, a heart ready to repent), one of the ladies from our team and one of the local ladies got up, getting ready to distribute the torn flatbread and chai cups containing grape juice.

Sitting to my right was Timothy*, one of the believers who only gathered with us once a month or so due to security fears. He and his wife had been regular attenders during their first year, but after the church had been visited by the security police, they had come around a lot less. However, they could almost always come to any sort of picnic event we held, since they felt that these kinds of social events gave them greater cover if questioned by their Islamic cleric relatives.

Timothy and his wife were still pretty young in their faith, certainly lacking in discernment, but the genuineness of their faith and affections was apparent. One time we visited them only to find out that Timothy’s wife was very excited because some kind of a local spiritualist woman had told her that she could discern that Timothy’s wife had been a Christian in a previous life. She was thrilled, feeling that this was a validation of her faith now in Jesus. We of course had to tell her that reincarnation is not biblical. Thankfully, she accepted this correction with humility in spite of her previous excitement.

When we practiced communion at this church plant, we would first explain it, then pass out the elements, then take a minute of silent prayer together. This time of silence was so that we would all have a chance to examine our hearts and confess sin to God as necessary. This was often followed by believers getting up and quietly repenting to one another before they then partook of the bread and juice. Most weeks, whether that was taking place or not, whoever was leading the service would end the time of silence by praying out loud, then lead the group in eating the bread and remembering Christ’s body broken for us, and drinking the juice and remembering Christ’s blood shed for us.

During this Christmas service, I remember being encouraged by how things were progressing. “Fencing the table,” excluding some present from communion, had been so hard for the local believers in the beginning. But they were truly taking ownership of it now, skillfully explaining in hushed tones to nonbelievers present and unbaptized believers why it was better for them wait to partake in communion until they could meet all three of the conditions I had laid out.

The elements were distributed and the time came for the minute of silent prayer. As I bowed my head I suddenly heard a song playing loudly from a smartphone. I peeked to my right. It was coming from Timothy’s phone. His head was bowed, but he was holding his phone up, clearly playing it for the benefit of the group in this moment of self-examination. Right away, I realized I knew those guitar chords. I knew those lyrics “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift.” I had known them ever since the movie Shrek had popularized the song for my generation. It was Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

In spite of its hauntingly beautiful melody and use of the term Hallelujah, this song is not a spiritual one. It is, at best, about the dark side of love. But it also contains lyrics that hint at darker sexual themes. The tricky thing is that it’s written with clear allusions to the biblical stories of David and Samson. So, many in the West play it at weddings and funerals, hearing these biblical allusions and Hallelujah repeated over and over and think that it must be some kind of spiritual love song. Timothy, with his intermediate English, had made the same mistake. And through him, Leonard Cohen was hijacking the service, taking it in a direction it did not need to go.

Timothy, to his credit, was just trying to serve the body in this simple way. He had found a beautiful song that he thought was a Christian one. But I knew that one of those “save the meeting” moments was upon us. Here we were, in the middle of communion, and I realized that we were about to be serenaded by “You saw her bathing on the roof; her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you” – and other lyrics that get even more awkward. Even if most of the locals would miss it, at least a third of our group were native English-speaking teammates and kids.

It was time to pivot. Bold leadership was called for. So, our silent prayer ended extra early that night. I’m sure it wasn’t this bad, but I remember awkwardly clearing my throat and belting out an extra loud prayer right before the whole roof-bathing part of the song. The group seemed to jolt awake, interrupted in the middle of their prayers of confession by a service leader who seemed unusually twitchy. An intentional glance from me at Timothy’s phone meant he got the message, and duly tapped off the music mid Hallelu–

Hijacking averted.

The rest of the evening went well. The fellowship was sweet, the food was celebratory, the gospel was shared, the electricity stayed on. Timothy did come over at one point to see if he had made some kind of mistake with the song. I assured him that I knew his heart was to serve the other believers as they were praying, and not to worry about it. I knew he was sensitive enough to not try that again without talking about it beforehand.

My wife and I laugh whenever we remember this incident. You really can’t predict the kind of things you’re going to face in the messiness of local church or church planting ministry. But meeting hijackings are not always this innocent, nor always so easily averted. Paul speaks of the importance of order in the church service and calls for quick action against the divisive man (1 Cor 14:40, Titus 3:10). Jesus models this as well with a number of his sharp, public rebukes and redirections (Luke 13:15, Luke 11:27-28, Matt 16:23). Faithful leaders need to do likewise.

For those who are leaders or who aspire to be so, we need to be ready to intervene against hijackers. Some of them will be wolves, dangerously trying to mislead the flock. Some will merely be misguided believers with good intentions. Wise leadership will be willing to guard against any and all attempts to take over – even if they come from dead Canadian musicians on a Central Asian’s smartphone.

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 changed for security

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One Very Problematic Persian Rug

“Mr. Talent* was taken into custody by airport police.”

“What? Why?” I rubbed my bleary eyes in the hotel room bathroom, trying to understand what my wife was saying on the other end of the line.

“They found the AirTag in the rug and thought it was a spy device.”

“Oh no.” I tried to keep a low voice since my brother was still asleep in the hotel room.

“He came to pick up the rug today, just like you asked him to. But then they detained him. Mark* kept trying to get ahold of you, but couldn’t reach you, so he called me. I didn’t really know what was going on either and I also couldn’t get through to you. Where have you been?”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry. We’ve been passed out in a hotel room in Doha. We missed our connecting flight and they put us up in a hotel in the city. We didn’t get any sleep last night, so we got to the room and have been sleeping like dead men for the last four or five hours.”

“You’d better call Mark.”

I rang my teammate Mark right away, still standing in the hotel room bathroom. A similar conversation ensued with Mark, but with the welcome news that Mr. Talent had been released, though only after much haggling and persuasion on the part of Mark.

“They thought the AirTag was a spy tracker of some sort. I pulled up the Apple website and insisted that it’s a normal consumer device that lots of people use. But they’d never seen one and didn’t want to believe me. Why did you have one in the rug again?”

“Well, last time we flew back they lost two of our suitcases for good. I didn’t want that to happen this time around. I didn’t think it would cause any issues though. Don’t lots of people use them now to keep their bags from getting lost? They really thought it was a spy device?”

“Apparently they’ve never heard of them in our city. And you know how sensitive they are about spy stuff here. They were pretty freaked out, gave Mr. Talent a very hard time about it. I was able to talk us out of it eventually, but we’ll need your help to resolve things.”

“Understood.”

I shook my head. All this for a rug.

Poor Mr. Talent, our servant-hearted, ever-loyal friend. Then again, there was that time he had gotten me and Mark detained when he took us on a surprise outing with AK-47s.

So, how had we gotten here? Well, a number of months into our medical leave in the US, it was looking like we’d need to resettle in Kentucky for the long-term. A friend and former missionary had given me some good advice before I took a trip back to Central Asia to sell everything.

“Even if it’s costly, bring back whatever household items are special for your family. Trust me, it’ll be worth it, because it will mean a lot to your wife and kids.”

We didn’t have too many household items that were special for our family. But we did have a beautiful blue Persian rug. We had bought it at the beginning of our second term and for a number of years it had been a central piece of our family’s hosting and spending time with one another. It carried sweet memories of chai visits from neighbors, Covid lockdown dance parties with the kids, Bible studies with local believers, and nights where we all slept on the rug because the living room was the only room warm enough or cool enough to sleep in. Yes, it’s normal for missionaries to have to liquidate their households over and over again. But, I decided that if I could, I would try to save this rug.

However, at the end of our surprisingly successful five day trip (quite possibly the most efficient five days of my life), this rug stood out as a very problematic outlier. First, we had had to do research to make sure it wasn’t illegal to bring an Iranian-made rug into the US. It wasn’t technically illegal, but none of the shipping companies would touch it. We knew that some visitors had successfully brought back rugs on planes before. So then we decided to get it specially cleaned, folded, and plastic-wrapped for air travel, a process that wasn’t complete until late on our final night. We thought we would simply pay a little extra for the weight and size of the rug, but that it wouldn’t be too bad.

When we checked in, however, the counter staff informed us that the rug was six kilos too heavy to be allowed as oversize baggage. It would have to be sent as airfreight, but only if the airline approved it – and this wasn’t for certain.

An anxious conversation in a side office and a new plan gave us a bit of hope that everything might still work out. If the airline agreed, they would hold the rug for us, the following day Mr. Talent would come get the rug from the airline office, find out the price to ship it as air cargo, get approval from me via WhatsApp, and transfer the rug to air freight. They wouldn’t be able to send it to Kentucky, but they could get it to Philadelphia, the city where my brother lives. Then somehow from there we’d figure out getting it halfway across the country.

The next day, our plan B worked reasonably well – until the rug was scanned upon exiting the departure area. That’s when the scanner found the AirTag, and the airport police proceeded to detain Mr. Talent.

A number of hours later, after Mark had successfully sprung Mr. Talent from airport jail, my brother and I walked around Doha. I was eager to hear from Mr. Talent about the possibility and cost of air freighting the rug.

When he eventually called, I did my best to make amends for the fact that I had just gotten him arrested, making sure to pepper the conversation with multiple respectful titles like “my only-begotten brother.” But I could tell from his voice that even Mr. Talent’s enthusiasm for helping was wearing thin. Still, we had come so far, and I didn’t want to give up now. Would that not mean that Mr. Talent’s detention and all our efforts so far would have been in vain?

Mr. Talent then told me the price they were asking. I had to take a minute. It would cost more than the price of the rug itself to send it via airfreight. Yes, Persian rugs in Central Asia cost only a fraction of what they do in the West, but the air freight fee was still no sum to sneeze at. Yet there wasn’t time to hesitate, a decision needed to be made. I sighed and bit the bullet. If we were to live in the West for years to come, I really wanted to have that rug around to remind us of our beloved Central Asia. I told Mr. Talent to pay the hefty fee, and told him I’d reimburse him from our furniture sale money. Finally, it looked like all would be well. In several weeks, the rug would arrive in Philadelphia and my brother would pick it up for me.

The weeks passed quickly and one day my brother got a call from the air freight department of the Philly airport. The rug needed to be processed by customs, so he’d need to come in to fill out some forms.

Unfortunately, once he arrived at customs they told him there was a $180 per day fee to hold the rug, and that they had no way of telling him how many days it would take them to complete their processes. It could be weeks they might have to hold the rug until they got around to it.

“Please give us your license and sign these forms,” the customs guy said.

My brother absorbed the bad news, did the paperwork, but in the process also managed to joke around and make friends with the customs guy. This natural ability of my brother’s has always impressed me. It’s a gift he got from my dad and grandfather, a genuine delight in people that leads to spontaneous friendship – something that can also come in handy in a tight spot.

As he drove away from the airport, my brother filled me in on the ever-mounting cost of this whole rug endeavor. No one could say how many days they would hold it, nor what the total charge might be. But it was likely to be in the thousands of dollars. After my brother hung up, I slumped in my chair, processing the bad news. I should have just sold the rug with our other stuff and been done with it. Was I just stubborn and foolish to keep going like I had? And was there even a way out now? How do you balance the intangible value of keeping something like your family’s favorite rug with the very real fiscal costs that just seem to keep mounting?

An hour later I got another call from my brother. He was laughing.

“You won’t believe what just happened. When I was at the airport earlier, they forgot to give me back my license. I was laughing and talking about our trip with the customs guy and so neither of us noticed that I didn’t have my license when I left. I’m halfway back to my house when my new friend calls me up, horrified that he had caused me to drive without my license, and he tells me to come back right away. He felt so bad for his mistake that he said they would expedite things and process the rug right away. I’ve got it with me now in the car!”

I smiled and shook my head. Praise God the rug saga was finally coming to an end. And my brother – what a champ.

The rug sat folded up in my brother’s basement for a few months until he could make a trip to Kentucky, when he brought it to the little parsonage where we were staying. Sadly, it was too big for the living room, so once again we had to put it in a basement, still folded up and plastic-wrapped.

But at least we had it now in the US to remind us for years to come of our life in Central Asia. And once we found a long-term house to live in, the beautiful Persian rug would once again be one of our favorite places in the home.

But… then we decided we weren’t staying in the US after all, but moving back to Central Asia. And now I don’t know what I’m going to do with that blasted rug.

p.s. We did at last get to unfold and use the rug for an event with a partner church (pictured above). As soon as my wife suggested the idea, I was all over it. “Yes! Must use that rug for something!!!”

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 changed for security

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A Freezer Full of Pork Sausage

There was a season early on in our marriage where we were very broke. At the time we were doing ministry with Muslim refugees in Louisville, KY. We were seeking to make ends meet through a combination of free rent (since we lived in a refugee resettlement apartment complex and put on community events for the residents), part-time support from Christian friends given through NAMB, and sales of looseleaf Central Asian chai. Needless to say, things were tight.

One of our partner churches was a very small church in the rural midwest. There were around twenty members, and most of them would have also been struggling to get by. I remember one prayer meeting where a man confessed, in tears, that he had been bitter about eating only deer meat. He couldn’t afford to buy meat from the grocery store, so his family had to rely on what he shot for their protein. The man asked for prayer that he would be grateful for the deer meat that God had provided them.

The financial support from this church wasn’t much, but it meant all the more knowing that they were giving to us out of their poverty, in a way that reminded me of how the Macedonians had given to Paul. There is a danger of falling into an entitlement mindset when we live off the giving off other believers. Churches like this keep me awake to the wonder of Christian generosity.

One winter, we drove out to spend the weekend with them and the pastor told us that they had recently butchered some pigs and, from them, made a bunch of pork sausage. I didn’t grow up in the rural US, but I did grow up in Melanesia, where pig meat is the most prized and expensive of all meats. Anytime you found out you were going to eat pig, this was cause for celebration. Here was a link between the residents of the midwestern cornfields and the mountain peoples of my childhood. Though here it would not be slow-cooked by hot rocks in a pit in the ground, but fried up in a cast iron skillet.

Truthfully, on that trip I had felt a little disappointed that the church hadn’t been able to give a bit more in the way of funding. Though, of course, I was happy to find out they were planning on sending some pork sausage home with us. I could not have predicted just how much they were planning to send.

When it was time to load up our car, the pastor filled up an entire cooler’s worth of freshly-made pork sausage and fresh deer meat. As I recall, the cooler was very heavy as I stashed it next to our son’s carseat in the back of our little ’95 Honda Civic. We said thank you over and over for this lavish gift and the pastor and his wife just waved us off, smiling and downplaying it all.

This gift proved to be extra helpful because this was a season where our apartment was constantly full of guests, many of them Muslims. We were committed to opening our home throughout the week to host our refugee friends for lunches, dinners, and late night chai and sweets. These meals gave them a small taste of the community they missed so much and also led to spiritual conversations. But, of course, all of this meant we were regularly emptying out our fridge, freezer, and cupboards in order to feed everyone.

Now, however, we had a freezer full of meat that we couldn’t serve to most of our guests. Muslims are forbidden to eat pork. And we would never dare serve pork as even part of a meal when we were hosting Muslims, since they would find it to be so offensive and disgusting. Yet we had pounds and pounds of pork sausage in our freezer. This meant that my family had meat just for us that lasted for several months. Like Elijah and the widow’s oil, the pork sausage seemed like it would never run out. Throughout one of the most difficult financial seasons for our family, we had abundant meat to eat – and that of the most delicious kind.

In seasons of support-raising, like this one, I am reminded of the sweet provision that came from our friends in that little rural church. My wife and I have brought up the pork sausage many times over the years as an example of God’s kind and unexpected provision. He really will take care of us, whether that’s by hunting deer, monthly support, or even a freezer full of pork sausage.

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 6:31-33, ESV

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.

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The No Man’s Land of Cross-Cultural Friendships

Sometimes, friends from another culture experiment with violating the norms of their culture around you. It’s as if your foreignness creates a little bubble where they can safely break certain cultural laws of behavior and decorum. This is usually all fine and well – but only if you know it’s happening. When you don’t know it’s happening or don’t see it coming, it gets downright confusing, as nobody knows which rules are still in effect.

Why is your local friend not fighting you when you offer to pay for their lunch? Arguing over the bill is the respectable thing to do. Is that male student making casual eye contact during conversation with your wife because he is being inappropriate, or because he finds it refreshing that foreign women will actually talk to him like his sisters will? Did that person really just accept your honorable yet hypothetical offer to buy them a very expensive plane ticket? How did they miss the cues of what is, after all, their culture, not yours?

Our local friends can see when we are doing our best to become acceptable outsiders in their culture. But because we can never fully become cultural insiders, they must meet us part-way, which means altering some of their behavior for our sakes. One principle of cross-cultural relationships is that whenever genuine relationship is present, cultural adaptation is always flowing both ways, whether this is recognized or not. We become like our friends, and it’s always been this way.

Sometimes, however, your friends jump at the chance to do things differently, and when they do that without explaining what’s going on, you can get caught quite flat-footed. Here, I am reminded of a local friend who came to stay with us one summer. Last-minute hosting for a night or two is very normal in the traditional culture of the area. But local wisdom says that guests are like fish – after three days they start to stink. This friend stayed for nine nights, and all indications were that he intended to keep staying. Exhausted, we eventually planned a trip out of town so that we had a mutually face-saving way to kick him out.

Another example of this happened right after our youngest was born. My wife had made the brave choice to give birth in-country, and the experience was, shall we say, mixed. Because the umbilical cord was around our son’s neck, the doctors decided a C-section was necessary. When administering the anesthesia into her spine, however, they poked too many holes in the spinal cord lining. This meant that a lot of my wife’s spinal cord fluid escaped, leaving her bedridden for a week and with a tremendous headache and pain whenever she viewed light, or tried to sit up or walk around.

The upside of giving birth in-country was the care we received from the believing foreigners and locals. Our fridge quickly ran out of space for all the food we were given, and many local friends came for the congratulatory post-birth visits, which typically last 15-20 minutes. Local culture is practical in this way, respecting the family by visiting, but also giving a nod to the fact that moms who have just given birth aren’t in much shape to host. In our case, my wife was bedridden in a darkened room and in no shape for even much conversation, so I did my best to serve chai and sweets to the guests, show off the newborn in between feedings and diaper changes, make conversation, corral our kids, toggle the house electricity as it came and went, and make regular trips back to the bedroom to see if my wife needed more pain meds. Not for the last time, I thought to myself how utterly practical the extended family model of living is, where these responsibilities would be spread out among various relatives, and not all fall on one parent.

Most of our friends gave their gifts, read the room, and after twenty minutes or so announced they had to be going, politely refusing my multiple offers for them to stay longer. One couple, however, got caught in the foggy no man’s land of cross-cultural relationships I have described above. When I protested their departure – “But it’s still so early!” – they looked at one another, smiled, and then sat back down. Oh no, I thought to myself, it’s happened again. The wires of our different cultures have crossed. Three hours later, they were still there.

When midnight came, I was utterly at a loss for how to communicate that it would be super helpful if they left. I really didn’t want to offend them. The husband was a new believer with a very sensitive and emotional personality. His wife, not yet a believer, was literally a sniper in the local armed forces. So, I just kept the chai and sunflower seeds flowing and became an expert in how my wife was supposed to eat a gnarly flour/sugar/oil paste that locals swear by for a post-birth recovery diet. After all the visits, we had ended up with a massive bowl of the stuff in our fridge.

Sometime after midnight, our guests stood up again and announced they really needed to be going. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to honorably protest. Instead, I squeaked out something open to interpretation like, “Wow, what a time we’ve had, eh?” and we proceeded to say goodbye dozens of times as we shuffled out the door, through the courtyard, and to the outer gate.

I went back inside and saw that there would still be about 20 minutes of electricity before it would shut off for the night.

“Are they gone?” my wife groaned when I went back to check on her.

“Yes, they just left,” I said.

“Wow, they are… sweet… but what happened? Why did they stay for four hours?”

I just shrugged, “I have no idea…”

“Hey,” I smiled, “want some of that yummy paste stuff?”

My wife made a gagging face, laughed, regretted laughing, and proceeded to settle down for a couple hours of sleep before our son’s next feeding.

If you have cross-cultural friendships, look out for the no man’s land, when because of contact with you, your friends begin unexpectedly experimenting with their own rules. When this happens, the normal rules go out the window – and you may find yourself very much in the fog.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

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While We Eat Wittenberg Falafel

He agreed to meet with us to study the Bible. Now to see if he really means it.

Ali* is a friend from an unengaged people group. Reza* first introduced us to him when he was a newer refugee in the US. In the years since then, we’ve hung out and discussed the gospel in the US, hung out and discussed the gospel when he moved back to Central Asia, and hung out and discussed the gospel again now that he’s moved back to the US. We laugh about how we keep following one another from one side of the world to the other. But much more than I have, a whole network of believing friends have spent time with Ali and shared the gospel with him.

Ali is one of those confusing unbelievers who doesn’t seem to be drawn to the message of the gospel – nor to be particularly offended by it. His loosely-Islamic live-life-to-the-fullest beliefs don’t seem to have budged in the years since I’ve known him. But he’s clearly drawn to Christian friendship and Christian community. He’s a happy, generous, charming, loyal friend, the kind of guy sure to liven up any gathering. To know Ali is to know that he would give you the shirt off his back if needed – or round up his relatives to bust you out of jail.

All this means I find myself now at a loss when it comes to how to talk to him about spiritual things. My words and the words of so many friends just haven’t seemed effective. Neither has a rich exposure to Christian community. I still try to intersperse my conversation with truth, putting out spiritual hooks as it were, but I find myself surprisingly unsure of how and when to press. This means I’m grateful for other believing friends who do feel free to open up direct gospel conversation with Ali when we are together.

Last night, Reza, Ali, and myself got together at a local Middle Eastern cafe and restaurant. Turns out it was a place Reza had not been to since his days an unbeliever. This environment had him reflecting and talking about the craziness of his life back then and the difference that the grace of God has made since. I finished up my falafel sandwich and nodded gratefully as Reza directed the conversation to Jesus and to what his claims mean for Ali.

As Reza and Ali sparred back and forth in their happy and direct way, politely passing the hookah hose to each other in turn, I felt myself more and more able to enter into the conversation, attempting to play wingman as Reza led. The goodness of this was not lost on me. Here was a friend I had led to faith and taught to share the gospel, who was now years later showing me the way.

There were three points in the conversation where Ali seemed to be internalizing what we were saying in a different way. First, in agreeing that Jesus is the only sinless prophet, and that his birth and life is utterly unique. Second, in perhaps understanding for the first time our claim that as God-man, Jesus was able to die because of his humanity, even though God cannot die. Third, in hearing a metaphor for imputation in which a country’s president honors the son of a war hero for the sacrifice his father has made for the country, even though the son has done nothing other than exist in relationship to his father. This final illustration seemed to help him understand Reza’s biblical argument that we could be accepted by God based on our relationship with Jesus’ as our sacrifice and advocate.

I don’t know if last night’s conversation indeed shifted anything within Ali or not. However, I was encouraged to hear him reference previous in-depth conversations about the gospel, some from years past. He does remember those, I found myself saying internally. Ali’s manner is such that I am tempted to feel that all the truth and love that he’s been exposed to simply bounces off and is soon dismissed or forgotten.

At the very end of the conversation, Reza pivoted toward the importance of actually reading the Bible, rather than just talking about things. I shared with Ali how things had shifted for Reza when we moved from regular debate into regular study of the book of Matthew. As we spiraled around the idea of the three of us meeting to do this, it seemed like Ali actually agreed. There’s always a Central Asian Insh’allah (God willing) noncommittal dynamic when making plans with friends from this part of the world. So the proof will be when Reza and I make a plan and send a concrete invitation.

But it seems as if Ali has agreed to study the Bible with us. After a good long while of feeling like our words have been utterly powerless, I am excited to expose him directly to the words that are like “fire, like a hammer that shatters a rock” (Jer 23:29). I want my jovial friend to know true joy. But for that to happen, we’ll need more power to break through his spiritual blindness. To paraphrase Luther, in the end, all we can do is expose him to the Word, keep eating falafel with friends, and pray the word has its effect. In the end, the Word does everything.

I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

Martin Luther

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 changed for security

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The Night of the Cane Toads

It was good to be a missionary kid in Melanesia the 90’s and 2000’s. Internet existed, but it was dial-up, pre-social media, and not yet in our pockets. This meant we had the chance to be a bit more creative with our boredom. One way that we did this was by doing our part to maintain a strong culture of pranks among the teenagers on the missionary base.

I have fond memories of toilet-papering different missionary’s houses, launching water balloons at the high school seniors giving rides to girls on their motor bikes, lobbing stink bombs and cough bombs into living rooms full of movie watchers, and causing other (mostly) harmless mayhem of this variety.

On a typical Friday night, many of the junior-highers and high-schoolers, whether base kids or dorm kids, would be out milling around, playing dodgeball, riding motorbikes, or hanging out in small groups. But some nights, especially during breaks when the dorm kids went back to the tribal areas, it seemed like everyone had already made plans, and no one was coming out. The base was dark, quiet, and lonely. One might wander around hoping to find someone to talk to, only to encounter the shadowy local security guards with their bows and arrows, or the ever-present cane toads who would stage a nightly mass invasion of our soccer field and basketball courts.

One quiet Friday night like this, I was out sitting on a cement wall with a couple other boys from my class and two girls. The girls cheerfully announced that they would have to go soon, because a group of them had secured the privilege of using the only hot tub on the base. We couldn’t believe it. Only one house at the far western edge of the base had a jacuzzi, set up under a covered balcony outside. And since this was the only hot tub on the base, perhaps in the entire province, it was a big deal if anyone ever got to use it. Apparently, five or six of the girls from our class had made arrangements, some kind of girls’ night – and we were definitely not invited.

As I recall, they seemed to enjoy flaunting this to some extent, which didn’t do much for the mood of those few of us who would be left by ourselves on a boring Friday night. So, after the girls left, I had the thought of pranking this girls’ night, thereby killing two birds with one stone. We’d find something fun with which to occupy ourselves, and we’d also get some revenge on our female classmates for their ill-advised flaunting.

But what to do for a prank? We knew where they would be and roughly what time they would be there. What sort of prank would rise above the common ones, and go down in the annals of MK prankery as truly worthy? Slowly, an idea formed in my mind. Maybe we could “recruit” the cane toads in our cause.

Cane toads, if you’ve never seen them, are a large, brownish yellow, invasive species of toad that have taken over Australia and Melanesia. They are appropriately warty (being toads) and as I mentioned above, they would emerge at night and hop all around the open lawns and sports areas of our school, looking for bugs to eat. It was all too easy to catch one, or if needed, a whole bucket of them. One just had to watch out for the poison glands, and the toad pee.

We agreed on a plan. We would collect an entire bucket of toads, sneak up on the hot tub, and while our classmates were enjoying themselves without a care in the world – dump the entire bucket of gnarled amphibians into the jacuzzi with them. It would be a lightning sneak attack followed by us immediately melting away into the darkness.

The three of us boys commandeered a large yellow plastic bucket from somewhere and went down to the basketball courts to collect our little coconspirators. It didn’t take long to fill up the entire bucket and soon it was full of a wriggling and hopping mass of cane toads – maybe around twenty of them. They had peed on us quite a few times, but we brushed this off as simply the cost of victory.

Casually and unobtrusively, we made our way all the way across the base, waving at the few people we passed and trying not to smirk when they looked askance at the moving contents of our bucket. Soon we were at the edge of a small field, just across from which stood the gate of the target house, and just beyond that, the wooden lattice that shielded the hot tub. It was perfect. The lattice would block our approach, meaning the girls would have no idea we were sneaking up on them until the very last second.

We snuck across the field and opened the metal gate as silently as possible. The hinges creaked and we froze, considering whether to abort the mission. But it seemed to go unnoticed. We could hear laughter and see movement behind the lattice. Now was the time to strike. We snuck as close as we dared to the lattice – and then we attacked. With a movement that took only a few seconds, we bolted around the side of the lattice, dumped the bucket of toads into the frothing waters of the hot tub, and then sprinted back into the darkness.

As we ran as fast as we could down the dirt roads, we wondered why there wasn’t any screaming. There had been some initial shrieks of alarm as we had shot into view, dumped the bucket, and took off. But after that, there wasn’t the kind of reaction we were expecting. I later found out that we had dumped the bucket so quickly that the girls hadn’t been able to tell what was in the bucket. Some thought it was just some brown leaves. However, soon they started to see and feel big brown-legged things – many of them – moving around in the foamy water. And then the screaming started.

We were halfway across the base when we heard the blood-curdling screams, and lots of them. Feelings of satisfaction and victory mingled with those of alarm as we realized that that level of screaming would probably trigger some kind of response from security. Still, we laughed as we ran. The night of the cane toads would be one those girls would never forget.

We later found out that all but one of the girls had leaped out of the hot tub in terror once they realized it had become the equivalent of the second plague of Egypt. One of the girls, however, who had grown up in a tribal village, stayed in the hot tub and began matter-of-factly plucking the slowly boiling toads out of the jacuzzi. At some point they had all been removed, hopping off into the nearby field, with only a few who had become casualties of the conflict. The girls then got back to enjoying their evening. And of course, plotting their revenge.

For our part, we greatly enjoyed boasting about our triumph for weeks to come and telling the story over and over again. We knew they would try to get us back, but really, what could they do?

One afternoon I came home and noticed that my mom was acting suspiciously. Mildly concerned, I turned down the hallway toward my room and was suddenly greeted by a cane toad, sitting in the middle of the hallway, looking at me condescendingly. I knew this probably meant something bad, so I hurried to my room and flung the door open. Rather than my normal bedroom with its usual high school boy decorations and trappings, I was instead greeted by a suffocating amount of pink – pink everywhere. The walls and the surfaces had been absolutely covered in hearts, girly decorations, and Precious Moments paraphernalia. And in the midst of the barbie-style devastation were two more cane toads. The girls had gotten their revenge, and not only had they recruited toads. They had gone so low as to recruit my very own mother. Touché.

It took an awfully long time to get all that pink out of my bedroom and to return it to its proper masculine state. But even as I cleaned and fumed and plotted how to escalate this vendetta, I remembered the quality of the shrieks after we had successfully completed our mission, and I still felt that it had been worth it. Yes, the night of the cane toads had been most definitely worth it.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

The Prisoner-Scholar and a Bible For His People

Since 2011, our people group have had the complete Bible in their language – both Old and New Testaments. This is an amazing thing. The translation and publication of the Bible into any language is usually a long tale with many different players. Someday, I’d like to put that more detailed story together. For now, this is the summarized version that I’ve managed to piece together through various conversations over the years. So, consider this a rough draft of the tale, not yet history in the carefully-researched sense.

The story begins with Kamal*, a prolific writer and educator among our people group during the turbulent 1970s. Kamal was a short man who always wore a distinctive floppy scarf-hat and had a passion for his people group’s suppressed language. In spite of this politically dangerous interest, Kamal’s reputation as a scholar and writer was so strong that he was put in charge of the education department of his province. However, it didn’t take much to fall foul of the ever-changing governments of the country during that era. Kamal seems to have written something or to have held a position that put him in hot water with whichever military dictator was in charge at that point. He was imprisoned in the south of the country, far away from the mountainous homeland of his people.

Many years later, when I attended his memorial service, I learned that it was while he was imprisoned and not yet a believer that he first committed to translating the Bible for his people. Apparently, Kamal had a dream where Jesus straight up told him to translate the Bible into his language. Kamal, wisely, agreed that he would. But he was in prison. How was he to accomplish this enormous project? God provided the means through a new cellmate, a Syriac priest – who had an old Syriac Bible with him. Kamal and the priest could communicate in the trade language of the country, so it seems that the priest would translate from Syriac into the trade language and then Kamal would craft each verse into his native tongue.

By the time he was let out of prison, Kamal seems to have come to faith and to have written a manuscript of the gospel of Luke, made up of loose papers. He moved back to his home city and neighborhood, just a few alleyways down from where my family recently lived in our old stone stone. There, he continued to write and teach, unsure of what to do with the Gospel of Luke manuscript that he kept in secret. Given the political and religious climate of the time, it was much too dangerous to attempt to work on it or publish it openly.

Just a few weeks ago at Cross Con ’24, I learned that this is where a Lebanese ministry leader enters the story. This now elderly leader told me that he had come to visit Kamal’s country, having independently developed a desire to see the Bible translated into Kamal’s language. This was a time of political intrigue, assassinations, and guerrilla warfare, so this ministry leader had to be very cautious as he asked around to see if there were any believers who would help him begin the translation. Somehow, he was directed to Teacher Kamal’s house, where a relieved Kamal handed him his precious stack of papers and told him to take them back to Lebanon to keep the translation moving along. At least at that point, the project was too dangerous to conduct inside the country.

Over the next couple decades, an international coalition of believers worked on the New Testament translation together. From what I understand, these were believers in Lebanon, Germany, France, and eventually back in Kamal’s country also. At this point much of the translation was being done from German, though later work was to be done directly from Greek and Hebrew. By the time the 90’s came, a British Bible translator, Alex* was living in a different city of Kamal’s region, and took on leadership of the project. Alex put together a translation team, including Kamal, and in the late 1990’s the New Testament was published. Although there were many revisions to come, the involvement of writers and poets like Kamal from the beginning gave the text a rich literary beauty in the local tongue.

By the time I was on the ground in 2007 as a green 19-year-old, this New Testament had been updated and had been eagerly adopted by the the community of local believers. The next year, Hama*, one of my close friends and a new believer, also managed to get his hands on one of the few early drafts of the complete Old Testament. I remember opening the massive three-ring binder with him and gazing together for the first time on Genesis and Psalms in his mother tongue. Hama treasured and studied this early text for years to come.

In 2011, the complete Bible was published for the first time. Decades of work by Alex, Kamal, the ministry leader from Lebanon, and others had led to the complete word of God now being available in our people’s heart language. Some communities of believers loved this 2011 text so much that they flat-out refused to use later revised editions, and started circulating illegally printed 2011 Bibles for their house churches – thus proving that KJV-only-style controversies are unfortunately not unique to the west.

The political and religious climate, while never calm, had grown much calmer since the 70’s. This has meant long stretches when this complete Bible can be spotted for sale in the bazaar’s book shops. To this day, someone on our teams might snap a picture when we see one prominently on display and send it to each other, “Look what I spotted in the bazaar today.” The government has even allowed a local church to set up at a huge annual book fair to sell these Bibles and other Christian books.

In spite of this measure of freedom, we still have many locals who don’t know that the Bible exists in their language. I’ve always loved asking if a given local knew that God’s word was available in their language. When they said no (as they often did) I would pull a print Bible out of my bag or open up a Bible app on my phone and show them a text like John 1:1, one of my favorite texts for explaining the divinity of Jesus. “You believe the eternal word of God became a physical book, right? Well, this verse says that the eternal word of God became a man.”

As I referred to earlier, I got to attend the memorial service for Kamal a few years ago, led by Alex and others. This was a public event, where hundreds of locals came out to honor the great writer. Few, however, knew of his role as the first Bible translator of their people. To my great delight, this part of Kamal’s story was told publicly, and a plea made for the attendees to read this book to which Kamal had devoted so many years of his life.

Kamal was obedient to the work that God gave him to do. So was the leader from Lebanon, and Alex, and many others. This has meant that as a church planter I have had the most important of all tools available to me – a Bible in the local tongue. It has meant that when I find a verse that seems a bit off in the word choice or grammar I have the privilege of simply emailing Alex for it to be considered for a future update. Sadly, most of the feedback these men get these days is suggestions and complaints from foreigners and locals for places where the the text needs to be revised!

Yet when we come to our senses we all realize what a great debt we owe these men. They have done something that is foundational for everything workers like myself try to accomplish. Cliche as it might seem, we really do stand on their shoulders. Many are aging fast and looking to hand off their work. Some of them are no longer with us, like Kamal. But I thank God for each of them, and someday I hope to write more of their stories.

Because of Kamal, the prisoner-scholar, his people now have a Bible. And that changes everything.

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 changed for security

Photos are from Unsplash.com