Here we go again! No... not another famine, just another article on the desperate situation in Turkana.

In the current issue of Chrisitanity Today (May 2007), you will find an article titled, "Famine Again?" This article highlights the work of large food aid organizations in Turkana. I was disappointed (to say the least) that there was no mention of the Church or christians in Turkana.

What follows is our letter to the editor of Christianity Today. We will see if any of it is included in the next issue of Christianity Today:

One of the very first photographs I took when we arrived at our language learning location in the village of Kangirisae was a scene of free relief food bags piled high in the middle of the village. It was printed in our first prayer newsletter from the field over 7 years ago.

Not much has changed.

Yesterday I traveled through the villages along the Kerio River to take medicine and a repaired motorcycle out to the CMF medical clinic in Nakaalei. It was food distribution day. In some ways, food distribution days are good if you want a chance to meet with people and you don’t have lots of time to find them—everyone is at the food distribution. All along my 10-hour trek yesterday, World Vision was distributing food in all the villages on the same day (a recent practice that keeps people from traveling from village to village to collect food—as many are on the roster in different villages under different names… but that’s a whole other story).

I teach people about HIV/AIDS because in this one African country alone, over 400 people are dying from AIDS every day. In Nairobi, mothers who are HIV positive abandon their babies—sneaking out of hospitals, leaving them at the police station, taking them to the gate of an orphanage. In Western Kenya, there are entire villages with no mothers or fathers—only children and grandparents.

In the tiny village of Kosikiria, it is likely that no one has HIV—but there are people with STDs. Apparently the Turkana are traditionally promiscuous. While there are very strict sexual boundaries for married women—they may only sleep with their husbands, men and unmarried women can be promiscuous as long as they are not caught. In a polygamous culture, the men are always looking for their next wife.

Upon coming home to our tiny village of Kosikiria the last week of January, Katy and I were not feeling the zeal and romantic fervor for missions and living in Africa we first felt when we arrived in Turkana in 1999. Nope. We were feeling the heat, the dusty wind; the pressures of a community that expects too much from us. No matter what we give or how we help, more is always expected from us. We could feel the lightness of the last couple weeks of vacation time with visiting family quickly evaporating. The burdens of the community and of living in the desert were returning, uncomfortably hot and dirty, on our backs.

What is the difference between professional atheletes and church league?

Daily life and disciplines affect the ability to react and make the right decisions in moments of crisis, or “on the spot,” or in the game. Most of the Christians in today’s church are just in the church league. They gather for a once a week for practice—to hear what Jesus did in the difficult decisions of life, and then go out to play the game.

If we believe that Jesus was a human just like us, and that he made the right decisions—then it is not merely the decisions we can focus on, not just the question “what would Jesus do.” Instead we need to ask, “how did Jesus prepare himself each day, so that he was able to make the right decisions and respond in a Godly way when he was “on the spot?”

It was at Milligan College that I first began examine issues epistimologically. That is, it was where I first began to think. I was asked to examine choices I had made in my life, not based on the cultural norms of my family or the town in Pennsylvania where I had grown up, but based instead on the culture of a group of people who proclaimed that Jesus was Lord of their lives. I began to see that all the things we did in our life were supported by faith, not just my decision to attend church on Sunday morning, but everything required a faith of some sort.

When I walk into a room at night, I reach out my hand to find a piece of plastic which has been mounted on the wall by the door. As I move the piece of plastic either up or down, a light turns on in the room. I have done this so many times in my life that I rarely think about it anymore. I have faith, I believe that when I switch that piece of plastic, the light will come on. Sometimes my faith is briefly shaken when the light does not come on, so I replace the light bulb. My experiences within my culture has taught me to have faith in light switches, and in my mind, a light switch is directly related to the light in a room.

God was to bless all nations through Abraham, all peoples would become the descendants of Abraham through Jesus. Is this the God you worship? The God of all nations? Or are you still worshipping the tribal God? The god who created the world and has especially blessed your tribe above others. The god who hates and punishes evil doers (defined as those who are not like you) but blesses those who are righteous (defined by those who are like you).

This is the God of your tribe, not the God of all tribes. Israel wasn’t too thrilled with the God of all tribes—they wanted him to remain their special God. The message of salvation from sin and freedom for all peoples was not a message received well by the Jews. The High Priests of the one true tribal God made sure that Jesus was killed.

"But the one quality I do want to highlight here is this: a leader must devote himself to nurturing his team members and enabling them to function at their maximum.
What often happens on the mission field is that the assigned leader of a team is burdened down with his own job responsibilities, and has inadequate time and energy to spend time nurturing his teammates. The teammates, meanwhile, begin to sense that their leader has put his own work before that of the team as a whole—which may or may not be true, yet it is so perceived. Thus the team members gradually lose their loyalty to the leader. The problem for the leader is how to demonstrate servanthood and self-effacement even in the midst of busyness and pressure. If the servant spirit is truly there, it ought to come through no matter how busy the leader is. However, where possible, it is better to choose people as leaders who aren’t so busy with some specific job that they have no time to lead." (Hale 219)

10) You are wealthy beyond comprehension.
If you are sitting in this room today, then you have a wealth that is unparalleled in most of the world. This may be hard for you to believe now, but most of the world uses many fewer resources each day than even students at Emmanuel do. Imagine a wealth that can call an airplane out of the sky to carry your family away in a few hours notice. Imagine a wealth that could take a month of resources for an entire Turkana family and pour it into the fuel tank of your truck for one day of driving—and maybe just for pleasure. Our wealth often became a barrier, and we found ourselves inadvertently preaching the gospel of health and wealth, just by the stuff that we had. Our wealth is always a tension in Africa.