Transition Post--So Long But Not Goodbye

Well, where to start? As we shared in a previous post, we had made the decision not to extend our commitment to World Mission and Africa Nazarene University beyond its original length, and in fact had to abbreviate it just a bit to meet the wishes of Point Loma Nazarene University, Mark's new employer.

First perhaps a bit about the last few days and weeks at Africa Nazarene and then a report and some pictures from our first days in the US and then finally some things we've learned.

"LATTER DAYS" IN AFRICA

Within the last two months, Nancy and Mark got a couple of things done that had been on the "to do" list for over a year. In late April, Mark flew to Johannesburg and did interviews for the second "African Voices" NMI book we have been asked to do. He spent several hours over two days with Dr. Enoch Litswele (pictured), whose parents became Nazarenes in the 1920's and who has been a Nazarene pastor, educator and Bible college head in Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe. It was fascinating to hear his stories of the history of the Church of the Nazarene, especially in Southern Africa.

 During that same trip, Dr. Filimao Chambo stepped away from strategic planning sessions to spend several hours being interviewed. He too, has a lengthy history with the church of the Nazarene. His family has been part of the denomination for over 85 years. From him, though, Mark got a glimpse of  the future of the Church of the Nazarene in Africa. Blog readers who have access to Nazarene missionary books will be able to read both of those chapters in a book scheduled to come out in 2011.

Mark also got to visit with Spencer and April Baggott who were in South Africa for medical appointments, and their great kids, Luke and Abbie (pictured)

In May, Nancy and Mark went with Rev. Don and Evie Gardner, our Field Strategy Coordinator and his wife, to the Maasai Mara--kind of the classic Kenya safari experience, and it did not disappoint. We stayed in a tented camp and spent one memorable afternoon with lions walking between our vehicles and roaring within 20 feet of us (pictured). It was a wonderful goodbye to the amazing wildlife of Kenya.

In early June, the goodbyes began officially. We can say without qualification that never in our past lives and we expect never in our future lives will we experience the warmth and kindness of our leavetaking in Kenya. Over the course of 2-3 weeks there was a University "high tea" in the Helstrom Student Center auditorium with 600 people in attendance and ending with our being pulled onstage to begin a kind of African "conga line" of students, faculty and staff that snaked its way 3-4 times around the auditorium floor. Nancy said the highlight was watching Mark dance. Mark felt her smile had a subtext to it. When Mark went by Pastor Bekke, a wonderful preacher and singer from Swaziland, a nation whose Nazarenes tend to be pretty conservative about dancing, Mark said, "Pastor Bekke, please don't tell the Swazi church I was dancing!" Pastor Bekke said, "No, I will tell them you were just happy!" 

That same week there was an evening goodbye dinner for faculty and staff. There were also ten other events--goodbye parties with the Religion Students Association (B.Th. grad dinner in our home pictured), the International Students Association, with the Alumni Association, with Mark's staff, with the Department of Religion, the congregation of University Church, with the missionaries--a dozen goodbye events in all. Beyond that, as we tried to complete our packing, we finally had to put a note on our door saying, "We would love to talk but we need to finish our packing" because, in the African tradition which marks intimacy and real friendship, people were dropping by all day to bring small gifts and to make short, really eloquent speeches about something one of us said that touched someones heart. Because Africans value oral tradition, they are more formal in their speech on such occasions, and they make a point of remembering something one of us has said. 

On Thursday, we were acknowledged and thanked by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Leah Marangu and on Friday at Graduation we were thanked by our Regional Director, Dr. Filimao Chambo.

Now an acknowledgment and disclaimer: First, the primary point we hope you can gain here there is that Africans are world class in their ability to communicate the importance and value of a relationship. We continue to think about and copy some of the things we have learned from them about relationship.If we had done the same thing on an American campus, there would have been a formal event with a plaque and some nice speeches, but that the level of support here is uniquely African, all out of proportion to the amount of time we have been here from an American point of view.

Second, Mark would say that a good portion of the warmth of the goodbyes comes from having a wife who is SO relational, who opened her office to students and heard their concerns and advised them. African kids have very busy parents and they are lonely for adult mentors. Nancy served that role with them and also with faculty and staff in a wonderful way. 

Even so, we do want to thank our African colleagues and students and friends for the incredible, unforgettable warmth of your goodbyes to us. We literally will never forget it and hope to retain relationship with as many as possible of you. That "deal" of buying you lunch if you get to San Diego is a real offer!

Friday, June 18th began with Mark and Nancy participating in graduation (including a symbolic handoff of the ANU ceremonial "mace" from Mark, through the Vice Chancellor, to the new DVC Dr. Rodney Reed) and ended with Mark and Nancy getting on a plane for LA. Due to flying with the sun, we were able to have ANU graduation lunch on FRIDAY with Filimao Chambo, Jon and Margaret Scott in Kenya and a "Father's Day" lunch on SATURDAY with our children and the new grandbaby in LA (see picture).

"EARLY DAYS" IN CALIFORNIA

After our lunch on Saturday with the kids, we crashed in a hotel for a couple of nights to rest up and then picked up an air mattress and a couple of lawn chairs and moved into our  new condo (street view pictured--rented at least short-term from Point Loma). Within a week we had installed internet (aaaahhhhh--the luxury of a connection that mainly WORKS and is pretty zippy!), gotten cable, gotten SIM cards or topped up our phones, purchased a car, signed up for Point Loma benefits, and generally started our new life. Our first night in San Diego, we had dinner at George's Ocean Terrace, a wonderful restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean (Nan and Mark pictured there).

In spare moments, we worked on the chapters for the second African Voices NMI book--more incredible stories of capable and faithful Afrricans doing important Kingdom work. Yesterday, in an amazing coincidence, BOTH of our shipments--the one from Nampa and the one from Kenya--arrived within 3 hours of each other! We got bed and other furniture wrestled into place, but as you can see from the boxes in our living room (pictured), still a lot of work to do!

SOME THINGS WE LEARNED

In conclusion, some insights and thoughts about our time in Kenya:

•  If we had it to do over again, would we make the same decision to spend three years in training and serving, WOULD we do it all again? Our answer is an enthusiastic "yes."   It was a real experience with some aggravations and disappointments and challenges in it, of course. Even so, our time at Nazarene Theological and at Africa Nazarene University has been a highlight of our experience-blessed lives.
• We’ve learned that twenty-first century missionary training is very different from training and philosophy of missions a century ago. As a result, it’s useful to us in a variety of situations: listen more than we talk, cultivate partnerships, accept and allow for cultural differences, suspend quick judgment, avoid authoritarian language, accept that understanding comes in several layers over an extended period of time.
• We are encouraged and blessed by the energy and growth of the church in Africa.
• We are constantly amazed at and instructed by the quality and the level of commitment of the denominational leaders in Africa. No one there told us, “Be more like us”, but how do we process the fact that two of the people in this book are training to go back into a creative access area where they may be estranged from their families and their lives will be in jeopardy for sharing the gospel, where one interviewee was part of a house church in which 80% of the members were martyred in 18 months, where several of those we have spoken for these interviews and in other contexts have left jobs or training in engineering, veterinary medicine, or government service to follow the call of the gospel? As we return to the US, what do we do with the example of sacrifice made by some of the people featured in this book?
• Our clear and easy “answers” to some of the challenges in Africa have melted away as we understand better the complexity of the circumstances. We recall the essayist who said, “There is a simple answer to every complex life question, and that simple answer is always wrong.”  
• While it’s true that there is poverty and corruption and disease in Africa, it is also true that Africa is making progress in many areas and that the global church needs to see Africa as a real place—not all safaris or all slums, but a place with gleaming shopping centers and well-travelled and well-dressed people and well-educated people as well as those struggling with the well-documented challenges.
• Because we have heard African denominational leaders say such things repeatedly, we believe that Wesleyan-Holiness is a unique and effective resource in addressing some of the key challenges in Africa. The idea of “prevenient grace” is good news to people for whom fatalism about the future is a natural response to great hardship. The idea that Christians are “co-laborers” with Christ is a powerful response to dependency. Our interviewees point to holiness over and over as an antidote to corruption and nominal Christianity if we dedicate ourselves more to imperfectly living it rather than to perfectly defining it.
• For ourselves, we are praising the Lord for the new opportunities he is providing, but admit to being in “listening and abiding” mode for his will beyond new business cards and position description. It’s so easy to see missionaries as the front line in evangelism and the Western world as a de-militarized zone, and yet the newspapers provide painful evidence that darkness is at work in comfortable American neighborhoods as well. In a powerful NPR interview before her death, Mother Teresa pointed to spiritual poverty as a more debilitating condition than economic poverty and encouraged First World people to engage close to home as well as far from it. As we said in our deputation services, we do believe this is part of what the Lord is telling us.

Finally, faithful readers of Africonnection and friends and colleagues and "fellow-travelers" on this journey of faith, we thank you more than we can express for your engagement, for your notes and face to face comments telling us you were reading, and for your kindnesses to us in other ways. The Church of the Nazarene, like all organizations, is changing, but we have benefited from the tradition of strong prayer and emotional support for missionaries. Two suggestions for you to consider: first, please do look for other international missionaries to whom you could extend some of your prayer and emotional support. 

We'd also ask this--there is a new wind blowing that encourages committed Christians to have missionary hearts in more familiar settings. We hear occasionally from some young people or people in transition who say--"I'm wanting to serve God in a deeper way. Is there some work I can do in Africa?" Now the answer to that question is always "yes," but we worry a bit that the reason it's phrased that way is because serving in Africa (or to some extent in China or in India) has been seen as kind of the "gold standard" for service and commitment. 

Even some of our African friends, though, are saying to us--why don't your people serve closer to home? And of course Americans DO serve close to home--in all kinds of volunteer or service organizations, paid and upaid but it would be so wonderful if the church could extend its emotional and spiritual support in deeper, richer ways to those "local, tent-maker missionaries" and to see the work THEY do as part of a new "gold standard." Could you look for someone like that and give them the level of support and prayer you have given us? Many of you will say--I'm already doing that, and we thank you for, as usual, being way ahead of us in your insights and faithfulness, but one final thought--any chance the Lord is asking YOU to be that "new era, local, tent-making missionary"? 

For ourselves, we believe this new kind of missionary service is what God is calling us to, but we are feeling our way and praying for God's daily guidance and insight. The path is not clear, the job description and parameters of this new chapter are not set. You won't be getting these blog posts anymore (somehow pictures of lions from the San Diego Zoo just don't have the same "zing" as pictures from Maasai Mara!). But we would covet your prayers and we will be praying for you that each of us can have insights about what God is calling us to do in this new era where ALL missionaries hearts are moved, but only SOME missionaries addresses change. Blessings on you, thank you again, and best wishes as you seek the Lord's will for your own area of service.

So long but not goodbye, 

Nancy and Mark

See Amboseli sunset and Pacific Ocean sunset pictured below.