Stories from HWHIA trainings

By Anthony:

I am leading many Helping Without Hurting in Africa trainings these days. In this post I'd like to share some highlights.

I can still get nervous even after all this time. Partly this is because many of our participants are very busy people with important positions - bishops, heads of organizations, development workers, denominational leaders, etc. Fears still come that people won't appreciate the training or that I am not capable enough. But the reality is that much of the learning comes from the discussions, and our material is excellent at generating important and deep discussions. There are new things I learn from participants every time.

I love seeing the impact made on organizations and churches, that they actually consider real practical changes to their ministry practices to better help materially poor people in Africa. I love inspiring people to have a deeper love for the poor. I love being able to teach the good news of the Gospel at every training, talking about justification by faith, the Kingdom of God, teaching against the prosperity gospel, and much more. I don't love the travel, but I love what God has given me to do right now! I am generally limiting myself to one international training per month, and my schedule is booked up about 9 months out. Below, see my coauthor Jonny teaching:

There was one new simple initiative that came about from another missionary, Debbie Nutzmann. She helped to organize a training for us in Jinja, Uganda. She came up with the idea of locally printing these stickers and giving them out to the participants for them to put on their phones or laptops. I thought it was awesome! So we took up the idea and now we give them out at each of our trainings. It is a great way to freely advertise the material. More importantly, I think it's a great conversation starter. When people ask about a sticker, it gives participants a chance to share what they learned about poverty alleviation.

One participant put it on his vehicle. Very cool.

My coauthor Jonny Kabiswa is the main person I lead trainings along with. But sometimes we divide and teach in different places with other facilitators. We are trying to raise up a team of facilitators and coach them well so that we have people we can recommend to interested organizations. This is a high level training and some of these facilitators have Master's Degrees or PHDs or else extensive experience in community development or church ministry. Here are three facilitators from Ghana and Togo who work for the Chalmers Center, or joined us to lead a training in Accra, Ghana:

David Fugoyo helped us lead a training in Kampala. He is from South Sudan but lives in Uganda. He is one of The Gospel Coalition Africa council members and also a contributor to the Africa Study Bible.

From the previously mentioned Jinja training, here is a photo with some of our co-facilitators and hosts. We actually had 8 other facilitators besides Jonny and me at this training.

The Jinja training group as a whole:

Monica, a co-facilitator in Jinja shared an interesting story. She was visiting Germany some years ago. A man asked her what country she was from and she told him she was from Uganda. He said, "Ohhhhhhh, you are from Amin's country!" And without losing a moment, she said back with a smile, "yessss and you are from Hitler's country."

I think this story is really illuminating. Most of us in the West would immediately and instinctively know that it would be seem rude and offensive to even mention Hitler to anyone from Germany, unless in a serious conversation about history. People don't want their country to be associated with that one time in history. Why don't we think the same way when it comes to African countries? Surely Ugandans don't want their country only to to be thought of and associated with one of their very worst times in history. Their country is more than that bad president. They have a beautiful country and are proud of it.

This is just a small example of a larger issue of the narrative in the West about Africa being so often just negative: lack of development, famine, bandits, violence. Of course, there are some famines and violence, but the negative narrative needs to be balanced with the true positive stories of Africa - beautiful joyful people, hard-working innovative people, hospitable cultures, thriving developed cities, passionate churches strong in faith, etc.

One of our recent trainings was in Malawi and it was very cold! I wished I had a winter coat. I got sick with fever, nausea, and digestive issues at the end of our time there and I could not get warm, even with all the blankets in the bed. Traveling back on the airplane while sick was a nightmare, but God sent me a Christian stewardess from Ethiopian Airlines who bumped me up to first class and took good care of me. Some photos from Malawi:

One thing that always comes up in our trainings is the importance of trust for development in a society, and the church's role in building trust in a society. But trust is a big problem in places like Uganda. You can read on the back of many taxis and buses the slogan, "never trust somebody." When I ask my Ugandan friends, most tell me they don't have a single person they fully trust in their life. I usually shock our training participants by talking about how I will send mobile money to people in Kampala I meet over social media, who I've never met in person before, paying them for a product to send it on the bus to me, trusting that they will actually do so and not just keep my money. Of course I have no possible way to track them down or figure out who they are. And yet I've never been cheated even once. It may happen someday, but I do this all the time and haven't been burned yet.

Here is a further reflection I have on trust. When someone warns you, "don't trust anyone" or sometimes, "you can't trust anyone in this country" or "anyone from this group,"  I think it is very likely that one of these things is true about that person:

1. They have been deeply wounded by someone breaking their trust and are now assuming all others are the same way.

2. They are not a trustworthy person themselves. They can't believe others would act in an honest way because they don't themselves.

3. They feel a deep sense of shame and hopelessness about the corruption of their own people.

For missionaries, it is often #1. They can take one bad experience in a relationship with someone in their host country, and then stereotype everyone else and never attempt to trust someone again. This has really hurt many relationships with Africans in particular who feel pre-judged by missionaries who won't give them a chance to be trusted.

However, unfortunately, it is often Ugandans who will warn missionaries not to trust anyone. It sometimes is from #2, but more often from #3. I wonder if it was foreigners in the past who made Ugandans to feel like everyone is corrupt and not to be trusted. But my experience now is that it is Ugandans themselves who are the ones perpetuating that lie. And they often cannot believe the trust I will place in people that they never would.

The lesson for all of us I think is to keep on building trust by giving people a chance. Trusting is an act of love, and every time you trust someone it's an opportunity for more trust to be built up.

The training in Ghana was really fun because they had great spicy food and a lot of seafood. I enjoyed trying a lot of new things.

This meal had cow skin, leg joints, fish, and crabs and was my favorite. With an okra sauce. This was the first time I ever ate crabs like this with the shell on. You just take a bite of them with the shell still on, very crunchy. You eat the whole shell. It was a lot of fun. I am adventurous when it comes to eating almost any type of animal. What is hard for me is eating fruits. Thankfully in Africa fruits are mostly served as dessert, so it's okay to pass on them. 

This was greens and tuna over rice.

There are a lot of criticisms today against sending missionaries to "reached" countries, rather than to unreached countries. I understand that criticism and agree with much of it. We are not sending enough missionaries to unreached tribes and places. It bothers my heart enough to make me feel guilty sometimes, am I in the right place? But I want to present another side that people don't often consider when it comes to missions today. 

In one of our trainings (I won't say which one), I was teaching a group of Christian leaders, educated leaders, who have been in church all their lives. As I was teaching them about justification by faith, I realized that for 90% of them, what I was teaching was basically new for them, that they are hearing it for the first time. Up to this point, they mainly were taught salvation through Christ but also by works. They fear God's judgment, never knowing if they have been good enough. Then some of the leaders also learned for the first time about the goodness of our bodies, and how we will be resurrected physically like Jesus was, not just living in Heaven forever as disembodied spirits. This was totally new for some of them.

On such days, when I get to spend hours teaching people how to understand the good news for the first time, in an overwhelmingly Christian country, I remember why we also need missionaries in such places.  Being "Christian" in name, does not mean that everyone in a country calling themselves "Christian" actually knows the Gospel.  In some countries the vast majority of people call themselves Christians because they believe that God exists, and because they call on him for help with food and finding a job, and because they know they are not Muslim. So they say they are Christian. 

I try to be the biggest proponent of what we can learn from African churches, but the other side of the coin is that there is still a great need for teaching and discipleship here. 

A participant said he thinks only 5% of churches in his country preach the true Gospel, the rest preach prosperity or salvation by works. He and several others told me later that if they preach the true Gospel they will be scolded or pushed out of their church. So they told me I need to stay in their country longer so that I could preach in their churches. I was of course so glad to see their excitement for the Gospel and wanting their churches to hear it! But I assured them that they could preach it themselves, and tried to encourage them to preach it despite the consequences.

Photos of a training group of all pastors in Moyo, Uganda near the South Sudan border.

Here are some random things that have come up in trainings - 

• An example of unintended hurting while trying to help that a participant shared. The UN or World Bank apparently shares weather predictions and shares about possible rain shortages or flooding. Apparently, farmers will often view those predictions as "what is going to happen" with the result that if they are told there will be floods or famines they won't even bother to plant at all.
• A participant said - "Fathers, give the girl child the gizzard!" Sometimes, mostly in the past, certain meats would not be served to women or girls, but saved for the father or boys.
• There is still belief in charms and witchcraft in many places in Africa. I learned that sometimes a person will pay a witchdoctor and they will scoop up soil underneath where another person has walked. Then they believe the witchdoctor will have power to do rituals against that person using the soil.
• Related to witchcraft, there is a lot of African traditional religion that has been syncretized into Christianity, especially in prosperity gospel churches. A participant's friend paid her pastor to come to her house to cleanse it of spirits. He did so by cutting in half an orange, then putting salt in it and sticking it to the window. Problem solved.
• One participant in Ghana shared his life story about struggling to develop himself. His father was not able to do much for him because he was the last child, child #50. His father has 8 wives and could not take care of all of the children adequately. 
• In one lesson, we discuss gleaning laws in the Old Testament concerning not completely harvesting your field, and leaving something for others to come and do the work of harvesting. One participant in Rwanda did gleaning as a child to get money for shoes and school fees. At that time people congratulated him and appreciated him for doing so. Neighbors welcomed him. But things have changed. They tell me no one allows people to do that anymore in Rwanda. People are more individualistic and life is generally more competitive. The same is true in Uganda.         
        Although people's standard of living is incredibly vastly improved from say the 1950s, the population has grown exponentially, education is prioritized much more and education is expensive. People are better off financially compared to 50 or 70 years ago, but school fees are so expensive that it seems everyone is constantly struggling with debts and poverty. This has resulted in people being more self-focused and sharing less with others.
  

Photos from Rwanda:

We have a lesson which looks at orphanages/children's homes and caring for vulnerable children. In most training groups, participants favor other approaches to care for children besides orphanages. In Rwanda, many orphanages have been shut down by the government.

But in one group in Northern Uganda, surprised me by being more in favor of orphanages. They say that communal culture has been eroded and spoiled through NGOs giving handouts and child sponsorship. They said that orphanages are better because when relatives take orphaned children into their homes, they often treat them as servants while treating their own children really well. When organizations try to support such families rather than orphanages, the parents will often use the money they receive for themselves rather than for the orphan. Or they will send their biological children to good and expensive schools and send the orphan to a bad school. 

Issues like this make an already complicated topic very complex to work through. I sympathize with the NGOs who are trying to help vulnerable children, getting criticized sometimes by people like me, but struggling to know the best approaches. I generally think that 90% of our energy should be in strengthening communities and families to support vulnerable children, and 10% in children's homes and orphanages. But I don't have all the answers either.

Last, here are a few testimonies from a training group in Liberia, a group I did not lead.

Sam - (in response to what is in our manual about caring for God's creation) "After the teaching I was taking some passengers in my taxi and I threw some plastic out the window. I said “Oh no I forgot" and I stopped the car and went back and picked it up. My passengers thought I was crazy at first but later after I explained I think they respected me."

Ab - (in response to what our manual teaches about culture and a biblical worldview) "Culture does not need to control us; we have God." 

Elvis - "I talked with my strong neighbor for 45 minutes the other evening. He has a problem with laziness and drinking but he came asking for money. So after we talked he left saying thank you for the help even though he never received any money. But he had many ideas to go and think on."