17

A New Path

We instinctively knew that things were going to be drastically different now. We were painfully aware of how much had changed—and of how much more we had changed. It was a truism, but we understood what it meant to say that we could never really go back home again. Even so, through the grace and care of God’s people, our family found a place.

Our alma mater invited Ruth and me to live and serve on campus during our furlough year. That opportunity would put us close to family and provide us with meaningful work. Being on this campus—and being once again with people we loved so dearly—eased our adjustment and aided our healing.

Once again our immediate family benefited from Ruth’s God-given people skills. For years in Nairobi Ruth had made our home a safe haven, a refuge, and a recovery ward for emotionally bruised and battered friends. In the same way, on our old campus, Ruth created the same world—but this time, for us. Soon, a group of committed Christian college students filled our home for times of food, fun and fellowship. Perhaps unknowingly, the students ministered to our entire family in profound ways. The students’ energy, love, and passion for Christ healed and helped us.

Over time, I was able to revisit and process some of the experiences, issues, and challenges that I had wrestled with in Somalia. Painfully, I relived vivid memories of dark and discouraging times when I had felt anger, frustration, and despair.

I began to understand that I had often survived the insanity of Somalia by pushing my questions and struggles out of sight. One way to deal with impossible things is simply not to think of them. I realized that I had done that for years. In the moment, there simply wasn’t time to figure things out. I guess I suspected that there would be time to do that somewhere in the future. And, now, suddenly—and clearly—I understood that this was that time.

Now in a safe place—and surrounded by loving people—I forced myself to deal with the questions. Can God truly overcome evil? Is love really more powerful than hate? How can a person maintain even a small hope in a dark place? How is it possible for faith to survive in an insane environment like Somalia’s? How can someone live the abundant, victorious life that Jesus promised in our world’s hardest places? Can Christianity work outside of western, dressed-up, well-ordered nations? If so, how?

Once again, I realized how woefully unprepared and ill-equipped Ruth and I had been to try to do what we did in the Horn of Africa. We had landed in Mogadishu, the capital of a militantly Muslim country, in the midst of a brutal civil war without knowing a thing about: (1) living in a setting of persecution, (2) being a witness to people who knew nothing of Jesus and were hostile to the information, or (3) teaching new believers how to survive in a hostile culture. We had never imagined the insanity of evil that we would encounter in Somalia. And we had certainly not been trained to deal with it.

It wasn’t that our sending agency had sent us out ignorant and unqualified. The problem was deeper than that. In our local church upbringing, we had never experienced anything that had prepared us for Somalia. The way we learned and grew and matured in our faith would not have prepared anyone for Somalia. It was no comfort for us to realize that we weren’t the only ones so unprepared.

Our new family of college students played an invaluable role in our emotional healing and in helping us process the discouragement and despair tied to our memories. We were open with the students about our life stories. They wanted to know more about our sense of calling to make Jesus known overseas—and about how we had felt that calling both as individuals and as a couple. We were honest about our mistakes and our fears, our foolishness and our limitations. We were also honest about God’s power to work even in our mistakes. The students were moved when we told them about God’s activity in Malawi and South Africa.

Many of these students were seriously considering serving God in some capacity overseas, so we felt compelled to give them a realistic picture of what they might experience. We candidly conveyed the good, the bad, and the ugly side of such a calling. In doing that, we were forced to deal with our own feelings as well.

It was fun to tell them the warm and inspiring stories of missionary success. But we also talked about the insanity of evil, the inhumanity of people, and the pain of failure. We described horrors that had shaken us. We admitted our doubts and our struggles of faith. We challenged them to ask the same hard questions that tormented us: Was the good news of the gospel powerful enough to overcome the forces of evil in our world’s darkest places? And if it was, why had we seen so much crucifixion in Somalia and experienced so little of the resurrection?

We felt safe enough to be transparent with these college students. We warned them that if they did answer the call to serve God in some other part of the world, there would probably come a time (or many times) when family and friends, and maybe even their home churches, might question their sanity. Sometimes, the questions would be difficult to answer: “Why go around the world to share Jesus when there are so many lost people here?” “Why risk your life, waste your time, invest your energies, or expend so many personal and Kingdom resources to try to change the minds and hearts of people who don’t want to change, and don’t even think they need to change?” We encouraged the students to ask these troubling questions now, in this safe place, before making their decision about God’s call.

Those of us who have grown comfortable with the teachings of Christ have allowed His teachings to lose their edge. So much of what Jesus taught makes no sense from a human perspective. Love your enemies. If you want to be great, first learn to be a servant. If someone smacks you across the face, turn your head and let him slap you on the other side. If someone steals your coat, offer him your shirt as well. If you want to live, you need first to die to yourself. The complete list of Jesus’ crazy-sounding teachings is a lot longer than that.

To me, the most startling thing Jesus ever said was when He assigned His followers the task of going out in pairs to share His good news with lost people. He said that He was sending them “as sheep among wolves.” Still, He expected them to prevail. In the history of the world, no sheep has ever won a fight with a wolf. The very idea is insane.

We talked a lot about that with our students. We said that Jesus still calls His followers today to go out and live “as sheep among wolves.” We said that we had consciously chosen to do that when we went to Somalia. And we talked about how what we had done there felt completely insane. We also admitted that, at this point, it looked like the wolves had won.

We never felt free to say those kinds of things when we spoke at churches about our work. But that wonderful group of college students gave us the opportunity to be open and honest about our deepest personal struggles.

Ruth and I also shared with them our struggle about our next steps. We wondered if we might be willing to return to Somalia if that became possible. We wondered (out loud) if we would be willing to go again “as sheep among wolves.” If that were to happen, however, we didn’t want to be stupid sheep among wolves! And we certainly didn’t want our ignorance, our lack of preparation, or our foolish and unintentional mistakes to endanger other sheep.

We asked our family of college students to pray that the Lord would show us where we should go, who we should talk to, and what we needed to learn in order to be better prepared sheep the next time. During that time, Ruth and I began to seriously explore our future options. We wondered how God would prepare us to be better prepared sheep among wolves.

Ruth and I felt like the disciple Peter when Jesus was ready to set His face toward the danger and death that He knew was waiting in Jerusalem. Many of His fearful followers turned back and deserted him. When Jesus asked the other disciples if they, too, might leave Him, Peter replied, “Where else would we go?”

Ruth and I were captive to the conviction that, if Jesus is not the answer to the human condition, there is no answer.

As we prayed and waited, one thought would not leave our minds. If we wanted to learn how to live in places like Somalia, then we would be wise to visit places like Somalia! At this point, it sounds like an obvious conclusion. At the time, however, the thought was startling. Were there other places in the world where believers were forced to live under persecution? Had believers been able to do that? How? How had believers survived brutal hatred and hostility? And, if such people were out there somewhere, would it be possible to find them and learn from them?

As we continued to pray and study, we began to ask questions. We stumbled on a single thought that captured our hearts: Surely, wherever believers have suffered, and still suffer, for their faith, we could find wise and faithful people who would be willing to share their spiritual survival strategies and other faith lessons learned from the hardship they have faced. Perhaps their personal, practical, tested, biblically-based counsel could help us. And maybe their wisdom could help other believers like us minister more effectively in impossible places such as Somalia. Is it possible that faith might thrive in such places?

The idea was life-giving. We had no idea, however, how to make it happen. We also had no idea where to start.

Ruth and I didn’t have the resources or the wisdom to do this by ourselves. We began to fashion what became a Persecution Task Force to advise and partner with us on this endeavor. We soon enlisted an impressive panel of experts—experienced leaders from our own sending agency, former teachers and personal mentors, and missiologists from several different denominations and seminaries. We were thrilled that they were willing to help us develop a plan. We would visit believers who have lived in persecution, sit at their feet, and learn from them.

We began making a list of countries where we thought we would find persecution. We consulted “The World Watch List” issued annually by Brother Andrew’s (of God’s Smuggler fame) organization, Open Doors International. We compared that list with those of other organizations with a special concern for the persecuted church around the world. With the added input of our advisory team, we soon had a target list of forty-five countries where we thought we would find significant persecution of believers.

In some cases, we knew that we might have to find refugees who had already left their countries. But, whenever possible, we wanted to meet and interview believers in their own cultural contexts. We wanted to listen to believers who were, somehow, surviving and thriving in persecution and being salt and light in hard places.

Unable to fund our dream, our sending agency allowed us to take a two-year leave of absence to pursue our project. We maintained our association with the college and began raising funds to support ourselves and to launch an independent research venture. As much as we would want to claim that this new project was our idea, we are certain that is was the gift of God. We were convinced that there were answers out there for our questions. Now, we had a glimmer of an idea where we might find them.

Our task force members helped us develop a research tool that would, hopefully, work cross-culturally to elicit the information that we needed to gather. Ruth and I began planning the first of our research trips. Given the recent collapse of communism in the U.S.S.R. and other Eastern European nations, and the well-documented religious oppression in that part of the world for most of the twentieth century, we concluded that Russia and some of its neighbors might be a logical and productive place to begin.

We began developing a list of potential contacts in Russia and neighboring countries. We wrote letters, made phone calls, sent e-mails and quickly collected a list of the names of people who could or might talk to me, or at least find people who would. We discovered someone who I had never met who agreed to host me in Russia and another stranger who was willing to serve as my interpreter. Ruth finalized my itinerary, purchased my plane tickets, and applied for the necessary permits for me to visit a half dozen former Iron Curtain countries.