Days Seven and Eight: Refugees at the Crossroads of the World

This city is a cross roads for many nations, and one of the tragic consequences of the many conflicts throughout the region is that tens of thousands refugees end up here.

Pam saw this situation close up yesterday. She worked much of the day in a refugee center that deals with people from as far away as Afghanistan. Mainly women and small children stay there; the husbands are trying desperately to find enough work to support them. An older couple—in their sixties—run the place. They came over from our nation without a clear idea of what they’d do here, only that they wanted to do something to make a difference in the suffering.

Jake, Cecie and I spent much of our day with the group of refugees who are our partners. We helped them put together small packets including the material we helped bring over here then walked through the teeming streets handing the material out. It was an amazing experience doing this work, with the haunting call to prayer reverberating throughout the city.

Cool moment: on the way through the city, we caught a train out of the station where the famed Orient Express used to arrive. For a lifelong Agatha Christie fan, I couldn’t help but to drag our friend Kevin into a quick pic. Sorry, had to blur his face a little:

We had dinner last night with another one of our worker’s families. Great young family, struggling to find their place here after being thrown out of the nation they had previously served. This kind of thing is happening more and more throughout the region.

On the up side, they did have satellite TV and we were able to watch some of the Braves/Phillies spring game. The Braves scored six runs in the top of the first inning, while we cheered the whole time (the husband is a UGA grad and a lifelong Braves fan, which obviously proves his deep spiritual maturity); in the bottom of the same inning, though, the Phillies scored five runs themselves. I didn’t see the end of the game but it had to have been something like 30-25.

Today we had a ball with our main national worker, a refugee whom we’ve come to love in just a few days. He and his family had us over to lunch, a four-hour affair that began at one o’clock with tea and ended up at four o’clock with more tea. In between, we ate a splendid ethnic meal. Here is a quick pic of the dishes, including the main rice dish, with saffron; deep-fried chicken; a lentil/potato dish; and—best of all—some delicious thing that was the bottom, crispy portion of the cooked rice that was sort of like hash browns, only better. Man, I ate a bunch of that.

Tomorrow we’ll be passing out more material. Then a trip to the Spice Market, to spend some money. Then packing. We leave Thursday morning at 3:30AM and get back to Lexington sometime after Zero Dark Thirty. Yikes.

Days Five and Six: Red Cabbage and Chickens

I didn’t get the chance to write yesterday—a long day. But some really cool stuff the Lord keeps throwing our way.

This morning I had the chance to speak to a larger gathering of workers in the area that included some of our partners but also workers from other groups. We sang together and hung out for a while. I was the speaker for the morning. Afterwards, I had lunch and a long theological discussion with a young, single man from Canada who arrived here after he graduated from college last fall and is now planning on making this work his life vocation.

Jake and I then travelled across town to join our friends, refugees from a country nearby who have started a church here. We love these guys so much! Their group began with two people a year ago. At tonight’s service there were over fifty people packed into a downstairs meeting room, including many young men, families and some older people. Many seekers were there as well as a good many recent converts. An amazing service. We started by singing for about thirty minutes, songs in their language but with music we would all be familiar with. Then a guest speaker, who brought a message in their language that lasted about forty-five minutes. A personal ministry time followed. And that’s when things really got interesting.

Almost everyone lined up in the central aisle (yes, the place had traditional pews that had hymnbooks in the pew racks). Jake and I were at the back, watching the service since we couldn’t understand any of it. But so many people were needing ministry that the guest speaker and the group’s leader couldn’t handle it all (BTW, three people came forward to make salvation decisions), so they called me up front to assist, along with an interpreter to help me. It was an incredible moment, and I was honored to minister to six or eight people, including one young woman wanting ministry for the healing of her back that was injured when she was imprisoned for her faith; a husband and wife who were also refugees and professional musicians and who wanted a blessing even though they weren’t believers; and two young men who felt called into vocational ministry.

Here’s a picture from tonight, with the faces of the refugees blurred:

Tomorrow Jake and I will be on the streets, handing out the material that you guys made possible. Pam and Cicei will be working with refugees.

I was really excited to here how well things went this morning back at home. Technology is taking ministry into new arenas, and I’m so happy you were able to share in a little bit of what’s going on here through the video I sent.

Yesterday we had a hilarious moment at lunch. We were downtown with our gang (that included our folks, our local partners and two refugee believers) and were able to hook up with one of our global partners, along with a group of his Latin American friends. We hung out some then went to a local restaurant with all fifteen of us. Turns out our global partner knew the restaurant’s owners and was able to speak their native language since they were from a nearby nation. So get this picture: our motley assortment of workers from around the world in a third-floor private dining room, looking out over some of the most impressive and iconic sights of Central Asia, whooping and hollering because it was freezing cold outside and we were all glad to finally be warm. Five different nationalities with five different languages and multiple interpreters all shouting at the waiter together. English, and Spanish along with the three other languages of nations right around us. This is what I think "cacophony" means in the dictionary. Then some of the Latin brothers told a joke in their language that had to be rendered into the other four languages, something about a red cabbage and a chicken. It never did make sense to me, but those guys could hardly breathe, they were laughing so hard. That took a while and after it was all over I realized how humor really can’t make the jump from one language to another. The cool thing was that all of us there were believers and shared the same faith. Sort of a Pentecost moment.

Last night we had a great time hanging out with our partners from home, who are working here as part of the same team. They and their families came over and we all ate dinner together. Then a wonderful time of shared ministry. Pam and I were able to have individual ministry time with each of the couples. What a blessing it was—we were transparent with one another and had the chance to really touch each other’s hearts.

The Real Cost of Ministry

Ok. A fun moment. This is three members of our team—minus me because I’m taking the picture from the front seat where I get to ride because I’m the senior member of this group—packed into the back seat of a taxi. One other member of our entourage tonight we can’t show. More on that in a minute.

So anyway, in the pic we’re on our way to dinner then to a filming session. The meal was excellent. But afterwards the real treat was to sit down with the leader of the entire Central Asian region and his wife in a local coffee shop on a busy street, and talk with them one on one about this area of the world and the importance of the work we’re doing here. We also talked about what kind of people come here to serve. It was a great interview with some real challenge for our extended family back home. Can’t wait for you to see it.

Back to the other guy in the taxi, the one I can’t show the picture of. We’ve been staying in a guest house this week where he’s also living for a period of time and were immediately taken with his sweet nature and infectious faith. But it was when he told us his story we were really blown away.

He’s a young man with a wife and three children, all of whom are believers. But the country he lives in doesn’t tolerate his faith, so when his ministry was recently reported to the authorities he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement for weeks, while a local judge ruled on his situation. His wife was also arrested, leaving their children in the care of their grandmother.

All because he believed.

He’s not the only one. Indeed, this entire region is hostile toward our message and will do almost anything to stop people from hearing it. This morning in our opening session, for instance, we spent an hour focusing on many others just like the young man, men and women our partners work with on a regular basis who are willing to pay any price for the sake of our message. Tomorrow night I’ll be leading a study with a group of men and women from the same nation as our young friend, ex-patriots living in this great city who gather together to worship and pray with relatively more freedom here than in their homeland, waiting for the day when they can return with the message of redemption to their family and friends back home.

All this puts into a deeper and much more challenging way the nature of our work. This is serious stuff with eternal repercussions. Let’s not fool ourselves—in our blessed and prosperous land—into thinking that what we do isn’t urgent and necessary. It is. More than anything else we can imagine.

And our young friend? I’m happy to say that, in a miraculous way his circumstances have resolved, and he and his wife will shortly be reunited here in our own nation then begin the next chapter of their lives. A chapter that, for them, will focus on sharing the message with even more people across the world as they move to yet another nation, to build yet another ministry that will reach their people with the good news they want so desperately need to hear.

Things You Should Never Say at DInner in a Foreign Country

Ministry in this area of the world is like ministry in any other part of the world, only more so.

What I mean is that we and our partners here face the same cross-cultural challenges we would face in, say, Honduras, the Philippines, Germany or even India. Things like a different language, culture, lifestyle, education and social environment. It’s just that in this part of the world, those things are magnified by a uniquely pervasive involvement with a singular religion. Every facet of life is colored by this religion. Which means that figuring out a way to effectively communicate our message in this environment presents an unusually difficult challenge.

Our partners working here know from years of experience how difficult it is. But they and their families have still devoted their lives to doing it. They ‘re willing to deal with people one at a time, deliberately and faithfully building the kind of relationships that eventually start to add up to a significant movement. It’s slow going. But we’re starting to see the first fruits of that labor.

It’s a privilege for us to come alongside of them. It’s so exciting to be a part of this unique mix of ministers on the field, our home office and committed groups like ours in Lexington—all on the cutting edge of ministry in this, the most hard-to-reach area of the world.

Tonight at dinner Pam had carefully gotten instructions from our friend Karla on what to order at a local restaurant. So our group struck out on our own, walking a few blocks through the city to the place. Pam did a great job on talking and gesturing to the waiter about where to seat us. She didn’t even need to look at a menu. Instead, she spoke the native language slowly and clearly, telling the bemused guy what we wanted. I say “bemused” because I’m sure he’d never heard his language spoken with an upstate accent.

After the waiter left I turned to Pam and admiringly said, “When you talk like that it makes me hot.” Pam gave me that look all husbands have seen. Jake, though, almost fell out of his chair laughing. I told him he couldn’t repeat what I said (then or later) when we got back home but since I know he won’t pay any attention to me, I thought a pre-emptive strike was in order.

That’s all for tonight. Heading to bed early since I’m still dealing with jet lag. The four-hour meeting today just about killed me.

Driving Fast Through a Strange Country

Our team arrived in this amazing city a couple of hours ago.  There’s an energy here that lets you know right away this is a place on the move. People everywhere and all of them rushing to get somewhere. New buildings going up as far as you can see. Two-thousand-year-old ruins resting next to modern apartments. Mosques with their distinctive minarets dot the skyline and calls to prayer echo through the streets throughout the day. And perhaps most critically, expressways crammed from curb to curb with traffic with our host careening through it like Danica Patrick at the Daytona 500 as he took us from the airport to our home for the next few days. I thought I was gonna die.

All our material arrived safely. Our friends are super excited.

We met up with our good friends when we arrived at our destination. Here’s David with Jake. David’s the one with the dark glasses on.  Jake’s the one with a dazed expression after undergoing 18 hours of travel followed by 1 hour of race car driving.

Karla and Pam were glad to see each other, too. Many of you will remember that David and Karla spent a while with us last summer.

We’re staying in a guest house here, a center for training and hospitality that David uses to reach out to people throughout the region. A real blessing. People are housed here (in fact, one young man, a believer, from a closed country is living here right now while his family is actually living in our country), taught here and find a place of peace and encouragement here. A pretty cool place.

We’re waiting now for dinner, which will include some national dishes—and a lot of them, I hope. Meetings begin tomorrow with our partners in country as well as back home.