The MAF Blog: Worldwide Pulse

Posts Tagged ‘culture’

RV City (vlog)

Posted on: July 14th, 2011 by Jason Chatraw  |  1 Comment

Here is a video about some of the inner workings of MAF and some of the people at headquarters who support our amazing missionaries on the field … our “RV City” volunteers.

Grace on the Ledge

Posted on: July 8th, 2011 by Rebecca Cannon  | 

This is how it goes when you move to a new country with a new culture and a new language. I know it. It isn’t the first time I have experienced all this. Yet it happens, just the same, despite my best efforts to avoid it.

First, the honeymoon. All is glorious and new and amazing.

Then, reality sets in and you begin to question your sanity at placing yourself in such a precarious position. You suddenly notice how steep the ledge is that you are perched upon, and you recognize that one misstep will send you careening into an abyss you hadn’t seen before.

Ah, but there is beauty and hope and grace in those unsafe and uncomfortable ledges. We realize how dependable God is … and how pitiful and pathetic we are apart from the One who led us there. We’re suddenly aware of our humanness and His God-ness. And we learn to trust Him on a level we never imagined possible.

This ledge can be a place of fear and worry and doubt. But if you can learn to let go of your misgivings in favor of a deep trust in the One who holds you, then there’s no better place to be.

Trust is a funny thing. It requires self-sacrifice, an abandonment of self-sufficiency. It requires letting go. Did you ever do those “trust falls”? The ones where you stand with your back to a group of friends and just let yourself fall backward, into their arms. You know they are supposed to catch you––but will they? Will something distract them? Are you too heavy, falling too hard or too fast for them to catch you?

This is like those trust exercises––only the stakes are much higher. But the Friend who is catching is much more dependable. His arms are strong, ever present.
If you find that God has brought you to a ledge––whether it’s a new country, a new job, or a new budget––go ahead and trust Him. You won’t catch Him by surprise. He’s ready and waiting for you to fall back with complete abandon into His everlasting arms.

Opposite World

Posted on: May 17th, 2011 by Rebecca Cannon  | 

I take a moment to grab a drink of water and glance out the window to watch my kids playing with our new neighbors in the humid heat outside. Tears stinging my eyes, I praise God for new friends. The boxes are still piled high and they need to be unpacked quickly––before things get even moldier than they already are. I chuckle to myself, realizing that I haven’t even flinched at the mold I found on my daughters’ puzzles (or everything else). Coming from the high desert in Southern Colorado, mold was at one time a foreign concept to me––as foreign as driving on the other side of the road, another thing I do daily without thinking twice.

Come to think of it there are lot of things I’ve come to accept as a normal part of life that were unfathomable to me before my first overseas living experience six years ago. I live in relative peace with the geckos that live on my walls, the cockroaches that crawl into my shoes, and the mosquitoes that attack me when I step out the door. I’m not startled or offended when my neighbors block off the street to hold a (rowdy) wedding. I’ve even learned how to keep a straight face when my senses are assaulted in the local market.

I’m often struck by the craziness of this lifestyle, of living so far outside my home culture that I have been known to refer to it as living in “opposite world.” Truly, it does feel like everything is the complete reverse of what I thought was “normal.” And yet, I’m beginning to feel quite comfortable in this new world I’m living in. How can this be?

I think the main reason I’m finding it so easy to slip into this new home is the people. We’ve been welcomed with open arms by nearly every Indonesian we’ve met. So far, it feels like we’ve been mostly on the receiving end of all the help––even though we thought we were coming here so we could help them!

It’s rewarding to be out there, as my husband is, flying the airplane and being directly involved in saving lives and carrying the Gospel to unreached people. But I believe it’s even more rewarding to find ourselves helpless and dependent on the kindness of God’s children here in Indonesia. We suddenly realize how dependent we children of God are on one another. We simply couldn’t be here without our national friends’ help. This is the Body of Christ at work––at its best––and I’m daily humbled to be a small part of it.

To Give Locally or Globally?

Posted on: April 13th, 2011 by John Boyd  | 

Over the past few years as the global recession has impacted every country, some people in the U.S. have questioned why anyone should give to charitable efforts overseas when there is so much hurting at home. It is a valid question, but one that creates a false dichotomy when it comes to giving and serving others.

The mindset and systems in the U.S. are oftentimes predicated on an “us versus them” mentality. If you’re not on one side of an issue, you must be on the other — or so the thinking goes.

This idea is nothing unique to American culture. Even in Jesus’ day, religious leaders sought to trap Jesus with this type of questioning. Instead of an either/or answer, Jesus responded with a both/and reply.

Jesus’ approach to the many issues people turn into a two-sided debates is one that can be found throughout Scripture. The apostles Paul and Peter both explained that God doesn’t display favoritism (see Acts 10:34, Galatians 2:6). If God doesn’t call us to prefer one person over another (only to prefer others above ourselves as Paul says in Romans 12:10), the issue of local versus global ministry is not a legitimate debate.

Ultimately, where we choose to give our money is between us and God. It’s more about our obedience to His call than it is about which people are more deserving or are in more need. At MAF, we are very aware of the suffering in the U.S. and other developed nations. But that is not where God has called MAF to serve. He has called MAF to use its resources and technology to reach people in the most isolated places on our planet.

There are people in every corner of the world who need help. There are people living in the jungle in Africa that need help as much as the person at the end of the street in a suburban neighborhood. And God calls you to help someone, somewhere. It might be the neighbor at the end of your street or it might be the person you’ll never meet, living in the Congo. Or it might be both. In the end, the Lord cares just as much about one person as He does the other. That’s the heart we must seek — one that looks at suffering people everywhere with the same spirit of compassion as God does.