Justice Conference

PhillyBloco performed! They are a Brazilian music and dance group with lots of energy and drums.  The convention center wasn't a great space for them, but they still got people dancing and enjoying the music.  I've seen them live in a smaller venue, and they are great live!

But I didn't go to the Justice Conference for the music.  I went to primarily to connect with people and secondly to hear some great speakers.  The highlight of the main conference speakers for me was a panel discussion which included Dr. John Perkins and Lisa Sharon Parker who is shown on the screen in the above picture.  Personally, I enjoyed the depth and thoughtful reflection of the discussions at the pre-conference breakout sessions more than the dynamism of the main conference speakers, but there was a lot to consider and learn throughout the whole conference.

So here for your consideration are a few thoughts presented by the speakers that I am still pondering.  Since I was scribbling notes quickly, I can't guarantee that these are direct quotes, but I'm hoping they are close or at least capture the speaker's point of view.

1. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff - None of the current writings on justice start from the wronged.  They start from the intellectual puzzles.

2. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff - We will get all mucked up if we start with the gray cases, so start with the easy and then get to the gray ones.

3. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff - Justice at many points requires freedom, but freedom without justice is only for the powerful.

4. Dr. Soong Chan Rah - (In many cases) Incarnational ministry has become a way for us to become the Messiah.  We empty ourselves to go to the poor to bless them.

5. Dr. Soong Chan Rah - Lament relies on God's sovereignty and not our ability.

6. Dr. Soong Chan Rah - It is our responsibility to lament.

I haven't watched this video, but from the description it seems like it may be similar to his breakout session talk.



7. Ken Wytsma - Quoting Eugene Peterson - You can't hurry lament.

8.Gary Haugen - Do-gooders show up late and leave early.  Perseverance is necessary.

9. Gary Haugen - ...the hidden glory of a long and faithful love

10. Gary Haugen -  Love that overcomes monotony and tedium (and frustration).  This is the love our Maker sees and honors.  A long obedience in the same direction.

11. Gary Haugen - ...ordinary unglamorous work of justice

12. Gary Haugen ... prayer not as a matter of discipline but desperation

13.Gary Haugen - The book of justice is long and boring...I love it when we read it together

14. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff - True love is never unjust.

15. Dr. John Perkins - The church lives out its call most fully when it is a community of faith with arms wrapped around a community of pain.

There were a lot of other great things to ponder, but those were just a few that I thought I would share with you.

The BEST part of the conference was the opportunity to connect with friends.  I had many great conversations between sessions and at lunch catching up on life and discussing the thing we heard from speakers.

Critical

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Faith and International Development Conference at Calvin College with several of my classmates.

There were two things I loved about the conference:

1. The opportunity to have candid conversations with the speakers and exhibitors after sessions and over meals.

2. Processing the things we were hearing from the speakers with my classmates.

One our professors has already stated that our cohort is more cynical (doubtful as to whether something will happen or is worthwhile) than previous cohorts especially when we process together.   We test everything we hear or read against our own experiences and the body of academic work we have already read on the subject.  We read critically, which is a good practice for grad students.  Because of this, our professors are great at leading us in always looking for the positive aspects of every theory or method even if there are significant drawbacks and flaws. 

At the conference I realized that without the direction of our wise professors, I have the tendency to not just critically analyze but to be critical especially when discussing something with my classmates.  We have honed our skills, and we are great at picking apart case studies.   But those are academic cases studies, and now we are at a conference listening to the real stories of development practitioners.   Somehow it is easy to forget to show grace.  I forget to allow for the possibility that others have been led by the Holy Spirit to pursue a different model of ministry than I would have chosen in similar circumstances.  I have made plenty of mistakes myself and I will continue to make mistakes even after studying international development and getting a degree.  There are rarely right and wrong answers when it comes to development practice, and the phrase "prayerful discernment" seems to be the answer to every difficult question that comes up in class.

So after this realization, I ask that you will pray for me (and for my classmates) to follow the lead of our professors in looking for the good in every ministry first especially outside of the classroom.  Also pray that we truly will rely on prayerful discernment and that it won't just be the answer we give in class when things are complicated.  

The Justice Conference is next week, and I'm really excited!  I will once again have the opportunity to hear speakers and learn about new ministries, so I will get another chance to analyze critically without being critical. 

WHM South Sudan Video

Check out the new WHM South Sudan video.  It is only a little over 5 minutes long.  Enjoy!

WHM South Sudan Video

It was great seeing lots of familiar faces throughout the video including these friends from the local water office! 

Pumpkin Oat Scones

I LOVE this recipe, so I thought I would share it with my blog readers.  I have made these scones in S. Sudan which means you can be flexible with the ingredients.  I made them for breakfast before a trip to NYC with my roommates last weekend (pictured above).  They are a perfect traveling day breakfast whether you have a MAF flight to Uganda or a train ride to NYC. 

I adapted the recipe from this website:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-oat-scones/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=pumpkin%20oat%20scones&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page

I usually add 1/4 cup sugar to the dry ingredients and also increase all the dry spices to 1 Tbs. each.

ENJOY!

A New Semester Brings Disasters

A new semester means new classes and new (used) books.  With titles like "The Road to Hell", "Condemned to Repeat?", "Famine Crimes", and "Despite Good Intentions", I decided to switch out the verses I have written on my mirror.  I added key phrases from Romans 8:18-21.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

I'm excited about my classes for this semester which are listed below.

Program Planning, Management and Marketing
Applied Research and Evaluation
Relief and Mitigation for Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Living in South Sudan, I saw suffering, but the WHM team entered in the development phase.  Mundri town was years past the relief phase.  This semester I will study relief and disasters.  I am thankful that last semester I had the opportunity to take Theology of Poverty where we discussed suffering and evil, but that does not mean I have it all figured out and will never need a reminder of the promises of God.  Even missionaries need to reminded of the gospel. 

This is the interactive part of this post.  Do YOU have any suggestions of verses to add to my mirror for this semester? My closet has two giant sliding mirrored doors, so there is plenty of room!

Order of Magnitude

I had a college chemistry professor who used to always say "What's an order of magnitude between friends?" when discussing extremely large or small numbers.  I like the concept of orders of magnitude.  I don't like it as much as I like fractals, but it is up there. 

Because I like the idea of considering the same object at different orders of magnitude, I have always loved this poster that hangs in my aunt and uncle's home in São Paulo.  I also like tomatoes, preferably at 0 mph. 

Tomato at 0 mph

Tomato at 4 mph

Tomato at 40 mph

Tomato at 400 mph

Lately I have been thinking about orders of magnitude when it comes to poverty.  Is there poverty, disease, and a lack of access to safe drinking water in the US?  Yes.  Is there poverty, disease, and a lack of access to safe drinking water in South Sudan?  Yes.  The difference is in the order of magnitude.

Home

When I landed in Sao Paulo, the Brazilian immigration officer welcomed me home.  When I landed back in Miami, the US immigration officer also welcomed me home.  Neither is completely true. 

At Jennifer's recommendation I read Love at the Speed of Email on my flight from Miami to Sao Paulo. It is a quick read, and the author, Lisa McKay, talks a lot about the idea of home. 

Lisa writes about "home" saying, "...nowhere I’ve ever lived looks fully like home to me. It has less to do with whether that place felt like a home during the time I lived there than with there being about a dozen such places."

There are so many places that a part of "home" for me including Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Brazil, and South Sudan. 

And I must admit that sometimes I feel like Lisa did when she wrote, "I was overwhelmed with the sense that my life was fracturing so irrevocably into a thousand disconnected people, places, and sensations that I would never stand a hope of feeling fully integrated."

For the global nomad, there are many sections of this book that put in to words the questions that tend to come with this lifestyle. 

My idea of "home" isn't simple, but is uniquely mine.  I am thankful that Brazil and South Sudan are important elements of "home" for me. 

Why International Development is like Quantum Mechanics

One of my favorite silly poems is "The story of Schroedinger's cat (an epic poem)" which can be found here if you are interested in reading the whole thing. 

I was reminded of this poem when Kristen, my classmate, was presenting on the appreciative inquiry approach of community development.

This approach is based on the idea that the very act of questioning changes the situation regardless of whether or not those questions are answered.

When Kristen said "questioning changes the situation" I immediately thought "The act of observing disturbs the observed —" which is a line from the Cecil Adams epic poem. 

My random associations always make sense to me, but usually make no sense to anyone else.  During an in-class discussion on overpopulation in Egypt and land reform I made a reference to eating babies in Ireland, and half the class knew that I was talking about A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift and the other half of the class was confused and a little disturbed.  A minute later another student referenced the Duggars.  It was an interesting class. 

This time I kept my quantum mechanics reference to myself, but after class I mentioned it to Kristen, a fellow science-lover.  She was tracking with me, so I decided I could post it here just for fun. 

So why is international development like quantum mechanics? Cecil Adams wrote:

"We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons — you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed —
Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability — certainty, never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear."

International development is like quantum mechanics because you can't know if an approach will work in a specific community without testing, but the very act of an outsider coming into a community and asking questions changes the community irreversibly.  You cannot undo the influence of a missionary living in a community even if they don't implement any projects.  The fact that an outsider is there observing and asking questions changes the answers to the questions.

So those are my silly thoughts on why international development is like quantum mechanics based on an oversimplification in verse.  =)

Merry Christmas!

Isaiah 9:6
For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

 Merry Christmas from my family in Brazil! It is always special when my grandparents can have both their children and their spouses along with all three of their grandchildren in the same room.  Our family is relatively small, but living on different continents makes getting together challenging.   The fact that this photo happened is a blessing for my grandparents who are both over 90 years old. 

 With my cousins

I took this photo on the day I arrived in Brazil which happened to be their 66th anniversary!

Recent Reading

Just a few thoughts on some of the reading I have been doing. (I actually wrote this a while back, but never got around to posting it.  It is crazy to think about all the different things I have read since!)

I recommend the book Walking with the Poor by Myers.  I read it shortly after I got to Mundri about three years ago.  I recently reread it for Theology of Poverty, and I got so much more out of it having read something from many of the authors that Myers references like Jayakumar Christian and Miroslav Volf.  Walking with the Poor is now available on Kindle.

http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Poor-Principles-Transformational-Development/dp/1570759391

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I like this quote a lot for so many reasons, but I will let you read and it and relate it to your own stories.  

"Our communities are like our houses in which we feel at home, and yet keep rearranging, taking old things out and bringing new things in, often objects acquired on visits to near and distance place, objects which symbolize that we can never be the same after we have ventured outside our home, that the things we encounter 'outside' become a part of the 'inside'" - A Vision of Embrace: Theological Perspectives on Cultural Identity and Conflict by Volf

Here is one more quote from our readings on reconciliation.  

“…a Christian way of dealing with suffering involves bringing one’s own story of suffering into contact with the story of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ." - Schreiter 

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I wish I could articulate in a better way everything I have been thinking, considering, and praying about through all my classes.  I have a lot of good questions, but honestly, I have information overload.  I am recognizing the mistakes I made as a development practitioner in S. Sudan, and acknowledging to myself that if I continue working in development, I will always make mistakes.  I seem to need to relearn that lesson every few months.  It is so easy for my sinful heart to make effectiveness in ministry an idol. 

"The Holy Spirit empowers us for mission, leads us into mission, and is responsible for the results of mission." - Myers   

So maybe I need to write that quote by Myers on my wall and remember that it is true for missionaries overseas, engineers in the US, stay-at-home moms, ... basically it is true in for every calling and vocation. 

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Since I am letting your all get a glimpse of my thoughts anyway, I must say that sometimes I hesitate write my thoughts on the things I am learning and reading on economics of development and theology of poverty, because I fear being judged.  I guess I still feel a little like an imposter as a missionary, like someone is going to realize that they let a chemical engineer slip in with all the real missionaries that went to seminary or at least have degree in appropriate technology.  And those thoughts take me right back to the Myers quote.  

"The Holy Spirit empowers us for mission, leads us into mission, and is responsible for the results of mission." - Myers  

So I will end with this, you don't have to have everything all figured and your life all cleaned up to take a step of faith accept Jesus as your Savior, and you don't have to have everything all figured out and have dealt with all sin in your life to follow Jesus if he calls you to mission.  God is in the business of restoring broken things and that is good news for you, for me, for churches, universities, nations, the earth, basically it is just universally good news.