Orientation (17 – 21 June)

Orientation was a blast. We stayed at the First Presbyterian Church of Miami Springs, along with Trek teams heading to Mexico City, Lima, Tegucigalpa, and Sudanese refugees in Cairo. The daily schedule went something like this: we began with a group prayer liturgy, spent time in personal devotions, worshipped as a group, talks or workshops about poverty or cross-cultural ministry, had free time, time with our team, and a worship / speech session in the evening.

One of the first speeches was given by Scott Bessenecker, who heads the Global Urban Trek program and who wrote the book The New Friars, which describes the movement of incarnational ministry that we were going to get a taste of for the summer. There was one point he made that really stuck with me. He talked a bit about how we were heading to cities with high pollution and how we would encounter foul odors, and he encouraged us not to avoid these sensations and experiences and to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us in those unpleasant situations. Then he flipped the idea on its head: He encouraged us to be grateful for our chance to breathe clean air in a spiritual sense on the trip. In our modern, wealthy society there are so many things to distract us from seeking God’s best for us, and it’s easy for his truth to get watered down in our self-centeredness and materialism. Rather than thinking about the physical air problems, Scott focused us on our need to get away from the noxious fumes that paralyze us spiritually in the West and have a time of detoxification for our souls. This thought has stayed with me because I have seen its truth. Never have I needed to rely on God so constantly and never have I sought to serve him so consistently as in Mokattam.

Besides learning and being prepared in lots of ways, we also had a lot of fun. One of the nights our worship session spilled outside of the building as we sang and danced to a Haitian Creole praise song. In some free times I got to warm up my long dormant soccer muscles. Our team was also great: several guys quickly discovered their common love of rhythm and often broke into spontaneous beatboxing sessions. There was a lot of camaraderie and playful energy even right at the start. Stephen, a Korean, taught us some SKGs (stupid Korean games) which could be played in large groups, and these brought us together so much that Chloe, our director, started calling our group Sam Yuk Gu, the name of one of the games. By the time we left the church for the airport at the end of orientation, we were really excited to be working together.

Wow. It's over. But keep reading!

Here I am sitting in my bedroom in New York. After a few days of being home, my bedroom is about how I left it (cluttered). The rest of my family has had an enjoyable but relatively uneventful summer. It is tempting to think that I left just yesterday, and that the six weeks I spent away are just a blip in my schedule. That's not true, though.

Between June 17th and July 31st I heard talks and took part in discussions on the gospel, the poor, and what they mean to each other; I went places and did things that were outside of my comfort zone; and I met and befriended people whose entire lives and destinies are bound up in one neighborhood on the edge of Cairo. My view of the world has changed as I encountered theirs, and I don't want it to just change back. There are things that I have learned on this Trek that I want to carry with me my whole life.

Because of this, and because you, my readers, want to hear more about my summer, I am continuing this blog. I am sorry that I could not update it during the Trek, there just never was enough internet time. Beginning now, I am reading through my journal, and as I do so I will post to this blog with summaries of what happened and reflections on things that were important. I don't know when I will finish this, as I am simultaneously trying to get my things together and move out to Boulder, CO for grad school. There will be more details coming soon, though, so please stay tuned!

Challenges to my Expectations

Dispossessed is divided into sections, each centered around a different city and focused around a slightly different topic. I have read the section on Manila, Philippines and I am pretty far into the one on Nairobi, Kenya. In each section there is a blend of personal stories and interviews from residents of slums – “informal settlements” as Kramer prefers to name them – and discussion of the history, economics, and statistics that give context and scope to these situations. I feel like I’m getting a really good picture of what these communities are like and what affects them, and some of what I see is not what I expected.

The fact that people in these situations are poor and struggle to find income was not surprising, but what struck me is that many of them have a decent education. This stood out especially in the part on Manila, where the author went into detail about how highly Filipino families prize education. There are even people with Bachelor’s degrees from local universities that live and work in Manila’s squatter settlements! My surprise reveals my underlying assumption that such residents are largely uneducated, which is probably much less true than I would guess.

Densely packed houses made of makeshift materials is a picture I would expect in an informal settlement, but what Kramer describes on his walk through a settlement in Nairobi goes beyond my expectations: He describes walking by barber shops, blacksmiths, vendors selling all kinds of food, informal cinemas, and so on. These are all things that I would find in any normal, productive western community! As I think this, I immediately realize that I had pictured slums as places where people sat around and slept all jammed up with not enough room, but I had not pictured them as places where people live. The fact is, though, that people go about their whole lives there, and they are just as industrious and productive as anyone.

Near the core of my flawed perception is my tendency to pooh-pooh the situation of the poor and to assume that they are at least partly responsible for the dilemmas they face. Even if I deny this with my words, that is the tendency of my emotional response to these things. The more I read, the more I see that this is so far from the truth. The factors that have caused and are perpetuating these horrible conditions are the result of the ways that the powerful elite have hoarded wealth and resources while completely neglecting and even robbing from the poor. By “powerful elite” I am referring to everyone from colonial powers in the past to corporations and governments in the present. Maybe I’ll post again later to discuss this more fully.

These thoughts have reminded me of the beginning of James chapter 5. As I reflect on the role my ancestors and my culture have had in the shaping of this reality, I can’t help but ask myself how much responsibility I bear as someone who has taken too much for granted or cared for the destitute too little. “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.” They might not be mowing fields today, but there are many people who do not receive just compensation or legal recognition for the work that they diligently do. If I were to stand before the God of justice today, would he say to me, “Weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. … You have hoarded wealth in the last days”?

Mokattam's fame

Have you heard of Saint Simon the Tanner? I hadn't until recently as part of the information I've read on Mokattam — you see, the neighborhood I'll be in is next to the very mountain that is said to have moved because of his prayers. Click here for the full story.

I'll be honest, I was quite skeptical of this when I first heard the story. I just knew the abbreviated version: "Simon the Tanner caused the Mokattam Mountain to rise up and set back down." I'm willing to believe the miracles in the Bible because I hold it as the inspired word of God, but to me so many of these saint stories just sound like superstition. When I stumbled across the story in Wikipedia, though, it struck a different chord in me. First, the story emphasized that it was God's work and mercy, because Simon just led the group in prayer and the whole thing happened to spare the Egyptian Christians from being wiped out or expelled. Second, there is a witness of this event: As a result of the miracle, a Muslim Caliph named Al-Muizz converted to Christianity, and for him a baptismal font was built in the Church of Saint Mercurius.

I've been thinking about this story because it may come up as we get to know and relate to our Coptic brothers and sisters in the community. How should I approach or even think about things like the treatment of saints or local religious legends? While I intend not to pray to any saints or revere their remains, I think I will be careful not to reject the stories they tell outright. After all, I do believe that God does miracles, and who am I to refute the witness of siblings in Christ, especially when recorded in things like landmarks? I guess the best thing to do is to approach such subjects with open ears and a good dose of humility.

People and Perspectives

I started reading Dispossessed today. The introduction was really on target. It describes the book's purpose in terms of getting to know the people in squatter settlements. The author is wary of both objectifying residents of these communities and over-romanticizing them. He really brings home the reality that these are people — people who laugh and cry, people who work hard and struggle to support their families, people who have friends and give generously. He also reminds us that while we who are rich have much to offer them, they have much to offer us too in things like ideas and faith. The heart of this book seems to be well aligned with my reason for going on the trek that I explained in my support letter, so I'm glad to be reading it.

One interesting proposition the author makes is that the viewpoint of people living in this sort of poverty is actually a better representative of reality than is our own. He backs up what he says with a quote from Robert McAfee Brown, who says rich people are limited in their understanding of the world because they "see the world from the vantage point of privileges they want to retain." To me this seems possible, yet weighty; I don't think it wise to accept it unreservedly, yet I am eager to learn more of what he has to say on the subject and see examples. This reminds me of something that was mentioned in one of the other books, I think New Friars, where it said that the urban poor feel the effects of things like pollution and global warming long before the wealthy do.

I'm looking forward to getting to know some slum residents and their perspectives through the stories recorded in this book. I think I will learn a lot from it.

Riches

Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith, and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him?
—James 2:5 NIV

I happened upon a story today that reminded me of the real reason I am embarking on this journey to a slum in Cairo. It's at the end of an article in Quest for Hope (page 230), not actually in my planned reading but rather on an opposite page where it caught my eye. There's no way I can convey how moving the story is without quoting the whole thing, but I'll summarize it as well as I can:

A small boy named Ernesto lived on the streets of Maputo, Mozambique, where he daily faced hunger, sickness, and the cruelty of bigger boys, who stole from him, beat him, and even raped him. A friend brought him to a children's center one day, where he heard about Jesus and asked him into his heart. Later something happened which I would rather quote than describe.

One day while he was praying he had a vivid vision. He told me that angels came and took him up to heaven. He said it was a beautiful place full of light. No one there was afraid. The angels took him to Jesus and as he sat on his lap Jesus told him to stay in the children's center where he would be safe. Jesus also told him to live a pure and holy life. He said he was coming back to earth very soon so Ernesto had to leave heaven and tell others about Jesus.

Soon thereafter a powerful government official visited the center, and after speaking asked if any children want to tell him anything. Ernesto responded immediately and began fearlessly telling the man the good news about Jesus, which the author describes as "one of the most powerfully anointed Gospel messages I have ever heard." This became a regular part of Ernesto's life as he came to love preaching on the streets even when threatened with prison.

When I read this awe and yearning welled up in me in a way that's hard to describe. Truly James was right, and God has bestowed great riches on those who are poor, weak, and downtrodden! I am so humbled when I compare this to myself and how highly I think of my own faith, while at the same time I deal with fear and weakness by trusting in earthly things. Am I not in this light spiritually pitiful and wretched, just like the Laodiceans in Revelation? I may have my salvation, but by no means do I have the riches of faith that this child has.

This is why I'm going: to get a glimpse, a taste of the riches that God has bestowed upon the least of this world. Not unlike the 1000 people who settle in Cairo every day, I have heard that there is wealth to be had in this city, and I want to go get some for myself. Unlike them, however, it's not a job or the city's material wealth that lures me, it is the riches of Christ's kingdom which are being prepared in the overcrowded dwellings and garbage-strewn streets of Mokattam. I'm not sure what to expect as I go, and I'm pretty sure it will involve stepping far out of my comfort zone, but I go trusting in God and eagerly anticipating what he will show me there.