Painting Conversations

Before...

April 8, 2008

God is so good!!! I started a project yesterday…painting a huge, metal storage container (it’s probably 9 ft. x 25 ft.). I prepped it and started painting it yesterday, but it was rather lonely working by myself for so many hours (the guest house is quite secluded at the far end of the compound). But today, the Lord sent me some help in the form of a young man named Moses. He is a former resident of GSF and is working for them for awhile until he goes to university. I cannot tell you what a great conversation we had while painting. The question that kick-started it all was, “Why do missionaries come and you get close to them and they promise they will write, and you hear from them for a little while but then all of a sudden you never hear from them again?” The next few hours I learned SO much from Moses about the things we missionary Mzungus (White people) do and say that are interpreted differently or taken more literally/seriously than how we meant it to be taken. And most of all I was reminded how vulnerable these children are. For us, we go on short-term mission trips with the understanding that we will give these children 150% - love, time, energy, attention, gifts - for the week or ten days we are there, and then we will return to our lives in America, maybe keep in touch with a few people for awhile until we get too busy to write letters anymore and the intense emotion of the trip fades. We generally see the trip – and the relationships - as short-term. Talking to Moses today helped me to see that because of these children’s vulnerability - and their desperation for love, family, acceptance, a mother and father – our actions and words can be much weightier to them than we realize. When we come to these vulnerable children and start singling out certain ones and giving them special love and attention, and slipping them candy, we may have no idea how attached they are getting to us, because there is such a deep need for love and affection. When they begin to see that we have a special attachment to them, they can’t help but begin to hope that you might be their forever family. Or at least that you will be apart of their lives from here on out. And then, to make things worse, we often tell these children we will write, we will come back to see them, we will stay in touch, all to ease the pain of goodbyes. But still, in our minds, these are not forever relationships…but because of their vulnerability and our well-intended-but-careless words, these are forever relationships to these children. They have no family, so it makes sense that they would become emotionally attached to these nice foreigners who come into their lives and give the individual love and attention they so desperately crave.

The whole conversation just reminded me how careful we missionaries need to be about saying things we can’t follow through on…even simple things like “I’ll write to you!” are taken literally - and as promises - by these children. And the disappointment and devastation they suffer if these “promises” are not followed through with can be quite tremendous.

After...