“I would like to have more chickens so I can help the widows more.” I’d had a feeling that was coming! We had been well fed by one of the church leaders in a village I was visiting with some friends. (This was not in Benin, by the way.) We had visited the local church, and had been invited to this man’s house for Sabbath lunch.
As we ate, our host began to tell us about his work with the widows in the area. He told us he wanted us to help him buy more chickens. He already had several hundred chickens, but he wanted more so he could help out more than he was currently able to do. This seemed like a worthy cause to us, though we felt we had been slightly misled by the lunch invitation, so we wanted to find out more. As the man’s somewhat-more-than-pleasantly plump wife continued to serve us delicious food, we probed more into the subject.
“Please explain a little more to us,” we said. “How is it that you help the widows with the chickens?”
“Oh, I give them the chicken manure to use as fertilizer in their fields. They struggle to support their families, so free fertilizer is very useful for them.”
“Interesting. That sounds like a good idea.” As we were shown around the various rooms filled with squawking poultry, we could smell that it must certainly be nice to have a place to dispose of all that filth! And to think that he uses it for such a worthy cause! We were getting more and more impressed all the time.
However, after a little while of gazing at all those chickens, it occurred to us that nobody keeps chickens just for their manure! “So, what do you do with the eggs all these hens lay?”
“Oh, we sell them. We have to live, of course, and we have several children to send through school. These chickens are a great help for that. But if we had more, we would have even more manure to give to the widows,” he reminded us, bringing us back to the point he wanted us to focus on.
As we left the well-furnished home that day, we decided our money would go to some other cause with less “waste!” I don’t doubt the brother’s sincerity or that he really did share his excess chicken manure with the widows of the village, but we felt that if we really wanted to help the widows, there were surely ways by which our money could go further.
I am not sharing this story in order to criticize my chicken-farming friend but rather to make a point about an attitude I have begun to see more plainly in myself lately. Two books have recently made a deep impression on me. Missions and Money, by Jonathan J. Bonk, is a book that will affect the rest of my life. Often painfully, it exposes the problems involved with missionary affluence in the presence of the poor they are serving. To Give or Not to Give, by John Rowell, picks up where Bonk left off and continues the painful journey of exposing missionary double standards and selfishness. God has used these two books to expose the selfishness in my own heart and has torn away the reasons I had stacked against sharing of our abundance with our brothers and sisters in poorer settings. We do not want to be missionaries in order to enjoy a standard of living we would otherwise not be able to attain.
We don’t want to try to say we will keep the manure and give away the eggs, so to speak, but we are learning to share of the abundance we have been blessed with. All of God’s children, and especially those in His church, are sitting at the table of our Father. Before some of us, there is an abundance of food, while others have little. As long as we remember this, it is not hard for us to “pass the plate” to those who need what we have within our reach. There is enough at the Father’s table for all to eat and be satisfied. We are praying that true generosity will always find a central place in our hearts and our lives as missionaries and Christians.
On the home front, we have some happy news to share. Although the miracle has happened countless times before, we cannot help but be amazed at the new life God has blessed our home with. On December 8, little Kaia Renée entered the world. She was apparently anxious to get out and find out what life was like, since Maggi was in labor for a very short time, and the birth was thankfully quite easy. Life for Kaia now consists mainly of eating, sleeping and filling diapers, but we have some precious hours with her each day when she is very awake and alert, listening to her brother fill our home with laughter and music. Reuben is a proud big brother! He is very gentle with her and gives her many hugs each day.
I attended a Wilderness First Responder advanced First-aid course in Sweden in the beginning of November. I learned how to take care of many common medical issues in remote locations. It is the kind of information I hope I never need to put to use, but I am glad to have it “in case of emergency.”
Our launching goal is now complete, thanks to God and to those who have given! We now have less than $700 per month in support to raise, so we should soon be able to book our tickets to Benin! These are exciting days as we make sure we have all the papers and last-minute details taken care of.
Beyond our chicken-farmer friend, we want to thank our donors for giving us an example of true generosity. We are amazed over and over to think that so many people have given so much to this project, and we know they have given of their best, not of their waste. We pray we will be able to show that same generosity to those we will be working with in Benin, to receive in order to give, not vice-versa.
May God richly bless you this holiday season and throughout 2011. Thank you again for being part of God’s plan for our lives and for being a channel for His generosity. We appreciate you and wish you a Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year!
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