A Muslim Wedding

Community Development, Arab World

They made elaborate designs in henna, wanting me to look beautiful as I attended my first wedding in their country. They didn’t seem to mind doing this service for a virtual stranger, the friend of a friend. They talked and laughed, anticipating the celebration that would take place in two days as their neighbour became a bride.

Just 3 weeks into language school, I didn’t understand much of the conversation that flowed around me and my mind wandered. The preparations reminded me of Jesus’ story about being ready for a wedding. “Once there were ten young women who took their oil lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” “Those women had such easy preparations!” I thought as I sat for hours without moving my hands and feet. “All they had to do was buy some oil for their lamps!”

The next day, the feeling at the house of my new friends is one of expectation—today is the big day! The anticipation intensifies as we spend several hours dressing and perfuming our clothing and hair with incense. Finally we are ready!

As my friends and I arrive at the wedding hall, I discover that in spite of their efforts, I am underdressed. My best dress is nothing compared to those around me! Women who normally look like black ghosts are now wearing dresses of every colour imaginable (and some combinations that you might not imagine!). Sequins and jewellery glitter everywhere. How beautiful the women are! Their laughing faces reflect their inner strength. Their lives are so difficult— they face poverty, year after year of childbearing, complete lack of selfdetermination. And yet they find such pleasure in dressing up and even more, in simply being together.

I happily join my friends on cushions on the floor. Music, provided by a band in another room, blares from loudspeakers. Women dance, as their mothers and grandmothers did before them. Finally an announcement is made and the bride arrives, with much fanfare! She wears a westernstyle gown with a hoop skirt at least 3 feet wide; every inch is covered with sequins. She proceeds slowly up the aisle in the middle of the hall, surrounded by young women who chant blessings and hopes for many sons. Once in front of the hall, the bride sits on an ornate, throne-like chair. And the sense of anticipation grows. The climax is yet to come. The music, dancing and visiting isn’t our reason for being here. We’re waiting for the groom to come! I think again of Jesus’ story. He told the story of the wise and foolish virgins because he wanted his followers to be ready. These women (and I!) have spent days getting ready for this wedding, but they don’t even know about the one to come. How can they possibly be ready when they have no way of knowing the Bridegroom?

The hours stretch on. The conversations grow increasingly desultory and fewer and fewer women dance. My head pounds from the loud music, and I look at my watch. Four hours have passed and still we wait! In Jesus’ story, the waiting women fell asleep. They must have booked a different band, because surely no one could sleep surrounded by music at this decibel level!

Suddenly, the music stops. My ears ring in the silence, and then, over the loudspeakers a voice announces, “The groom is coming!” All around me is a whirlwind of activity. Reclining women suddenly leap to their feet and fly into their overcoats and veils, changing back into black ghosts. Here is the groom! Finally, the days of preparation and waiting are finished!

In Jesus’ story, when the groom arrived, there was both joy and sorrow, as some of the bridesmaids discovered that they weren’t ready. And for them, it was too late.

“The bridegroom arrived. The five who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the door was closed.” (Matt 25:10b-11)

In the middle of all the rejoicing, my heart is heavy. My friends here are not ready for the wedding that’s to come. They’ve never met the Bridegroom. Seeing them with covered faces reminds me again of how it veils their hearts and makes it impossible for them to see God clearly. They cannot understand how He loves them and longs for a relationship with them. I look forward to a wedding feast with Someone who calls me His beloved. All they have is a set of rules to try to keep, and a faint hope that a capricious judge will be kind.

In spite of the stranglehold of Islam in the country, I have hope that God is working here and that my friends will be part of the final marriage celebration. Please join the work here by praying that hearts will be open to the wooing of the Bridegroom.

/작성자:

A Random Encounter

Community Development

Well, remarkable for me. Lois, Becca and I were taking the long way around back to the US from Asia this past July. The journey is six days by rail from Beijing to Moscow and our overland travel adventure required that I take the twenty minutes stops at major stations, usually around five hours apart, to find food.

Zima represented a particular challenge for me. First of all, I saw a most interesting building beside the tracks as we pulled into the station. I had to have a photo of it. We were also low on our food stocks. Our diet consisted of sausages and bread with the rare cucumber or piece of fruit thrown in. However, I was low on rubles and few people out in Siberia are willing to change dollars for you. But I had read that there are ATMs in the Russian train stations. So I set my goals for the next twenty minutes: dash over to the building and snap a shot, race into the station and see if the rumour of the ATMs was true, and, if so, then capture a meal for our family from the stalls lining the platform. But, I think that God had other plans for me that day.

You can see here the photo of the building that caught my interest. And yes, there is an ATM at the Zima, Siberia station and it does dispense rubles using my bankcard. I was two for two with ten minutes left. Now, over to the kiosks for provisions. “Two sausages,” I said in English pointing to the treasured sustenance with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other. Back in our train cabin I spread our meal out before the adoring faces of my loved ones.

“I did it,” I said to myself walking back into the train corridor to look out upon Zima. But as I gazed upon the field of battle on which I had been so victorious, my eyes fell down upon a bedraggled man in his mid-thirties and what I took to be his young son beside him. The boy’s hands were full. He was clutching two halves of a watermelon. His father was gazing up at me with a beseeching look, that universal expression of piteous appeal beggars use was etched across his face. As he began his spiel I was astounded. I understood him. He was speaking Persian.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I meet people in these exotic places and we begin to speak in a minority language like Persian, they fail to think it strange that a foreigner can speak, with limited capacity in my case, their native tongue. He was a Persian speaking Tajik, a veteran of the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan war, from whence the deployable condition of his life ensued. Did I not have a few rubles to spare? Well, I did. In fact, my pockets were literally brimming with rubles.

I could be magnanimous. Had I not just accomplished a most remarkable feat: providing fine fare for my family for the next five hours? I stepped back into our cabin and picked up one of the sausages. “There’s a Tajik out here begging who fought in the Afghan war,” I announced. I reached down with my offering. He reached up with his outstretched hand. A Siberian sausage passed between us.

That should have been it. In fact, if I were writing the story, that is how it would have ended. I wanted the train to move. “Certainly it’s been twenty minutes by now,” I thought. The man tucked the sausage into his coat pocket with thanks and continued beseeching for more, more food, and maybe some rubles too. “Why couldn’t he be happy with my sausage?” I thought. “It’s like the Afghans say, ‘there are two things that are never full – the beggar’s bowl and the mullah’s stomach.’”

I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia. I wanted my giving to be easy. Out of my abundance had I not been so generous? I wanted him to be satisfied – satisfied with my small talk in Persian, satisfied with my compliments about his son, satisfied with the gift from my table. And still the train did not move. But I did. I came back into our cabin and sulked, turning over the uncomfortable occurrence in my mind. “Why can I not feel satisfied through this giving?” I mused.

The train jerked and began to move forward. I looked past our cabin door into the corridor and saw the veteran from the Afghanistan war jumping up to catch a final look at me through the window. His face was smiling. The begging was over. I ran to the window to bid him and his son farewell. Looking back at them on the Zima platform I waved as I watched them diminish in size while the Trans-Siberian Railway took us onward to another adventure.

Back in the States in the Interserve office, Lois and I met with our finance director. “You’ll need to raise more support to meet your budget,” he said. Lois’ modest salary from the school in Thailand was finished and we now need to make up the shortfall. With eighteen months before us in both the States and New Zealand, we face the unenviable task of finding funds from donors who support our ministry.

At the same time, these donors are not some random travellers passing through our lives. They are partners with us in our work, some of them showing interest in us for over fifteen years. I’ve been pleased to find how many folk back home really have been keeping up with us, reading our newsletters, praying for us, and supporting our ministry.

Yet even with all that, despite the “noble cause”, I often feel like a beggar at a train station. I guess that’s my challenge during this season of life: how to give and how to receive. And it all rose to the surface when I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia.

/작성자:

A Random Encounter

Community Development

Well, remarkable for me. Lois, Becca and I were taking the long way around back to the US from Asia this past July. The journey is six days by rail from Beijing to Moscow and our overland travel adventure required that I take the twenty minutes stops at major stations, usually around five hours apart, to find food.

Zima represented a particular challenge for me. First of all, I saw a most interesting building beside the tracks as we pulled into the station. I had to have a photo of it. We were also low on our food stocks. Our diet consisted of sausages and bread with the rare cucumber or piece of fruit thrown in. However, I was low on rubles and few people out in Siberia are willing to change dollars for you. But I had read that there are ATMs in the Russian train stations. So I set my goals for the next twenty minutes: dash over to the building and snap a shot, race into the station and see if the rumour of the ATMs was true, and, if so, then capture a meal for our family from the stalls lining the platform. But, I think that God had other plans for me that day.

You can see here the photo of the building that caught my interest. And yes, there is an ATM at the Zima, Siberia station and it does dispense rubles using my bankcard. I was two for two with ten minutes left. Now, over to the kiosks for provisions. “Two sausages,” I said in English pointing to the treasured sustenance with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other. Back in our train cabin I spread our meal out before the adoring faces of my loved ones.

“I did it,” I said to myself walking back into the train corridor to look out upon Zima. But as I gazed upon the field of battle on which I had been so victorious, my eyes fell down upon a bedraggled man in his mid-thirties and what I took to be his young son beside him. The boy’s hands were full. He was clutching two halves of a watermelon. His father was gazing up at me with a beseeching look, that universal expression of piteous appeal beggars use was etched across his face. As he began his spiel I was astounded. I understood him. He was speaking Persian.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I meet people in these exotic places and we begin to speak in a minority language like Persian, they fail to think it strange that a foreigner can speak, with limited capacity in my case, their native tongue. He was a Persian speaking Tajik, a veteran of the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan war, from whence the deployable condition of his life ensued. Did I not have a few rubles to spare? Well, I did. In fact, my pockets were literally brimming with rubles.

I could be magnanimous. Had I not just accomplished a most remarkable feat: providing fine fare for my family for the next five hours? I stepped back into our cabin and picked up one of the sausages. “There’s a Tajik out here begging who fought in the Afghan war,” I announced. I reached down with my offering. He reached up with his outstretched hand. A Siberian sausage passed between us.

That should have been it. In fact, if I were writing the story, that is how it would have ended. I wanted the train to move. “Certainly it’s been twenty minutes by now,” I thought. The man tucked the sausage into his coat pocket with thanks and continued beseeching for more, more food, and maybe some rubles too. “Why couldn’t he be happy with my sausage?” I thought. “It’s like the Afghans say, ‘there are two things that are never full – the beggar’s bowl and the mullah’s stomach.’”

I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia. I wanted my giving to be easy. Out of my abundance had I not been so generous? I wanted him to be satisfied – satisfied with my small talk in Persian, satisfied with my compliments about his son, satisfied with the gift from my table. And still the train did not move. But I did. I came back into our cabin and sulked, turning over the uncomfortable occurrence in my mind. “Why can I not feel satisfied through this giving?” I mused.

The train jerked and began to move forward. I looked past our cabin door into the corridor and saw the veteran from the Afghanistan war jumping up to catch a final look at me through the window. His face was smiling. The begging was over. I ran to the window to bid him and his son farewell. Looking back at them on the Zima platform I waved as I watched them diminish in size while the Trans-Siberian Railway took us onward to another adventure.

Back in the States in the Interserve office, Lois and I met with our finance director. “You’ll need to raise more support to meet your budget,” he said. Lois’ modest salary from the school in Thailand was finished and we now need to make up the shortfall. With eighteen months before us in both the States and New Zealand, we face the unenviable task of finding funds from donors who support our ministry.

At the same time, these donors are not some random travellers passing through our lives. They are partners with us in our work, some of them showing interest in us for over fifteen years. I’ve been pleased to find how many folk back home really have been keeping up with us, reading our newsletters, praying for us, and supporting our ministry.

Yet even with all that, despite the “noble cause”, I often feel like a beggar at a train station. I guess that’s my challenge during this season of life: how to give and how to receive. And it all rose to the surface when I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia.

/작성자:

A Random Encounter

Community Development

Well, remarkable for me. Lois, Becca and I were taking the long way around back to the US from Asia this past July. The journey is six days by rail from Beijing to Moscow and our overland travel adventure required that I take the twenty minutes stops at major stations, usually around five hours apart, to find food.

Zima represented a particular challenge for me. First of all, I saw a most interesting building beside the tracks as we pulled into the station. I had to have a photo of it. We were also low on our food stocks. Our diet consisted of sausages and bread with the rare cucumber or piece of fruit thrown in. However, I was low on rubles and few people out in Siberia are willing to change dollars for you. But I had read that there are ATMs in the Russian train stations. So I set my goals for the next twenty minutes: dash over to the building and snap a shot, race into the station and see if the rumour of the ATMs was true, and, if so, then capture a meal for our family from the stalls lining the platform. But, I think that God had other plans for me that day.

You can see here the photo of the building that caught my interest. And yes, there is an ATM at the Zima, Siberia station and it does dispense rubles using my bankcard. I was two for two with ten minutes left. Now, over to the kiosks for provisions. “Two sausages,” I said in English pointing to the treasured sustenance with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other. Back in our train cabin I spread our meal out before the adoring faces of my loved ones.

“I did it,” I said to myself walking back into the train corridor to look out upon Zima. But as I gazed upon the field of battle on which I had been so victorious, my eyes fell down upon a bedraggled man in his mid-thirties and what I took to be his young son beside him. The boy’s hands were full. He was clutching two halves of a watermelon. His father was gazing up at me with a beseeching look, that universal expression of piteous appeal beggars use was etched across his face. As he began his spiel I was astounded. I understood him. He was speaking Persian.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I meet people in these exotic places and we begin to speak in a minority language like Persian, they fail to think it strange that a foreigner can speak, with limited capacity in my case, their native tongue. He was a Persian speaking Tajik, a veteran of the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan war, from whence the deployable condition of his life ensued. Did I not have a few rubles to spare? Well, I did. In fact, my pockets were literally brimming with rubles.

I could be magnanimous. Had I not just accomplished a most remarkable feat: providing fine fare for my family for the next five hours? I stepped back into our cabin and picked up one of the sausages. “There’s a Tajik out here begging who fought in the Afghan war,” I announced. I reached down with my offering. He reached up with his outstretched hand. A Siberian sausage passed between us.

That should have been it. In fact, if I were writing the story, that is how it would have ended. I wanted the train to move. “Certainly it’s been twenty minutes by now,” I thought. The man tucked the sausage into his coat pocket with thanks and continued beseeching for more, more food, and maybe some rubles too. “Why couldn’t he be happy with my sausage?” I thought. “It’s like the Afghans say, ‘there are two things that are never full – the beggar’s bowl and the mullah’s stomach.’”

I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia. I wanted my giving to be easy. Out of my abundance had I not been so generous? I wanted him to be satisfied – satisfied with my small talk in Persian, satisfied with my compliments about his son, satisfied with the gift from my table. And still the train did not move. But I did. I came back into our cabin and sulked, turning over the uncomfortable occurrence in my mind. “Why can I not feel satisfied through this giving?” I mused.

The train jerked and began to move forward. I looked past our cabin door into the corridor and saw the veteran from the Afghanistan war jumping up to catch a final look at me through the window. His face was smiling. The begging was over. I ran to the window to bid him and his son farewell. Looking back at them on the Zima platform I waved as I watched them diminish in size while the Trans-Siberian Railway took us onward to another adventure.

Back in the States in the Interserve office, Lois and I met with our finance director. “You’ll need to raise more support to meet your budget,” he said. Lois’ modest salary from the school in Thailand was finished and we now need to make up the shortfall. With eighteen months before us in both the States and New Zealand, we face the unenviable task of finding funds from donors who support our ministry.

At the same time, these donors are not some random travellers passing through our lives. They are partners with us in our work, some of them showing interest in us for over fifteen years. I’ve been pleased to find how many folk back home really have been keeping up with us, reading our newsletters, praying for us, and supporting our ministry.

Yet even with all that, despite the “noble cause”, I often feel like a beggar at a train station. I guess that’s my challenge during this season of life: how to give and how to receive. And it all rose to the surface when I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia.

/작성자:

A Random Encounter

Community Development

Well, remarkable for me. Lois, Becca and I were taking the long way around back to the US from Asia this past July. The journey is six days by rail from Beijing to Moscow and our overland travel adventure required that I take the twenty minutes stops at major stations, usually around five hours apart, to find food.

Zima represented a particular challenge for me. First of all, I saw a most interesting building beside the tracks as we pulled into the station. I had to have a photo of it. We were also low on our food stocks. Our diet consisted of sausages and bread with the rare cucumber or piece of fruit thrown in. However, I was low on rubles and few people out in Siberia are willing to change dollars for you. But I had read that there are ATMs in the Russian train stations. So I set my goals for the next twenty minutes: dash over to the building and snap a shot, race into the station and see if the rumour of the ATMs was true, and, if so, then capture a meal for our family from the stalls lining the platform. But, I think that God had other plans for me that day.

You can see here the photo of the building that caught my interest. And yes, there is an ATM at the Zima, Siberia station and it does dispense rubles using my bankcard. I was two for two with ten minutes left. Now, over to the kiosks for provisions. “Two sausages,” I said in English pointing to the treasured sustenance with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other. Back in our train cabin I spread our meal out before the adoring faces of my loved ones.

“I did it,” I said to myself walking back into the train corridor to look out upon Zima. But as I gazed upon the field of battle on which I had been so victorious, my eyes fell down upon a bedraggled man in his mid-thirties and what I took to be his young son beside him. The boy’s hands were full. He was clutching two halves of a watermelon. His father was gazing up at me with a beseeching look, that universal expression of piteous appeal beggars use was etched across his face. As he began his spiel I was astounded. I understood him. He was speaking Persian.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I meet people in these exotic places and we begin to speak in a minority language like Persian, they fail to think it strange that a foreigner can speak, with limited capacity in my case, their native tongue. He was a Persian speaking Tajik, a veteran of the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan war, from whence the deployable condition of his life ensued. Did I not have a few rubles to spare? Well, I did. In fact, my pockets were literally brimming with rubles.

I could be magnanimous. Had I not just accomplished a most remarkable feat: providing fine fare for my family for the next five hours? I stepped back into our cabin and picked up one of the sausages. “There’s a Tajik out here begging who fought in the Afghan war,” I announced. I reached down with my offering. He reached up with his outstretched hand. A Siberian sausage passed between us.

That should have been it. In fact, if I were writing the story, that is how it would have ended. I wanted the train to move. “Certainly it’s been twenty minutes by now,” I thought. The man tucked the sausage into his coat pocket with thanks and continued beseeching for more, more food, and maybe some rubles too. “Why couldn’t he be happy with my sausage?” I thought. “It’s like the Afghans say, ‘there are two things that are never full – the beggar’s bowl and the mullah’s stomach.’”

I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia. I wanted my giving to be easy. Out of my abundance had I not been so generous? I wanted him to be satisfied – satisfied with my small talk in Persian, satisfied with my compliments about his son, satisfied with the gift from my table. And still the train did not move. But I did. I came back into our cabin and sulked, turning over the uncomfortable occurrence in my mind. “Why can I not feel satisfied through this giving?” I mused.

The train jerked and began to move forward. I looked past our cabin door into the corridor and saw the veteran from the Afghanistan war jumping up to catch a final look at me through the window. His face was smiling. The begging was over. I ran to the window to bid him and his son farewell. Looking back at them on the Zima platform I waved as I watched them diminish in size while the Trans-Siberian Railway took us onward to another adventure.

Back in the States in the Interserve office, Lois and I met with our finance director. “You’ll need to raise more support to meet your budget,” he said. Lois’ modest salary from the school in Thailand was finished and we now need to make up the shortfall. With eighteen months before us in both the States and New Zealand, we face the unenviable task of finding funds from donors who support our ministry.

At the same time, these donors are not some random travellers passing through our lives. They are partners with us in our work, some of them showing interest in us for over fifteen years. I’ve been pleased to find how many folk back home really have been keeping up with us, reading our newsletters, praying for us, and supporting our ministry.

Yet even with all that, despite the “noble cause”, I often feel like a beggar at a train station. I guess that’s my challenge during this season of life: how to give and how to receive. And it all rose to the surface when I met myself on the train platform in Zima, Siberia.

/작성자:

The Power of Water

Community Development

If only Nepal – and especially the poor of Nepal – could harness this environmentally friendly and renewable energy for their own development and benefit! Developing hydropower, in today’s world, is better than drilling for oil in Saudi Arabia!

It was in trying to answer this question that a team of us from United Mission to Nepal (UMN) and People Energy & Environment Development Association (PEEDA) came up with the Pro-poor Hydropower (PPHP) concept. We were very aware that much of the commercial hydropower development in Nepal to date has benefited the rich. Wealthy businessmen from Kathmandu and overseas have invested in very profitable projects. Little of the profits from these projects has reached the local poor, even though the projects are built on their rivers.

Yet how do the poor people living high in the mountains of Nepal provide a living for themselves? Most scratch out a living farming on little terraced fields clinging to the steep slopes. At such high altitude, this type of farming produces very little for all its backbreaking work. How can such poor people afford the costs of buying food, health care, education and all the other services we take for granted.

The Pro-poor Hydropower Concept

Pro-Poor Hydropower is a concept by which the rural poor of Nepal are facilitated into the profitable ownership of their water resources. This is achieved through development of commercially profitable1 and socio-ecologically acceptable hydropower projects with the local poor gaining the majority of the benefits of the projects.

But how can the rural poor attain majority ownership?

The mechanism by which the local poor attain majority ownership is by building on the labour component of the project’s construction and operation. Generally, the local poor have nothing to invest except their own labour. In PPHP, opportunities for the local poor to be employed on the project are maximised. Their labour is paid for in both cash and equity (shares) – see the figure. The labourer earns shares by sacrificing part of their wage. This wage sacrifice is then multiplied through a grant and soft loan facility. For each share that is earned through labour contribution, a number of shares are purchased through a grant (from donors). Another few shares are purchased through a soft loan facility.

Currently, we are in the first phase of a trial project which is looking at the feasibility aspects and putting all the project components together. Phase 2 will see the project move into implementation. Should the trial project prove to be successful, we are looking to role out the project to many more areas of Nepal. Our aim is that poor communities will be able to receive a regular cash income through dividends, many years into the future.

/작성자: