9 May 2006
Friends, Family and Supporters,
We greet you with the greeting that those here are always careful
and generous to give: greetings to you in the name of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ.
This newsletter is a bit of a backward reflection—speaking
of our experience of our travel to a culture a long distance from
Dembi Dollo. A very distinct culture with many loving people and
many very odd social norms and customs in a region called North
America. That’s right, we visited the United States (and
Canada). We just returned from a three-week trip back to Washington
state, where we had the blessing of being able to attend Mike’s
sister’s wedding.
We had a wonderful time celebrating the covenant of my sister
and her new husband, visiting with friends and family, and speaking
to churches and organizations about our work in Dembi Dollo. We
thank the Lord for this wonderful time, and we thank many of you
also for expressing and extending your love and support for us
in our work, and thorough donations you gave to the PC(USA) for
our position and to the specific projects we are engaged in.
While we were home, many people asked us if we were experiencing
“reverse culture shock” being back in the United States
after our first eight months in Ethiopia. We had to think about
that one, and our overall answer was no, as we didn’t feel
we had been away from our home culture long enough to feel any
sense of real change. We went to the United States to celebrate
the bonds of family and the traditions of individuals coming together,
which is something that God has blessed all of humanity with,
regardless of one’s location on the planet. And we were
really just guests, not moving back, not trying to re-establish
ourselves there. However, this small bit of time away did allow
us time to see some things in a slightly different manner than
we might have noticed before, which I suppose is a minor form
of American culture shock.
An example: Once when we pulled up to a stoplight at an intersection,
a big SUV pulled up beside us with a huge set of those shiny and
flashy “spinner” wheels, the kind which have a center
that keeps spinning after the vehicle has stopped. I thought about
this rather gaudy-looking (in my opinion) display, and how silly
it would look on a truck on the muddy streets of Dembi Dollo.
What was the cost of four of these contraptions? What was their
purpose? A few days later, I happened to see an advertisement
for this same type of wheel: $2000 each. So this one vehicle was
traveling around on $8,000 worth of “look at me.”
I thought for a bit in stunned contemplation: Who or what was
benefiting from this investment? How did it reflect or contradict
the values of this culture we were witnessing and were a part
of? The message that seems to be broadcast throughout the country
and seems to be driving everything more and more is “Do
you want it? Then you can have it and have it now.” It leaves
me to wonder what values in our personal lives and in our relationship
with God are being left behind when there is little true want
left, when our have-nots are no longer measured by simply not
having, but merely in the level of quality of the widget that
we can afford.
Maybe we have been witnessing too much of an
alternative reality—the harsh, gritty reality of rural
poverty and true need—but is America getting more and
more distracted from what is going on in the rest of the world?
Another thing we noticed was how extremely entertainment-driven
everything seems to have now become. The United States has just
about always been the world’s capital of consumerism and
mass media. However, something seemed to have even changed since
we left. It seems that every product advertisement, radio show,
and even newspaper and television news program that we saw, read,
or heard seemed to hook into some movie promotion, or what the
celebrities in Hollywood were up to at that moment, or what was
happening with the characters on some “reality” TV
show, or what gossip or intrigue some gossip columnist had dug
up. While reading the local newspaper, I (Mike) noticed that coverage
of the birth of a baby to a pair of famous movie stars was not
in the entertainment section, but in the national headlines section!
The van my parents rented for driving around relatives for the
wedding had a drop-down television/DVD player in the back where
the kids usually sit! What reality are we escaping from? What
reality are we creating? Maybe we just became more cynical about
such diversions. Maybe we have been witnessing too much of an
alternative reality—the harsh, gritty reality of rural poverty
and true need—but is America getting more and more distracted
from what is going on in the rest of the world? In the constant
drive to seek diversion and entertainment from everyday life,
are we losing what it is that draws us closer to one another,
and to Jesus Christ and His will for our lives?
But then I thought back to Dembi Dollo, where we’ve also
seen displays of conspicuous consumption among those who can afford
such things. And people do certainly like to be diverted from
the realities of difficulties around them, rather than take the
uncomfortable steps to address them. Maybe it all boils down to
what we as Christians believe as our fallen nature. Would people
in Dembi Dollo behave differently if they had the same level of
resources? Maybe the United States, in all of its bigness, brashness,
and wealth, just makes our human faults more obvious. I guess
our challenge, as always, is to turn to God, to daily evaluate
our actions, our decisions, and what we are paying attention to,
and to try to direct our lives to Him.
Mike and Janelle
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 330
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