"...and moved into the neighborhood"

How naïve I was to think that in a few short days I could become incarnated into Izmir and into Cairo! They will always tug at my heart (these blog entries are a way of fixing them there in a sense) but four days each pass quickly. For me, just moving on to Egypt, which is more foreign, overlay Turkey, an equally wonderful and needy place. That’s the drawback of a short-term experience. We weren’t tourists, who come and gaze and spend and go, but we didn’t “move into the neighborhood,” as John says about the Word who became flesh and blood (the vivid Message paraphrase).

The closest I can come to describing our purpose is that we attempted, rather like cultural anthropologists, to become participant observers of IVCF’s summer student cross-cultural ministries. In due time, we will share what we have learned with the people who want to make these ministries even more fruitful. (Again, the word “privilege” is the only one that I can find to describe this opportunity and another reason to write these mini-essays, which attempt to pull out and examine the themes that emerged from our observations.) I tentatively suggest that even though we could not move into the neighborhoods, we could at least be vehicles for blessing them. Some of our most tender and special times were those in which we had opportunity to do that (even as we strained the resources of our hosts—they were the ones blessing us). I think of praying as we walked in mean narrow streets and wide tiled boulevards and, for some of us, crooning to babies or visiting with people in their homes and shops. Some of us sat on a panel about careers, trying to convey to Turkish and American students alike how Jesus would have us work, and others helped staff put together ESL lessons or think through how they could enhance their ministries. I think of the conversations with longer-term staff and short-term students as they poured out their concerns and their joys, their love for their neighborhoods and their deep distress over those forces of evil that undermine so much that could be good there, followed by prayer for them. An empty restaurant by day (Turkey) and a cool rooftop by night (Cairo) became holy places where God met us all in prayer. We all listened carefully and in gratitude to those servants of God who are by birth rooted in Egypt (no such opportunity in Turkey) who shared their hard-won visions for ministry. Even just listening, hearing well, being open to be changed by what we are learning, can be a form of blessing.

As for the students and staff, they did become incarnated. In Turkey, the students literally moved into the neighborhood as they lived with their student-partners’ families. What a risk—accept the spare bed and participate in all the lifestyle differences of complete strangers! Some of the staff in Izmir had fallen in love with the place on former Global Projects. In Cairo, they breathed the same foul air as the Mokattam residents, walked the same grim streets, attended the same praise services, held the dirty hands of the same horde of kids, rode in the same dangerous taxis and tried to discern whether God would have them return here, or to similarly mean streets in Calcutta or Mexico City, for a lifetime. God has many neighborhoods.

What does all this mean for me, rooted in Wooster, unlikely to be able to go anywhere long-term because of Karen’s needs, now overwhelmed by the realities of Izmir and Cairo, which just increase my longings to serve Muslim students? How can I live as these students and staff and locals do, reflecting their Lord, “generous inside and out, true from start to finish”? I have more questions now than I do answers.