I. Introduction D. How Others Responded
I did not find the reactions of friends to our call to
Malawi—whether they be members or nonmembers—to be radically different. Members, of course, understood better why we
wanted to serve a mission, but because we were headed to Africa, everyone
thought of the mission as a “humanitarian” or service mission.[1] Going
to Memphis on a mission would have been incomprehensible to non-members, but
Africa made sense. It is not hard to
envision how one might help out in a poor African country. They
were certainly right about that, there being endless opportunities for service
in Malawi for anyone who wishes to pursue them.
Of course, some were surprised by our willingness to go to
Malawi, a few even openly incredulous.
Several good friends shared privately that they would never do what we
were doing. As best we could tell, apart
from the health fears, most thought Africa was too distant and possibly too
dangerous. Some struggled with the
thought of leaving family behind for 18 months, certainly the biggest hurdle
for us to overcome. A few focused on
what they saw as the self-sacrificing element of the call. But for the most part, friends and acquaintances
were more intrigued than puzzled. Many
of them could, I think, imagine themselves accepting a similar calling, though
perhaps not openly seeking it. In this
sense, the Church provides a wonderful platform for senior couples to perform
service, something most of us could never sort out on our own. Through the Church, we immediately had a
congregation with whom to work, a sense of purpose, an apartment, access to a
vehicle, help in getting a visa, a list of the immunizations that were needed
for that part of Africa. It would be
daunting to think of finding a place to serve without the help of some existing
charitable or religious organization already on the ground.
The reactions of others to our mission call to Malawi were
colored in part due to the timing of call—arriving as it did in the midst of
growing international concerns about the possibility of a massive world-wide
outbreak of the Ebola virus. A few
thought it crazy to go to Africa, not realizing that the countries hardest hit
by the virus—Sierre Leone, Liberia, and Ghana—countries in west Africa—were
thousands of miles from Malawi. No cases
of the virus had been reported in Malawi or any of the other countries in southeastern
Africa.[2] When in Seattle, we were much closer to the
small, though contained, batch of cases of Ebola in Texas, than we would be
when in Malawi from the rash of cases of Ebola in west Africa then threatening
the well-being of so many people.
Certainly some thought I was naïve, perhaps even cavalier, about the
potential health risks that Carole and I would face by living in Malawi. But that is not how I saw it. My health and Carole’s have been remarkably
good; this was our time to go; one way or another I was confident we would be
fine.
Never did I believe we were immune from getting sick or
suffering an acute health episode. Such
problems can crop up, at any time, and to anybody—they are a part of this
life—the legacy inherited by being human.
“And unto Adam he said, because
thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of
which I commanded the, saying. Though
shall not eat of it: cursed is the
ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt
though eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of
thy face shall thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it
wast though taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.” Gen. 3:17-19.
Though we may not like it, all of us are subject to life’s challenges—the
risk of getting sick being one of many—and those problems can strike any of us,
from the great to the small, without notice.
Over the years, several well-beloved passages of scriptures,
lyrically phrased, have given us comfort, when we grappled with having our own
children on missions far away from hearth and home, without parents there to
provide support.[3] Later those same scriptures gave us solace
as it became our turn to exercise faith, leaving behind the comfort and
familiarity of home and family. “And
whoso received you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your
left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you,
to bear you up.” D&C 84:88. “Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing? And one of them shall not fall
on the ground without your Father. But
the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” Matt. 10:19-31. One looks in vain in those passages for
guaranties of being shielded from all ills.
But what is promised that the Lord is “mindful” of His servants—they are
in the palm of His hands—all will be well with them in the end, whatever trials
they may be called upon to face in the interim.
And at the end of the day, we care far more about that than we could
ever possibly care about our own health.
[1]
When visiting with work colleagues and non-members about going on a mission, I
usually focused on the “service” or “humanitarian” aspect of the calling,
knowing they would understand that, even if they otherwise could not comprehend
why I would want to stop practicing law.
But how could one argue against helping the poor and needy of Africa.
In my
experience, many nonmembers find strange, even offensive, the proselyting
element of Church missionary work. They
don’t want to be to proselytized and consider Mormons often “pushy,” too eager
to share, encroaching upon what they consider to be private matters. They, many of whom have little interest in
organized religion, find the differences between Christian denominations
bewildering, and sometimes outright silly, and consider it odd that one
Christian group would find it necessary to poach, as it were, the flock of
another Christian denomination. For
Mormons, this misses the mark—while they recognize all Christian groups enjoy
many of the essential truths of the Christian faith, they focus on what they
consider the “fulness” of the gospel.
It is also worth noting that many of them just don’t
want to be bothered when it comes to religious matters—either because they have
little tolerance for religion, being thoroughly secularized, or because deep
inside they are defensive, not wanting to discuss or defend the manner in which
they live their own lives. In either
way, Mormonism (or for that matter, any other religion having exacting
standards of moral conduct) is viewed, perhaps unconsciously, as
threatening. “And this is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the
light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”
John 3:19-20. Mormonism
represents a style of life at odds with the way they are living, and one they
wish to continue living, creating for them either a conscious or unconscious
threat. The dissonance can be relieved
by adopting an openly hostile attitude toward the “do-gooders,” seeing them as
misguided, naïve, out-of-step, repressed or by ignoring or dismissing them as
being total irrelevant. What could be
threatening in a life style thought of as odd, stodgy, old-fashioned, out of
touch with modern concerns.
[2]
But while there was no real risk of that infection, Malawi is not where you
want to be hospitalized. We suspected
this before arriving, and our early experience here in Malawi has not lessened
that concern. Several months ago we
drove one of the Mwale’s daughters, a Blantyre 2nd member, to the
Chiradzulu District Hospital, about 20 miles southeast of Blantyre, for
treatment for what was thought to be a bout of malaria. While the hospital is located in a beautiful
setting, it is not a modern facility.
The hospital does not provide food or typical nursing care; instead, the
patients’ families must supply the meals, picking up food from the local market
of small wood stalls, which has grown up around the hospital grounds, and must
handle many of what we think of as typical nursing chores.
As we arrived, an older man, with an injured foot,
heavily wrapped, dragged himself between buildings (the hospital campus
configured much like an open module California style school), leaving in his
wake a bloody trail on the concrete sidewalks and halls. Not what one wants to see in a hospital in a
country where the HIV rate among adults approaches 15%.
Even at the Blantyre Adventist Hospital in Blantyre,
one of the city’s two best facilities (resembling a small but decent community
hospital in the United States), the physicians largely blotched the treatment
of a spider bite that one of our sister missionaries got. Only after three visits to the hospital,
spanning a long three week period, were we able to convince a surgeon to lance
finally what was by then a badly swollen lower arm. Fortunately, the news is good, the sister is
now fully recovered and doing fine.
We understand the medical facilities in South Africa
are first rate, comparable to or better than those in the United States, but I
have no interest being stuck in a hospital thousands of miles from home, if
anything serious were to happen, however irrational the sentiment maybe. Should I need hospitalization, I would be
inclined to fly back to the United States (at our own expenses), and then return
to the mission field once the problem has been cleared up. Obviously, this plan assumes the need for
care is not acute, and I could tolerate the twenty plus hours in transit. Carole, when we have spoken of the matter, is
far more sensible, saying she would be fine in a South Africa hospital.
[3] Three
of our children served missions: Seth in
the Swiss Geneva Mission (1991-93); Sarah in the Hong Kong Mission (1997-98);
and, Joel in the San Francisco California Mission (2003-05). One might have thought it would be easier on
us as parent over time, struggling the most with the first, then finding it
easier by the time the last served. But
that was not my experience. It was just
a painful having Joel go, perhaps because by then we knew two years was really
a long time to be separated from a child.
Our struggles are not unique.
Indeed, each year thousands of families in the Church have to come to
grips with sending off children to missions far away. Yet we know, as they do, that rich blessings
flow from faithful missionary service.
We know that first hand through the wonderful spouses of our children,
whom we feel so blessed to count as family members. Five served missions: Ryan Owens (Leah’s husband) in the Stockholm Sweden
Mission (1991-93); Tomicah Tillemann (Sarah’s husband) in the Hungary Budapest Mission
(1998-2000); Billy Edwards (Abby’s husband) in the Frankfurt German Mission (1997-99);
Michael Leavitt (Catherine’s husband) in the Buenos Aires North Mission
(1997-99); and, Stephanie Matsumura (Joel’s wife) in the Cochabamba Bolivia
Mission (1997-99). Until assembling the
data, I did not realize that four of the five served missions at roughly the
same time, also overlapping with the years of Sarah’s service. Seth and Ryan, the first two to serve, were
also contemporaries.
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