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Jun 25, 2021Liked by Do Good Better

I think the quote that stood out to me the most from these chapters is “I had thought Somalis would envy my freedom and informality. Instead, I found people were satisfied for the most part with their interaction with God.”

I know that I was brought up with this idea that “people have a God shaped hole they are seeking to fill”. And we are to talk to our neighbors and friends so they can realize about the hole and we can tell them the solution. I now wonder at the arrogance I carried. There is little empathy to see that people’s lives and experiences are valid to them. I was listening to a podcast the other day where someone suggested that all Christians who go overseas do so with an assumption of superiority. I want to deny it but I am concluding much of having to undo our white savior complexes is because we have internalized that fixing things is our most loving contribution.

(Also, apologies if I am reading too much into that quote but that’s what it got me thinking about).

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I really resonated with your descriptions of being a spiritual expatriate and that longing to join in and connect spiritually with a place and a people. When I taught at a high school in Tanzania, my Muslim students would go to a tiny room for their daily prayers. For months, I saw them doing this and my curiosity grew and grew. Then during Ramadan, I saw them sacrificing their own comfort for their faith (especially surprising in 13-year-olds!) I told them that I'd like to fast with them. They gave me lots of pointers, and we chose a day. On that day, one of my favorite students came to get me from my room. She shyly asked if I wanted to pray with them that day because I was fasting with them. She carefully instructed me how to clean myself, how to wrap my headscarf, and placed me in the back of the room to participate to the best of my ability. I stuck out in so many ways in Tanzania and I often had my outsider status reinforced to me, but, in that moment, I felt a connection beyond words. I was so grateful for my students' acceptance and trust and welcome. I was scared to tell my supporters back home about it, and honestly have never really written or spoken of it before now. But I'm so grateful for that memory and that moment.

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Chapter 13 – Jinn

In East Africa we have people known as night dancers who manifest demonic spirits mostly at night. They may or may not be totally “normal” in the daytime, but at night they wander, often naked, and do strange and scary things. They will ignite fires in treetops that do not consume. They will drink gasoline to satisfy the demons in them. People are terrified of them.

When I was about to move into the village house I was building, I went to pour water on the drying floor cement when I found a pile of ashes in the doorway. Night dancers, or others, will do such things out of jealousy, especially with new houses. They burn fetishes, then pile the ashes is a place where the person is likely to step on or over them, and that brings a curse. The person’s leg may swell, he may get ill, and he may even die on the spot.

Thankfully, I knew what it was, and I knew that my Jesus is bigger and stronger than any demonic curse. So I prayed over those ashes, rebuking satan in Jesus name, then deliberately stepped over them, turned around and kicked them out the door! Then as I walked the path back to the place I was currently staying, I looked and saw a number of ash piles in the pathway. So I just kicked them off the path and went home.

Nothing ever happened except that a year later, to the exact day, my night dancer neighbor died. Why a year later? I don’t know. But it spoke to me that he had planned for me to die that day…

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