A marker on my journey

I started a WordPress blog way back that could be the blog that picks up where my Substack currently leaves off. Reading some of it today feels like I dropped markers along my journey to remember.

After the medical mission, I started looking for a graduate program that spoke to where my head and heart were at the time. Short-term missions and aid as I understood it were not productive. I am encouraged to read through my old writings.  I am reminded of what my thoughts were in those key moments (and that my memories are serving me fairly correctly!).

I vaguely remember searching the internet for a master’s degree program that fit with what I was experiencing and believing about aid. I stumbled upon (or was led?) to the Master of Arts in International Community Development program at Northwest University. I enrolled for fall of 2011 and bought the books but then had to hit pause due to life circumstances. About two years later, when I was beginning to believe that going to graduate school was not going to happen, I decided to read the materials I had purchased. My daughter, aged 8 at the time, asked what I was reading, and I explained what had happened. I know God was speaking through her when she said, “Mom, why not start now?” She was right. Why not? So, I looked at the program again and the school was launching the first ever online cohort! If that wasn’t a sign…

I am including one of my WordPress posts here in its entirety as it captures my thoughts sort of in the moment (link to the blog at the bottom). I am so thankful to my friend, Heidi, for suggesting using WordPress at the time. I treasure these posts as markers on my journey.

I suspected as much.

February 28, 2015 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This really is becoming a place for reflection…I am hoping all of this will lead me to a thesis topic someday soon!

After participating in some mission trips (especially my first trip to Africa), I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the idea that I could actually do something of value. Not that I don’t think good can come from missions and serving – I do, but I was rethinking what it should really look like. And not just mission trips, but aid and help and partnership. What did that all mean? There were several pivotal moments that changed how I viewed my role in helping and serving the poor. The first moment was in Uganda. I realized very quickly that I wasn’t really helping long term (the layers of poverty are many!) and that I didn’t have a clue how to. Another instance was when I watched a video put out by Azusa Pacific University about meaningful mission work. The words of a local Mexican family who had been served by an American team still haunt me. The man said “this team came and painted our church. They did not talk to any of us. When they left, we painted our church back the way it was.” Depressing. One last thing I will share about how I got to where I am today is reading Miriam Adeney’s book, God’s Foreign Policy. Wow! I was so moved and so encouraged by all the grassroots programs that were happening around the world. This all made sense! I knew my mission was to find a way for our church to be involved in a long term partnership, where there was trust and there was community driven development. That is how the partnership with World Vision in Mahlalini came to fruition.

And now I am in graduate school, doing a deeper inspection on this stuff and a deeper reflection upon myself as well. After spending a week in Oxford with my cohort, I summed up my time with this statement: “I have found my people!” Everything I am studying and discussing with professors and students is about what God had led me to as I was “doing” the work: I have no clue how to help. Maybe we should ask the person in a developing nation what he or she wants and needs and what he or she is good at. We should start there. There is a concept I was reading about: Planners vs. Searchers. We have too many planners (like me) who probably don’t have a great idea of how to help these nations develop. The attitude seems to be “well, we did it. Let’s give those who haven’t yet our ideas and technologies, etc.” And yet the Big Plan hasn’t worked. And then there are the Searchers. You hear snippets of small successes in far off locations because one person found a way to make what was needed happen. Cheap malaria drugs aren’t getting in the hands of the poor. Searchers find a way. Maybe we should be funding people and projects like this, grassroots stuff, rather than governments and agencies and our own big ideas.

jayezern.wordpress.com