Tag: missionary

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Pluck

My plucky wife slipped the medical release document between unmarked leaves of her passport. Stamped Canandaigua, N.Y.,, her doctor’s letter had okayed this, her first-ever overseas flight. We would board for Africa May 26 – our first child (we didn’t know the gender) to be born in under two months.

***
“Where have you been?” The director’s voice carried an edge, the tone anything but casual.

A day earlier Ann and I had travelled the 5 ½ hours from upstate New York to Brooklyn. We would lodge at an inner-city Mission before passing through one of JFK Airport’s many international gates to then ascend into friendly blue skies.

The Mission sat in a more sullied neighborhood where pedestrian traffic sadly displayed prominent signs of addiction and vice. We probably should have known better than take our stroll around the block.

“We took a stroll around the block. . . maybe a couple blocks.”

“Please,” the Mission director’s eyes were pleading. “Never do that in these neighborhoods – day or night – not without at least one of our staff along.”

We nodded meek compliance.

Next day a gregarious volunteer-driver with a heavy gas-pedal-foot chimed, “Hey guys, on our way to the airport, let’s go via Coney Island.” I loaded luggage into the old van and helped Ann settle on to a bench seat partway back.

Street conditions citywide have trended downward somewhat since 2012, according to the Mayor’s Management Report.

So reads data filed by New York City’s Independent Budget Office. But based on a 1972 Coney Island van ride with an expectant missionary wife on board, the recent trending downward had not been the first. Of things hoped for in the nation’s biggest city, traversing Coney Island pot holes at head-clunking speed was not counted among them.

Nine years after Idlewild was renamed John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport we shuffled our way into the cavernous belly of America’s most-renowned passenger aircraft of the times. A behemoth of an aircraft, the Boeing 747, commonly tagged Jumbo Jet.

Our seat-belts fastened, we took each other’s hand and I voiced a prayer. The moment felt surreal. Here we were, really off to the great Africa continent. To serve – hopefully for years to come.

The leg to England was relaxed, given our adrenaline-charged hours leading to it. We would need relaxing, considering what lay ahead.

Changing airplanes in London we expected. Changing airports we did not.
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Cajun Surprise

The joy-stream inside me began as a trickle and broadened soon to a rippling brook, before breaking out in overflow. Like Old Faithful awash in laughter.

The contrast was stark. My mood of just moments before had been glum.

Merely responding to an inner prompting to laugh surely couldn’t lead to such a free-spirited abundance of peace?

Irrational, even hypocritical as the laughing exercise at first seemed, my hollow ha-ha-ha’s at some point crossed a threshold. As if persistence made possible the passing of a baton. To a literal spirit of laughter.

Regardless how it all may have gone, one thing was certain.

The money-worry lifted – indeed it had vanished. A bubbly joy giving rise to effortless, authentic laughter washed over my heart and mind. Nothing felt a threat or burden, not CPK Language School fees. Not a looming insurance bill. Still I was rational, knowing a full day of normal, responsible activities lay ahead. An unvoiced assurance had settled in that all was well.

Four hours later I drew open a post office box and spotted a letter marked Louisiana. And started to read.

“Hi Jerry and Ann. I hope you all are doin’ well.”

I smiled as Ray Manguno’s easy-going Cajun brogue drifted into my hearing via the eye gate as I read.

“Well, I’m out in Alabama’s back-country doing evangelistic work. I’m preaching some night services at a little church. . .”

Ray then spoke of a practice he followed when preaching revival meetings.

“I always preach one evening on foreign missions, the call to get God’s message out across the world. I always raise an offering on that missions night, passing the plate so the local gathering can send a gift to whoever their church supports outside the country.”

As I read, curiosity stirred, Where’s my college pal headed with this? I glanced the added paper insert that had dropped from the envelope.

“Well,” Ray continued, “when the service ended the pastor came over to me a little embarrassed. He said, ‘Brother Raymond, our church doesn’t support any missionary. In fact. . . we don’t even know a missionary we could send this money to. . . Do you know anyone who could use the offering?’”

“‘Well, pastor,’ ” I said to him, ‘I actually have a couple on my mind right now.’”

“Now, Brother Jerry. . . and Ann, I want to tell you all that for the past few days I had been having you in my thoughts. Actually, the sight of your faces came up before me ahead of my time to preach here at this church on missions.

“So anyway, that kind of explains how the enclosed gift is for you guys.”

I sat in our white VW Bug with its KNZ 948 license plate, and rehearsed the story in silence, re-reading it slowly, word by word. Taking in the dollar amount registered on the American bank check I was sure it sufficed to cover our two crucial bills.

It was then I let out a whoop. “Praise you, Father! Thank you, thank you, Lord.” I thought of my wife.

Wait ‘til Ann sees this.

Pausing again, I recalled the early morning laughing spell and wagged my head in a mix of gratefulness and wonder. I steered the Volkswagen into traffic.

My accelerator foot experienced a slight weight gain en route home.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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In The Name Of A Friend

The young pastor strained under the weight of the bleeding man he supported. “He is my brother.”

He labored to keep the wounded man upright. The machete blade had gone deep.

“How did it happen?”, I asked, as my nurse-wife entered from a side room and approached to lend aid.

“My brother has a friend. The friend sent my brother to collect money owed him by another man.”

I took in the unfolding story as we all helped the wounded brother out of his coat, it’s back soaked through in red.

“The man owing money was drinking beer and got angry when my brother told him why he came. My brother decided to leave and come back another time. But the man had taken up a panga (machete). When my brother turned to go out, it was then he was slashed, before he could reach to the outside.”

Ann had brought out a sizable roll of gauze. By now his shirt had been removed and, with strips of old sheets and tape, she bound his bare torso. The panga had opened a V-trench some eight inches long – vertically, between spine and shoulder blade. She wrapped the material about his torso several times, in hopes it might slow the blood, buying us time to get him to the clinic where they could sew him up.

The government-sponsored clinic, a thinly-equipped medical outpost established to serve the Wakuria clans, sat at the edge of the village nearest us, five miles to the north.

Life was hard for the tribal people, often heartbreaking. It was a rare home that had not lost at least one child to malaria.

And there were the skirmishes.

With cultures of the region given to decades-old feuds – mostly to do with livestock – violence could erupt in a heartbeat. Kuria country lay bordering other cattle-tending families – the Maasai, the Luo, the Kipsigis. Bands of spear-wielding parties of either tribe, trekking by foot in their stated quest to take back rustled livestock, had become a common image.

I grew to slow the bug down on our dusty road and roll gently past the occasional vigilante parties. We couldn’t guess when a band might come into view on the twenty mile drive to our mail box (we checked for letters once, sometimes twice, weekly). Though as a missionary family we did not feel directly threatened, our verbal charge to the back seat passengers came with regularity, “Roll your windows up, kids.”

The task at hand just now was to get a terribly wounded young Kuria to a place for treatment.

I hope the doctor is in.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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World of Spirits

Spirits. Good. Evil.

What is this thing, this world of spirits? How real is the unseen world? Do invisible personalities carry influence, power with people – sometimes over them?

I pondered the questions off-and-on. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition, I had heard things about the spirit-world referenced plenty of times. Demon-oppression – Spiritual warfare – Deliverance ministry, and the like. My understanding was limited but the idea seemed reasonably simple.

Those good, powerfully strong beings of the angel variety represented God’s good presence at work in the world. By contrast, dark, evil, destructive forces issued from the kingdom of Satan, God’s biggest adversary. These dark beings were real and to be taken as seriously as angels. Teachers of scripture and the bible itself had shined light on the subject. That, though God himself is supreme, having no rival, no equal, much of humanity suffers in some measure under the deceiver, the accuser. This view, with plenty of Bible to commend, had informed much of my belief on the issue of spirit beings.

For me, it was also personal. I had sometimes sensed a a thing that felt like a dark, eerie presence. Not often but enough to trouble me, leaving me unsettled and sometimes fearful.

Living now in deep Africa, I discovered something I had long heard. The world at large – outside North American, European and other Western cultures – needed no persuading whether the spirit world existed. They required no convincing if spirit beings might play a role in living, breathing human beings.

First-hand encounters with witchcraft jarred me out of any guesswork about the matter.

I was enjoying lunch at the home of a missionary friend – another Jerry – in Southwestern Kenya. Jerry taught in a vocational school. The tribal people of the region had generations-long histories featuring spirit powers they knew to be evil. Placing curses on people was as common in some areas as the presence of moisture was common to a rainy season. Divination, witchcraft and the like, saw  powerful spirit influences, fueled by fear.

A youth on a bicycle sped toward the house where we were.  He came from the school’s direction a mile away.

“Mr. Jerry, Mr. Jerry!”

My friend set his tea cup down and moved outside.

After a brief visit with the boy, my host called up, “A student at the school is in trouble. Want to come with me?”

We set off on the ragged road – hardly more than a foot path. Less than five minutes the car jostled to a stop.

A tall, robust-looking youth sat on an outcropping of rock – one common to the area, rising about four feet out of the ground. In every way the student looked like, from a distance, a fine specimen of health. Except, that is, for his demeanor. And the trembling hands. His eyes shifted repeatedly away from direct contact. They seemed dark, fearful. He held his head as in a vice – sandwiched in a tight grip between the palms of his two large hands.

Missionary Jerry gently questioned the boy and one or two friends. He summarized the problem as best he could. The boy suffered an overpowering head-throb. It pulsed with searing pain. Indeed, he looked tortured.

But the pain’s source was not biological. Not really.

©2017 Jerry Lout                                                                                        Image credit. AMAS-Quay Snyder, MD

 

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Hidden Limp

What about my demons?

Joining up with Jesus in chasing out the devil, invoking his name, watching a man set free from fear, maybe even death. This is living!

An other-worldly thrill comes on the heels of such triumph. But then, as with many of life’s highs, a larger reality finds a way of settling in. Troubling questions may follow.

What of my own demons?

I had met Christ dramatically in my youth. His presence flooding over and through me, wave on wave, at my Yes to a simple invitation voiced by a real estate agent – “Would you like more of Jesus?”

God had kept me from the prison of an iron lung, had brought my useless, polio-smitten legs to life.

His relentless Spirit had, later on, chased after me and my rebellious teen heart. Such love at work had melted me to brokenness and restored me to my family.

And, wonder of wonders, he brought to me my most prized treasure, an inside/outside beauty from the Big Sky state of Montana. It had been Ann who waited with Jerry’s wife for us two men to complete our deliverance ministry assignment with a traumatized African youth.

And even a call to Christian service. Overseas, no less.

Yet.

My secret held on. And its attending darkness.

The night Lawrence violated me in my pre-puberty childhood had set the stage for compounded issues fueled by shame. Through wrongful, impure ways I had gotten exposed to sexuality. This set in motion  desires I knew to be wrong.. Repeated cycles of guilt-inducing thoughts and behaviors naturally followed. Behaviors I knew to be wrong but which plagued me regardless how I tried to resist. And try I did.

So, while on the one hand my life was marked by blessings nearly too good to be true, I struggled deeply with periodic bouts of distress over crippling addictions.

Crippled. A missionary with a limp.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Culture Leap

It wasn’t long and an opportunity to dismiss a house guest came my way.

Another visit to our home by Pastor Tom. Again, discussing church matters.

Twenty minutes or so into our chat – the second round of our respective tea cups nearing empty – we  each knew our time to wrap up the visit had arrived.

Though I had it on good counsel my next move was called for, this would be my first time to tell a visitor to leave my house. Taking in a slow breath I rose from the chair, and smiling broadly, took a couple steps toward him, extending my hand.

“Pastor Tom. . . it’s been good seeing you.”

Before the phrase had left my lips, I caught a look in his eyes that signaled all would be well – that sending my visitor to the door was not an act of rudeness, rejection or idiocy.

Tom’s smile flashed warmly, his gleaming eyes conveying pleasure – and likely, I gathered –  relief. I felt I could almost read his thoughts: Ah, the missionary from America finally gets it!

Taking up residence in another culture, whether across town or across the globe, brings with it mystery. Hurdles. Discomfort. Yet. . . Once sincere attempts are made to adapt, occasional doors to astonishing surprises fling open.

                               ***

“Pastor Jerry, please may we welcome you and Sister Ann. Our new child has come! Meet us at our home for tea.”

Ten months earlier the South Nyanza woman had stepped forward for prayer in our little Migori church. She and her husband wanted to grow a family but were unable to conceive. Her eyes were pleading.

“Please pray.”

We bowed. Petition went heavenward in Jesus’s name. Time moved on. Months passed, and I had all but forgotten the moment.

We got to the home mid-afternoon. The new parents, overtaken with joy, brought out folding chairs to the modest courtyard, receiving us in celebration of their newborn.

We and our hosts sipped sweet chai, helping ourselves to servings of toasty, deep-fried mandazis.

Then came the introduction – their “miracle baby” – a boy. Special expressions of honor are sometimes assigned a person deemed helpful on the occasion of a child being born. A namesake.

Common surnames among the Luo people begin with the letter ‘O’.

“Thank you, Pastor Jerry, for praying that day.” The mother paused. She and her husband smiled,

“Meet Jerry Lout Okech.” 

On any marathon journey of a missionary, special moments emerge unlike any other. Humbling. Sacred. Joyous. The mid-1970’s tea visit in Luo-land marked such a time.

© 2017 Jerry Lout

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A Time To Laugh

“Autumn! Get those pants back up, right this minute!”

When eight pre-school children of four young missionary couples (two M.K.s per household) suddenly go quiet in their outdoor play, the concern of parents increases by degree. First, an observation by a mom whose voice barely masks a growing angst.

“Anyone notice the kids aren’t making any noise?”

From here all the earlier conversation, random banter, interchanges of whatever among the parents, trails off. Anxious thoughts roll in, We’re in Black Mamba country. . . What if they’ve wandered off down by the trees and. . .

In this instance, as it turned out, we didn’t need to worry of strayed children.

Little Autumn’s father had stepped across the living room in which we adults had all been relaxing. Peering out an elevated window, he spotted the little ones. Our children stood in a circle beneath a Frangipani tree at the house’s edge, surveying from a distance curiosities of the human anatomy.

Parents, especially the moms, sprang for the outside doors. They had, just prior to the alarming shout,  entered into a quietly reverent prayer time. So much for that. . .

In days following, the mommies and daddies regaled one another with their reactions and those of their urchins.

“Mark, did you lower your pants out there before the others?”

“No mommy”, he moaned. “I tried, but I couldn’t get them to unbutton.”

Sarah, one of the other mom’s present, shared on another occasion a special nugget of wisdom. Noting the useful role humor carries in the sometimes overburdening work of international missions.

“He who laughs lasts.”

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Foreboding

Considering the severe hardships missionaries have encountered through the centuries, our valley of 1984 could seem trite by comparison. For us it was raw pain.

What just happened?

The question had us reeling as my wife and I made our way back from Dallas to our temporary residence in East Texas – Carthage, where our family was part way through our stateside furlough.

Ann and I had served in East Africa 12 years up to this point. We had just been broadsided by news that we may be ‘disinvited’ to return to our post. The past six years had been among the richest of our lives to date. Amy, our cheery third-born, had been added to our family a year ago. Her siblings, Julie and Scott, were content as ever – growing friendships, learning, thriving. The Extension Training I had brought to the region and was overseeing had expanded and, by every account, was cherished by those it served.

“You need to fly to Nairobi, Jerry. I think it’s necessary for you to clear the air with what’s going on with you and the Kenyan leadership.”

The senior-most American leader in the Africa work, sitting opposite us now, offered his opinion in a near mater-of-fact voice.  Yet, his manner conveyed an ominous urgency. “You need to meet with the Council face-to-face to get this resolved.”

We left the Dallas restaurant having barely touched our salads, both of us bewildered. After a few silent miles, Ann spoke. “What was that about. . . Get what resolved, Jerry?”  Ann’s words echoed my own upside-down ponderings. What is happening. . . what?

As the Dallas bombshell news began seeping its way into our souls, Ann and I were reminded of a hint of something just a few days earlier. A co-worker and friend had phoned us from Kenya, feeling compelled to connect. He shared of some fuzzy word going around that Missionary Lout was possibly in trouble. But no details accompanied the reports. All he’d heard were guesses, conjectures. No one was defining what seemed to be afoot.

St. John of the Cross – a Christian mystic of long ago – spoke once of ‘the dark night of the soul’. The dark had started descending. Soon I would board a plane to cross the world, not knowing why.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Shepherd Paths

“When you get out there and when things get hard – really hard – remember this. . .”

The words hung there above the table between us.

Veteran Missionary Johansson had leaned forward in his chair, apparently for emphasis. It was early 1972 near Rochester, New York, a few days before Ann and I would fly to Africa, embarking on the adventure of our lives. I probably wasn’t ready for his three-word punchline.

“Remember”, “when things get really hard, Love your wife.”

Now, here I stood, a dozen years later, poised to open a conference room door in Nairobi and face the distressing thing awaiting me, whatever it was.

“Remember. Love your wife.”

Before we entered our own trial, I had heard of married couples so undone by hardships and testings, that the best they could muster at the end of a day was to silently weep themselves to sleep in each other’s arms. Ann and I had entered such a level of “broken”.

Yet, a curious thing had also been happening. In the tunnel of conflicted voices and questionings, I sensed a quiet invitation. To the Psalms – the ancient song book at the Bible’s very center. The readings became my home, my refuge. I blubbered its lyrics, reviewed its whimperings and its railings, poured over it from my soul. And comfort came out of hiding to find me.

We drew from the psalms together, Ann and me. Even now, with seas and continents between.

I entered the room where the Kenyan leaders awaited. Senior overseers offered handshakes. Courtesy marked their faces – a measure of warmth it seemed to me, blended with a measure of awkwardness. Are these men feeling “left out” of something like I do?

The meeting commenced.

Two hours later the visit was over and I left almost as puzzled as before. But, in an odd way, I was comforted now. And greatly relieved. A question had surfaced among the men. Some voiced it several times.

“Why is our brother here? Why the cost, the long flights?”

Closing comments wrapped up the time.

“Brother Jerry,” the senior spokesman’s words came quiet, sincere. “Whatever difficulties there may have been in your service with us, there is nothing we see that should call for you to make this big and costly trip. We really do not understand, actually. Please give our greetings to your wife. We look forward to receiving you back to the work when your time in America is done.”

Before I reached the airport for my return flight home, a signed letter from the Council was passed to me. Offering well-wishes and words of “sorry” for undue pain brought our way. The message kindly addressed Ann by name – affirming again the African leadership’s readiness that we carry continue forward in the work.

The big aircraft started its lumbered movement toward an outbound runway. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are preparing for take-off. Please see that your carry-on items are secured safely. . .”

Drawing my seat belt about me I took in a slow breath. Lord, you surely have things for us to learn. Don’t let your counsel be lost to us.

Soon a treasured piece of literature lay open before me, precious phrases strung together I could easily recite from young childhood.

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” From the Psalms.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Making It Happen

The grand company of heroes in foreign missionary work features a long list of people who never walked the church aisle surrendering to God’s work abroad. They never enrolled in a college Missions course, never boarded a plane or ship venturing off to lands and to peoples hungrily awaiting their arrival and the good news they bear.

These are the child-rearing, husband-supporting homemakers.They’re the carpenters, accountants, physicians and farmers, high-schooler babysitters, retirees making it on fixed incomes. And a trainload of other skilled and not-so-skilled, educated and hardly-literate folks, all of a common stripe. They make up the interceding, resource-sharing, passion-fueled army known simply as missions supporters.

Many are anonymous, praying and giving – passing their support on through the coffers of a partnering church. Faithful, continued, selfless giving, without which the missionary enterprise would cease to carry forward.

“It’s not as much as I wish it could be.” 

How often throughout our Africa years did we take in this and similar tender expressions, sincerely offered. 

For years Sister S regularly mailed to our East Africa PO Box a one-dollar bill. Her monthly “widow’s mite” meant as much to us as any amount from any additional source, an outflow of a big generous heart.

Africa’s enormous land mass lies a good long way from America’s shores and visitors flying out to see us through those years were few. The lone pastoral visit we received from the U.S. in our two decades on the field happened in 1989.

Billy Shoffner’s southern drawl – which usually rolled out in easy, unhurried tones – betrayed a faint trace of urgency at one point during a game park visit. We had taken a break from church ministry for a day or two of sight-seeing.

I eased the diesel pickup toward  a slow-moving herd of elephants. . . a little too near for Bro Billy’s liking.

The company of mammals had moved our direction. One especially large beast now lumbered within nearly arm’s reach to the pastor’s rolled-up window. The elephant paused there. A second or two passed. My old friend stirred in his seat before speaking.

“Ya know, Brother Jerry. . . you think it might be time now we kindly moved on past our friends here?”

Through all our years in the Lord’s service, there remain a handful of memories which when recalled, very specially warm our hearts. The faithful prayers and giving of supporting friends and family are included. Numbered among them, two shepherds paying a visit from from East Texas – half the world away – Billy Shoffner and James Walker. 

Thank you.

©2018 Jerry Lout