15

When Your Best Is Not Enough

During these dark days, we felt that our Somali neighbors valued us for who we were, for what we said, and for what we did. Sometimes, we even sensed that they noticed the values that motivated our work. At least, we hoped that they did.

For example, we sometimes encountered Somalis who were surprised that we wouldn’t take bribes to feed certain people first or to decide which village we would help next. Their culture had convinced them that everyone can be corrupted. One day a group of grateful Somalis from a coastal village came to us and said, “You would not accept any bribes to come to our village. Then, after your people did feed us, you refused to take any payment for it.”

That was all true, so I nodded. I had no idea what would be said next. They continued: “You know that as Muslims we can’t eat certain foods. They are unclean for us. So we brought this for you.” They opened two huge coolers to reveal seventy-eight fresh Indian Ocean lobsters. The man continued: “You can’t consider this a bribe because you have already fed us, so this is a thank you gift for your people from our village. We understand that you Westerners love lobster.”

We enjoyed a lobster feast—and we deeply appreciated their gift especially because it was based on behaviors and values that they had noticed in our lives and work.

We were also encouraged when Somalis noticed and appreciated the serious commitment required by our relief work. In fact, there were times when Muslim people even recognized the power and reality of the One we ultimately served. Often, in times of great danger, my Muslim staff members and friends would ask me to pray for them. At other times, during a medical crisis, our Muslim nurses would stop emergency treatments, saying, “You always pray for our sick people. So, first, ask God for help, and then we will continue treating this child.” We would stop and pray, simple and sweet prayers, public and out loud. Then, the medical treatment could continue.

We hoped that we were creating a little circle of light in the vast void of darkness. But many days we wondered. I still believed that the Lord had sent us to this place. But where was the spiritual fruit of our labor and sacrifice? There had been no Christian church, no Body of believers, anywhere in Somalia before we arrived. Now, years later, the situation seemed even worse. Now, there were almost no individual members of the Body left. I wondered if there was any hope that good could triumph over evil in Somalia.

When the United Nations pulled its staff out of the country in the spring of 1995, no one knew what to expect. In fact, little seemed to change for the average Somali. Poor people still struggled to acquire the basic necessities of life. Opposing clans still fought. Some days were probably better. Others were worse. After all that these people had suffered for years, the mid-1990’s were hardly the best of times nor the worst of times for Somalia.

The departure of the United Nations did, however, change the nature and scope of our work. With less attention on the needs of Somalia, financial support decreased quickly. We also lost easy access to transportation and security. It was a painful and dangerous time for us on several scores. We were forced to release employees who had served us well for years. In many cases when I let employees go, I tried to ease the pain by giving them a cash incentive of five hundred dollars after they had submitted a plan to set up a small business. That was a princely sum for Somalis in those days—enough for a prudent and resourceful man to open a shop or launch a small business that could support his family.

I could see the handwriting on the wall: the opportunity for us to work anywhere inside Somalia seemed to be coming to an end.

That realization was especially difficult for me to accept. The people in our organization had invested blood, sweat, and tears, with so few tangible results. Certainly, we had eased suffering and saved tens of thousands of lives. But for how long? And to what end? Was Somalia better off now than when we had first arrived?

I honestly didn’t know the answer to that question. And my struggle at this point brought me to a profound spiritual crisis. I knew that God had never promised to reward obedient sacrifice with measurable success. At the same time, I wondered why our sacrifices had yielded so little. Maybe, I wondered, there were results that we could not see. Still, these were dark days.

I stubbornly, and perhaps pridefully, resisted giving up and leaving. I feared that leaving would be a way of saying that evil had won. I held tight to the psalmist David’s conviction that the weeping and tears might linger for the night, but that joy would come in the morning. Sadly, after six years in Somalia, each morning brought only more tears.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I was dealing with something that I could not fix. Prayer and obedience and hard work and good training and godly intentions and sacrifice—none of it seemed to make a difference. The situation had changed so slowly and so little in Somalia since I had made my first flight into Hargeisa. I wondered if it might take all eternity for God Himself to make things right in Somalia. I am embarrassed to admit it now, but I even wondered if maybe this problem was too big for Him.

Everything in my background told me that if I trained better, worked harder, prayed longer, sacrificed more, and sowed more widely, God would grant an abundant spiritual harvest. But that did not happen in Somalia.

We knew that we had been obedient. We were proud of our team and its hard work. But when I tried to catalogue the results of our efforts—the unfinished business, the shortage of spiritual fruit, all of the things that we couldn’t accomplish—doubts and questions filled my mind. Had our efforts been worth the time, the money, and the energy invested? Was this worth the price that we had paid?

There was no way to know, of course, that very soon these hard questions would become even more personal.