9

Why Didn’t I Just Keep My Mouth Shut?

We had been in Malawi less than two years. We were obviously all susceptible to malaria and getting sicker week by week. After prayer and discussion, our leadership determined, with broken hearts, that we couldn’t possibly stay in Malawi. They gave us a choice. We could return to America, or we could work in South Africa where there was no danger from malaria. Given our sense of call, it was an easy choice.

When we left Malawi, our leader closed the sad occasion by reminding us, “Serving God is not a matter of location, but a matter of obedience.”

Many of our family members and friends begged us to come back to the States to get further treatment. But we knew that doctors in Africa had more expertise in dealing with tropical diseases. We decided to continue our work in a different country. We wanted to be obedient to our sense of call—wherever it led.

Our move from Malawi to South Africa was far from simple. It felt like we were moving to another world.

In Malawi, it seemed that new churches were being started everywhere. Malawi felt like a modern version of the Book of Acts. The Spirit of God was moving—and we had been a part of that. The spiritual hunger of the people there was overwhelming.

South Africa was a very different place. Europeans had brought the Good News of Jesus to South Africa over two hundred and fifty years earlier. Now, it seemed that there was some kind of church building wherever you went in that country. Christian religion had become so established (although admittedly not well-applied sometimes) in the culture that there was not much interest in planting new churches.

The warm welcome and instant sense of belonging that we had felt in Malawi reflected the heart and spirit of its people who were some of the kindest, most generous, accepting, and loving human beings on the planet. We arrived in South Africa at the height of apartheid, when there was an underlying and often unspoken (but always present and palpable) sense of tension, wariness, fear and anger in people and throughout the country itself. Hostility spawned and fueled by racism was like a cancerous tumor steadily eating away at the heart and soul of the nation.

I thought that I understood something of the psychology of racial prejudice and bigotry, but the racism that we found in South Africa was racism on steroids, racism multiplied to the nth degree.

We worked mostly with the Xhosa people. That meant that we would study our third African language in three years. Since most of the Xhosa were required to reside in the black homeland of Transkei, that’s where we chose to live.

After we had been there for a while, I had a conversation with an Afrikaner government official. I told him where we lived. He acted a bit surprised to learn that my family had chosen to live among the black people we worked with.

Out of curiosity, and with perhaps a touch of contentiousness, I asked, “Since I am obviously permitted to live with my family in a black homeland where we minister, would one of the black pastors in the area be free to live near me in the Republic of South Africa outside of Transkei if he so chose?”

I don’t know if the man had ever been asked that question before. He hesitated just a bit before he forced a smile and rather coolly assured me that I was free to live wherever I wished with my family. That was a choice I had. But it was also a choice that the black pastor did not have.

Of course, receiving that “clarification” didn’t clear up all the misunderstandings related to the spoken and unspoken rules that evidently applied in apartheid. When my boys rode their bikes in Transkei, black children would sometimes throw rocks at them thinking that they were white South Africans. I would frequently get stopped and questioned by black homeland police officers who were automatically suspicious of any white man driving in that area.

There were also occasions, outside of Transkei, when white South African policeman would stop me and take me to the police station just to ask how I could let my family live with “people like that.” Explaining that I loved “people like that” because every human being is in need of God’s love and grace didn’t seem to satisfy my interrogators.

We enjoyed a rewarding ministry, made many dear friends in both the black and white communities, celebrated the birth of another son we named Andrew, and lived in South Africa almost six years.

At that point, Ruth and I began reading the Book of Acts together again. As we studied and talked about those earliest followers of Christ, we came to understand that Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28 meant that we needed to follow the examples of the apostles in the Book of Acts. We felt strongly that we needed to go where the gospel had not yet gone, where people had little or no access to Christ. While there was certainly important work yet to be done in South Africa, neither one of us felt called to continue working in a country where Jesus had already been proclaimed for centuries.

We contacted our leadership in early May of 1991 to tell them that we were feeling led to go where there was no church, someplace where the gospel had yet to go. They listened respectfully and informed us that there was talk about exploring the possibility of new work in Sudan or Somalia. Ruth and I began researching and praying about both possibilities.

Later that May, I talked more about our thinking with one of our leaders at a conference in Kenya. He arranged for me to visit a United Nations refugee camp on the coast of Kenya. Thousands of Somalis who had fled their homeland were being detained there.

I was informed that no one in our organization was working with Muslims at that time—so there were no colleagues to give me any helpful advice. The only word I was given was this one from a veteran missionary in Kenya: “Be careful, Nik, those Somalis are 99.9 percent Muslim and they eat little Christians like you for lunch!”

I flew to the Kenyan coast and took a taxi north out of Mombasa until I reached the first refugee camp. I handed over papers granting me permission to enter “on behalf of a humanitarian organization to explore the possibility of future projects for Somali refugees.”

I was only a few miles south of the Somali/Kenya border, standing just outside the gate of a camp that housed ten thousand Somalis. I didn’t really know what I hoped to accomplish. I had never met or even seen a Somali before. At that point in my life, I had never met, let alone held a conversation with, a Muslim. I didn’t know the Somali language or culture. And I was there all by myself because I hadn’t even had enough sense to bring anyone else more experienced with me.

Before I talked myself out of doing what I had come to do, I took a deep breath and walked hurriedly through the gate. Once inside, a swarm of Somalis surrounded me, anxious to talk and tell me their stories. I was surprised at first by the number of people who spoke English. I then realized that, in all likelihood, the folks living in the squalid conditions of this refugee camp were some of most privileged of Somali society. Only that nation’s best educated, professional, and well-to-do citizens had enough resources to escape the horrors of their homeland.

I soon found a friendly young college student named Abdi Bashir. He introduced me to his friends who were more than willing to practice their English language skills on an American visitor. I asked many questions and listened to their stories. Everybody, it seemed, had a story to tell.

I learned that the population of this camp was made up mostly of educated Somalis—teachers, business people, and former government workers. In general, they seemed to be motivated and capable people. Many had exhausted their personal and family resources to escape the violence of their country.

They had fled everything that they had ever known, hoping and dreaming of a better life for themselves and their families. How demeaning it must have been for them to find themselves confined and crowded in a fenced compound, living in tents, and using public latrines with no running water. They had few possessions, no financial resources, and no idea where or when they might go next. Sadly, they had no more say-so over their own future than they had had back in Somalia.

I couldn’t help feeling intimidated by the warning that I had received. I sensed that I shouldn’t mention that I was a follower of Jesus. My decision to abide by that advice had been reinforced when I discovered (to my horror) what had happened after one well-meaning Christian organization had delivered ten thousand Bibles to that camp. The people had laid most of them out on the ground to make sidewalks through the mud; the rest they turned into latrine paper. Such disgraceful treatment of our holy book was just one indication of the intensity of their belief in Islam’s dominance over, and their hostility toward, Christianity. And that wasn’t something that I wanted to stir up when I was outnumbered ten thousand to one.

I finally decided to see what response I might get if I simply asked my engaging young friend, Abdi Bashir, “Do you know my friend Jesus Christ?”

I was totally unprepared for what happened next.

He immediately leapt to his feet and started speaking sharply to another young man nearby. Soon there were a half a dozen other men pressing around and shouting back and forth at each other. I thought that I might have triggered a riot. Here I was backed up against a metal fence topped with razor-wire with no place to go. Soon, a dozen, then maybe thirty, young men gathered around me arguing loudly, gesticulating wildly, with spittle flying.

I didn’t realize that that was normal Somali behavior—Somalis are typically very demonstrative. I could hear “Jesus Christ” this, “Jesus” that. I thought, “Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?”

Finally Abdi Bashir turned back to me and declared, “We don’t know your friend Jesus! But Mahmoud thinks that he might have heard of him and that he may live in the other refugee camp down the road. So go back out the gate, turn left, go to the next camp, ask for Jesus Christ there, and you might find him.”

I was so shaken by that experience that I decided to take his advice and leave as fast as I could. Instead of heading down the road to the other camp, I went back to Mombasa and flew home—never to return to that particular refugee camp.

That was the end of my first, less-than-encouraging experience of trying to talk with Somali Muslims about Jesus.

Back in South Africa, I told Ruth, “I have never encountered lost people like this. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Even so, we both continued to feel that God wanted us to serve among the Somali people. We shared our sense of God’s guidance with our leaders. They soberly informed us that no one from our organization had ever served there—and they wondered about the wisdom of sending someone there now. The needs, however, were massive—and they invited us to embrace this incredible challenge.

Two months later we moved to Kenya to set up our base of operations. We were required to learn the local language, so we began taking Swahili classes. I contested that requirement; it seemed to me that we should start working on the Somali language immediately and that Swahili would be unnecessary. My request was denied. Somehow, despite my background, I had an aptitude for African languages. Ruth and I both passed our Swahili test—the fourth language that we had studied in seven years—after fourteen weeks, with more than a little grace from our language evaluator. Only then could we start learning Somali.

In the course of our planning, we made a quick trip to the States to consult with our mentors and to seek advice. We were both surprised and pleased to talk with a top mission leader, an expert in cross-cultural communication and one of the world’s leading missiologists.

When Ruth and I walked into his office, this esteemed researcher greeted us by saying, “So you’re the couple with the audacity to try to take the gospel of Jesus to Somalia?”

I assured him that we felt called by God to do that very thing. “We realize, of course, that the Somalis aren’t very receptive to the gospel,” I felt the need to remind him.

In response, this seemingly mild-mannered, professorial-looking diminutive scholar literally leapt up out of his chair so fast that papers scattered. I thought that he might fly across his desk at me as he demanded: “How dare you say that the Somalis are not responsive to the gospel when so many of them have never heard the gospel or been given the opportunity to respond!”

Chastised and challenged by that encounter, Ruth and I returned to Kenya to continue our preparations. Shortly after that, I made my first exploratory trip into Hargeisa in February of 1992. I quickly concluded that there could never have been adequate advice, training, or life experience to prepare us for what was to come.