I'm learning ... slowly...

The process of getting to know our students is a slow one. As Laura (our daughter) has observed from her experience in Jamaica, when you are a “short timer” (a foreigner vising for around 2 weeks or less) people aren’t likely to open up very much with you. She has the privilege of spending longer. Relationships take time.

But I have gotten to know the students some. In some ways, they are just like me. They have health issues, and transportation issues, and issues with relationships, and issues with the busyness of life. Yet they experience some of these things in much more challenging ways. 

For example, some of them are full time pastors and make roughly $100 or even $60 a month. Things are a bit cheaper here (a Coke costs about 40 cents in the store, but of course you pay with Kyat, and I’ve only seen people drink Coke in restaurants that cater to the rich or foreigners, and a new car might cost about $15,000). But that’s not enough of a difference to make it easy to live on $60! So they might live with family. Many (most?) don’t have bank accounts because there isn’t enough money at the end of the month to put somewhere. As many have said, no matter how challenged most of us feel in dealing with our money, we are nowhere near what so many in the world face!

But things aren’t entirely obvious either. For example, 7 of my 8 students have smart phones and/or iPads. (FYI, I’m down to either 5 or 6 students because of various issues.) Apparently parents or others have helped them get this technology, and what a fantastic resource it is for them. And they don’t complain about being poor. They eat rice for every meal, but not because they have to. That is what they like. They wouldn’t dream of having a car (although at least one of the pastors has one), yet life works pretty well without one.

It is so good for me to begin to see the world from within the eyes of someone else whose experience is quite different from my own. I quickly discover that what seems like the only way to think about things, and the only set of important values, turns out not to be the only or best way. And yet, there is so much for which I am thankful in my own context. It takes great wisdom to realize what is really good and what just seems good.

So I endeavor to keep learning, whether abroad or at home. Thankfully our God is patient and wise, and He loves to teach. And so much of His teaching He does through people, so I’ll keep trying to learn wherever I go.