Two armloads of money to pay our bill

During our family's first term in Zaire (now Congo), we took a vacation at the beach at Moanda.  The guest house charged us $165 for the week--not bad, for a family of six.   What I remember is that when my husband John counted out the money, it amounted to two huge stacks of bills.  We thought that was inflation.  We hadn't seen anything yet.

John paying for our family vacation in 1982.  Total in his arms:  $165

The government owed more than it could pay, so it felt it could solve the problem by simply having more money printed.  Of course, this caused the money itself to be worth less and less.  When the Zaire note first came out, it was worth $2 US.  In our latter days in Zaire, a One Million Zaire note was worth just cents.  I can't tell you how many because that decreased almost hourly toward the end.  Our calculators could not handle the number of zeroes, so we used a shortcut method.  3,500,000 Zaires became 3.5, etc. 

The government felt the solution was to change the money.  At least twice that I remember, they declared the old money valueless and issued new money with fewer zeroes on the end of each note.
Some limited time was allowed for the people to cash in their old currency and receive new.  However, the time allotted did not take into account that a lot of the population lived far away from banks, transportation was difficult to find and too expensive for most people, and the roads were in disrepair.  Many people did not make it to the bank by the deadline and lost what currency they had.

In other cases they made it to the banks only to find that the banks were not adequately prepared for the changeover and had run out of currency.

In one changeover, they decided that coins, called Makutas, would no longer be accepted.  What did people do with all their coins?  They put them in the church offerings!  Soon the churches found themselves with bags full of coins that they could do nothing with.

We bought the coins from the churches at a low price, which at least gave them something they could use, and we brought them home to sell as souvenirs.  That was about the only time I can remember anyone winning as far as the devalued, overprinted currency was concerned.

During our second term the inflation became much worse.  The currency was losing value almost hourly.  It was at best a three day trip to Kinshasa to exchange money.  If we brought the currency we received back to the interior, it had lost a major part of its value in those days of travel.   This was at the same time that every government agency was looking for new ways to tax the few expatriates and business people who remained in the country. 

We made it through in those days, often by the skin of our teeth, by never letting much currency rest in our hands.  As soon as we received some currency, we would immediately invest it in things we knew we could resell locally--school notebooks and pens, salt, salted dried fish called makayabu, etc.  We never made any profit on those exchanges, but we minimized our loss, which would have quickly sunk the ship otherwise. 

We used to wonder why the Zaireans never saved anything.  After living through this kind of skyrocketing inflation, it was very easy to see.

Sometimes we see political jokes about currency being like Monopoly money.  I can understand that more than most.  My husband tells the joke he heard someplace that you know inflation is bad when paper is worth more for toilet paper than it is for money.  It is spoken out of experience.

We lived through economic collapse once--please, not again!

Our family lived in Zaire for nine years and were there through the declining days of the Mobutu rule.  I never dreamed that missionary life would give me lessons in economics.  Balancing our personal support was all that I had "signed up for".  But I found that living in a nation in full-blown economic decline taught me much more.  In the next three posts I'll talk about three areas of our experience:
1.  What happens when government targets the "rich" (I'll put that first since our own US government is having an affair with that idea right now)
2.  What it's like when government prints an endless supply of worthless money creating runaway inflation
3.  What it's like when government tries to "protect" workers by treating employers as if they were ATM's or money machines.

TARGETING THE RICH?  ONCE WE WERE THE "RICH" THEY TARGETED

The definition of "rich"

I first learned I was rich in a discussion with a Zairean friend.  We lived mostly on the level of the people around us, especially during our second term.  When we chose our new mission site, there were no buildings there, although it was near a village.  We knew that eventually we would build a cement house, but we did not want the first thing we did to be to build a house for ourselves.  As it worked out, we lived for six years in a mud hut with dirt floors and a thatch roof. 

Our home in Congo from 1990 to 1996

We had no electricity in our home and we used to joke that our running water was the water carriers running up the hill with a bucket.  We bathed in nearby lake and kept a simple bucket of water by the back door for clean up in-between.  Our clothes were permanently kept in the suitcases they came in, held up by rough sticks lashed together with vine.  We used a pit latrine outhouse.  In the beginning we cooked our meals over a campfire and for a long time baked bread in a hollowed out termite mound, a skill we learned from the Zaireans. 

Our bread going into a termite mound

 

Our "rich" kitchen

We bought greens and mushrooms from the local kids and dressed simply.  So I was surprised, in light of all this, that my friend still considered us rich.

"You think we are rich?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, Madam.  Very, very rich."

"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Because you have a truck," he answered matter of factly.

The truck did not belong to us personally, of course.  It was a mission truck, but we had use of it, so we were rich.

Our mission truck stuck on Zairean superhighway

When we first went to Zaire, being "rich" did not cause us any trouble, except that wherever we went the village chief & elders always wanted to talk with us.  Always they wanted us to build them a hospital and a school.  In every village.

The roadblocks

In the early days, we created friendship with the police at the few barriers before the towns we visited often.  We used to prepare little bags of coffee and sugar.  Before they could ask for a bribe, we began chatting with them in the local language and pulled out the baggies along with Bibles or booklets as goodwill gestures.  We always left as "bampangi ya luzolo"--beloved relatives.

As the country's bankruptcy became more and more complete, things began to change, however.  The government was out of money so it was not paying its workers.  Insistence on bribes became greater and greater.  We had to reduce the number of trips we could take because we could not afford the high price demanded at the roadblocks, and the number of them was multiplying.  The police began sneering at the coffee, sugar and Bibles.  They wanted $10.  Then $25.  Then $100.  At that point we were effectively grounded.

The mail

We had always paid for a post office box, since there never was mail delivery in Zaire.  The price on that quadrupled.  Then they also began charging us for each piece of mail we received.  We were livid at first, but then we realized that the postal workers were not being paid, and charging the few "rich" people who could afford the service was the only way they could make ends meet.  We paid for each letter.

The "infractions" and the taxes

Staying home did not solve the problem, however,  The government began coming to us.  The big Zairean holiday was New Year's.  Everyone hoped for a "bonne fete", a good celebration, which included eating plenty of meat and getting a new suit of clothes, and maybe drinking liquor for some.  The government was rarely if ever paying its workers, but many continued in their positions, perhaps because of the authority they could wield.  The only ones left in the country capable of making sure they got their "bonne fete" were the "rich".   The parade of government wokers began in September and continued in an unmitigated parade through New Year's Day.  Every conceivable department of government found a reason to visit the mission, each of them looking for some "infraction" for which they could levy a fine against us.  Of course, we were also expected to provide hospitality for them for as long as they stayed. 

The infractions were totally unreasonable.  One, I remember, was a supposed tax on dangerous places.  We had built a storage shed called a "depot".  It was a dangerous establishment, they said.  Our controller had already spent most of the day arguing with them when I got involved.

"What is dangerous about it?" I asked.

"Someone could get locked in there and suffocate," they responded.

"No, that cannot happen.  We have designed it very carefully with more than adequate ventilation.  Even if someone gets locked in, they cannot suffocate," I argued.  "Come, I'll show you the ventilation system and you can see what you think."

"Well, it doesn't matter whether anyone could suffocate or not or whether there is any danger or not.  By definition, a depot is a dangerous establishmnet, and you have a depot, so therefore you have to pay a tax."

We ended up paying the tax just to get rid of the guy.  Our funds were limited, so we had to decrease what we were doing in ministry.

The Environmental Protection Agency came out and declared that we had to pay an environmental tax because the generator that we used at the Bible school created vibrations that shook the ground.  It disturbed the termites, it seems.  So THAT'S why the termites were always so avidly attacking our house!  My husband, Papa John, tried to argue with that guy about the reasonability of what he was demanding.  "You just want your bonne fete," John said, hitting the nail on the head. 

The guy began feigning offense.  Papa John had insulted him, he said.  Before he could levy another tax on us for that, one of the pastors took him by the arm.  "Papa John must be getting hungry," he said.  "You know, the sun beats down on his bald head and he can say crazy things.  You must be getting hungry, too.  Let's go get something to eat."

We can laugh about it now, but it was truly difficult at the time.  The creativity for coming up with new infractions for which one could be taxed was truly amazing, dealing with the officials was both exhausting and discouraging, and the loss of funds cut very deeply into our accounts, making it difficult to help anyone else.

The situation got worse and worse as more and more people left the country, until toward the end even I longed to leave the country I loved so much, the place I had planned to live and minister for the rest of my life.   We spent most of our time trying to figure out how to get by, and we swore they spent most of their time trying to find new ways to take from us the ministry funds we had brought to help the people of their country. 

Reflections

I suppose my experiences in Zaire affect my thinking about our current situation in America.  No one really got any long term help by government officials targeting the rich.  A few elite got a bonne fete for a day.  The government did not address any of the issues that had caused the deterioration of the economy until mass chaos erupted and the country crumbled.  They have never really recovered from the damage that was done.  I fear America may be headed in a very similar direction.  We may have been rich by Zairean standards, but by American standards?  We've certainly never made anything even approaching $250,000 a year, so I am not trying to protect myself or the majority of my friends.  I just see the "taxing the rich" idea as a symptom of much deeper problems.  Would to God we would begin to address those!  I don't want to live through the collapse of a country for the second time.

Next time:  Living with Wild Inflation in the Congo

Thanksgiving Day Injustice

For Thanksgiving Day yesterday, Planned Parenthood published Thanksgiving "Discussion Points".  Nothing about being thankful for the gift of life, of course!  No, we were all encouraged to talk up with our families the idea of abortion as reproductive JUSTICE!  No, I'm not kidding.  A mother destroying the life of her unborn child is now being held up as JUSTICE.  Obviously not justice for the innocent child whose life is taken.

This is of great concern to me not only because I am 100% Pro-Life, not only because it's such a constant battle to constantly dicipher of politically correct doublespeak in which many cultural and political leaders are engaging, but also because I am so vitally concerned about justice.

This is part of the problem with this new doublespeak:  When a word can mean anything at all, in reality in means nothing at all.  If cutting an unborn baby apart or sucking it out with a vacuum (or any other method of destruction) can be called justice, then justice means nothing at all.  And this makes the term ineffective when we try to talk about real issues of justice for downtrodden, oppressed or enslaved people.  Once we accustom ourselves to thinking of justice as our personal right to do anything we want even though it destroys the life of another, we have then stripped the term of its power to discuss real and important issues that dramatically impact the lives of people.  Next thing you know, maybe PP will be claiming that when we recite "with liberty and justice for all", we are praying for abortion "rights".

The Biblical prophet Isaiah described our days perfectly:
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!" (Isaiah 5:20)

Are we now at the point where anything goes, anything can be made to sound good, and half of our words mean nothing at all?

UNIVERSAL CHILDREN'S DAY-Why are Children Valuable?

Today is Universal Children’s Day.  The world over, people are recognizing the value of our children.  In some places, however, children are not valued.  On last night’s news we learned of children being used as human shields.  This very day children are trafficked, sold into slavery, sold for sex, and used a delivery devices for bombs.

The value of children is tied up in the value we place on human beings.  Of course, all of us like to think we are important, but are we really objectively so, or is our value something we simply assign to ourselves, sort of like patting ourselves on the back?

For Christians like me, children are valuable because people are valuable.  People are valuable because God made us in His image and for His own pleasure.  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them…” (Genesis 1:26-28a) .  “All things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16c).

Some religions see children as valuable, but only insofar as they fulfill the purpose of the group.  They may see them as valuable as instruments of jihad or war by which their religion is expanded, or as propagators of more of their particular brand of faith, thus changing the logistics of nations, influencing votes to bring them into power through democratic means. 

In the Christian faith, children are valuable simply because God made them special in His image,  and He finds pleasure in His creation.  I find this immensely liberating.  It frees me from trying to force my children or those whom I serve in ministry to become what I think they should be.  It frees them to become what God wants them to be.  It helps us all enjoy their unique value whether they are smart or mentally challenged, average kids or autistic, beautiful , strong and healthy or physically challenged.  It helps me appreciate those who are different from me as much as those to whom I relate more easily.

Sure, Christians too think about what their children might become and the great things they might do for the Kingdom of God.  Yet that is not what gives our children their essential value.  We understand that they are precious because God made them, and He made them human.

In the Christian faith, children are a blessing from God.  From the moment of conception until God takes that new life back into His hands in death, children bring blessing into our lives.

We at Every Child Ministries gladly join in celebrating our children today!

Are homosexuals born that way? part 2

Although I have not seen any compelling evidence that homosexuals are born that way, I admit that it seems that way to many people. 

So for the sake of considering the issue, I'm saying that maybe some people are born with that inclination.  The question then is, Is that a reason they should pursue that lifestyle?  Is that a reason society should affirm them in that inclination? 

Well, let's think of some other examples.  People may be born with a psychopathic personality.  Should we affirm that or try to treat it?

People may be born with a bent toward pedophilia or beastophilia.  Should we affirm those bents and tell them it's OK, it's normal, that's the way God made them?  We shouldn't send sexual abusers of children to jail any more?

People may be born with a craving to set things on fire.  Should we encourage the bent toward arson, writing it into our children's textbooks as just another normal lifestyle?

People may be born with leukemia.  Instead of treating it and praying for them and rooting for them to overcome it, should we just affirm that leukemia is beautiful?  May start leukemia pride parades?

The point is that all these abnormalties are evidences that the whole creation has been cursed through our sin, just as the Bible points out.  We normally don't have any trouble sorting out the sin or the sickness from the sinner.  We normally don't have any trouble affirming the value of the person, affirming our love and support for the person, while also fighting the abnormality.

It's just in a few select cases that we do that.  Homosexuality (and many other sexual aberrations) is one of those cases.  In those cases we want to see it entirely differently.  It's immensely popular and politically correct to affirm THOSE cases alone as normal, just another lifestyle, made by God, etc.

It isn't very consistent or logical thinking, though, is it?

Again--Anyone may enter this discussion, no matter what your viewpoint, as long as your discussion is civil and respectful.  I welcome your comments.

Were homosexuals born that way?

Well the question of whether to accept homosexuality as normal has come to Africa.

Wasn't so years ago.  I remember in the 80's in Congo an old pastor came over to me after talking with a group of other pastors.  "Mama," he asked, "is it true that in the U.S. a man can marry another man?"

"Yes, I'm sad to say, that is being done in some places in the U.S." I said.  He mouthed dropped open.  He turned and said to the others, "She says it's TRUE!"

Another time a young African woman asked me how homosexuals "do it", since they are obviously lacking the God-supplied equipment for sex.  I told her one way was through anal sex, explaining that in the briefest and simplest of terms.  She shook her head.  "Kitoko VE," she said.  "NOT pretty!"

That pretty much has been the attitude I've seen in Africa.  Although I met one representative of an NGO who said she was there to help "gays" come out.  I wasn't surprised she was finding some.  Most poor people in Africa would be anything you wanted if it meant they'd get some special kind of help.

One of the biggest arguments I'm hearing is that homosexuals were born that way, and God created us, so He must have created them as homosexuals and therefore approve of them being such.  It sounds very logical.

Let's think about that for a minute.  I, being an evangelical Christian, do subscribe to the belief that God created our first parents and gave to them the gift of being able to procreate (have children through sex).  So ultimately I agree that God is the Creator of us all.  Even homosexuals.  God made them and they are His beloved creatures just as much as me.

But those who believe the Bible enough to believe the acccount of Creation should believe it enough to believe the account of how that creation got spoiled.  It comes in the very next chapter after the description of Creation.  The short version is that God gave our first parents a test--an opportunity to choose to obey or to disobey, to choose their Creator's way or their own way.  They failed the test, choosing their own way over God's.  Some may argue about the details of the account (although I accept them), but you don't have to look around you very far in our world to see the far-reaching results.  Evil has come into our world and is still very much with us.  Even those who don't believe in God usually have some standard of good and evil, thus acknowleging that evil is very real.

God did not make us evil.  He made our first parents good.  But He also gave us another gift, without which we would not be fully human as we know and understand humanity.  He gave us the gift of freedom, of choice.  That was part of the dignity of being human.  We were not programmed with instinct like animals.  We were able to choose, and we were warned of the devastating consequences of choosing our own way over God's.

So according to Christian belief, the world is not as God created it to be.  Even the ground was cursed because of our first father's sin.  I know the reality of sinfulness in my own heart all too well, if I am honest.

When some argue that God created people, so if they are homosexuals, God must have made them such, they are forgetting or ignoring that the world is not now as God created it to be.  Much has been spoiled because of sin.  Now we are laboring under the effects/ consequences not only of the sin of our first parents, but all the wrong choices of generation after generation of ancestors, the wrong choices of human societies as a whole, and also our own personal wrong choices.  Things are majorly messed up.  I don't see how anyone can dispute that.  Look around you.

I am not at all convinced that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim (or more commonly, the assumption) that homosexuals are born that way.  We'll save that for another discussion.  For now, let's say for the sake of argument that they sometimes are.  Even if that were true, it only shows that our world is messed up.  People are born with cancer.  That was not God's intention for them.

More on this discussion to come

A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE & THE WAR ON WOMEN

My husband and I have been talking about "rights" lately.  It seems to me that we human beings have got confused about that a time or two.  It seems to me we are bogged in a mire of confusion right now.  The founding documents of my country, the United States, talk about being "endowed by our Creator" with "inalienable" or unchangeable rights.  God-given rights.  Not rights we assigned to ourselves because that's what we wanted to do, but rights that are good in the natural order of things.  Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of religion.  These rights and others have stood the test of time.  These rights do not infringe on the rights of others, and if some would warp them to do so, we have had the good sense to realize that the expression of one right cannot be interpreted or used to infringe on the rights of others.  I can practice my own religion, for example, but if my religion says I should amputate the right hands of all men, I cannot practice that, because my right to practice my religion stops short of injuring others.

How different from some of the "rights" many people are pushing today.  Today many of our governmental and cultural leaders have decided that there are new "rights" people are "entitled" to.  We don't want to ever say it in such a way that it shows clearly that another's rights are being violated, so we never say "a woman's right to end the life of her child."  We don't even like "right to an abortion".  We want to make sure nobody thinks about the victim or the violation of another, so we use nicey euphemisms like "a woman's right to choose", "a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions," "reproductive rights", etc.  It's more than euphemisms.  It's doublespeak.  It's talk that consists of words having no relation to reality.  Recently I read that even the UN is determined to push "reproductive rights" as a universal right.  If anyone thinks differently, they are fostering a "war on women."  That's what some would have us believe.

If it is my right as a woman to choose when to end the life of my children, it is a right of a far different nature than the inalienable, God-given rights described in our founding documents.  I can practice my religion without hurting anyone.  I can speak my mind without hurting anyone.  I can live in freedom and seek happiness in many ways that hurt no one.  But I can never have an abortion without hurting someone.   Actually, I can never have an abortion without killing someone.  Without denying that same life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that I enjoy to someone.  It's impossible.  Abortion by its very nature ends a life.

It's pretty bleak when I think about how the idea of "rights" are used today.  Whatever we decide we want to do, we just manufacture the "right" to do it, it seems to me.

I am somewhat encouraged, however, when I remember that in the past we have fallen into this pit a number of times before and still managed to climb out of it.  I remember that there was a time when the Supreme Court of our beloved land declared that a slave had no rights that a white man need respect.  Some people wanted to have slaves.  They found it profitable, so they gave themselves the right to do it.  Thank God we later came to our senses and even the Supreme Court realized that it is not infallible.

Hitler felt the Jews and others did not have the right to live.  A similar thing happened between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in modern Uganda just in recent times.  "Rights" manufactured in the human imagination.  "Rights" to enable wicked people to do whatever their evil hearts imagined.  Those "rights" took the lives of millions, but they did not stand the test of time.

We need to get back to the God-given, unchangeable rights.  A woman's right to choose to terminate the life of her child is NOT one of those.