When Kara’s family was out visiting us for Thanksgiving Kara and I went to Manhattan with her brother Nathanael and his wife Laura.  We spent a good deal of our time at the Museum of Modern Art.  It was packed with great exhibits, way too much to see in one day.  But we got a very special surprise while we were there.  The MoMA was having a huage Van Gogh exhibit - Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night.  We saw a ton of Van Gogh’s work and saw his growing facination with painting night time scenes.  My very favorite piece was the Starry Sky Over the Rhone.

Starry Sky Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh

We also got to see Van Gogh’s Night Café for the second time in person.  Kara and I have a print of this piece in our house so I was glad to get to read a little bit of the back story for it.  In short it was inspired by a café that Van Gogh said brought out the absolute worst in people, the kind of place that would make you want to committ crimes.  Yikes!

The Night Café by Vincent Van Gogh

Another painting that I can’t get out of my mind is a very dark piece by Jasper Johns called Diver.

Diver by Jasper Johns

At first it just seems dark and macbre (which it is) but there’s much more going on.  This is the MoMA’s description…

The footprints at the top of Diver, the handprints at bottom and center, and the arrows, powerfully evoke the physical movement of a dive. But Diver also provides a metaphor for Johns’s artistic process: we are invited to immerse ourselves in the rich surface of his thoughts. A dive can be seen as a suspended moment between life and death (the two handprints can also be read as a skull)—and this work has been interpreted as, in part, an homage to the poet Hart Crane, who dived to his death from a ship in 1932.

For years I’ve wanted to travel to Africa.  It probably began towards the end of high school and beginning of college.  That was right around the time that I began to open up to God’s call for me to the ministry.  It was also about the time that my cousin Tiffani graduated from college and promptly moved from Chicago to Nairobi, Kenya to work as a librarian.  Her stories over the years of life in Africa, the adventures she had and the closeness to God she experienced there all deepened my desire to go to Africa.

In college I began to read books like Richard J. Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity and a number of Henri Nouwen’s books that were challenging the culture of busyness and consumption that I was (and remain) immersed in.  For some reason Africa became the place in my mind where a Christian could finally be free of the over-scheduled life of busyness and by necessity would have to live simply rather than by greed and consumerism.  Both then and now I longed for more stillness in my life, for a life of sustainability rather than one full of cool stuff.  Africa was a beacon, it was there I thought, that I would finally learn these lessons and following Jesus in these radical ways would just become easier.

In my later years in college I began to discover Jesus’ heart for the poor, and God’s call for his people to stand for justice in this world.  This compounded the mythical power of Africa in my imagination.  Africa was a place where God would be more present simply because of the poverty and injustice there.  And so I longed to visit Africa so that I might meet God in a new and more powerful way than is possible for a privileged kid with a Masters degree in America.

But when I went to Africa God was the same.

And that made me think.  It made me think that instead of internalizing God’s heart for the poor, I might have used it as justification for feeling distant from God.  And if that was the case then feeling distant from God probably had a lot more to do with me not paying attention and not spending enough time in prayer than it did with my surroundings.  I still wish I could embrace a life with more simplicity, I still long for more silence and prayer in my life and less scheduling and busyness.  But right now I’m thankful that God helped me to deconstruct yet another mythical place where being a Christian is somehow easier and reminded me that it’s not about where you are, it’s about who you’re becoming, whose voice you’re listening to.  Because even in Africa, God still speaks in the still small whisper and even in Africa following Jesus still takes a lot of faith.

This is the video I put together talking a little bit about our trip to Malawi and what we were trying to do in our visit.

So I’ve been trying to think how to tackle blogging about my trip to Malawi and it keeps feeling way to big. So I’m just going to start blogging about little things that come to mind rather than wait for the “big profound post from the sky.” Because let’s be honest, that would mean I just never post about it.

One thing that struck me when we arrived in Malawi was the dress. Perhaps this just reveals my ignorance, but I had expected clothing much like what the Maasai tribe in Kenya wear. Instead the clothing, in both urban areas and out in the villages, was very western. With the exception of some of the women - they would wear long skirts and then wrap them in a layer of fabric called a cha-ten-gee. These pieces of fabric often had very colorful vibrant patterns that would be rare here in America. But aside from that, the clothing was very western.

In fact it’s not a strech to say that most of their clothes had been worn by Americans at one point. Apparently most of the thrift-stores where we donate clothes pack it up in bulk and ship it off to other countries for dirt cheap. It’s a practice called “clothes dumping” and while some say this offers clothes cheaply to those who are poor I can’t help but wonder how it stifles the chance for local entrepreneurs to build a textile industry. The practice of clothes dumping has been outlawed by some countries like Indonesia and the Phillipines because they see it as a threat to local textie business. There’s a healthy debate about whether or not clothes dumping is helpful or harmful to poor countries. I can’t help but feel a little weird about it though. To think that the clothes I pack up and take to goodwill would end up being sold to someone in Africa is odd to me. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I guess part of me wishes that they had a uniquely African way of dressing and weren’t wearing hand-me-down t-shirts with Denver Broncos logos on them (yes, I saw this). I just wonder if what I meant as generosity was twisted into something that makes it harder and harder for a seamstress in Malawi to feed her kids because she can’t sell the clothes she makes for less than my used clothes are going for.

I’m not sure. I do think that it would go a long way, if I met the people I gave my used clothes to. This stuff seems to happen when there is some third party or institution mediating our generosity. When we give to the poor, but never meet them stuff like this seems to happen more easily. In his book The Irresistable Revolution, Shane Claiborne says that one of the subtle layers of insulation that separates the rich and the poor is charity. He goes on to say that “we can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables.” He goes on to say that he’s not convinced that when we get to heaven Jesus will say “When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.”

So Africa isn’t just making me rethink how I love my neighbor all the way across the world, but how I’m called to love my neighbor here in New Jersey.

(The raft in the middle of the lake, with tent readied for the night. above)

Sunday night at 7:30pm I stepped onto land. For the previous three days I had been residing on a 16′x16′ raft with four other friends. Only weeks before our team, who has been praying about and planning for our upcoming trip to Malawi, came up with the idea of doing a big attention-getting fundraiser that would allow our local community to have an impact on and be a blessing to the community of Sakata, Malawi where we will be working.

There are several ways that this money will go directly to the Malawian people to be of assistance. Mosquito nets to help prevent contracting Malaria, building fish ponds for communities to be a sustainable food source as well as a source of income, and building a mission center and repairing a preschool. We were really hoping that we could somehow raise four or five thousand dollars in our efforts. The community’s response was mind-blowing! We were so moved by the generosity of passersby, children and people who drove to Allentown just to donate after finding out about our cause from the media. Three kids came up to the booth and emptied their piggy-banks so that kids in Malawi will have a better chance to live. At the time of this post we have raised over $16,000!!!

Life on the raft was, well it was hot. We were fortunate enough to have a large shade canopy above our heads for the duration of our time on the raft. The sun was out for the majority of our time on the lake and we applied copious ammounts of sunscreen in response. We had many many visitors canoe out to us to talk, bring a meal to us, share a meal with us, play some card games or spend some time fishing. We were a floating hospitality barge for the large part of the three days.

But there was plenty of time to enjoy each others company as well. Of the five of us, four are confirmed for the trip to Africa. Our time on the raft together was an invaluable introduction to each other and how our personalities gel. Spending three uninterrupted days together will really tell you a lot about a person, and back on land I have so much more respect and admiration for my teammates. I am humbled by their passion for serving Christ. I am relieved that we are a group that prides itself on laughing at ourselves. I was also moved by a rather deep and controversial discussion we had on the raft about war and following Jesus where teammates with a radically different position than mine were able to have a friendly debate and never for a moment feel as though it would change our friendship or damage how we view each other.

Before the raft I was excited and anxious about going to Malawi and was looking forward to getting to know my teammates a bit better. Now I feel as though these people are family and I am grateful that we will be going on this mission together.

Dear Friends and Family,

As some of you know, I will be joining a team from our church on a two-week mission trip to Malawi, Africa to provide assistance to poor and needy people in that country. Our goal is to develop a long-term partnership between the Allentown community (where I am a youth pastor) and a village/community in Malawi, where we would focus on comprehensive, sustainable development in an effort to raise the village out of poverty. I’m reaching out to my friends, family and blog readers to see if you would be willing to help support our efforts.

The Need: Malawi is located in the southeast quadrant of Africa, and is a country of breath-taking beauty, and back-breaking poverty. Malawi is considered to be one of the four poorest countries in the world, with unemployment estimated at 60% or more, nearly half the population surviving on less than $1/day, and more than 65% of the population living below the poverty line. The statistics about medical conditions are hard to fathom: the average life expectancy in Malawi is less than 40 years old, more than 13% of the children do not make it to the age of 5, and with HIV/AIDS rampant, there are a staggering number of orphans and child-led households. Throughout Africa, 3,000 people die from malaria every day (one every 30 seconds). These severe medical issues combined with the malnutrition and food insecurity caused by the severe economic conditions make it extremely difficult for Malawians to pull themselves out of poverty on their own.

Our Vision: As I mentioned, our vision is to partner with and adopt a village in Malawi and provide broad-based assistance designed to enable the village to lift itself out of poverty. We will be partnering with the Development Office of the Presbyterian Church in Malawi, and with them have identified a rural village an hour outside of the city of Blantyre, near the town of Zomba, which is currently not receiving outside assistance. Our intentions are to provide a variety of forms of aid, including (1) constructing a simple building as a mission center that will serve a preschool/feeding center for the youngest and most vulnerable orphans in the community and a training center for agricultural and other programs to enhance the food supply for the village; (2) purchasing and distributing mosquito nets to help prevent the spread of malaria, which is especially prevalent in the region; (3) providing funding for fertilizer and seed to enhance next year’s harvest, (4) purchasing needed materials and supplies for orphanages and the preschool; and (5) establishing programs for providing sustainable sources of food, such as the construction of fish ponds and providing livestock that will reproduce.

How You Can Help: I’ve agreed to the crazy idea of joining a couple of other members of the team in spending up to 72 hours on a raft in the middle of the Allentown Lake, as a way to raise awareness of and interest in the plight of those we seek to help. We are asking people to support our efforts by making a pledge to sponsor our time on the raft. Each of us has agreed to spend an hour on the raft for every $10 we individually raise, up to 72 hours. So, if I’m able to raise $720 or more, I will have to spend the full 72 hours on the raft. 100% of the funds raised will go directly to providing assistance to the people of Malawi. We have a competition amongst ourselves to see who can raise the most pledges (and thus be stuck on the raft for the longest!). The following gives you an idea of what your pledge would buy:

Item/Cost

Buy mosquito net/$10
Stock pond with fish to support 1 family/$10
Stock pond with fish to support 5 families/$50
Construct 20m x 10m fish pond/$200
Materials needed to build mission center/$4,000

If you feel moved to sponsor some of my time on the raft and make a pledge, or otherwise support our efforts, please let me know — we will be launching the raft on the evening of Thursday, June 26. You can either give me the funds or a check (made out to “Allentown Presbyterian Church” with the notation “Africa mission” in the memo section) directly to me, or you can send it to me at home (101 Farber Rd 7B, Princeton, NJ 08540). I’ve never used the blog as a format to raise money before, but doing whatever I can to help our brothers and sisters in Malawi is something that I feel very passionate about. Any support you can provide — even if it’s only your thoughts and prayers for a safe and fruitful trip — will be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or want to learn more about our vision, please don’t hesitate to ask.

For a peek into life in Malawi, be sure to check out the blog where our pastor and his family have been writing about their experiences during their year in Malawi at apcmalawi.blogspot.com.

Sincerely yours,

Charlie Lyons-Pardue