Thankfully, it looks like I'm going to get to go to Myanmar this summer to apprentice under my good friend Ryan. He set up an entrepreneurship school over there and I'm really excited to get to learn about how he started and hopefully start one of my own in Haiti some fine day. It's just a dream right now, but I am taking steps to learn about entrepreneurship and international development. If I think too far ahead of myself like I'm prone to do I just get paralyzed by thinking about how much could go wrong. As a friend commented on this blog post before though, what if it doesn't fail miserably and what if God uses it to glorify Himself and love people well?!
Even as far back as 2006 when I took my first real overseas mission trip to Kenya, I can remember asking a friend something along the lines of, "Alright, so we know we don't want people to have to live in this type of extreme poverty, but I don't think the excess of America is all that desirable either." He agreed and it is something that I've never been quite able to shake. Ask anyone who has been to a third world or developing country what the main things are that they noticed and one of the likely responses will be how happy the people seemed to be. Part of that may simply be awkward shyness on the part of the locals, but maybe there's something more to it than that. Even when I've gotten to know locals on a deeper level, they seem to possess this inexpressible joy that I can't quite put my finger on.
Many missionaries have done significant damage in the past to local cultures by trying to bring their culture in and monopolize an indigenous people's culture rather than showing the locals where Jesus already is at work and how they might connect to Him. Somewhere I was reading told the story of how Indians would laugh with each other at how many times they had been saved due to just wanting to eat some food. How sad is that? These missionaries have been/are well meaning, hopefully, but mostly just misguided. There is a right and wrong way to do missions in general and short-term trips more specifically. The first thing to keep in mind is to go with a learner's heart. In our campus ministry, we were told to look for disciples who were F.A.T. and that has always stayed with me. It means faithful, available, teachable. I've tried to stay that way post college as well and hope that I never lose the ability to be taught something. There aren't very many arrogant people that are easy to like and I pray I never become that way.
Recently, I purchased a DVD from a group called LGH, light gives heat, an organization based in Colorado that employs around 120 women in Uganda. It was the story of how they got started and it was so inspiring. What I liked especially was when the wife was talking about how they just went there and listened to the locals and what they thought their needs were. The thing that kept coming up again and again was that they wanted to be able to afford to send their children to school but they couldn't afford school fees. This young couple also saw how the women would sit around and make these beaded necklaces for the tourists that would come through the local market. As you can probably imagine, there aren't a lot of tourists to Uganda, particularly after the war. So what this young couple did was to open up the market back here in the states, and now they provide a sustainable income to 120 women in Uganda. How incredible is that?!
My friend, Ryan, did pretty much the same thing in Myanmar. He went originally to work with the youth in that country and as he got to know them more he kept hearing the youth talk about how they were desperate for employment and jobs. That's what gave him the idea of the entrepreneurship school. Personally, I think that's a great idea for Haiti, but I think I might try and spend some time down there first and see what the locals have to say about their current situation.
Well, here's a link to the light gives heat website...http://www.lightgivesheat.org/Light Gives Heat
And here's a video link to their Merry Christmas video...http://vimeo.com/53466083merry Christmas video
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