Stories of Hope
by Monte Sahlin
One of the things that I always loved about being raised as an Adventist kid was mission stories. At a young age they took me all over the world. They were filled with adventure and the war with disease, suffering, poverty and evil. I learned to see the world through the eyes of compassion and hope.
For a couple of hours recently that experience was reclaimed as I read two new volumes by Dr. James Appel, a contemporary of my children who served until recently as a missionary doctor in Chad. He has an undergraduate degree in theology from Southern Adventist University and a medical degree from Loma Linda University, completed a family practice residency at a county hospital in southern California and then went off to be medical director at Bere Adventist Hospital, the lone doctor for 150,000, mostly Muslim, desert people.
His quiet courage and unrelenting faith comes through despite his unblinking honesty, even about his own frustration and despair on occasion. His stories of hand-to-hand combat with Malaria, HIV-AIDS, drunkenness, hunger, and all manner of disease and pestilence are simply heroic. It will renew your faith and your pride in your church to read these unadorned accounts of front line missionary activity.
Appel wrote the one book literally in the trenches. It is a collection of his Email and Blogs written to relatives, friends and distant supporters of his little hospital, written at odd moments in the haze of long days and sleepless nights. And it is precisely that flavor of random notes, unexpected events and one painful intrusion after another that makes this a really gripping read!
It even includes a romance. The young doctor falls in love with a Danish nurse in faraway Africa. They take an interlude in Europe to get married (which he skips over in the book) and more recently are the parents of twins. But his blog about her is a priceless expression of love.
Nasara: Dispatches from a District Hospital in Chad, will give you a very realistic, nitty gritty picture of the people who are battling the vast problems of public health and community development in the Southern Hemisphere. It will reassure you that a new generation is doing God’s work, unrelenting in their dedication and sacrifice.
The second book describes what Dr. Appel was thinking about theologically while he was doing surgery and delivering babies in rural Chad. Children of the East, is an extended Bible study on the topic of Islam. How does God see the seemingly insoluble, often violent differences between Christianity and the Muslim faith that includes one quarter of the Earth’s population? No small problem for a young theologian-physician to tackle and one that he admits being forced to consider because of the context in which he found himself working, a Muslim community.
Both books are self-published (with the help of an editor) and available on Amazon.com through the marvels of new technology. If you grew up like me reading mission stories, you will enjoy these volumes. If you did not grow up in that milieu, I strongly recommend that you read these books just to better understand the rest of us, if for no other reason. The experience will also provide you with other dividends.
More than anything, reading these two books gave me a strong sense of assurance about the new generation of Adventists. They are just as willing to give themselves to the work of healing and sharing faith as any Adventists have ever been. They are just as likely to take the risks of going to the ends of the earth, whether that be in rural Africa or the inner city of an American metropolis. They are just as deep in their theological thinking and dedicated in their reading of Scripture. God is working in the lives of new generations of His people.
I guess I need to re-borrow my wife's Kindle 🙂
Thanks for the recommendations.
Thank you for a positive blog; I plan to order his books. As we look at our own sheltered lives, it raises the desire to do more in our own sphere of influence. I have a friend who has served in several different relief agencies (including ADRA), and I marvel that she has given her life (still single and attractive at 40) to serving those in poverty. Most of the time she has worked in public health in Africa.
Thanks for reminding us about what unites us as Seventh-day Adventists.
Monte: As a missionaries' kid myself, I have noted that though many, many Adventists born in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s left the church, shortly before, during, or after the removal of Desmond Ford from the Adventist ministry, those of us who had been with missionary parents outside the U.S. during a portion or all of the 1960s and 1970s tended to remain. The hypothesis has been presented that an Adventist who has been reared in a variety of cultures tends to see Adventism as the unifying element in an otherwise unstable cultural upbringing. That may well be, but speaking here from my own experience, as a lifelong Adventist who spent the 1960s in South America, I see the primary factor being that of experiencing a far broader picture of the totality of Adventism, and consequently being less prone to leave in protest over a single manifestation of ecclesiastical overreach and miscalculation—which is a very charitable and understated characterization, in my opinion, of the evil done Desmond Ford, and by extension to the church. The mission experience, either personally or through books and stories, anchors a person far more securely to the totality of Adventism, rather than to a small aspect of it as represented in an English-speaking, white, Anglo-Saxon congregation, which otherwise would have been my primary and perhaps only touchpoint with Adventist culture. I recognized that the treatment of Desmond Ford was wrong, but I felt that the fallout from that decision would provide its own natural punishment and corrective. I believe it has, far more than I could have ever thought possible. Today I continue to work for reform in Adventism, from within, while many of my contemporaries continue to carry their departure as a badge of honor. The fact that ours is a "world church" has a tremendous unifying effect on those who have experienced it most profoundly.
I was a missionary kid in central america from the age of three months until I was almost 15. During that time I became friends with many other missionay kids and other kids living away from their home countries. I was born in 1967. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Mr. Schwisow's conclusion that the mission experience anchors a person more can cut in exactly the opposite direction–but as far as I know, when this happens nobody collects the data. Right now, at age 45, I am just barely beginning to come to terms with some of the issues, both positive and negative, from my experiences. When I finally decided based only on the data on other kids I knew that we couldn't be alone, I started looking for information on what happens to missionary kids. I found a book called "Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds" by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, that does an admirable job of describing how my demographic's trajectory tends to pattern itself.
I don't know what the church is doing now, but I know many kids and adults who suffer serious and long lasting effects related to having been missionaries, and I think something ought to be done to help them–at least the ones that are going through it now. There is no need for so many of my demographic to be perpetually depressed, get on drugs, have abortions, have their families split, and go on to have difficult relationships that end in divorce, difficulty in their careers and so one, when it can all be traced in the majority back to the fact that they were missionary kids. Many people my age have nothing but boundless vitriol for their parents and the church, which to me seems at the least, unconstructive. I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg here…but let me assure you there are many lives who feel they were in one form or another sacrificed on the altar of the so called greater good. It is difficult for many to see that this damage wasn't willful on the part of their parents or the church–although some have merit in that direction. Some feel it is now their mission to do whatever they can to tear the church down, and I have seen them be successful.
I believe the church would be well served to take an intense and active interest in helping families go into and come out of the mission field, because what the church doesn't know is certainly hurting it in this respect. The effects, both positive and negative, are long lasting. If they're negative and unresolved, let's just say in a charitable and understated way that the results are bad. The people who have left do not necessarily carry their departure as a badge of honor. It's often a shield against unresolved grief that plagues them everywhere they go and can hamper many of their efforts to succeed.
For every action there is a reaction, the tremendous unifying effect on those who have experienced the world church can profoundly backfire with equal or greater force.
I can only pray the church at least makes some effort to reach out to these people and offer them a choice of denomination or non denominational counseling so they can get on with their lives. To some, the church owes an outright apology, to others, they deserve to learn skills to help them be able to talk with their parents, and parents with their kids, and others need to simply have a mechanism or frame work to resolve the many issues being a missionary kid raises by default.
I was a missionary kid in central america from the age of three months until I was almost 15. During that time I became friends with many other missionay kids and other kids living away from their home countries. I was born in 1967. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Mr. Schwisow's conclusion that the mission experience anchors a person more can cut in exactly the opposite direction–but as far as I know, when this happens nobody collects the data. Right now, at age 45, I am just barely beginning to come to terms with some of the issues, both positive and negative, from my experiences. When I finally decided based only on the data on other kids I knew that we couldn't be alone, I started looking for information on what happens to missionary kids. I found a book called "Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds" by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, that does an admirable job of describing how my demographic's trajectory tends to pattern itself.
I don't know what the church is doing now, but I know many kids and adults who suffer serious and long lasting effects related to having been missionaries, and I think something ought to be done to help them–at least the ones that are going through it now. There is no need for so many of my demographic to be perpetually depressed, get on drugs, have abortions, have their families split, and go on to have difficult relationships that end in divorce, difficulty in their careers and so one, when it can all be traced in the majority back to the fact that they were missionary kids. Many people my age have nothing but boundless vitriol for their parents and the church, which to me seems at the least, unconstructive. I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg here…but let me assure you there are many lives who feel they were in one form or another sacrificed on the altar of the so called greater good. It is difficult for many to see that this damage wasn't willful on the part of their parents or the church–although some have merit in that direction. Some feel it is now their mission to do whatever they can to tear the church down, and I have seen them be successful.
I believe the church would be well served to take an intense and active interest in helping families go into and come out of the mission field, because what the church doesn't know is certainly hurting it in this respect. The effects, both positive and negative, are long lasting. If they're negative and unresolved, let's just say in a charitable and understated way that the results are bad. The people who have left do not necessarily carry their departure as a badge of honor. It's often a shield against unresolved grief that plagues them everywhere they go and can hamper many of their efforts to succeed.
For every action there is a reaction, the tremendous unifying effect on those who have experienced the world church can profoundly backfire with equal or greater force.
I can only pray the church at least makes some effort to reach out to these people and offer them a choice of denomination or non denominational counseling so they can get on with their lives. To some, the church owes an outright apology, to others, they deserve to learn skills to help them be able to talk with their parents, and parents with their kids, and others need to simply have a mechanism or frame work to resolve the many issues being a missionary kid raises by default.
I was a missionary kid in central america from the age of three months until I was almost 15. During that time I became friends with many other missionay kids and other kids living away from their home countries. I was born in 1967. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Mr. Schwisow's conclusion that the mission experience anchors a person more can cut in exactly the opposite direction–but as far as I know, when this happens nobody collects the data. Right now, at age 45, I am just barely beginning to come to terms with some of the issues, both positive and negative, from my experiences. When I finally decided based only on the data on other kids I knew that we couldn't be alone, I started looking for information on what happens to missionary kids. I found a book called "Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds" by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, that does an admirable job of describing how my demographic's trajectory tends to pattern itself.
I don't know what the church is doing now, but I know many kids and adults who suffer serious and long lasting effects related to having been missionaries, and I think something ought to be done to help them–at least the ones that are going through it now. There is no need for so many of my demographic to be perpetually depressed, get on drugs, have abortions, have their families split, and go on to have difficult relationships that end in divorce, difficulty in their careers and so one, when it can all be traced in the majority back to the fact that they were missionary kids. Many people my age have nothing but boundless vitriol for their parents and the church, which to me seems at the least, unconstructive. I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg here…but let me assure you there are many lives who feel they were in one form or another sacrificed on the altar of the so called greater good. It is difficult for many to see that this damage wasn't willful on the part of their parents or the church–although some have merit in that direction. Some feel it is now their mission to do whatever they can to tear the church down, and I have seen them be successful.
I believe the church would be well served to take an intense and active interest in helping families go into and come out of the mission field, because what the church doesn't know is certainly hurting it in this respect. The effects, both positive and negative, are long lasting. If they're negative and unresolved, let's just say in a charitable and understated way that the results are bad. The people who have left do not necessarily carry their departure as a badge of honor. It's often a shield against unresolved grief that plagues them everywhere they go and can hamper many of their efforts to succeed.
For every action there is a reaction, the tremendous unifying effect on those who have experienced the world church can profoundly backfire with equal or greater force.
I can only pray the church at least makes some effort to reach out to these people and offer them a choice of denomination or non denominational counseling so they can get on with their lives. To some, the church owes an outright apology, to others, they deserve to learn skills to help them be able to talk with their parents, and parents with their kids, and others need to simply have a mechanism or frame work to resolve the many issues being a missionary kid raises by default.
This has been recognized as a real need by a special counseling service offered in the town where I live. For returned missionaries and their family who need help in returning to the states in finding work, helping children adjust is necessary.
I have known children of returning missionaries and often their children have been sent to boarding academy at an early age where there was no parental supervision; then entering the schools in the U.S. they were somewhat lost and didn't know how to "fit in" which is difficult enough for teens. Some were used to being waited on by native servants and expected the same in the states. Like fish out of water, it is difficult and children have no choice in parental moves. "Saving souls" in foreign countries takes precedence over saving their own children.
Thanks for that comment Elaine. Do you know of any action within the church itself to take this on?
No, sorry I don't, but it is a service that should be offered just as returning veterans need "de-briefing" and counseling on adjusting back into civilian life.