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GoogleI worried at the time that the stories would be self-serving. But I tried to be honest about what it was like to live in a dirt-floor shed in Nicaragua for a week, and about my own shortcomings as a first-time missionary.
I got an incredible positive response to that first series of stories, and to the stories I've written about each of my foreign trips since that time. Every year I worry that I'm being self-indulgent or that people will get sick of my ramblings, but not a week goes by during the year without someone commenting on those stories -- or asking me where I plan to go next. (I'll answer that question in a moment.)
This year, when I ran a series about my Costa Rica trip, I got a couple of indirectly negative responses. One of our web site commenters -- a fellow who never has much good to say about anything -- noted a photo of me on horseback and asked, "Which one is the jackass?"
Then, a few weeks later, a woman who was unhappy with the newspaper wrote a letter to the editor (with a copy to our corporate offices) blaming me, personally, for three different burrs under her saddle, two of which had nothing whatsoever to do with me. The one issue in which I had been involved was that I had refused to run, at her suggestion, a negative story about a candidate on Election Day, something no respectable journalistic organization would ever do. In this woman's letter, she made reference to my Costa Rica series and implied that I should be covering the news here at home instead of galavanting around the world.
Except for that first year in Nicaragua, my mission trips are taken on my own hard-earned vacation time, and so they don't take anything away from my coverage of the news here at home.
I still believe, based on the year-round comments I get, that most people like reading the stories. But I want to be sensitive to the issue, and when I think I've overstayed my welcome I'll stop writing them. I certainly don't have to write the stories in order to take the trips. (Actually, I do have to write them. I just don't have to publish them.)
I haven't been as happy with the stories from the past couple of trips because the trips themselves were less productive, and so I didn't feel I had as much good to write about. In Bolivia in 2007, we had some misunderstandings about for whom we were working and what was expected of us. Several other things went wrong as well. Debra Snellen and I spent too much "down time" on that trip simply because there were days when there wasn't that much for us to do.
In 2008, in Costa Rica, Frank Schroer, Megan Siegrist and I were in a much more pleasant and cooperative environment, working with two incredible churches -- but the communities in which we were working just didn't have the same level of poverty I'd seen on previous trips, and at several points during the trip I felt almost guilty for having raised money to go there.
Well, the good news is that I'm making plans to return in July to Kenya, the site of the trips I took in 2004, 2005 and 2006. My heart has been in Kenya ever since I first set foot there -- I even wrote a novel about my experiences -- and I have eagerly waited for a chance to return.
-- John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. He is the author of "Soapstone," a novel based on his short-term mission experiences. His home page is lakeneuron.com.
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Mr. Carney, I hope I will not be labeled as someone who never has much good to say, but I have to ask: Do you feel like your physical presence on your mission trips ever justifies the expense of the travel. In other words, do you not think the investment could be better used to supplement the churches in the areas you visit, especially those in extreme poverty? There have been many people I have talked to recently that have gone on similar short term trips and I have always wondered what their objective was, but did not want to appear rude and ask. I only ask you now because you brought the expense up yourself. I understand the need for missionaries, but to me, those funds being spent on tangible goods instead, such as books, buildings and even teachers, would be much more efficient. I do not know if you would agree with me, but I assume that most places you have visited have been exposed to and talked to many westerners and have been fairly well exposed to Christianity. I do not imagine that there are too many remote tribes left out there to convert and that the organized church already has considerable exposure.
I guess the better question to ask you is whether your trips do more for your own personal growth, or if your presence actually provides something that is not available, either from the churches currently in place or from the local population. Again, I am not trying to be mean, judge your actions or single you out, just to understand. Also, if you do not mind me asking, where do you attend church and do you have any ambitions of becoming a full time missionary sometime in the future?
I think that there are some types of mission trips that fall into exactly the type of trap you describe. I think this is particularly true of construction-related trips. In some cases, it seems like much more could be done by hiring local people to do the construction work, which would benefit the economy as well as create a church (or orphanage or whatever is being built).
One of the reasons I like LEAMIS, the group with which I take my trips, is that they have a different approach. We emphasize training --cottage industry training and pastoral leadership training -- which will, we hope, empower the people with whom we work to continue after we are long gone. And we've seen some results from this. My last Kenya trip, in 2006, had a group of us from the U.S. working in tandem with a group from Nairobi to teach cottage industries in a more rural part of Kenya. The Kenyans who had been our students two years earlier were now helping to spread what they had learned to other parts of their own country.
Our pastoral leadership training helps equip pastors from rural areas -- many of whom have had little or no formal training -- deal with many practical leadership and management issues, with both practical and Biblical perspectives presented.
Our trips aren't the evangelistic type of mission trip. We work in partnership with an existing church in the host country, and try to meet their identified needs and priorities. Occasionally, of course, the host church will want us to do a little street preaching or home visitation as an adjunct to our relief work, and we're pleased and privileged to do that. But that's not the central focus of our trips.
I have to say that I also see benefit to the cultural-exchange aspect of mission teams. I think I have grown spiritually through my own exposure to the churches I have visited in developing world countries, and I hope that I have become more aware of global issues as a result of my travels. Even in cases where the visiting team is building a church (or doing other, similar work which the locals could have done themselves given a little money), there's some benefit to this aspect of short-term missions. Again, I think LEAMIS tries to maximize this. Whenever possible, we stay in homes rather than cocooning ourselves in a western-style hotel or guest house as some groups tend to do.
In some cases, security or infrastructure issues make it impossible to stay in homes. When one of our 2004 group wanted to spend the night in the Kibera slums, our Kenyan hosts told him it would be dangerous, not only for him, but for his hosts -- who would probably be robbed after his departure on the assumption that the visiting westerner had left cash or gifts behind. But even on that trip, we were staying in homes -- in Nairobi proper, not in the slums.
To answer your other questions, I am a member of First United Methodist Church. I haven't felt the call to go into a long-term overseas missions assignment, although I don't rule out that someday I might seek a career in some form of mission work.
This is a complicated issue, and I think some of the complaints leveled against short-term mission trips are valid. I've tried to be transparent in my previous stories and talk about some of the misunderstandings and problems we encounter. But I think such trips can have value.
I appreciate your answer, and the fact that you did not read any insult into my questions. I worried about my wording as soon as I had saved the comment.
Your answer completely satisfied my curiosity. The group you travel with sounds as if they do make the most of the trips. I was imagining a group of people (who usually sit in an office) arriving in a city (or village) and working (poorly) on a building project while the people from the area watched. I also had the image of middle class foreigners (some of whom could possibly be accused of being Sunday morning Christians) preaching to those, who have in some cases, have already steeled their faith by living lives most of us can thankfully only imagine.
I am not sure if I am correct, but I am now picturing your groups being more like the rotating Japanese engineers coming to work here at Calsonic for a few months at a time to troubleshoot whatever problems come up, being for the most part advisors, but occasionally doing whatever needs to be done.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with personal growth being an added benefit of your trips. Greater understanding on both sides of the border must be a good thing. I think I have missed your previous stories though, as I am still a fairly new reader and do not often travel from the blogs or Home Page. I have a couple more questions regarding how your trips have changed you and your views of the world, but I will check out your website for that (I don't know how I originally missed that information at the bottom of your piece) and if I get a chance this winter, will pick up your book.