FIELDS OF GOLD

Planting a Church among Central Asian Muslims

James Wright

Copyright © 2013 James Wright

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 149287020X

ISBN-13: 978-1492870203

DEDICATION

For her weighty wisdom, though she is a person of few words, this book is lovingly dedicated to my wife, the little woman with a huge vision to see the unreached nations come to Jesus.  I also write in a spirit of intercession for the peoples of the Muslim world.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

i

1

1

People of the Fields

3

2

Waiting Through Winter

14

3

Into the Vastness

23

4

Transplanted

29

5

Wedding on the Steppe

39

6

Breakdowns

43

7

Survival Mode

53

8

Seedtime

59

9

Farmland

65

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

“I’ve Been Praying for You”

The Garbage Dump

Dreams of a Field

With and Against the River

Urban Exile

Reclaiming the Land

Sweet Days Summer

Pruned for Purity

Fire in the Fields

The Road Home

New Stewards

Epilogue:  Lord of the Harvest

Praying for Muslims

Where are the Fields?

About the Author

71

78

84

87

96

100

106

110

114

125

128

133

136

137

142

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

How can I count all the great people who have made this story possible? Certainly many thanks go to our parents, who have stood by us faithfully for over 20 years of working in difficult and remote places.  Janna’s mother helped plant the church by sending packages.  Special thanks goes to the wonderful people we worked with in Central Asia.  Also we have had many good friends cheering us along in the good times and bad.  Because of their example and many others we can joyfully participate in God’s global work.

Introduction

Far from the fair shores of America, eastward of the efficient cities and ancient castles of Western Europe, beyond a revitalized Slavic Europe and south of the massive Russian taiga, vast deserts and grasslands stretch seemingly on forever over the high plateau of Central Asia. Centuries ago this boundless land served the world as the stage of the Great Silk Road, bridging the gap between the Far East and Europe. Still isolated from much of the world, though recently emerging from decades behind the Iron Curtain, live the Kazakhs, a people precious to God, wanderers of these fields.

In the early 1990’s, when the vast Communist Soviet Union unraveled like an outworn garment in the period of a few short months, like countless other young Westerners I learned about the great land and people of Kazakhstan, a country almost completely unknown to me before the fall Soviet Union. How such a vast piece of real estate could remain hidden from the Western world is a mystery, one only partially explained by the mysterious nature of the Soviet Union. Now populated by eighteen million people--half of whom are Kazakhs--Kazakhstan was historically their homeland, a place where they could survive and thrive as nomads grazing their huge herds of sheep, horses and camels on the sweet grass of the open steppe and the ice-cold waters of rocky mountains. They enjoyed a pastoral lifestyle much like their ethnic cousins the Mongols in Mongolia and the Uighurs in the Altai mountains. The demise of the Soviet Empire gave the Kazakhs and several other major Turkic people groups renewed sovereignty over their homeland.

The founding of a new country after an era of life under a globally powerfully ideology would normally mean extraordinary changes for its people. When Kazakhstan become a free republic, it not only entered a new time with this heritage, but it brought with it the history of having been a place of major importance on the Silk Road, one of the northernmost boundaries of Islam, and one of the smallest number of Muslim background believers of any Islamic people group.[1] It also entered a new season of great social and political upheaval followed by an economic boom brought about by the development of its world class petroleum reserves. Things had never simultaneously looked so bad and yet so good. Along with a vast array of differently motivated people, several followers of the Messiah Jesus mobilized inside and outside of Kazakhstan with the single-minded desire to meaningfully and fruitfully communicate to the Kazakhs the unchanging message of forgiveness of sins, friendship with God, and eternal life. As part of that initial wave of messengers, my family entered the Kazakh story in which we acted and were acted upon in life changes ways.

This is a personal story about the emergence of one of the very first churches started among rural Kazakhs during this important time in the country’s development. I try to portray an honest picture of both the Kazakhs and the ambassadors of Jesus who served among them.[2] Though precious to God who desires to make them the recipients of his endless saving love, the Kazakhs sometimes offend him in their darkened existence as sinful people. The people whom God used in this work were also people with struggles and problems, sometimes subject to highly stressful trials and hardships as they attempted to serve in extreme conditions. Furthermore, to further magnify His grace, God sometimes (often?) holds back the ones who are most impressive from a strictly human point of view and sends some of his weakest, neediest servants to gain their share of eternal treasure in the distant fields of gold. Now let us look beyond ourselves for a bit to the distant expansive steppe and the snowcapped mountains lifting their rocky peaks to heaven.

1

People of the Fields

The weary traveler forced his legs to keep moving. Many days earlier a sandstorm had separated him from the westbound caravan traversing the Great Silk Road. A mournful wind howled at him over the featureless Central Asian steppe. His outer cloak, though useful in the damp forests of medieval Europe, failed to bar this undaunted wind. A treeless land covering more of the earth’s face than the Mediterranean Sea bred a hostile climate completely unfit for humans…or did it? In the distance he could just make out an unnatural shape. It looked too regular and too big to be anything growing in the grass and scrub brush. In that moment a little spark of hope of finding people in this forbidden land energized his steps. He moved closer and began to distinguish a small dome jutting up sharply from the ground. In the quickly darkening twilight sky he saw a thin curl of smoke rising from the top. Could it be? People? He hurried closer to the dwelling, now seeing a warm, golden ray of light escaping from near the bottom of the dome. A bitterly cold gust of wind blew upon his face. He shivered, then cupped his ear, listening in amazement. Ever so faintly he could hear someone plucking a melody on dancing strings. The heartwarming sound mingled with the music of the wind, which now seemed much less harsh. Desperate for shelter, he found and lifted a small flap of heavy woolen felt and peered into the dome-shaped tent. He blinked a moment in the bright firelight that poured upon him then focused on an aged man with a white beard, entertaining children and adults seated in a circle on the floor around a cheery fire that warmed and lighted the room. At intervals throughout the song, they all smiled or laughed, their eyes sparkling.

Upon seeing the traveler, the wizened old man stopped playing and made signs with quick motions for the unexpected guest to come in closer. Late into the evening, while brilliant stars hanging over the wool dwelling made their circular journeys, the traveler became acquainted with the Kazakhs, incorrigible nomads of the steppe. Together they heartily feasted on the best camel and horse milk and meat the hosts could offer while relaxing on the softest cushions they could provide.

For five centuries, the Kazakhs have lived on the Central Asian steppe. The vast, mostly unpopulated Chinese Xinxiang province borders it on the east, the caviar producing Caspian Sea on the west, mighty Russia on the north and the Tien Shan mountains, the rooftop of Central Asia, in the south. Kazakhstan encompasses three times more land area than Texas. For centuries, along its southern side, in the shadow of lofty alpine mountains, huge caravans of camels and merchants made their way from east to west on the Silk Road. Few names can conjure more images of the exotic and foreign than the name Silk Road. Marco Polo’s fantastic stories of his adventures along the Central Asian highway brought derision and disbelief when he first brought back his firsthand accounts of Khanates and huge tracts of untamed wilderness. Centuries later much of his narrative would be confirmed in its accuracy. Ancient cities, predating the Kazakhs, housed travelers and offered rare merchandise in open bazaars. Huge networks of communication, vast armies, robust economies, and even vibrant Nestorian Christian communities once existed deep in the heart of Asia. Eventually various Turkic tribes of Central Asia such as the Turkmen, Uighurs and Kazakhs would form new coalitions, languages, and identities that would remain to this day.

The largest area of unbroken steppe, a vast sea of land right in the heart of Asia would become the homeland of the three Kazakh hordes. For centuries they wandered the land, pitched their yurts (kizui pronounced keyooz—ooee), and raised their livestock. Maybe it seemed to them that their endless steppe was the entire world. As far as they could travel in any direction, they only found more land. The physical boundaries of water and mountains and occasional conflict with other ethnic groups shaped life. They divided into three groups, the Great Horde, the Middle Horde, and the Lesser Horde. The seasons governed where they wandered. Spring brought snow melt, warm rains and green grass to the mountain pastures. Winter brought heavy snowfall turning the mountain ranges into inhospitable fortresses.

They did not wander alone, but with their dependable sheep, camels and horses. Their lives became intertwined so intimately, that a Kazakh riding a horse appeared as a fabled centaur, one with the head of a horse and a human. In every way the Kazakhs depended on their animals for survival. They did not farm the land, nor did they build cities. The nomads constructed their mobile yurts by covering a retractable wooden frame with large, thick panels of woolen felt. They hand-crafted boots, coats, vests and other clothing articles from supple leather. Using wool, leather and bones Kazakh craftspeople made decorative and practicable items used throughout the yurt. And if at all possible, a Kazakh would prefer a juicy fat chunk of meat for every meal. They ate horse meat in the winter and mutton all other times of the year. Horse sausage, made of seasoned fat and meat stuffed into the large intestine, always gave cause for excitement at a feast.

In beginning of the 21st century few Kazakhs still live a nomadic lifestyle except for a scattered few who have preserved the way of their fathers on the Kazakhstan and Chinese steppe. The near extinction of the nomadic lifestyle is due in part to the bleak history of Soviet oppression. Long before the Communists took over Russia, the Russians and the Kazakhs had established a mostly friendly relationship. The Czar agreed the might of imperial Russia would serve as protectorate for the Kazakhs' steppe and in return the Kazakhs agreed to fight Russia's enemies and allow some Russians to pioneer on their land. At the time the relationship allowed the Kazakhs much greater freedom of movement and self-governance than was available to most indigenous peoples in the Western hemisphere. After the Communist revolution of 1917, Soviet Russia began exerting more influence in the Kazakh territory. This eventually led to the it becoming one of the fifteen Soviet states in the USSR. During the first few years, the Russians did not oppress the Kazakhs. Then Stalin seized power.

Stalin had great ambitions for the Soviet Union to achieve status as THE world power. To do this he would have to crush opposition within his own borders and increase the output of the Soviet industrial machine. For the historically peaceful, nomadic Kazakhs who wandered the vast steppe, ripe with potential to become a major agricultural producer, this meant submit or perish. After centuries of no boundaries, no political limits, they were suddenly forced into villages and cities. In Communist terminology, they were collectivized. Those who didn't go died. During the 1930’s and ‘40’s, perhaps up to two million Kazakhs perished. The Kazakhs themselves slaughtered millions of sheep, cattle, camels and horses to keep them from falling into the hands of Russian Communists.

Like so many other episodes in its stained past, the Soviet government wanted to forget this dark chapter in the life of the Kazakhs. Nevertheless, the winds of communal memory blow mournfully over the hills and grasses of the steppe, not letting the world forget this immense tragedy. Kazakhs still grieve the loss. The grief is especially noticeable in their music. Though they may not openly sing about the oppressive years, their melancholy melodies convey a certain sense of pain and grief. They blame the Russians for oppression, and try to find some relief from their many heartaches, both old and new in the vodka introduced by their northern rulers. In fact, few nations drink like the Kazakhs. Alcoholism is an endemic problem. Before the Russians brought vodka, the Kazakhs only had kumiz, fermented horse milk, though very, very sour only mildly alcoholic. Since the arrival of vodka, Kazakhs have found it nearly impossible to escape its unrelenting grasp.

Seventy years of oppressive Communist rule radically altered their lives, yet the Kazakhs remain intact as a unique people group. The Soviets tried to eradicate Islam (and all religions), drive the Kazakh language to extinction and render Kazakhs and Russians indistinguishable in every way but physical features. It almost worked, but not quite. With the founding of the new republic of Kazakhstan the Kazakhs faced an unexpected future, feeling perhaps like a phoenix newly risen from the ashes. The people of Kazakhstan, especially the ethnic Kazakhs, have become the sole agents responsible for their destiny. The future belongs to them and their children. As stewards of vast petroleum reserves, the Kazakhs have tremendous potential for creating a prosperous society. This gives them hope and fear. They have hope of making something better out of their land. Yet they fear the weaknesses inherent in the society and culture. They know the tendency to discrimination, xenophobia, corruption, and irresponsibility in their culture. The risks of unbridled liberty cloud the dawn of opportunity.

Facing profound transition, Kazakhs have questioned their identity. The Communist years produced a people uncertain about themselves. For centuries they defined themselves as Muslims, but Communists indoctrinated their children in atheism. They defined themselves in relation to their dead ancestors, but the Marxist materialists said the ancestors had no spirits, that nothing spiritual existed outside of their imagination. They defined themselves by their role as shepherds, but the Communists forced them into farming and industrial work. They wonder whether they are Asian or European. With a heavy stock of Mongolian in their genes tracing back to the armies of Genghis Khan, they have Asian roots. Yet centuries of contact with Russians and other Slavic peoples has created a westward pull in their thinking, certainly, if not their ethnicity. It would be nothing unusual to see a Kazakh elegantly playing Tchaikovsky on a grand piano. So, who are they?

As the ancient Kazakhs searched for better grazing land from season to season, the modern Kazakhs are searching for an understanding of themselves that offers peace and fulfillment. In this context many Kazakhs, both those whose families became Russified in language and culture and those who preserved a more traditional Kazakh lifestyle have shown openness, even eagerness to talk about Jesus. They have witnessed the bankruptcy of Communism, and are leery of fundamental Islam with its rigid religious code and certain revolutionary elements found in some parts of the Islamic world.  They need a point of reference that provides meaning and purpose individually and corporately as a distinct people emerging on the world scene after years of isolation.

Into this state of affairs many other ideas have entered to compete for the hearts and minds of the Kazakhs. The fall of Communism opened the land of the Silk Road to a wave of modern change elements, including Eastern religions and Western cults. It also caused a back-draft of liberty and influence reviving the two religious fires that historically burned deeply in the hearts of the Kazakh people. These two flames are Sunni Islam and animism. Missiologists combine these two under the category of Folk Islam, an unorthodox religious form that merges Islamic beliefs and practices with more primitive spiritism and ancestral worship.

The Kazakhs have never been particularly devout Muslims and the influence of Communism only further weakened Islam’s hold on their minds, hearts and communities. Centuries of nomadic life hindered the work of Tatar and Arab Muslim teachers and conquerors from establishing strong Islamic Kazakh communities committed to a fixed mosque. Kazakhs wandered widely over the vast Central Asian interior. Few sat still long enough to learn Arabic, the language of the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an. This meant that few Kazakhs qualified as mullahs, that is Muslim religious leaders. Yet in spite of the obstacles presented by geography and lifestyle, Tartars and other Muslims labored intensively to bring the Kazakhs into the fold of Islam.  But their nomadic ways meant that they would understand less clearly and more easily distort Islam into forms considered unorthodox by Sunni Muslims of North Africa and the Middle East.

Animism, which is a belief in supernatural powers and spirits in nature, may have originated in Asia. Thus, with shallow roots sunk into Islam, the Kazakhs were disposed to syncretize it with ancestral worship and animistic practices. Islamic belief and practice stands with five "pillars." These are confessing the Shahada that Allah is One and Mohammed is his Rasul (roughly translated apostle or prophet), offering ritual prayer five times daily, giving alms to the poor; observing Ramadan the month of fasting from sunrise to sunset, and making the Hajj, that is, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in a lifetime if at all possible. Some Muslims add a sixth pillar, the Jihad, meaning Holy War. Historically Jihad is understood as a war fought for advancing Islam over the face of the earth, first using persuasion, then economic and social pressures, and finally military battle.

Rarely does a Kazakh practice these five pillars. A small percentage of older people, who become more religious with approaching death, may be observed keeping the daily prayer a few weeks before falling out of practice. However, with the post-Soviet freedom of religion the number of Islamic teachers from Turkey and other Muslim countries has greatly increased. Along with them have come waves of Kazakh refugees who had fled the Communists and settled in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and other Islamic countries.  Living outside of the sphere of Communism and under Islam made them much more devout.  Many of these different kinds of Muslims have established numerous lower and upper level educational institutions and Qur’anic courses to training the Kazakh youth in the rudiments the Islamic faith. They encourage them to become more devout in the practice of prayer, fasting, and mosque attendance.

The one time of the year that nearly all Kazakhs peak in their practice of Islam is Ramadan. With increased zeal, Kazakhs, especially in the rural areas, begin talk about religious matters, offer a Kudai Tamak (God Feast) inviting large crowds of relatives and neighbors, fast, pray and host mullahs in their homes to receive a bata (blessing) upon their health and household. Ramadan has also become a time when pressure on the emerging Kazakh church has increased. It is as though the spiritual darkness thickens in the land like a dense fog. Intolerance deepens with the possibility of greater pressure within families and in communities to persecute anyone who does not conform to the rigid sunrise to sunset fast. Anyone seen as a defector, especially members of the community who have left Islam to follow Jesus, can face severe pressure and threats.

In daily life, the typical Kazakh, whether found in an urban or rural environment, tends to be more concerned about his or her deceased ancestors and evil spirits than about Islamic law and practice. Orthodox Islam is the high religion and Folk Islam is the street religion. Kazakhs hang holy grass, sheep bones and other talisman in conspicuous places around their homes and work places to ward off evil and invite the favor of ancestral spirits. Frequently, perhaps weekly, they might prepare special fried bread believing it will please the spirits of their deceased ancestors. The bread prepared on Thursday and served Friday is called Jeti Nan or seven bread. The aroma of the bread, which is distributed to neighbors and relatives, is supposed to attract favor from the spirits of the deceased. Overall, the ancestral spirits seem to play a role in the Kazakh worldview similar to a lesser god or a mediator between God and man. For special occasions they prepare the elaborate Kudai Tamak in hopes of appeasing Allah so he won’t reverse a blessing he has already given or to persuade him to reverse a problem they are facing.

The Kudai Tamak provides a good example of Folk Islam. The men sacrifice a sheep and a mullah chants the Qur’an in Arabic. Food is prepared with the expectation that ancestral spirits also attend the feast giving their blessings. During the Soviet reign, the government banned all religious practice, including animistic healers. In the 1990’s, the number of spiritual healers among the Kazakhs multiplied greatly. The healers, or tauyps as they are known in Kazakh, claim to heal with power from God, ancestors, or forces in nature. The more popular healers gain followings of thousands of Kazakh holding healing meetings in large stadiums or auditoriums attended mostly by women desperate for help in their difficult lives. Local healers attract a clientele of regular patients who pay for their services with money, jewelry, livestock, or other goods. If a healer is particularly successful, he or she can exercise influence in the wider community. Healers can also fall out of favor quickly due to a failed or bad treatment.

For the approximately half of Kazakhs living in cities, it could be said that Islam and animism are less prevalent in the worldview than for rural Kazakhs. Urban Kazakhs are more likely to have had their entire education in the Russian language and culture and thus think more like Westerners. For these Kazakhs, a significant factor is philosophic naturalism. Marxists rigorously taught them the universe is material and natural and completely void of God and any kind of spiritual dimension. Most of the political, scientific, and commercial leaders cling to philosophic naturalism, though since the demise of Communism, giving lip service to the belief in a creator God has become somewhat stylish. In the late 20th century into the 21st century, Kazakhstan has experienced a political and religious openness unparalleled in the Islamic world, due in part to the influence of these leaders. They could be compared to the liberal minded deists of early American history, such as the founding father Thomas Jefferson who lobbied for freedom of religion while personally rejecting belief in the Christian view of God.

Along with gaining economic prosperity due mainly to vast oil reserves, many Kazakhs have become increasingly consumerist in their values. When the Iron Curtain opened, foreign businesses suddenly had access to an enormous untapped market. Three hundred million people live in the former Soviet Union, eighteen million of these in Kazakhstan. Material goods poured into Kazakhstan from China, Turkey, Japan, Germany, Korea, the US, Iran, and many other countries, intoxicating the materially starved Soviet citizens, leaving them craving for more. In the Kazakhstan capital, once archaic storefronts now glitter with the newest fashion designs from Europe and electronics from Japan. Under the Soviets a housewife might feel very lucky to own a clothes washer that looked like a cross between a garbage can and the Star Wars robot R2-D2. In the boom days she can not only get the latest computer controlled multi-cycle machine from Germany, she can own a new wardrobe of designer clothes. A man who used to covet his neighbor’s rusty, twenty-year-old Lada could now drive down the highway in his own Mercedes with leather seats and a DVD player for the back seat. And for those who still can’t afford the high life, the desire to possess the latest Western goods tugs incessantly at their hearts through a campaign of Madison Avenue style marketing.

Over the centuries the Kazakhs experienced little exposure to the Gospel of Christ. However, archeological evidence suggests that some Central Asian Turkic tribes, some of whom were likely ancestors to the Kazakhs, were Christians and formed church communities. The discovery of Christian tombstones in the Chu river valley of Kyrgyzstan is important to the study of ancient Turkic Christians. The tombstones were found in two locations. The first set, found by Dr. Porjakow in 1885 rest south of Tomak, to the east of Issyk-Kol, a large salt-lake fed by hot springs. All of them have crosses engraved on them, but not all have inscriptions. A Russian surveyor named Alexander found the second set of 611 stones near the city of Bishkek. These provided a trove of inscriptions dating from the years 1249 to 1345 AD. The inscriptions are in Syriac, indicating Nestorian influence, but use Turkic names and loan words. The tombstones give a penetrating insight into the nature of these 13th and 14th century Turkic Christians. A look at some inscription translations gives the best sense of how these early Turkic Christians lived with faith in Jesus Christ:

1273 This is the grave of the church visitor Pag-Mangku, the humble believer.

1307 This is the grave of the charming maiden Julia, the betrothed of the chorepiscopus Johanan.

1338 This is the grave of Pesoha the renowned exegete and preacher who enlightened all cloisters through the light--Extolled for wisdom and may our Lord unite his spirit with the saints.

1326 This is the grave of Shliha, the celebrated commentator and teacher, who illuminated all the monasteries with light. Son of Peter, the august commentator of wisdom, his voice rang as high as the sound of a trumpet. May our Lord mix his pure soul with the just men and the fathers.

This is the grave of Pasak--The aim of life is Jesus, our Redeemer.[3]

These communities eventually declined and went extinct. Timor I Leng (Tamerlane), the “Sword of Allah” did incredible harm to Christians and Muslims with his armies. But there were also internal problems, as Christians compromising their faith for the sake of survival and making deals with ruling Islamic governments to keep the Gospel to themselves.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhs were considered an unreached people. They had no opportunity to hear the Gospel in their language and culture. Kazakh churches simply did not exist. For the most part, Kazakhs considered the Russian Orthodox church and the other registered Russian evangelical churches either irrelevant, offensive, or simply incomprehensible. In the late 1980s, research estimated a total of 15-20 Kazakh believers out of eight million Kazakhs. Ethnographic specialists considered Kazakhstan one of the least accessible regions of the earth. Yet amazingly, contrary to their intentions of stamping out religion, the Communists inadvertently created an environment fertile for the spread of the Gospel among the Kazakhs. The Soviets' emphasis on education fostered a widespread school system that produced a literacy rate close to 100%. The oppression of religion shifted the Kazakh worldview away from fundamental Islam and toward pluralism and more critical thinking. Even many Kazakh Muslim leaders have shown eagerness to discuss the person and life of Jesus. In 1990-91 when the door to Kazakhstan opened for foreign evangelists and church planters, many workers responded to the opportunity. Most of the early ministry centered in Almaty[4], the former capital of Kazakhstan. Several Kazakh fellowships sprang up almost immediately, as the truth-starved inhabitants heard the Gospel for the first time in their lives. The first wave of churches that sprang up tended to attract Russified Kazakhs. Some of the first believers were translators who came into contact with foreign Christians needing their services. The Russified Kazakhs with their cultural closeness to the new, mostly Western foreign guests led the movement of ex-Soviets Kazakhs to the Messiah. Yet in the early days of the republic the millions of traditional Kazakhs living in small villages scattered over thousands of miles of open steppe still had no understandable witness. These unreached people in the land of the well-trodden Silk Road were the ones to whom we felt drawn. Our desire was to plant a church among them, and this is that story.

Waiting Through Winter

In childhood I once dreamed of a road. Tall trees lined the road, covering it with shade. Beyond the trees, dry, open land stretched into the horizon. I didn't know at the time what it meant, but the picture strangely stirred my heart. I had never traveled to a place quite like that, not that I could remember anyway. My rainy home in the bayous and pine forests of north Louisiana didn't fit the image. Still, somehow, for years the picture of the road was something that lingered in my mind, a distant memory, until one evening when I saw the road leading into our village in  Kazakhstan. I had come home to the place in my dreams.

Before Sub-Saharan Africa was evangelized to the degree it is today, the brave workers who pioneered that land sometimes gave testimony of seeing visions or dreams of Africa as children. The call of God to go to a certain place and preach the Gospel can begin at a very early age, even in the womb. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5, ESV). Given the difficulty of leaving one's homeland to embrace an alien culture, it makes sense that the Lord’s preparation would begin long before the person is fully aware of his or her destiny.

Neither my wife Janna or I ever thought we would someday live in Central Asia. In our college days before meeting each other, we had both independently wanted to help take the Gospel to people outside our own language and culture. After meeting we discovered our shared calling and that China particularly appealed to us. Our wedding reception featured the staff from a local Chinese restaurant we hired to serve egg rolls and crab Rangoon’s, but the door to actually move there and work never opened. After our wedding and graduating seminary we settled into a three-year pastorate. During this time Janna finished a nursing degree and we started to plan having our first child. I owned a lovely, detailed map of China--compliments of National Geographic--that I used to pray for the country, carefully going over every province from the Pacific to the Gobi. Interestingly, after many months of praying my way from the eastern coastline to the western Chinese frontier I arrived at the final province on the map. I had come to Xinxiang, the expansive Muslim-populated province that borders Kazakhstan. Still, as I sat looking at the border drawn between China and Soviet Union, I knew nothing about Kazakhstan, much less Kazakhs.

Even two decades since the founding of the breakaway Soviet republics, many Americans think of the former Soviet Union simply as "Russia." The mental designation isn’t entirely inaccurate since Russians have controlled or heavily influenced many of the bordering republics and peoples for centuries. However, to label the new countries "Russia" is to miscomprehend the rich mix of cultures scattered across Eurasia. This cultural diversity was virtual invisible to me during my youth. When I thought of the USSR, I envisioned ethnic white Russians, with slightly slanted eyes (Russians may have up to 25% Mongol stock in their ancestry), blond hair, and blue eyes. The truth is that the USSR was composed of Latvians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Germans, Greeks, Turks, Koreans and many dozens of other peoples, far more ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity than is found in the United States. Russians were only just the majority. The outdated Soviet ruble illustrates the mosaic with the words "one ruble" printed on the front of the bill in the fifteen predominant Soviet languages.

Probably few if any people foresaw how dramatically God's purposes for the Soviet people would unfold in the late 1980’s and early ‘90’s. The empire that for forty years rivaled the United States as the other global superpower and held the entire earth in a grip of fear suddenly disintegrated. It was, then one day, it was not. Historians and other analysts have tried to explain the break up from a political or economic point of view. Clearly political and economic factors played a role in the liberation of the Soviet people. Yet blaming factors like economics for the failure of Communism would make as much sense as saying Pharaoh freed the Hebrew slaves in Egypt because a series of natural disasters impoverished the his kingdom. Is it not more accurate to say that though unseen by human eyes, God’s hand is still working crafting his purposes in the lives of men and women for his glory?

As the dust settled from the collapse of a massive empire, interested persons who took the time to gaze beyond the fortress walls of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox onion-dome spires soaring over Red Square discovered the multicolored tapestry of Slavic and Muslim republics. These new nations emerged on the world scene for various reasons. Some republics in the Caucuses gained attention because of inter-ethnic strife. Chechens continue to make a name for themselves with Islamic fundamentalism and ruthless fighting. Others, like the Ukraine began to gravitate toward Western Europe and the United States in their politics and economics.

The republics most curious to me, and perhaps least understood in the West, were the five Muslim-majority republics in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Our first introduction to them came in 1991 through David Billings, a pastor in Indiana. His church sent him and his wife on an exploratory trip in Central Asia with hopes of finding a place where they could eventually send a ministry team. Equipped with some fluency in Russian, they traveled widely throughout Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan, making friends and contacts, taking loads of photographs, and developing a vision for the region. In the fall of 1991 Janna and I enrolled in the course Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. One evening David had the opportunity to share fascinating pictures and stories from his travels along the Great Silk Road. In the days following, we began to hear more about Kazakhs and Kazakhstan.  Later in a conversation with Pastor David I learned about a church-planting team that tested water quality, using environmental science and aid as an entrance for spreading the Gospel in rural areas. At the same time, though we already had a strong sense of calling to go somewhere outside the US with the Gospel, the Perspectives course ignited in us a renewed passion for reaching the unreached peoples of the world. We began to wonder if God might be calling us to Kazakhstan, though we had no idea who to go with, how to get there, or where to go if we went. But the Lord had our address, literally.

In mid-January 1992, Janna delivered our first baby, Michael. His birth and developments in our pastorate gave us a sense that significant change was imminent in our lives. One day, in dramatic fashion, the door flew wide open when we received a recruiting letter in the mail from a team leader who was recruiting and building a new team with the sending agency Eastern Outreach (EO). With excitement and trembling hands I read the letter. Then I shouted across the house, "Janna, you won't believe this! There's a church-planting team in Kazakhstan looking for new team members, and they are doing ecology work to get their visas. This must be the same one Pastor Dave told me about." Having studied microbiology in college and receiving a graduate degree in theology, the combination was a perfect fit. We immediately responded to the letter and began an application process with EO and the new team. In the spring I announced to the church we were leaving for a new job internationally. We planned to raise financial support through the summer and be in Kazakhstan by the early fall. The plan was highly ambitious, but our vision filled us with optimism.

The non-profit, entrepreneurial structure of EO meant that no board or agency provided an income. We had to generate the needed funding through vision-casting and inviting people to share in our ministry plans and goals. That we were headed to an exotic, new field created a stir in churches that were familiar with only hearing about fields already evangelized to some degree. The process of speaking to individuals and groups helped keep our vision alive and clarified our goals.

We did not know where we would live after moving out of the parsonage. In the final weeks before moving out we sold most of our possessions in Saturday yard sales, hoping to lighten our load for the journey ahead. Each Saturday we hauled furniture, clothing, and other household items into the front yard, constantly asking each other how we could have accumulated so much stuff in just three years. Many folks from our church offered to help in whatever way they could. Leaving them after serving as pastor was sad, but we were motivated to look forward with the thought that they had a church, while the Kazakhs had none.

Raising our projected budget was slower than we anticipated, complicating our housing situation. For the first several weeks after vacating the parsonage we lived with some good friends from church. As a retired couple they had lots of time to help watch Michael and even share delicious meals from their carefully tended garden. Later other friends offered their house for a couple of months in the summer. When it was clear the support wouldn't be in by the fall, we had to find more housing. This time we stayed in the home of a kind Christian widow. For several weeks the arrangement worked well, partly because we hoped to be on the airplane soon by October. But again our estimated departure date came and the support was insufficient for us to leave. We felt increasingly concerned that our family was inconveniencing our gracious hostess and that we too needed some of our own space. At least we had saved rent money living with someone during a period of low and unpredictable income. Finally we decided to move again, this time to a small upstairs apartment in the inner city.

The view from the inner city apartment through the fall and winter was bleak, especially on overcast days, of which there were no shortage. Months later, when we lived in Kazakhstan, we remembered the place as good preparation for the kind of Soviet bleakness we would encounter there. The apartment was the fourth place we lived since leaving the parsonage the previous May. The instability created by continually moving from house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood put great strain on us and our relationships. Furthermore, Michael battled with chronic ear infections, requiring frequent medical care and eventually surgery for ear tubes. Weaknesses in marriage communication that appeared mildly in normal times began to show up more frequently and with greater intensity. Watching the support flow in slowly, moving four times in five months, nursing Michael's ear problems, preparing for life in a country we had never seen, and living with uncertain income tested our endurance and commitment to God, each other, everything!

During that time I began writing often in my journal, a spiritual discipline that helped bring grace into our lives. February 8, 1993 I wrote,

This is the second entry into a journal that I hope will be full and meaningful in days to come. I can't begin to describe the pressure I feel these days. It is hard to imagine why we have to go through this. But we do. Right now the pressure consists of waiting on finances to come in, Michael's fourth month of ear infections culminating in tubes, marital differences, packing and preparations and fear of the unknown.

This is a strong world. The only truth I am able to hold on to is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived a perfect life, was falsely accused by jealous and hostile men and was crucified between two thieves for a crime he did not commit. Why did he do that? Was it an isolated, meaningless death? The truth is that I have committed sins which in God's holy sight deserve eternal death. The man Jesus was willing to substitute his life for mine, the just for he unjust, the holy for the unholy. Nothing matters much in time or eternity but that fact. Many may scoff at this experience in my life. But I know in my heart that the reason I live is to glorify this Lord Jesus and him alone.

On a day to day basis as we get ready to embark on a colossal journey that seems to be unending what does the cross mean to me? It apparently means that I must die day to day. Jesus didn't die for me once for all that I could live for myself all the time. The paradox is this, although he died in my place, and I died with him, I still must die to sin every day. It's as if Jesus shares his death continually. How can I die with a living man? But this seems to be the will of God for me. Paul said, ‘I die daily,’ and Jesus said ‘take up your cross and follow me.’ But adding it all up, it defies math. It appears that the death of Jesus wasn't sufficient. If he died once for me, why do I have to die and die and die continually each day every day of my life? Who is the sacrifice here? Did Jesus die for me so that I would have to die over and over again? Why do I have to die in addition to the death of Jesus? I am called to life, am I not? But I am also called to death. Herein is a paradox of Scripture. I have to lose my life to find it.

How do I die daily? All this talk about death in my life rather sounds depressing and morbid. Where are the scenes of bursting vitality that is imparted by the wondrous presence of the Holy Spirit? Where are the visions of sparkling water bubbling up from a rock in the mountains? Here is the heavy talk of crosses and losing oneself and dying to oneself and the world. Here is Jesus talking about hating one's father and mother and relatives and homeland for the sake of the kingdom. Here's the vision of the Lord of life nailed like a rag doll to a rough wooden cross. Is this the ‘Full Gospel.’ Is this the part that is overlooked, watered down, avoided like the plague because it doesn't ‘tickle’ our fickle ears?

Who anointed the Gospel of today that preaches an easy path, one that leads to self-fulfillment, health and wealth? Certainly it wasn't anointed by the one who said, ‘no one is worthy to be my disciple unless he takes up his cross denies himself and follows me.’  And who are the heroes of the church today? I am impressed that the real heroes are exactly able to be heroes for Jesus because they avoid the fame of world. So I can't say who they are. The nature of them being a hero keeps them hidden from public scrutiny.

As we stand on the threshold of cross-cultural outreach to an unreached people it suddenly occurs to me that expectations of an easy path, a rosy existence of plush Christianity that centers primarily on self will be quickly and ruthlessly dashed. If I hold to these expectations as the standard of what Jesus wants and promises me, I will quickly be disappointed and will come home. Let's face it, there will not be an easy time there. I need a complete exchange of convictions and interpretations of God's promises. If I accept suffering, persecution, pressures within and without, trials, temptations, disappointments, and pain as normal Christianity then I will discover a new level of perseverance and even joy in the Lord as we serve overseas. It will be joyful to know that the pain I feel is working in my life to bring me closer to God. The joy is what I feel at the anticipation of knowing God.

Even more forcefully I say that I must throw off the yoke of the prosperity Gospel. It is a yoke because it denies any spiritual value in suffering and it denies that God wants us to suffer or that we can be fully in the will of God and still suffer. It brings condemnation to many Christians and gives false, fleshly hope to millions of people. It fits the same category as the doctrine that teaches that sick people are not healed only because they don't have enough faith. It says, "You are not doing God's will or else you would be healed." What they don't understand is that we may actually be doing God's will and therefore are not healed. Authentic Christianity has a meaningful answer to suffering in the lives of individuals, even the most godly.

In the years since first going to Kazakhstan, I have come to see that one area of vulnerability during those months was a lack deeper relationships with other brothers and sisters in Christ.  Although we regularly attended a supportive church when not traveling and speaking, our busy schedule and focus on the task diminished our ability to relate personally with friends in the church. An inspiring view of Kazakhs coming to Christ in true worship motivated us, but we did not notice our own needs for safety and security found in close, encouraging relationships. Determination to do the task was our strength; trying to without cultivating authentic relationships was our weakness. This can be true of international workers. Working cross-culturally, as Christians or otherwise, attracts rugged individualists to live and work as pioneers. As a corrective to this tendency, Jesus and the Apostle Paul leave in the New Testament a model of preachers and teachers always traveling with close companions. Living in on-going relationship with others is the pattern of personal and community health. It doesn’t insulate us from all suffering, but gives us greater resources to face the sufferings with the character of Christ. At the time we prepared to set out for Kazakhstan that was less clear to me.

Raising the necessary material and spiritual support for our personal and ministry budgets and our work brought both excitement and disappointment. As I spent time talking with individuals and speaking at churches, I began to notice an interesting pattern in the way the Holy Spirit would lead people to give. Sometimes He would nudge me to approach a person of high standing in our community. Maybe he or she was a successful executive, a well-known government leader, or an outstanding Christian leader. Under normal circumstances, I shared little in common with such persons and sometimes found myself intimidated in the person’s presence. But then I would sense the Spirit nudge me, in spite of my fears and insecurities to talk to them our ministry and request they consider making a financial contribution. Often as not, these persons declined supporting us, but on occasion shortly afterwards, someone else made an unusually generous gift, or a complete stranger gave to support our work. This pattern of obedience, disappointment then subsequent blessing taught me some important lessons. Learning to talk with high-level leaders in the community would be necessary for serving in Kazakhstan, where we frequently interacted with leaders at all levels. Through these experiences God strengthened my resolve to obey Him in the face of possible rejection, intimidation, and disappointment. Also, He illustrated to me that he doesn't need the help of earthly leaders and powers to get His job done. Sometimes he chooses to use them, but he can just as easily work through a less wealthy friend or a stranger who he supernaturally directs to engage in His work.

To encourage ourselves as the support came in, we taped a paper thermometer on the wall of our inner-city apartment and illustrated the gradual increase of our support with a red pencil. Some days the thermometer was more discouraging than encouraging! Coming from typical middle-class, comfortable backgrounds had we never lived in a situation where the promises of Jesus in Matthew 6 had to be true if we were to have bread on the table. "Give us this day our daily bread," was far more than a poetic religious phrase, it was a literal request. God only, in his faithfulness, met our daily needs and the needs for serving overseas. In the winter months of 1992-93 we passed through this crucible of purification. Having to trust God for our living needs during the pre-field period was a trial run of our ability to trust Him for a much more difficult thing, the salvation of Muslim Kazakhs. This was a time of cross-cultural "boot camp." Almost everything that was soft, convenient, reliable, predictable, and easy was stripped away. We began learning how we can live without many things, but absolutely not without God. The Holy Spirit forged in our hearts a deeper awareness of our desperate dependence on Him, preparing us for a life and ministry in Kazakhstan that was more demanding than anything we had ever imagined.

One Sunday afternoon in the late winter I was sitting on the couch in the apartment, sleepily gazing out the window, when suddenly the telephone ringing startled me. I answered it and an unfamiliar voice on the other end asked if he were speaking to James Wright. When he knew he had the right person, the caller went on to tell me he was calling from Maryland. Whom did I know in Maryland? Nobody. What could this possibly be about? The unusual call intrigued me. The man continued to explain that his friend told him about our ministry to Kazakhstan. When he heard our story he felt strongly interested to share about our work among other young couples in his area. They had successfully raised $150.00 a month to support us. I was speechless. This was amazing. A believer, who had never met me, in a place I had never visited, felt so concerned for the Kazakhs that he personally stirred interest and support in the work to introduce them to Jesus Christ. After many thanks and warm good-byes, I went to the thermometer and excitedly colored the red above the level of 100% support. After eight months of waiting, moving a family four times, traveling thousands of miles, and experiencing many stresses, the time had come to buy airline tickets to the new nation of Kazakhstan.

3

Into the Vastness

Before traveling to Kazakhstan, our time spent outside the United States was limited. Janna had visited Hong Kong on a two month summer ministry project during college, and had even seen Communist China. That was a valuable introduction for the days ahead. I had never traveled to another country except a short visit to Juarez, Mexico on an afternoon excursion across the border from El Paso, Texas. Interestingly, the Mexican and Tex-Mex culture I mingled with that day as a youth came to mind many times once we moved into Kazakhstan. This lack of overseas experience could be viewed two ways. If we had traveled more extensively, including a site visit to the Kazakh village, it might have better equipped us for the demands we encountered in rural Kazakhstan. On the other hand, had we made a site visit to our village we might never have returned! Such was the state of living conditions in the place we would learn to call home. We plunged ahead in blissful ignorance.

Our departure date was set for St. Patrick's Day in March 1993. I felt honored to leave on the day named in memory of one of history's greatest evangelists and church-planters. Patrick's story is one of inspiring sacrifice and commitment. Irish bandits took him from England to be a slave on the Emerald Isle. After years of toil and sorrow, miraculous events helped him escape to his homeland. Sometime later, in his famous dreams, he saw the faces of forlorn Irishmen, beckoning him to return with the Gospel of Jesus. The Holy Spirit used the dreams to so move him, that he returned to Ireland, not as a slave, but as a messenger of hope to set people free. His ministry transformed Ireland and propelled Irish teachers, scribes, translators and evangelists across the British Isles and into Europe proclaiming the Gospel. How better could we celebrate day named in Patrick’s honor than to board an airplane as a family and leave our homeland to take the Gospel to a people who had never heard?

In the 21st century world one cannot simply sail to a new country like Patrick did, step foot on their soil and begin to preach. The geo-political structure of nations is a sensitive issue. Governments guard their borders with vigilance, even more so since 9/11. To leave the borders of the US, international law requires a passport. To cross the borders of another country, travelers usually need a visa. And depending on the political stability of the host country, extra official documentation may be needed from both the traveler's home country and the host. Securing all these documents rarely goes without some tense moments and times of earnest prayer.  Kazakhstan, after decades of living under total seclusion from the outside world, became intoxicated with the thrill of receiving foreign guests. Therefore, the novelty of having foreigners, especially Americans, weighed the balance greatly in favor of those wanting to travel or work in Kazakhstan. However, within the government bureaucratic machinations, out-dated procedures, inefficiency, lingering insecurities, and good old-fashioned red-tape found in every country, made obtaining our visas to Kazakhstan a difficult process. In the end, the will of God prevailed so we could legally travel to Kazakhstan with the little blue stamp in our passport.

As an American I grew up in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. I have also been part of the wealthiest church in the world.  Not counting the churches that teach the "prosperity Gospel" saying God means for Christians to be healthy and wealthy, evangelical churches in American can generally be characterized as some of the wealthiest institutions in the world today. When compared to their counterparts in the Two-Thirds world, American Christians live on the top ten rungs of a one-hundred rung ladder. Much of the world's suffering today has to do with material poverty. By leaving the wealth of American middle-class Christianity and moving into a poorer lifestyle in Kazakhstan, we were saying that true discipleship may include deprivation and self-denial. This is different from the kinds of natural, unplanned suffering that all humans experience. This is the suffering that comes from choosing to go against the values of the world, the pleasures of the world, and the currents of the world.  Such a lifestyle will produce suffering.

Trying to fit this together with all the promises in Scripture of God's spiritual and material provision for his children is not easy. As with many of the truths Jesus spoke, this one contains a paradox. Although we suffer, we are blessed, although we may be materially blessed, we must give it away until it hurts, before it hurts us; although we of all people have the most to be joyful about, we of all people often experience the greatest hardships.

The final Sunday in our home country before we embarked on our journey to the other side of the earth, we knelt at the front of the church with a sober attitude. Many of our friends and supporters came to lay hands on us. The custom of laying on hands gave us a special sense of the closeness of God's people. We were not doing this incredible work alone. It would be the result of the sustained effort of dozens, even hundreds of people serving with us through their prayers, financial resources, and loving friendships. The warm weight of those many hands reassured us that truly we were not alone.

At last the day of our trans-global flight arrived. As Janna's parents drove us to the airport I gazed out the window at the idyllic Indiana countryside, knowing that it would be many months before I would see it again. Every few miles I spotted a rural church with its clean white steeple pointing in the direction we would soon be moving -- upwards.  The slender symbols of worship reminded me of a song I wrote years earlier explaining why we were traveling overseas:

Where I grew up

was a church on every corner

steeples could be seen for miles

where I grew up, where I grew up

Got a Bible in elementary school

every other kid got one too

where I grew up, where I grew up.

Celebrated the day Jesus was born,

the day that he resurrected

where I grew up, where I grew up

I've heard about

a place where there are no Christians

no churches, no steeples, millions of lost people I've heard about

I've heard about a people,

They've never seen the Bible,

They live in utter darkness.

How can I stay, when they don't know the way? I've got to go, so they can

know… Jesus

I've got to go, so they can know… Jesus

Our last few moments with Janna's parents and some close friends from the church we had pastored passed quickly. In the airport we ate McDonald's hamburgers since they were a classic bit of Americana we would certainly miss in the former Soviet Union.

Jesus said our love for him must outshine our love for everyone and everything else. This love for Jesus is poignantly tested when people part ways with loved ones for the risks and dangers of the foreign field. At that painful moment when the flight attendant calls for boarding the plane, it's loved ones behind and Jesus before. Of course people leave their homeland and loved ones for many reasons, some good and some base: adventure, self-discovery, acquisition of wealth, spirit of exploration, humanitarian helps, and war. For us personally, those aims could not have supplied the strength to turn forward and board the plane headed for the land of the Central Asian nomads. We stepped forward because God had placed in our hearts a desire to see Jesus worshipped in spirit and truth by a Muslim people who did not know him.

Though once in the air we enjoyed the comfort of modern air travel, the journey with our one year old across the Atlantic and then across the vast Asian interior exhausted us. Moving at nearly six hundred miles an hour the jet flew for almost twenty hours. Had the two inquisitive sons of a Mid-western pastor, Orville and Wilbur Wright, not successfully invented powered air flight, places like Central Asia would be practically impenetrable by anyone except the hardiest expeditionary. Yet there we traveled, an ordinary young family with a baby, planning to live in the exotic land of camels and caravans, spices and silk. I wondered if Bishop Wright had any inkling of the ways his son’s invention would be used by God to advance his Kingdom.

In the wee hours of the pre-dawn I peered out the small window, hoping to get a glance of the new world below me. The digital map displayed on the passengers' televisions indicated we were in Kazakhstan air space. At first I could see nothing but a murky blackness below. Then as my eyes adjusted, I began to notice tiny points of light far away, giving me the sensation we were flying upside down and I was looking upwards into the stars. Suddenly I caught my breath, realizing the lights were coming from little Kazakh villages miles apart on the steppe. My first glimpse of  Kazakhstan was one of great promise: lights in the midst of darkness. More and more lights came into view, holding my attention for several moments. I opened my Bible to the passage for that day. I read a chapter a day, sometimes through the books of the Old Testament. The passage that day leaped out at me as if God was speaking personally in that moment to my situation. It was 2 Samuel 7:18-21:

"Then David the king went in and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me this far? And yet this was insignificant in your eyes, O Lord God, for you have spoken also of the house of your servant concerning the distant future. And this is the custom of man, O Lord God. And again what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God! For the sake of your word, and according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness to let your servant know.'"

I carefully read again, "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me this far?" I confess that tears filled my eyes and an indescribably profound sense of awe and reverence filled my heart. Here I was flying in air space over the former Soviet Union. US satellites carefully monitored this airspace during the Cold War. The Soviet Air Force shot down a US reconnaissance aircraft in these skies. Soviet intercontinental nuclear missiles on the ground below were aimed at North America. Mighty Soviet rockets lifted into the heavens from the Baikanor Space Center on Kazakh soil. We could have been flying to another planet, such was the geographic and political distance between our home and this new land.  David's words echoed in my mind…who was I, who were we, that God would bring us this far?

But the more important question is about God. Who is He? Why would he move people around such great distances? God said to Abraham centuries ago, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). This was God's word, his holy promise that he must fulfill. In Abraham, meaning through the Messiah who emerged from the people of Abraham, and through all those who by faith are now children of the covenant, people chosen from every ethnic and linguistic group in the earth will receive the message of salvation and give purest praise to the living God. In order to fulfill his own promises, demonstrating he is faithful and true, God continues to send forth men, women, and families far and wide as his witnesses to the nations. We are his instruments chosen to bear his name and message until all the nations have heard and are blessed.

Once we arrived in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, we still faced three hundred miles of open road along the southern border of the country. To transport us, our team leader rented a rickety old Soviet bus that felt like a river barge. Little did we know that its top speed was about forty-five miles an hour and its cooling system was broken. From five in the evening to three the next morning we puttered along the two-lane highway through the hills and steppe, stopping frequently for the Russian driver to pour water into the steaming hot engine. Before long we were in a state of semi-comatose. Time had stopped. Reality was gray. We dreamed with our eyes open.

The journey's end in our village was unromantic. Our team leader helped us unload our thirteen pieces of baggage into the house prepared for our family. We opened the door and stepped inside. At the precise moment we opened the door and stepped inside, a large water-soaked area of the adobe ceiling plopped down on the floor directly in front of us, splattering mud, debris, and water across the floor and the snow-white walls. A leak from the water tanks installed in the attic caused the accident. For the next five years, just before someone came to our village for a visit, this scene more often than not repeated itself. We never decided whether it was a spiritual attack upon our morale or the Lord's sense of humor. Perhaps it was the former, but in time by grace we learned to laugh (or at least try to smile) when a water leak brought down wet, slimy chunks of the ceiling. That night not even a collapsed ceiling could deter the weary travelers from a deep sleep. For the first time in more than thirty hours of traveling by car, plane, tram, and bus, we rested horizontally. The ancient land of the nomads was now our home.

4

Transplanted

Villagers in Kazakhstan raise gardens to keep from starving. Abundant fresh vegetables in the summer nourish them with vitamins and. minerals. Canned fruits and vegetables sustain their hungry families through the colorless winters. Our new neighbors considered it most peculiar that we chose to cultivate half our yard and leave the other half covered with grass.  The grass would have made a little sense if we had owned a sheep or two, but the only one tumbling around in the grass was our one-year-old. But then we won their admiration by sharing our sweet corn seed shipped from Indiana. We quickly learned at planting time that a seedling is most vulnerable when transplanted from indoors to outdoors. During the transition, the fragile little plant is essentially traumatized. It is handled, uprooted, and exposed to stressful temperature fluctuations and harsh direct sunlight, blown by wind and pelted with rain. The shock to the entire system of the plant causes leaves and stems to wilt. Usually a few of these shocked seedlings either barely survive or wither away completely. However, if the transition process moves forward with proper care, the seedling will not only survive but go on to produce tasty, abundant fruit.

Human beings are not typically characterized as stationary organisms rooted firmly in the soil of their conception. No other creatures on the planet except bacteria live spread as widely as humans in environments ranging from jungles to deserts and from Antarctica to the Arctic. For millennia people have wandered, migrated, explored, trekked, and sailed into the four corners of the globe. Sometimes nautical peoples, for example the ancestors of the Hawaiians, plunged ahead with no assurance of finding land and no maps or navigational systems other than the stars overhead to guide them. Many of the early immigrants to America suffered the pain of separation from mothers and fathers to whom they would never return. So it should be even easier to relocate to a new culture in the era of air travel, e-mail, global commerce, and international electronic communications. Right…?

Someone once observed that an English overseas worker in the nineteenth century relocating to India experienced less adjustment to the standard of living than a Western worker in the twentieth century would face moving to the same place. In nineteenth century England, sanitation, medical care, transportation and all the other facets of living were not much better than those found in the less developed nations. Since that time the gap has widened tremendously, not only between countries but within them. A modern worker raised in the West who relocates to a less developed country faces an abrupt adjustment from every imaginable convenience and luxury to deprivation and poverty. This change, plus all the other environmental transitions, can creates a reaction known as culture stress. In the worst cases, it is known as culture shock. The person can experience disorientation, frustration, homesickness, and general unhappiness in the new culture. Humans, in spite of the great migrations of people over the centuries, indeed do seem to put down roots that anchor them to the soil. To be uprooted, thrown into a completely foreign environment and separated from nearly all nurturing relationships and activities are a shock to the core of a person.

For the first few weeks in our village, we took comfort in our teammates. With no knowledge of the Kazakh language before we arrived, our ability to engage meaningfully with our Kazakh neighbors almost non-existent. Communication consisted of gesturing wildly with our arms and hands, grunting and moaning. We had learned it was critical we not depend too much on the other foreigners, lest we fail to properly bond with the Kazakhs in the way a newborn bonds with its mother. To live among them, we had to internalize them. Little by little, times with teammates and with Kazakhs helped soften the blows of culture stress. Though I felt very homesick on occasion, little reminders from family and friends gave great encouragement. A journal entry from July 13, 1993 reflects some of the feelings I had.

The packages today were a huge upper. I thought I was going to the post office to pay a tax of some sort. When the clerk brought out the packages with quality wrapping it still didn't dawn on me until the last second that they were ours. Everything in them is a treasure. It was like Christmas in July. We must have needed something special to happen. God doesn't do anything randomly. They haven't been all of America, but they have been a hearty little sample of America for us to savor for a few days.

The same day I also wrote,

I've still been fighting fatigue. Even now I am so tired I can hardly move. It takes major effort to get up and walk around. The heat must be a major culprit. Excepting the hardness of the humidity I've never lived anywhere with such high temperatures. And when it did get hot in Louisiana we had air conditioners.

What made the culture shock worse was that we had to wade through months and months of grueling language learning before we could get to the "good stuff" we had really come for: preaching the Gospel and planting the church. Like toddlers we asked far too many questions, mispronounced words, and made humorous mistakes in etiquette (humorous to them, not necessarily us). In summary, it was as if we died to be resurrected and start a whole new life from infancy. We died as Americans and resurrected as Kazakhs.

This all sounds a bit extreme, and it was. Before leaving for the field our team was influenced by a couple named Bob and Betty Brewster, who pioneered a system of language learning called Language Acquisition Made Practical or LAMP for short. They taught that to effectively learn a new language and culture, and preach the Gospel efficaciously, the communicator must leave the "foreign compound" and integrate with the host culture. He or she begins their time as a learner, not a teacher; a listener, not a speaker; a follower, not a leader. Though contrasting with the traditional model of colonial paternalism, this one draws inspiration from the incarnational life of Jesus Christ. He came in a form we understood. He began his life in the most humble way possible, God Almighty in human form nursing at his mother's breast.

Such an approach of bonding is hard in so many ways. It fosters long stretches of loneliness and tests patience. Perhaps the hardest thing is the breaking of human pride that takes place. Many workers complete higher education and achieve excellence in their academic class or profession. The church lauds them as heroes and brave-hearts for their commitment to forsake land and family for the Kingdom of God. Supporters regard them as experts and specialists. Perhaps they have special gifts or talents that distinguish them. Even without trying, it is easy for a person to try and draw a sense of self-worth and importance from these things. Little can they properly anticipate that when they relocate to the field, the ego is about to get a vigorous washing on the scrub cycle of culture shock!

The Iron Curtain of xenophobia isolated the Soviet Union from the rest of the world for decades making anyone from the West instantly seem like a celebrity to the former Soviets. This phenomenon offset the sense of low self-esteem that often assailed us. For the first couple of years, Kazakhs treated us as like royalty. They hosted us with huge feasts. Their low set tables overflowed with fruits and meats, drinks and sweets. Had we responded to their persistent and aggressive offers to drink vodka, we would have become inebriated beyond consciousness. Their rich hospitality made us feel overwhelmingly honored and appreciated. Of course we faced numerous mundane trials. First we had to learn how to meet our basic human needs for food, drink, rest, and proper hygiene. Although our team leader was an brilliant engineer who had equipped our home with a sophisticated plumbing system providing hot and cold running water and an indoor toilet, the sub-standard building materials he was forced to use required constant maintenance and repair. Most Kazakhs simply brought water inside their adobe house from a hand-pumped well in the garden. We had two hand pumps behind our house that provided water for our garden and our monsha (an indoor steamy sauna). As much as possible we used the faulty system daily for our indoor supply of water to bath, wash dish, cook, and clean. The continual problem of getting water in the house, along with shopping in a depressed economy, cooking from scratch, and traveling without a car required an huge expenditure of time and energy given to survival.

To ease the burden of survival, most team members hired Kazakh helpers. Kazakh men worked the garden, assisted with house maintenance, cleaned outdoors, and did some shopping. Kazakh women helped indoors watching the children, tidying the house, cooking, washing dishes, and doing other domestic chores. Both men and women gave continuous language practice. One problem with having a helper inside was that we could never leave them alone. Operating by non-Christian value systems, Kazakhs frequently pilfered from us. In our early days many things mysteriously disappeared when we turned our backs. Later we learned that pilfering was endemic during the Soviet days because workers felt they deserved something more from the employer or because they had no fear of losing their job. Everything belonged to everybody anyway. We constantly had to remind ourselves that reaching the Kazakhs was worth the loss of a few personal items.

Before arriving in Kazakhstan we gained encouragement in the steady stream of field reports both from the cities and the villages telling about the eagerness Kazakhs were showing to hear and receive the Gospel. In the previous year our team leader had baptized several Kazakh family members and started discipling them to reach others. In the heady days of the early ‘90’s reports from all over the former Soviet Union raised expectations. Once we arrived in our village, I saw the bigger reality and wrote on April 16, 1993,

Many of my expectations have been met, even surpassed. Many of them have been dashed. I think the one that is the hardest yet for me to accept is the spiritual condition of the Kazakh people and their closeness to being a people movement toward Christ. I hope that this isn't unbelief. My perception however seems to have changed from picturing the Kazakhs as right on the verge of thousands coming to Christ in a few months -- as is happening in Russia -- to seeing the Kazakhs as a group with barely enough Islam to thoroughly inoculate them against the Gospel.

On the flip side, perhaps the Kazakhs had expectations for us as ambassadors of Christ that we also failed to meet. Like two people in a marriage we would have ample opportunities to forgive one another.

In spite of the tensions and failed expectations that sometimes existed between the our team and the nationals, some of the Kazakhs endeared themselves to us through their willingness to enter our world and allow us to enter theirs. One such Kazakh was Jastai, or Joe for short. The first Kazakh I hired to do maintenance on our house and work in the garden was teenage boy who came for a few hours each day. It wasn't long before he began to squander his wages on liquor and came to work drunk. Finally he asked to quit. Shortly afterwards, an acquaintance introduced me to Joe. The first time I saw Joe, he seemed like a wizened little elf. He was shorter than I and his face covered with wrinkles. Years of hard life in the baking hot Kazakh sunshine and the freezing winter winds had etched age into him. I discovered that he was younger than me by a year. I would have never guessed. Joe became a faithful worker at our little village homestead and a superb language tutor. He had a quick mind and broad horizons in his thoughts. Although he was from a small, isolated Kazakh village north of ours, he was aware of the larger world.

In those first months Joe and I struggled to communicate with one another, he about his world and me about mine. Slowly, I grasped words and phrases that enabled me to talk with him and understand him.  Joe had amazing patience. He would sit on soft pads next to our low tea table and listen to me struggle to get across an idea or a story. When confounded by the vocabulary, I would grab the dictionary and point out a critical word to help convey my meaning. He would lean back, smile, and say, "Ohh, I understand." And he really did understand. In a country where I was a million miles from home and everything familiar, here was a man who understood, who cared. I had made a Kazakh friend. That two men of such dissimilar backgrounds could be friends was miraculous.  Through our relationship I began to understand the new context. He became the source for information about the language, culture, traditions, government, and social norms. Anything and everything I needed to know to survive and work in the country I got from Joe. He was more valuable than a set of encyclopedias or anthropological articles written about the Kazakhs.

Janna's gift of hosting guests in our home took the relationship with Joe and his family to a higher level.  Kazakh culture places high value on the virtue of hospitality. So when we invited Joe and his wife Victoria to our home for a traditional Kazakh meal they felt honored and appreciated. We had not personally hosted Kazakhs yet because we didn't think we could sustain the conversation in our limited Kazakh. Earlier in the spring Janna offered our home for friends to host a huge going-away party for a short-term team member. To prepare the feast for the going-away party, a crowd of Kazakh men and women invaded her kitchen and the back-yard, slaughtered a sheep, cleaned the head, intestines and meat, then boiled it in a huge kettle. We mostly watched and listened, trying to disguise our feelings of shock and disbelief. Late at night, after the party cleared out, Janna stuffed the uncooked hindquarters of the sheep into our tiny refrigerator and quietly wished for a supermarket around the corner. This time she was flying solo and there was still no supermarket.  For days she planned a lovely evening with our first Kazakh friends. By hand she made dough for Kazakh fried bread called baursak (similar to unsugared donuts.) Then she patiently rolled out more dough into wide, flat noodles for bishparmak (boiled meat and noodles) the Kazakh national dish. A young neighbor girl stopped by to lend Janna a hand. She chattered endlessly in Kazakh and didn't care whether we understood her rambling or not. With a little moral support from a friendly neighbor, Janna summoned her courage and conquered the big chunks of raw meat. She boiled them with the noodles and onions to create a savory pot of bishparmak that could make an authentic Kazakh's mouth water.

Joe and Victoria arrived and immediately seemed to feel at home with the familiar aromas and decorations. Since Joe helped me in language learning, he knew how to sustain the conversation in spite of our limited vocabulary. Janna and Victoria seemed to intuitively understand each other and a friendship between them started that day which eventually helped bring Victoria to faith in Jesus.  Janna's humble acts of mastering the culinary arts of a foreign people and then offering to break bread with them were no less a sign of God's grace than manna falling from heaven.

During those early days of settling in, what was happening to us inwardly? The first word that comes to mind is pain. The changes that occurred around us and the ones taking place inside were discomforting at best. Perhaps some expatriate workers thrive on practicing survival techniques in primitive places. Some adventurers seek out remote places for exploration and take a thrill when isolated. For me, the stage of settling into a primitive environment and a location isolated from everything and everyone familiar was painful.

Someone has said, "There are no shortcuts to the places worth going." That certainly was our experience in Kazakhstan. The goal of our pilgrimage was a growing and multiplying Kazakh church. The road there was long and arduous. In many different ways Scripture says why this has to be the case. Maybe Jesus' words in John 12:24,25 illustrate this truth most clearly, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone: but if it dies it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal." The cross-cultural journey is yet another road to the place every disciple of Jesus must go, the cross. Those days were undoubtedly painful as the self-serving carnal will suffered wounds and died. Spiritually and physically we had to suffer to become vessels of grace to a wounded and dying people.

In the midst of the hardships, humorous incidents often lightened our hearts and encouraged us to press on. Early in the spring of 1993, shortly after arriving, we decided to buy some chickens. The Germans who had originally inhabited our house before emigrating to Germany after the borders reopened had constructed a spacious and well-designed chicken coop. Almost everyone in the village owned chickens; they were just a natural part of village life, producing much needed eggs to supplement the meager diet of the villagers. In addition, for those who had a productive flock of chickens, the extra eggs generated some income. To better fit in with our neighbors and simply because we liked chickens, we wanted to get some.

In those early months we enjoyed fellowship with a single young man who was visiting our team. His name was Michael, but the Kazakhs called him Malek. The first time I met Malek, I thought he was a Kazakh. Besides having physical features that mislead me, he wore a heavy brown leather Kazakh coat and muddy Soviet boots. I jumped in shock when he put his hand forward to shake mine and then spoke flawless English.  The day I got my chickens, Malek went along with me to the nearby city to do some shopping at the large open bazaar and to lend a hand if I needed it…which I would.

How can I describe the Central Asian bazaar? Our favorite word was "bizarre." It seemed that every imaginable kind of service, food, and merchandise could be located somewhere in the huge maze of open stands, shops, back alleys and open lots. The bazaar covered several city blocks in the city of Kalasi. I can't say how long the bazaar had been in operation, but the civic museum had a diorama vividly depicting the bazaar in the ancient city of Taraz that stood on the same spot a thousand years earlier. Of course this bazaar didn't date back that far, but it was somehow just as exotic as the ones the ancient silk and spice merchants operated during the days of Marco Polo.

The southeastern corner of the bazaar was devoted to the trade of poultry. Up and down the street and sidewalks local folks, mostly older Russians, offered to sell chickens of all colors and sizes. Many of the sellers had small wire cages that contained a dozen or more chickens. Some had their special chicken standing on the sidewalk with a string tied to its feet. Occasionally a person would cuddle their prize chicken like holding a house-pet, sitting with a forlorn look on their faces. I wanted to chuckle that someone could love their chicken that much, but ached in my heart that they had to sell their pet chicken for extra money.

Malek and I walked up and down the aisles looking for a good deal. Kanshadan?, Skoika? (How much?) we asked in Kazakh and Russian several times. We came to a seller who had some white birds that looked healthy but a little young. Nevertheless, the price was good so we opened our burlap sack. I noticed the chickens were especially agile and eluded the man's grasp before he finally secured them all in our bag. One in particular was long and stringy, with large feet. We walked back to our car to load the goods and head back to the village. The heavy bag of farm animals in my hand made me excited. My mind started picturing the dozens of white eggs they would produce and all the time and effort they would save me from having to shop in the market.

How the one chicken got loose I could never understand, but the stringy bird with large feet made an escape before we could cluck. It ran through the traffic on the busiest street in the bazaar, cars everywhere around us. We managed to secure the other birds so we could go after the escapee. I was determined not to leave one chicken short. The chicken ran directly into the bazaar, down another busy street. I had paid lots of money for that bird and I wasn't about to let it get away. So we pursued it, dodging people, horse-drawn trailers, and honking cars. Chickens are amazingly fast, especially that one. It moved through the traffic like a road runner. The longer we chased it, the more I became aware that people were beginning to take notice of the chase. Dark haired Kazakh men laughed and pointed in our direction. Were they pointing at us or trying to help show where the chicken was hiding? We weren't sure. Perhaps it was the commotion that distracted the chicken long enough for us to get close to it underneath a parked car. Slowly, quietly we sneaked closer. With a precision move, Malek grabbed it by a leg. The delinquent bird squawked and flapped its wiry wings in protest. Oblivious to the gawking on-lookers, we walked proudly back to our car having re-captured my investment and proved that even Americans can master the challenges of the bizarre Central Asian bazaar.

5

Wedding on the Steppe

As fall approached the work in the garden slowed as the last of the summer fruits and vegetables came in. I noticed my friend Jastai acting more chipper than usual and asked him if he had any news. He told me that his younger brother was getting married and the celebration would be in his small home village to the north of us. A Kazakh wedding! This would be a tremendous opportunity to observe rural life from the inside and possibly get a chance to expand our witness. I tried to get more information about the wedding, and finally, after my obvious display of curiosity in the event, Jastai gave my family and our team mates the Youngs a formal invitation to come. I wrote about the wedding in my journal Oct. 2, 1993.

Last Saturday night we went to our first Kazakh wedding. It was quite an experience. We and the Youngs had received an invitation from our friend Jastai to come to his younger brother's wedding. It started at ten o'clock at night. We were told to come a little early. A large tent had been set up over an open area between the house and a barn. Inside the tent were three rows of tables that were each very, very long. At the far end of the tent from the opening was a special mound built up higher than the ground where a table had been set facing the other tables. Behind it was a large rug with the names of the bride and groom written on it. It said "Bakit -- Saulee.” On their table was a huge cake and some other things. The three rows of tables were filled with breads, rolls, salads, meats, cheeses, soda and liquor. It was quite a sight. As soon as we arrived we were escorted through the sparely gathered crowd, into the house and into a back room where the bride was waiting with her maid of honor and some little girls. At first I was embarrassed that Hank and myself were allowed to see the bride, but the Kazakhs didn't seem to think that it was anything against their culture. We sat on the floor and talked a few minutes with the bride's attendants while the bride stood in her flowing white dress like a Kazakh cultural doll.

Soon afterwards, we were escorted back out to the front of the middle table, seated directly in front of the bride and groom's table. It was the second highest place of honor. The table behind us was the table of honor for the family. I couldn't believe we were allowed in such a honorable place.

Two young women sat with us and talked for a while. Apparently they had been put in charge of us and did a good job of making sure we were welcomed and taken care of. At that point most of the wedding guests were still standing outside. We must have been seated early because we were special guests. While we waited for the wedding to begin, we were served tea and we snacked on the food in front of us. It was a pleasant time. Michael played around the edge of the table while we talked. At one point I happened to look up and he was at the top of the mound with his finger touching the frosting on the edge of the wedding cake! I quickly moved him.

We got to try some interesting foods then. There was cow tongue, a salad made from sheep stomach, a salad made with garlic and cucumber.  Some was good and some I didn't eat much of.

After an hour and a half of waiting, the crowd was allowed to come in. They rushed under the tent and sat down with a flurry of movement and noise that made me think of a river breaking through a levee. All of a sudden two hundred people were seated, opening their vodka bottles, eating and talking. It swirled around us in a tumultuous wave.  Shortly afterwards, a man who had borrowed my dombra[5], started playing and singing at the open end of the tent. Through the aisle I got of glimpse of the bride and groom. After some opening music and talking, the bride and groom came down the aisle to be seated at the head table. When they came down the aisle everyone stood up. That's about as far as the similarities with an American wedding go.

They sat down and some of the closest relatives began to give their blessings. It is customary at their weddings to have a huge sound system set up for use in giving blessings and then in playing music later. Unfortunately it didn't work at first, so the early blessings had to be shouted across the din of the wedding guests. During each blessing given, the bride and groom along with their maid of honor and best man, had to stand. Considering that dozens of blessings are given over several hours, the bride and groom had best be prepared to do a lot of standing.

While the blessings were being given, they finally got the sound system working and the emcee made some opening comments. This first phase of blessing giving was accompanied with hot tea. Can you imagine serving hot tea to two hundred people at a rural house with no running water and a primitive kitchen?  Somehow they did it, making sure everyone had as much tea as they wanted. An army of relatives roamed about among the wedding guests with pots of hot tea pouring it constantly. Other hosts roamed about making sure everybody had as much as vodka as they wanted.

We weren't drinking anything but tea and soda but the family wanted us to drink at least a swallow of vodka in honor of the bride and groom. Everyone drinks and puts incredible pressure on anyone who looks like they won't. Even my friend Jastai wanted me to have some. He was obviously embarrassed that we weren't drinking.  After he tried, one of the women who had been sitting with us tried to get us to drink and then an older brother tried and later another relative tired. For a guests not to drink causes the Kazakhs a great deal of distress. They act like to reject alcohol is to reject them. In their minds they have elevated alcohol to the place of near godhood so that to drink it with a blessing for the bride and groom is viewed as a seemingly divine experience. To not drink it is to the Kazakhs as having a worship service without the holy book would be to us. These are my impressions only of course, but it my judgment is that it is an idol.  By the way, this is practically universal among the Kazakhs, maybe one out of a thousand doesn't act this way.

After repeated attempts, they saw that we wouldn't give in so they more or less left us alone, but it certainly made me feel like it strained our friendship with them. I hope they get over it.

Well, that part was difficult, but the rest of the evening was a pleasant, extremely interesting evening.

We were allowed to share our blessings with the bride and groom. The four of us went to the microphone and gave a short blessing. Hank read the passage that says what God has brought together let no man put asunder. Janna and Cynthia gave a blessing. I sang Kazakh party song and Psalm 23 with the dombra. They loved that..they love the dombra. It was definitely a favorable part of being there.

We also got to eat bishparmak, the Kazakh national dish of noodles, onions and meat. They had several kinds of meat: horse, beef, sheep, horse sausage and horse intestine, I think. The horse had a strong flavor, but the horse sausage was delicious.

The Kazakhs love to dance, so after we ate everyone moved into the courtyard to dance. Their dancing is not like dancing in America. They have cultural dancing that looks like a cross between Persian and Chinese. It is much more subdued than Western dancing. We shuffled around with them (they also are very persistent that the guests dance) for two or three hours. By this time it was two in the morning. Janna had put Michael to bed but the loud music woke him up. He came out all sleepy eyed and watched everything with fascination. Janna and I held him while we moved around the courtyard. Some people brought out some ducks and a sheep to give away as prizes to the "good dancers." After the song they told me I had won the first duck. I think it was rigged! Michael really liked the duck.  We have it now but it limps badly and I'm afraid it will have to become duck soup.

Around four o'clock, after two or three hours of dancing and visiting, we decided we wanted to try to leave. That's not a simple proposal. The Kazakhs don't want you to ever leave. One wonders what they would do if a person really did stay and never left. Even their great hospitality would probably reach a limit!

Somehow we succeeded in getting away politely at a little after four. I think that the wedding party went on for another hour or two, with another round of tea. We were so tired I don't think we could have done it.

The next day we slept late trying to catch up on the lost sleep. Today we're still moving a little slow from the weekend…So that's a Kazakh wedding!

6

Breakdowns

People of God go through painful experiences. In Scripture and in our lives we see this pattern repeatedly. Persecutions arise, sicknesses develop, disappointments occur, unanswerable questions come. Sometimes God permits these breakdowns in our relationships, health, and work with a purpose, to reorient us toward his loving kindness away from our foolish pride. He wants us to exchange our reliance upon self for trust in Him.

Our adopted village of Sara Yer was built on the shores of a northward flowing river called the Talas. During the great thrust to develop Central Asia as part of the national industrial-military infrastructure, the Soviet central planners built a huge dam on it complete with a Mt. Rushmore-size head of Lenin peering along its top.  But long before it was altered, it followed its present course out of the mountains of Kirghizstan, northward through the steppe, and into the Moun Kum desert. This remote region happened to be one of the Communists' favorite places to exile political dissidents and other undesirables, the most famous of whom perhaps was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He writes extensively about this region in his book the Gulag Archipelago.

Kazakhs customarily name people and places using common words, similar to the culture of some Native Americans. Before long, we learned that the word Talas in several Turkic-based languages simply means dispute, feud or court case. Sometime back in the regional history, the river must have been the site of a territorial dispute or tribal feud. Thus, we lived in the valley of the River Dispute. We did not realize how descriptive that name would become for many of our experiences dealing with team mates, Kazakh believers, and others in the community.

Shortly after we arrived in the village, we began to sense tension between the team leader, Jake Wallis, and another team couple, Mark and Sharon Kamp. Before we left for the field a seasoned worker cautioned us about interpersonal conflict. She said, "One of the greatest difficulties we see on teams is conflict between its members, because this kind of work attracts strong-willed, aggressive people." The New Testament illustrates this truth with the oldest recorded story of a cross-cultural church-planting team.  The Book of Acts reveals a painful rupture between Paul and Barnabas over whether to accept a younger man named John Mark to their team. Paul contended that John Mark had disqualified himself from service by abandoning the work earlier. Barnabas, ever playing his role as Son of Encouragement, appealed to Paul to reconsider his rigid position. Paul did not yield. The parting was not bittersweet, just bitter.

Over the years I have tended to idealize my leaders and elder brothers in Christ. Maybe that is because I was the youngest of three with two older sisters and always wanted an older brother whom I could admire. Having served in leadership at times and seeing human weaknesses and shortcomings in other leaders should have made me realize that no human leader is above making mistakes, having bad judgment, or struggling with weakness. However, sometimes an ideal world feels safer than the real one. From my weakened condition during the first months, idealizing my leader and co-workers made me feel more secure.  I had enough troubles with language learning and cultural adaptation to honestly face the struggles of others.

Before leaving the US we started building our relationships with both the Wallises and the Kamps.  The Wallises were about our age and the Kamps a few years older. Jake and his wife Lyndsey had some experience working in unreached fields, but the Kamps, like the rest of us, were new to the entire process. Mark and his family lived just down the street from us in the village so we saw them frequently. He often helped me get around the community before I knew how to speak the language. Having no one else to speak with about his feelings, Mark occasionally talked to me about his relationship with Jake. He was a strong, intelligent, and driven man with great expectations for his ministry in Kazakhstan. Mark had left a high salaried job as an electrical engineer to move his family of three children across the globe into a newly formed republic. I admired his enthusiasm and commitment. His strong drive naturally brought him directly into the path of Jake, who also left a prestigious engineering position to establish and lead a pioneer church-planting team. I could understand how Mark might feel uncomfortable at times working under a younger and less experienced leader. I could also see Jake’s concerns that the team function with smooth relationships, each person contributing with his or her gifts under the overall vision that he wanted to provide as the founder of the team. Perhaps if all the members of the team had had more experience in field work and not been so isolated deep in the wilderness of Kazakhstan with access to more human resources, a breakdown could have been avoided. This part of the story is told not to blame anyone, but with the purpose to help others in the future find new ways to constructively resolve conflict.

During the spring it seemed that Mark’s feelings began to move him toward independence from the team and into uncertain cooperation with the team leader, bringing disharmony to team dynamics. By early summer, Jake, following the counsel of company leaders, decided to take action. Jake asked me to accompany him to the Kamps' house as a witness to a list of several points of concern. Jake summarized the points saying the Kamps' main problem was the sin of pride.

As we walked the short distance from my house to the Kamps, I felt apprehensive. Mark and Sharon were waiting for us in their tea room when we arrived. On previous days, with sunlight streaming through the tall windows, we enjoyed the fellowship of drinking tea and eating fresh bread covered with raspberries and cream.  On this day, the sun shone dimly. Jake unfolded his paper and began to read while the Kamps listened, their faces starting to show a mixture of anger and dismay. I sat quietly, trying to pray. My whole body trembling slightly. I suppose Jake was hoping the Kamps would respond with something like, "We're sorry and we respect you as our leader. We are committed to the team and want to keep working together." Instead, the Kamps lashed out in anger and hurt, demanding we leave immediately. Once back at our house, Janna and I joined the Wallises in prayer and worship, expressing to God our pain and our trust.  Later the Youngs came too. Their eyes were red from crying. Hank said that he and his wife quarreled at the same time Jake and I spoke with the Kamps.  That afternoon the spirit of Talas had struck in more than one relationship on the team. They prayed with us for grace to heal the wounds of conflict inflicted upon everyone.

In the days that followed, Jake and the Kamps reached a compromise that hid the tension without resolving it. Mark made a partial confession of unloving ways of relating to others on the team. The Kamps requested a couple of weeks to travel on a vacation in the mountains near Almaty.  The rest of the team was glad for a short reprieve from the stress. That's when Jake and Lyndsey announced their big news.  They were expecting their first baby. We all rejoiced with them in the thrill of a new life coming into the world. Then came the hard news.  The Wallises planned to leave the field at the end of the summer for nearly six months. I quickly began to consider what this meant for our team. We would be without a team leader on a team with two other couples, both of which were unseasoned, one of which was under discipline for attitudinal problems. The questions assailed me. Who would lead the team in Jake's absence? What if the Kamps veer off course, escalating conflict on the team? Who is there to offer the protection we need in interpersonal relationships as new personnel serving in a remote field? How can we survive in a primitive environment with meager language ability? The lengthy departure also carried ramifications for an exciting new Kazakh Bible study that had just started. To the best of our knowledge, this was one of the only such groups among rural Kazakhs in the whole nation. The weekly meeting was attracting five to ten Kazakhs who learned the very basic ideas of Scripture: the creation story, the Ten Commandments, and Abraham's offering of his son Isaac. Trying to care for these new seekers would demand much from us. The stage was set for God to take us through the greatest tests of the first year.

The Wallises’ departure date came very quickly. One priority for Jake before leaving was the appointment of an interim team leader. Hank and I, being the newest male team members, asked not to be considered. This of course only left Mark. How could Jake legitimately consider him an option due to the recent confrontation? This put him in a quandary. They needed a maternity leave, Hank and I asked to be exempted from consideration, and Mark was under discipline. He finally decided to appoint Mark as interim leader, but in an attempt to protect the team relationships, he limited Mark's authority so the whole team would be involved in decision making. With this fragile arrangement in place, the Wallises bid the village farewell.

Our team customarily met each week to discuss business matters, pray, and catch up with one another. As interim team leader, Mark was responsible to guide these meetings. During our first meeting without the Wallises, some of the attitudinal problems Mark had shown earlier began to surface again. Later that week he approached me privately to talk about his leadership. He expressed frustration about the decision-making process and said it was like having his hands tied. I interpreted his comment to mean he was very uncomfortable with the process of team discussion and consensus.

The next week our team met at the Kamps' home. In the afternoon before meeting I prayed and wrestled deeply with the passages of Scripture that speak of the relationships between leaders and followers in the body of Christ. Should we submit unquestioningly to Mark or was there a basis for openly discussing concerns with him and his wife? In our case, given the conditions laid down by Jake before he left, Mark did not have the permission to lead as an autocrat. Not long into the meeting, the agenda started to steer in a direction that troubled me. I reminded the team of the conditions under which Jake appointed Mark. Another team member spoke in support of a system of checks and balances. To our dismay, Mark ended the conversation and angrily left the room, saying he resigned from interim leadership and the team. Left alone with the rest of the team, his wife expressed hurt and disappointment. For a few moments we sat motionlessly. The fragile arrangement had fallen to the floor in broken pieces.

By the time we walked to our homes, the western sky was dark. I found an old wooden bench in our courtyard where I could kneel in prayer. Rarely have I prayed with such raw emotion. As my diaphragm heaved with uncontrollable sobbing, religious clichés' were replaced with naked honesty. "God, please help us in our distress, please heal this team." I don't know how long I prayed, just that the stars overhead twinkled silently and the moon crept across the sky.

From that day in early September until mid-October, the Kamps had almost no contact with the rest of the team. The hurt and mistrust had grown so deep that communication without a mediator was almost impossible. The Youngs and our family continued to meet for prayer, worship and business. The newly started Kazakh Bible study fell apart. We never heard, but we guessed the Kazakhs figured out that our team had a conflict. Shame, fear, guilt, and uncertainty assailed us. Mark wrote and circulated an accusatory e-mail letter among our company leadership, further aggravating these negative feelings. I had hopes for several days that Jake would make a short return trip to Kazakhstan to try and save the Bible study and bring damage control to the team. This didn't happen, but to our great relief the EO Field Director, Bob Lane, scheduled a trip to our village in mid-October. He would then decide how to best bring reconciliation and restoration to everyone on the team.

The wait for Bob was long and hard. Not only did we bear the stress of the conflict, but Michael, now one and a half, was battling a chronic ear infection that seemed to be getting worse by the day.  The week of Bob’s arrival, we started Michael on a second round of antibiotic. His temperature spiked at 105 degrees the Friday we got the phone call that Bob was in town.

Bob’s time was limited, so he tried to squeeze meetings into every minute. He scurried from the Kamps, then to the Youngs, then to us, trying to broker a resolution that would be beneficial and satisfying to everyone. Sunday morning Janna and I awoke early to discover that Michael's temperature was soaring again. Swollen tonsils puffed his neck out as large as his head. Infected fluid drained profusely from the left ear. Michael's body was limp. His eyes dulled. His stomach couldn't tolerate water. Everything, including the antibiotic, caused him to vomit. We had an emergency. The foremost thing we needed was prayer, lots of it. We realized the crisis from that stage could quickly become life-threatening from any number of factors. Dehydration from lack of food and water, infection entering the brain cavity, or complications with extreme fever can be fatal if not properly treaded. During our first term several small children in our village died from lack of adequate medical care, even though their illnesses were relatively minor. My journal entry on October 18, 1993 reveals the seriousness of the situation..

Sunday I thought my son was dying and I've never been in such grief and fear as I was then. I called out to the Lord with all my heart for him to touch Michael…he was so limp and burning hot from a high fever. He threw up many times and just looked at me with his big blue eyes as if to ask, “why is this happening Daddy?” I couldn't do anything, I was helpless and he kept getting hotter. The more I prayed the worse he seemed to get. It was almost too much for me to handle. I know that the Lord is a healer and that even now he is working in Michael to restore him to health. But that doesn't mean we didn't suffer Sunday having to watch Michael as he was.

To start a prayer network for Michael, I dialed the local telephone operator to order a call to my parents in the US. This was the first time since arriving in Kazakhstan that I had gone through the complicated procedure of ordering an international call. A time of high stress wasn't the best time to practice! God knew my need that moment, because the instant I said hello to the operator, she replied in Russian, "Ello, Ello, are you Wright? You have a call from America."  Incredulous and yet greatly relieved, I listened to my mother's voice speaking over the crackling line. In a miraculous moment of timing my mother had called us from the opposite side of the globe at the exact instant I was desperately trying to call them. After we talked briefly about the situation, she made more phone calls starting a network of prayer among our supporters scattered across the US.

The next task was to get medical help. We belonged to an emergency medical plan for expatriates living in the former Soviet Union. I ordered a call to their Moscow office for an evaluation of Michael's condition. In extreme emergencies they would send medical personnel, even aircraft to evacuate patients. They decided that Kazakh doctors could treat Michael. In our concern we rejected this idea.  We were afraid of the local system and were insecure in our ability to talk with the local medical personnel. I called the Moscow office a second time to request an evacuation. They offered to evacuate only Janna and Michael to Moscow. The flight would be many hours and the stay in a Moscow hospital would cost $250.00 a day. We were aghast they would ask Janna to make such a long journey alone with a critically ill child. Evacuation under those circumstances was not an option so they arranged that afternoon for an ambulance to come and take Michael and Janna to the children's hospital in the nearby city of Kalasi. Shortly afterwards a Kazakh doctor arrived at our home with the ambulance, gave Michael a quick examination, and an injection to lower his temperature. I followed them to the city in a separate car.

Any parent has experienced at least one time the heart-wrenching fear and anxiety of helplessly watching their ill child. An alien country, a less developed medical system, and the inability to speak with doctors magnified our concerns. At the hospital we watched powerlessly as Kazakh nurses and doctors pricked and prodded our first-born son in unfamiliar ways. What were they doing? Nurses whisked him away to a different room. Where are they taking our baby!? Meanwhile, a jovial, older Kazakh doctor smiled reassuringly and tried to chat with us in between heavy drags on his filterless Soviet cigarette. When would this ever end?

The nurses gently placed Michael in a room with bare walls, four single beds, and a small table by the window overlooking a tree-lined city lane. For the next seven days this room served Michael and Janna as their living room, kitchen, and bedroom. The treatment prescribed for Michael was a bit out-dated by Western standards, but it worked.  Several times a day for seven days the doctor injected him with penicillin until his little bottom looked like a well-used dart board from a British pub. Nurses served Janna, Michael and the other patients hot cereal, bread and butter and hot Kazakh tea mixed with sweet, rich milk.

As Michael improved that week under the care of the Kazakhs, something happened deep inside me. Driving home alone one evening I suddenly declared aloud, "This is my land, and these are my people!" Through this crisis, I learned that before I could call a people to cast their lives into Jesus' hands, I must first cast my life into theirs.  On the nineteenth of October I wrote,

This has been a difficult trial, the hardest I've ever been through I think. It sort of makes the trials of last winter seem insignificant by comparison. The storm has raged, the rain has fallen, the floods have come, but the foundation of the Lord has held our house firm.

Kazakhstan--these are my people, this is my land. It appears that the Lord has put us squarely in the complete care of the Kazakhs. We've come to give them help finding salvation in the Lord and now we find ourselves needing their help for our son to be healed.  We came to be the givers and the servers and now we are the takers and the ones being served. We came with the answers and strength, now we have questions and weakness.  We came with our ‘superior’ ways and have found ourselves looking to them as the providers of help. We came from another time and place, now we are connected to this time and place. These are our people, this is our land.

I last saw the Kamps in Sara Yer at a reconciliation meeting in their home. This was awkward because at the time neither party necessarily recognized any personal wrong-doing. To bridge the gulf separating us, each one offered an admission of failure in the relationship. The honest attempt at facing one another helped us move a small step in the right direction toward trust. Bob informed us the Kamps would relocate to another EO team in Kazakhstan within the month.

What could we have done differently to avoid or resolve the conflict we all experienced? I have come to believe that avoiding conflict altogether especially in isolated settings is probably impossible, but they don’t have to result in complete breakdown of relationships.  The direct confrontation of the Kamps with a written list of grievances might have been better handled in a relational manner, starting out with some ground rules for good communication, similar to good speaking-listening techniques practiced by husbands and wives in the context of resolving marital conflict. All parties involved in a conflict need to feel respected and valued as people, even if they may differ on matters of policy and/or theology.

The conflict escalated to the point of complete breakdown of all communication, a dangerous scenario in which negative speculations about one another can begin to run wild. People start to mistrust one another and create false caricatures that make reconciliation much harder. It’s hard enough to forgive and overcome real wrongdoing against one another; it is much harder to destroy negative caricatures. Perhaps if we had taken steps much earlier to make peace and seek a mutually respectful, understanding relationship before the grievances had a chance to grow out of proportion, we could have then headed off such a serious rupture.

The lack of a wider supportive Christian community was a problem unavoidable in a pioneer situation. Of course we would have all benefited from having the voice of an objective perspective spoken from multiple sources like pastors, elders, peers, friends. On the other hand, we have seen interpersonal conflict in churches in the US where people have abundant tried and tested resources. In the end we must face that humans sin and the enemy attacks and therefore should do our best to be prepared.

After the Kamps relocated I felt relieved, yet still a little anxious. Michael was on the mend, we had started to see some progress in learning Kazakh and their departure lessened tension on the team. But it reduced our numbers further from eight adults in the spring to a small circle of four green-horns left to face the harsh sub-Siberian winter alone.

7

Survival mode

The snow and the temperature fell and fell in the Kazakhstan winter of 1993. As Kazakhs huddled around wood stoves indoors sipping bottomless cups of piping hot tea, the conversation buzzed with talk about the unusually cold weather.  According to the village elders, it was the worst winter in twenty years or more. We arrived just in time not to miss it. Most Westerners cannot understand how much energy and time it takes for many people in the world to care for their basic needs. The arctic weather didn't help matters any. The water systems went through a cycle of freezing and thawing, creating many leaks in the ceilings of our home and in the offices and laboratory of the environmental company. The aging Soviet machinery and automobiles struggled to operate in sub-zero temperatures. Food and supplies became scarce. For several weeks little gasoline was available, hindering transportation.

We tried to keep extra diesel and gasoline on hand in portable steel fuel tanks in case we had an emergency and needed to travel with fuel or in case we ran out of fuel. During the winter, as it became harder and harder to find any fuel, we had to dip into our reserves. One of my neighbors worked not far from the village in a huge fuel storage facility and offered to help us get some fuel in a pinch. So one day, when it began to appear that the petrol stations had completely run out of fuel and had no hope of getting supplies any time in the near future and our own supplies were dwindling, we loaded a half dozen fuel containers in the Soviet jeep-like Niva and headed out in the sub-zero temperatures for the storage facility.

Maksat, our Kazakh interpreter came along with us to help out with Russian if we needed him. By then we had progressed in speaking Kazakh but only knew enough Russian to get by in the marketplace, in that way we could honestly tell the Kazakhs we weren’t working with the Russians on some plot to change their religion.  We got out of the village, drove a few kilometers and came to the main four-lane highway that followed the same course of the old Silk Road connecting the major cities of Central Asia, like Tashkent, Bishkek and Almaty. We followed the highway eastward hoping to reach the fuel facility before our own fuel ran out.  Just as the gauge approached empty a huge tanker truck sailed past us. Maksat said that it would be fine for us to flag down the tanker and buy some fuel directly from him. We got the car up closer making signs to stop. We both slowed down and the tanker driver was happy to oblige our request. But just before we had stopped, we noticed a small Lada Samara, a sort of Soviet semi-sport car, whiz past us, then abruptly turn back and start in our direction. Just as the tanker driver had climbed down from his cab, the Lada eased up behind us on the shoulder of the road. Maksat began to look troubled and whispered, “Be careful.”

He probably didn’t need to give us those simple instructions, because three intimidating young men popped out of the Lada. The driver looked like a Korean. He was small, but his grin didn’t comfort me. I looked at the other two guys and then back at the Lada. How could they have possibly fit in that car? One of them, a blue-eyed, blond Russian, wore a jacket that looked exactly like a college letter jacket, probably newly imported from China like so many things made in an American style. Though he wasn’t much taller than myself, and I’m about average for an American, he was one of the broadest individuals I have ever seen and if he had been born and raised someplace like Iowa instead of Kazakhstan, he would have been a first draft pick for a major college football team. The third guy had a dark complexion and small black eyes. He wore a tight-fitting ski cap, the epitome of someone who might be much more brawny than brainy. It seems like he had some scars on his face; if he didn’t have scars, he had a face that looked like someone had chiseled it out of a piece of scrap iron or rawhide. He too looked nearly as broad as tall.

They immediately took interest in us as foreigners, but first they quietly and confidently instructed the tanker driver to fill their own fuel tanks. While the driver complied, they hovered near us, sizing us up. Maksat was an average sized Kazakh, and much more of an academic than a brute. Though taller but thinner than the average Soviet, I hardly offered the guys an imposing figure. Of the three of us, Hank had the biggest frame and could actually put on a mean face that might cause an attacker to at least pause. The big Russian looked at him and quizzed him about us. Hank gave a short answer and Maksat followed up with a few extra words. I stood in the cold praying silently that we would get out without any problems. For a moment or two the tension built. It may have been the guys were not sure if they should just rob us or say they were happy to meet a couple of Americans in such a desolate location. Then the driver finished filling their fuel containers and told them they could go. They sauntered off without paying him anything, gave a last glance at us, then quickly loaded their car and took off. We decided to leave as quietly as we could. Once back in the Niva driving toward our village, Maksat explained how dangerous road bandits can be. Some of the tanker drivers would carry weapons to protect themselves and the bandits could also be heavily armed. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked God that he had protected us during a dangerous situation and a desperate time of the country’s history.

Fuel shortages were not the only problem during this period. As part of developing its own independent economy, the Kazakh government decreed the old Soviet ruble outdated and issued a new Kazakh currency called the tangye.  This devastated some elderly folks, who lost much of their life savings due to the devaluation of the Soviet ruble and the low exchange rate. Along with the fuel shortage, the currency change brought confusion to local commerce, making life harder for everyone.  We spent much time with the Youngs to encourage one another.  We had no choice.  Our hearts were starved for Christian fellowship.  A sea of people lost in darkness surrounded us. To our east the nation of China loomed with more than a billion people. To the north Mother Russia hovered over her wayward republics.  To the south and west millions of Muslims greedily eyed the wealth of their former Soviet brothers. One evening I sat under the soft glow of the lamp and used my atlas to calculate our distance from Tehran, Iran. It was only six hundred miles, closer than Chicago is to New York.  In former days, the remoteness of Kalasi Oblast served to break the spirits of many Soviet dissidents. The companionship we found as a small band of friends and co-workers was a spark of warmth on the frozen fields. Earnest worship, heartfelt prayer, reminiscing about the States, and laughing about our culture shock kept our hearts from fainting.

Stress is a much discussed topic in today's world. Even the Kazakhs discuss stress using the English word. Foreign workers in particular live with too much stress, even when things are going well. All the chronic stress we had been through in the previous eighteen months began to accumulate in our system. To make matters worse for Janna, a Turkish hair stylist -- accidentally or intentionally, we don't know -- shaved off her hair in the back in a most odd shape. For some people this might not be a big deal, but for Janna, who takes special care of her appearance, it was traumatic.

Stress management has never been one of my strengths. My pattern was to become stressed, then try to counter it by striving harder, thus producing more stress. If not checked, this can develop into a dangerous spiral. Just at the time I needed encouragement along the way, God brought a new team mate who would be a good friend for that season.

During the 19th century many Swiss Mennonites immigrated to the US seeking freedom to occupy good farmland and worship undisturbed. In Switzerland, the state churches forced Mennonites to live above 10,000 feet in the Alps because of their beliefs and practices. In the New World they would be free to spread out their “tent pegs.” Some of these Swiss Mennonite immigrants settled in northern Indiana and founded the small town of Berne, a community named after the capital of their former canton. To this day the Berne community has worked hard to preserve its Swiss heritage through local Swiss architecture, heritage festivals and remembering the stories of their forefathers who kept the faith over the miles and years. On her mother’s and father’s side of their family, Janna descended from these hardy Swiss Mennonites. Out of respect and appreciation of this heritage, she and I have tried to maintain some traditions and celebrate the unique Alpine people of Switzerland.  However, we had never met a modern Swiss citizen in person until we lived in Kazakhstan.

Late one evening an unexpected knock came at the door of our cottage. I opened it to discover a tall European dressed in hiking gear. Fritz Baumgarten, our long awaited Swiss team mate, had finally arrived. Fritz quickly became an involved and committed team member. We shared our burdens, prayed every weekday morning and enjoyed chatting about our idyllic days of youth. Though the Atlantic ocean and half a continent separated our homes, our lives -- his in the Alps of the Bern canton and mine in the pine hills of Louisiana -- were strangely similar. Several times he stayed in our home, telling us about the history of the Swiss, of Central Asia, and of outreach in various parts of the world. He sat for hours playing with Michael, while both of them practiced speaking Kazakh to one another, Michael pointing his chubby finger at things around the room and Fritz saying what it was in Kazakh. Occasionally on a cold winter night Janna treated us all to a steaming kettle of fondue. God graciously gave us some sparkles of color in an otherwise gray existence that frigid winter.

We weren't the only ones who took interest in Fritz.  In the final days of 1993, KGB agents called Fritz and Hank to the city for a meeting. For two hours, an agent, who chose not to give his name, interrogated them about our environmental company, our visas, and about Fritz's Swiss passport. His passport drew the most attention.  Apparently we raised their suspicions because we weren't all from the US. Also, Fritz's passport contained visas from several other countries. For many days the government held his passport, giving no clear indication if they would allow him to stay in the country. We prayed much during that time and eventually the Lord's will prevailed so the visa office granted Fritz permission to stay.

During the long winter days everyone on the team continued to plod through language learning, attempting, with little success it seemed, to establish deeper relationships with Kazakhs. At times our language ability seemed to only make us look sillier than we must have already appeared to the nationals. One evening after an enjoyable party with Kazakhs, I tried to say a heartfelt thank-you to them. As I got in the car to leave, I smiled and said, "Thanks to us." At the time, I didn't realize I made a mistake, but as I drove home and thought about the hostess' odd expression, I realized my highly embarrassing error. No wonder she looked perplexed, I had just thanked ourselves for coming to their elaborate party.

These frequent embarrassments compelled me to study harder. The bad weather meant Joe had more time to help me with the language. In the afternoons we sat at the tea table as I struggled through the Book of Luke.  Using the Scripture as a tool for language learning proved invaluable later when I began to teach and preach in Kazakh. It also sparked many conversations with Joe, though invigorating, never seemed to go far enough.

One of my projects was to create a contextualized personal testimony of faith. After having been in Kazakhstan for almost a year, I felt ready to try something, which I ended up telling to Kazakhs whenever I had the opportunity. The testimony said,

When I was a child, I heard about Jesus the Prophet. He is also called the Messiah. He was a great hero, the greatest of all time, for all mankind. He did not fight against people. His war was spiritual. He fought against Satan and sin. He was crucified on a cross as our sacrifice. The devil thought he had beaten Jesus. For three days Jesus was in the grave, but on the third day, he rose from the dead. Now he is alive.  He defeated Satan. Jesus is Lord!  Jesus is my hero. He forgave all my sins. Satan cannot hurt me. I am not afraid of any curse. Before I knew Jesus my life was dark. Now the top of my yurt is open all the time. Heaven is open over me and I am not ashamed before God. He gave me a new song to play on my dombra. Jesus lives in my heart as my honored guest. Through Jesus I will live forever in the Lord's house as his special guest.

Of all the Kazakhs I knew, Joe was the most Islamic in his thinking and the most intelligent. His family had a distinguished position in the community, so the fear of people ever impeded his faith. Still, he was the only Kazakh at that time with whom I had built a level of trust. So as the winter passed, I began to consider how to introduce the Gospel within his family network. My plans took shape, exciting me with the possibilities I saw for a Kazakh church started through Joe. I eagerly told God all about my plans, but he had a different man on the horizon.

8

Seedtime

One of the greatest treats we experienced while living in the village was finding a small brown card in the mailbox notifying us that a package had arrived from the States. In The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews sings about her favorite things, one of which are brown paper packages tied up with strings.  In those days when the only Western products that could be found in the markets and bazaars were cigarettes, alcohol, M & M's, and snicker bars, a care package of clean T-shirts, chewing gum, instant coffee, a Hot Wheels car, and a Reader's Digest was priceless.  Americans who casually stroll through a Wal-Mart Superstore cannot comprehend the luxury of it all.

One day, my little brown card in hand, I rushed to the village post office in the center of town to claim our package. The post office, like nearly all Soviet workplaces, was large and bare and had probably been built around the time of Khrushchev. To save money, the workers used only one light in a gymnasium-size room. A pleasant middle-age Russian woman, who kept the local postal system running as efficiently as was possible during the collapse of a huge empire, always waited on me, patiently interpreting my broken Russian language. I excitedly claimed my package, thanked the Russian lady and turned to rush home with a bag of goodies for the family. The drafty old room was empty except for one man sitting on a row of chairs against the wall. For some reason he caught my eye. I vaguely recognized him from a neighborhood near our house.  But that was not why he caught my eye. It was his forlorn expression. Why would somebody sit in a dark, oppressive Soviet post office in the middle of the afternoon?  When I finished my business at the clerk's desk he made no effort to approach it. He saw me pause and look his way, so he gave me the Kazakh greeting, “As-salaam-awlekum,” (Peace to you.) I returned the greeting, “waalaikumsalam,” feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed that he had caught me looking at him. He asked something about the packages, which made me think of Janna and Michael waiting eagerly at home, so I excused myself and said goodbye.

In the late winter the cold weather began its slow retreat and the green grasses of the endless steppe began to blanket the countryside around the village climbing up the slopes toward the snow covered mountain peaks to the south.  The warming weather allowed us to get back outside for family walks, a favorite pastime of ours. Few people in the village owned a car, so walking gave us an opportunity to be among the people of the community. Walking home one evening, we had a surprise encounter with the man from the post office and with his family. They had just picked up their children from the Soviet-style kindergarten still operating in the village center and were walking in the same direction so they joined us and we chatted politely after the greetings. How old are your kids? Where exactly do you live? What are your names?  Questions flew in both directions. We learned that the man, named Amman, and his wife Rumee were fairly close neighbors. The back of their small apartment faced the road in front of our house. With obvious interest in the new Americans on the block, they accompanied us to our gate. Kazakh culture dictated we invite them in for tea. I could smell alcohol and I could just envision their three children playing roughly in our house (as if Michael was beyond mischief), so I wasn't too sure about hosting them. I reminded myself that Jesus said it isn't the healthy who need a physician, but the ill. So we all piled into the tea room of our small cottage.

The proper cultural response for a Kazakh family who is invited somewhere is to then return the hospitality in their own home.  So it was no great surprise when our family and the Youngs were invited to Amman and Rumee's home for supper a couple of weeks later. The Youngs couldn't go. That left us, who were mildly interested.  Perhaps we had let some ministry strategies get in the way of real life, having learned to view some kinds of people as more strategic than others. We had been taught time and again to reach community leaders who can sway others. Persons on the societal fringe obviously would attract only more fringe people, wouldn't they?  Furthermore, our team ethos mean we were there to reach traditional Kazakhs, not Russified ones.  Amman had moved from the far north and could hardly speak Kazakh. With that in mind, we had low expectations for our evening with Amman and Rumee in their one-room apartment with crumbling walls.

In the end having low expectations wasn't such a bad thing. It made us relax. We ate a roasted goose, not a popular Kazakh dish but the nicest thing they could afford to serve. We listened to Soviet hippie music on their out-dated record player, enjoying simple fun and laughter. An unseen bridge between our distant cultures was crossed that evening.

Jake and Lyndsey Wallis returned in early 1994 with a precious baby girl. Our environmental company landed a huge project with the Asian Development Bank that promised for the region a grant of one hundred thousand dollars. Jake and Lyndsey, pushed by a deadline, worked day and night to finish a comprehensive environmental report on Kazakhstan. Other team mates helped write the book, but still worked primarily on learning Kazakh.

During the days of the Soviet Union, the KGB, their much-feared secret service agency, often hired people as informants. Though the local government granted Fritz Baumgarten a visa, he still believed the KGB watched us regularly. We began to speculate that they employed Joe, my helper, as an informant. He sometimes asked me personal questions about my activities and my other relationships. In order to test my friendship with him, I offered that he go to work for Jake instead. I reasoned that if he was truly my friend and not an informant, he would continue to show sincere interest in us. Jake hired him, leaving me without a maintenance and language helper at the beginning of the gardening season.

Word quickly got out we needed help. The wage we paid of seventy dollars a month was low, but it was much better than other places paid, if they paid anything at all. One of the first applicants was Amman. Upon interviewing him I discovered that he had only one lung. Doctors had removed the right one due to tuberculosis. For that reason he received a meager government disability benefit, but not really enough to cover his cost of living.  The day I saw him sitting in the post office he might have been waiting to receive his disability benefit. I hesitated to hire someone with a respiratory problem for demanding outdoor labor, but I sensed the job was very important to him and he would do it seriously.

The bank project gave our team so much favor in the eyes of the local officials, the team decided it was time for a major evangelistic outreach. Jake contacted the regional mayor and got permission to show the movie Jesus in the local theater. The idea looked promising. Kazakh friends posted flyers on public boards and telephone poles throughout the village. Team members invited their friends. A few Kazakh believers from Kalasi joined us in the outreach. For three nights the theater showed the film, each time to a crowd of about twenty. At the end of the film, Kazakh believers invited each guest to a seekers meeting the next week in the central restaurant.

The visible results were disappointing. In a village of 15,000 people, sixty people seemed too few. At the seekers meeting the next week in the village’s only restaurant, twelve Kazakh men and three team members gathered. Amman and I occasionally talked about the Gospel, so I felt it appropriate to invite him. Two young Kazakh men, who had recently immigrated from Iran, listened to an older Uzbek believer, named Din-Koy, share his testimony about coming to Christ through the Russian Baptist church. Unable to tolerate what sounded like blasphemy to their ears, the Iranian Kazakhs argued angrily with Din-Koy, bringing the meeting to a close. Darkness separated from light with distinctive lines.

The team held subsequent meetings, first in the restaurant, then in a Kazakh's home. Amman showed interest but feared that something might happen to cause him to betray his Kazakh heritage.  Repeatedly he asked me, gesturing with his hands, if Janna and I prayed like the Russian Orthodox, who genuflect in the sign of the cross. To a Muslim Kazakh, anything remotely suggestive of Russian religion and culture is anathema.  If he ever saw me genuflect, further discussion about Jesus the Messiah likely become much more difficult. So deep were his suspicions, as he later admitted to me, that he imagined we drew our curtains, lit a candle, then secretly made the sign of the cross on our forehead and chest as we prayed. In his cultural-religious construct, it was impossible for him to believe a white person worshipped God any other way.

These Jesus film follow-up meetings abruptly came to an end one Wednesday night. We never exactly learned how, but two fanatical Muslim Kazakh from a neighboring village, both self-appointed religious leaders, found the meeting and attended.  Both wore white prayer hats (called a takea), white shirts, black trousers, and supple black leather boots, signifying their devotedness to Islam.  After waiting for the right moment in the Bible study, the younger of the two discharged his fury upon the group. The neutral bystanders sat hanging their heads, feeling ashamed of his behavior, yet paradoxically, ashamed they weren't more passionate about Islam themselves. The older mullah offered some smooth words sprinkled with a few more barbs. The damage to the fledgling group was beyond repair. For a second time in twelve months, a seekers group disintegrated.

At this point God directed us to unleash the full potential of the resource only slightly tapped a few weeks earlier…the Jesus film. Originally produced years ago by a prominent college ministry, the Jesus film has been translated into more languages and shown more widely than any other film in history. During college Janna and I had the privilege of meeting the producer behind the film. He told his story how as a college student he had refused to get serious about his relationship with Jesus. One afternoon at a retreat a friend came to him and put it to him bluntly. “When are you going to give Jesus everything? Your life would mean so much more than it does with you just playing around.” The words struck him deeply and he acted upon them. The friend who had confronted him to live as a serious disciple of Christ could in no way have guessed how far-ranging would be the fruit of those words. In the Jesus film the Holy Scripture is the script. Every word Jesus speaks is from the Book of Luke. The Kazakh translation, done by professional actors at the National Film Studio--affectionately called "Kazakhstan Hollywood"--speaks clearly to rural Kazakhs.

Around this time our team received a shipment of the first hardback copy of the Kazakh Scriptures that contained many but not all the books of the New Testament. A German translator in Almaty had labored with Kazakh linguists to produce the book, the first of its kind. One afternoon, after just getting my hands on a few copies to distribute, I invited Amman to the house. When I offered him the deep blue book with gold lettering on the cover that said in Kazakh Keali Kitap (Holy Book), he took it lovingly from my hand, kissed it, and gave me many Rakmets (thanks). He had never before seen and held God’s Word in his hands. Both he and I fought off tears.

In the late spring Janna and I felt it was time to offer Amman and Rumee a more intimate look into the life of Jesus using the film. To our delight, they were eager to see it. Not only that, but they invited some family members and friends to join us. In all, an audience of twelve adults and children gathered at their modest home for the showing. Day turned to dusk, which gave way to starlit heavens overhead. The Kazakhs sat in the open air witnessing for the first time the story of Jesus, the Messiah, from his birth to a virgin girl through his ascension back to God. The film impacted Amman and Rumee so profoundly they arranged for us to show it to her brother's family in a small farming village named Dalada, seven miles north of Sara Yer.

9

Farmland

Stalin, the infamous dictator of the former Soviet Union, viewed  Kazakhstan as a pristine land to be exploited. Before Stalin came, most Kazakhs were still nomads, roaming the steppe with herds of horses, sheep, and camels. Then Stalin and his cronies assaulted the steppe with the might of industrialized Russia. It would become an industrial powerhouse, a base for space operations, and a breadbasket. Soviet troops forcibly herded Kazakhs into collective farms and ranches.  Some Kazakhs slaughtered thousands of sheep, horses, and cattle rather than forfeit them to the Soviets. Communists either killed or imprisoned those who resisted.  Historians estimate that up to half the Kazakh population died during those dark days.  Some managed to escape to other countries where they remained until the Soviet Union collapsed.

Dalada was a living legacy of the collectivization policy implemented by Stalin and then later expanded by Khrushchev, the father of the "Virgin Lands Project." In more prosperous days, everyone in the village contributed in some way to the production of sheep products. Some grazed the sheep, some drove tractors with supplies, some tended the collective sheep corrals, and some administrated the entire operation. Ideally the collective farm should operate as a single organism, a perfect example of the way Marx and Lenin devised what could really be considered a counterfeit Body of Christ. After the fall of Communism and subsequent move into capitalism, disorder and unemployment came to the collective farms.  In Dalada, as in many villages, unemployment soared well over fifty percent.

One afternoon with plans to show the Jesus film, we loaded up our little Lada with Kazakhs, kids, and electronics. On the drive to Dalada we had a spectacular view of the steppe to the north and the mountains to the south. The road between our village and Dalada was in fairly good shape, so we covered the distance quickly. We got to the edge of a collective farm, noticing how much smaller it was than our own village. A modest number of whitewashed adobe houses lined the unpaved roads. Rumee directed us where to turn to get to her brother’s house, but there was no concern of getting lost in the small collective farm where it seemed time had come to a full stop.

Yet, undaunted by the collapse of everything secure in their world, the people of Dalada welcomed us with cheers and smiles as we drove onto their dusty road. A ticker-tape parade could not have made us feel more honored. To the poor people of Dalada, literally living in the land of exile, we represented hope beyond hope. They knew nothing yet of the Gospel we had to share, but the mere willingness of "wealthy" Americans to visit their dusty streets in the name of Almighty God conveyed a message they had probably never heard before: you are precious, you are not forgotten, you are truly loved by God. The Jesus film outreach that evening progressed like clockwork. Rumee's sister-in-law Salia served us tea and delectable Kazakh treats.  While we lounged for a couple of hours on a large mat spread out in the bare little farmyard with chickens strutting around and sheep bleating in the distance, she went to the homes of several neighbors and invited them to see the film. She assured us that many people would come. We had no idea what to expect, but were hopeful that at least a few would choose to come.

In the farming season village Kazakhs work long hours from dawn to dusk, usually coming home not earlier than 9 PM. After the local folks cleaned up from their work in the fields, they began to trickle, then flow in, packing the large tea room in Allahdan's and Salia's home. Aged Kazakh women, dressed in colorful traditional clothing with their heads covered and wearing abundant silver jewelry, sat down comfortably on the floor, suggesting they had spent their girlhood in nomadic tents. Elderly men, some of whom had been members of the local Communist party, gazed at us in complete astonishment. Surely it must have been difficult for all present to comprehend that young American Christians and weathered old Communists were sitting in the same room deep in the heart of Central Asia preparing to watch the life of Jesus together. And as people gathered, our blond-haired, blue-eyed toddler Michael excitedly chattered in nearly perfect Kazakh to a highly entertained audience, “Isa Paygambar, Isa Paygambar” (Jesus the Prophet).

When the Kazakh villagers filled the room to capacity, with women, young and old, squished together on the floor, men pressed against the wall and children and teens crowded shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, I started the film. For the length of the film the Kazakhs sat in a sober silence. The story ends with the dramatic scene showing Jesus ascending into the sky followed by another view of the empty sepulcher. The message couldn’t be clearer…Jesus is alive! The Jesus film spoke to both Communists and Muslims smashed by the dozens into the tea-room, making a profoundly new and challenging claim. Even in post-Soviet Russia, the government still preserves Lenin's body in a massive mausoleum in Moscow. On every level of society the Soviets tried to re-enforce the idea that Lenin's persona is not dead, that he lives in the Communist party and the people. Muhammed, the other person highly regarded by Kazakhs, though not worshipped, is celebrated as the greatest prophet.  Muslims believe that he now resides in the highest heaven with Allah, as the Kemal, or perfect man. Comparing the pseudo-immortality humanly imposed upon Lenin with Jesus’ resurrection or weighing Jesus’ life and teachings with the “perfection” attributed to Muhammed, one can quickly see where real greatness is found. While the followers of Lenin and Muhammed may still be inclined celebrate them as if they still live, the fact remains that their bodies lie in the grave. On the other hand, the real Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrates greatness and divinity by bodily resurrecting from the grave. In the crowded room the Jesus film portrayed the immense contrast between normal men and the God-man. Sadly, our language ability was inadequate to follow-up the film showing with a discussion. Maybe it was just as well thought, since people needed time to think about this radical new message.

During this time prayer served as our instrument for tilling the soil and sowing the seed. We didn’t know how many seeds found fertile hearts that night, but by Monday next week we learned that many more folks in Dalada wanted to watch the film. So when Friday night rolled around again we loaded the bulky Soviet TV, the video player, and Amman's whole family into the Lada again and journeyed into the countryside. As the week before, we went through a several hour routine of tea and lounging. Michael played in the farm yard with his little Kazakh buddies. We drank bottomless cups of tea that would help us stay awake later when the film started. The temperature cooled as the setting sun filled the immense Kazakhstan sky with shades of gold, red and purple. In the distance we could hear the bleating of sheep returning home from the fields and could see a huge cloud of dust kicked up as they worked their way down the street. I sipped my tea and watched the stars peep out, pondering how an piece of electronic technology so often used by Satan for his twisted schemes also enabled us to make an indelible impression on nomads living at the earth's end.

The lovely evening brought out a bigger crowd than the previous week. People strolled into the courtyard by ones, twos, and groups. Salia had to bring out more mats to cover the ground. With the arrival of each new person I felt so grateful that the Lord had called us out of an ordinary existence to witness this act of his marvelous grace among these people who had been cut off from all Gospel light. Finally the people seemed mostly gathered so we turned off the light and turned on the television.  As colorful Bible scenes flickered in the evening darkness, their eyes riveted upon the screen. Children winced and grandmothers wailed when the Roman soldiers drove the rusty iron spikes into the hands and feet of Jesus. Whispers rippled through the crowd when Jesus appeared in white garments after his resurrection. If only I could have captured the moment. People, visibly moved, walked away slowly absorbed in thought.

Since that night I have tried to imagine the range of emotions a person must feel after seeing the life, death and resurrection of Jesus for the very first time. These Kazakhs never went to vacation Bible school, they never saw a Gideon Bible in a hotel room or received one as a child, they never heard of Christmas or Resurrection Day, they had probably never talked to a Christian. Before that night, Jesus was only a shadowy figure referred to in the Qur’an, a nondescript prophet who came long before Mohammed. They had been taught he healed some people, then was taken back to heaven before he was crucified. After the film their world could never be the same. A light shone, refusing to be ignored. The Lord came close and knocked at their door, even in Dalada.

For the remainder of the summer, this movement picked up momentum. Each Friday we loaded the car, picked up Amman's family, and made our pilgrimage to Dalada. The sweeping view of the sky, steppe, and mountains seen from Allahdan's front gate etched itself in our memory. Kazakhs came in droves, leaving only standing room.  After the crowds dispersed, we stayed into the wee hours of the night sharing bishparmak, scooping up in our greasy hands the rich the noodles and chunks of meat off a large community platter. But mass evangelism was not our ultimate goal, however important it may be. Following Jesus' example, we planned to gather a core of disciples who would develop relationships as a local church. Of these, it was critical that some emerge as leaders. Recalling the time I saw Amman passively sitting alone in the post office, I had trouble envisioning him as a leader, although he was the most receptive Kazakh I knew. I was fishing for the big one, with my eyes on Allahdan. Allahdan's name means, "God has given." For some reason, maybe from infertility, pregnancy complications, delivery problems, or just the fact that he was a male first-born, his parents felt that his birth was a special gift from God. I too had hopes that God planned for this outspoken Muslim leader to become a witness for the Messiah. So I wrestled with him, trying to make the Gospel meaningful in his understanding. Each Friday night his family, Amman's, and mine sipped tea while we vigorously discussed the similarities and differences between the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an. On many occasions, Allahdan did his evening Muslim prayer in the back bedroom while the Jesus film played in his tea room. Undoubtedly, unseen spiritual tension was generated by these two kingdoms in such close quarters.

A journal entry from August 1994 reveals some of the problems starting to mount as we continued to work in the Dalada. I wrote,

It's been a long day with Kazakhs.  We spent the entire day, from eleven to four, with our Kazakh friends on the bank of the Talas river near the village of Dalada. It was a rather tiring day, although the Kazakhs were most hospitable and the Talas was quite lovely. We enjoyed them and were happy that they had invited us to spend time with them.

Last night we had a Bible lesson of sorts, as two Kazakhs read a little out of a scriptural answer book. We also watched the Gospel presentation at the end of the Jesus film. There was little response to the book or film, although they seemed grateful that we brought these things and are willing to meet again next week.

I am stumped as to what step to take next in seeing a church started there. No one has surfaced yet as a clear leader. And the husband of one family is still distracted at best and antagonistic at worst. My thought now is to continue with the goals of:  1) accustoming these two families to meeting weekly, 2) baptizing these two families in genuine faith, 3) eventually netting some other men who live in Dalada who will be "reliable men," elders in the church, 4) evangelizing other friends, families and neighbors who will join these house fellowship and eventually break off and start their own.

It's slow, painfully slow at times. Maybe I'm trying to rush things. We need to take note of these important strategic points: 1) the Mullah's house (Allahdan and Salia) has been the base and continues to be the base for showing the film to large numbers of traditional Kazakhs, 2) this same house is the base for widespread literature distribution, 3) my helper (Amman) is excited to meet privately in his home for discipleship and is showing signs of learning, 4) we have favor with a wide circle of Kazakhs in the Dalada, which may be the road to the future elders and future members, 5) this ministry is invaluable training for us in language, culture and ministry.

Some issues possibly involved in the future are: 1) How long do I persist with this village if no fruit is seen, especially if something else opens on Friday night, 2) How can I avoid offending our first set of friends in Dalada if another family unit becomes more responsive, 3) What do I do about Dalada when we take maternity leave in October, 4) How do we deal with the position the Mullah takes which is usually much different from his family.

By autumn the lines between the two kingdoms became clearer. In spite of showing the film to somewhere between one and two hundred villagers, none made further inquiry. The local tauyps (animistic healers) and mullahs spread rumors that Isa was actually Isys Christos--interpreted by the Kazakhs to mean he was sort of a tribal god of the Russian--and that we were CIA agents. Among our small group of friends, Amman and Salia expressed the greatest interest in the Gospel, Rumee wavered on the border, and Allahdan entrenched himself more firmly in the rigid realm of Islam. With the last whispers of the warm Kazakhstan summer breezes, our time in Dalada quietly ended.

10

“I’ve Been Praying For You”

Children in Kazakhstan receive plenty of attention. As in most eastern countries, a large family is a sign of wealth and honor. That's why Janna drew many curious stares and comments that summer as her waistline grew larger with our second child. Early in the pregnancy she had ultrasound done by a Kazakh technician revealing we would have another son. This brought even more "Oohs" and "Ahhs" from admiring Kazakh women. We knew at that time Kazakh hospitals sometimes reused needles, ran dangerously low on medications, and offered minimal nursing care, so we chose to return to the States for a brief maternity leave in the fall of 1994.

Once in the States, the prosperity of the American culture bewildered us. The volume and variety of products found in a single Wal-Mart Superstore was greater than the supplies in all the shops of Almaty, a city of 1.2 million people. We could not take it all in. The prosperity we casually enjoyed before living in Kazakhstan suddenly jumped out at us as lavish as Aladdin's golden cave of treasures.

When we first returned to the US I was still recovering from a serious bout of dysentery from the end of the summer, probably contracted the afternoon we had picnicked for hours on the Talas river. I went through a series of tests to see if I had any parasites or other diseases from Kazakhstan. Thankfully, no one in our family was infected. With a clean bill of health I hit the speaking circuit in a full sprint. In spite of my best intentions to rest and relax, keeping a heavy speaking schedule gave me a sense of temporal fulfillment. I made the mistake at times of equating work with worth; success with significance; and productivity with purposefulness.

Our travel took us thousands of miles across the country. We visited my family and Janna’s, having to drive a thousand miles in each direction between our two homelands. Over the years of marriage we had made the trip many times and knew the route well, basically following the same direction as the Mississippi River running straight north and south. Because the trip took many long and sometimes boring hours cruising past endless miles of southern forests and mid-western corn fields, we tried to vary the highways, sometimes taking the interstate system to the west of the Mississippi and sometimes to the east. During this short break, we visited my folks in Louisiana then planned to get back to Indiana in time for the birth of the second child. We chose a route that would take us hundreds of miles across the state of Mississippi and Tennessee, Kentucky and into Indiana. This route would give us lots of time to enjoy the changing colors of fall in the great southern forests and countryside. We broke up the trip with a hotel stay in Tennessee, about halfway to Indiana.

Though long, we did enjoy certain things about the trip because it gave us a break from the speaking schedule, time alone as a family, and a chance to see some interesting sites in our great country.  In 1994, living and working in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, made us so unusual to most Americans that at times we just wanted to be completely anonymous without having to face the odd stares, curious questions, and excessive attention. It was bad enough that we already had to endure near-celebrity-status in Kazakhstan. We just wanted to be “normal” Americans for a while. In a way it made us want to wear sunglasses and dark coats with our collars put up. Being on a trip across the US where no one knew us and no one really cared was a pleasant relief.

After our restful night in the hotel, enjoying a swim in the indoor pool and a hearty southern breakfast, we hit the road again. The next large city we would pass through was Nashville, about a hundred and fifty miles ahead. Nashville, Music City, is a famous place, the metropolitan center of Tennessee and the commercial center of a vast entertainment industry following closely after Hollywood and New York. Nearly two million people live in the greater metropolitan area that covers hundreds of square miles in the rolling hills of north Tennessee. It’s important to remember those numbers. I had visited it several years earlier as a single seminary student, staying with my uncle and aunt when he was working as an interim pastor in a church there, but even then I hadn’t really seen the city. I stayed with him one evening before taking off the next day for school in Indiana. Since then I had only passed through it a time or two on the metropolitan bypass, observing the skyline and river from a distance. I checked our travel schedule and it looked like we would be passing through Nashville about lunch time. Janna and I talked about stopping over in the city for a bit, going downtown and doing a little exploring and maybe having lunch somewhere interesting.  She was up for the adventure too, so armed with our Rand McNally road atlas and a keen sense of discovery we drove into the heavy traffic following it toward the city center dense with skyscrapers, while joking that we might run into a famous country singer like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton.

When we exited the interstate and descended into the downtown area, we began to realize that even with our trusty Rand McNally, finding our way around the massive city blocks with skyscrapers towering overhead was perhaps a more imposing task than we had first reckoned. And not only is Nashville the center of commercial music in America, it is the state capital, so there was no end of bustling activity on the streets with cars, taxis, trucks and pedestrians hurrying from one place to another. Still, we were up for an adventure, and anyway, our stomachs had started to grumble for lunch, so we redoubled our efforts to locate a place to park somewhere and get a decent meal. Eventually we passed a brightly lit multi-storied shopping galleria constructed from glass and chrome. We found a parking garage where we could bring our little Volkswagen Jetta to a rest while we continued our exploration on foot.

The galleria had the typical kinds of department stores and specialty shops. The restaurants either looked too expensive or too crowded, so we exited and struck out into the city streets in search of something different. After hurrying across a busy street trying to avoid getting hit, we turned a corner and spotted…a McDonald’s. Ok. We didn’t have anything per se against McDonald’s, but we didn’t feel satisfied to brave dizzying Nashville lunchtime traffic and navigate our way around the unfamiliar maze of the metropolitan downtown just to eat somewhere we could have eaten at in just about any other square mile of the United States. But we were getting hungry. Still, I had just a little exploring energy left. Just then out of the corner of our eyes we noticed a narrow little alleyway opposite the McDonald’s on the opposite side of a busy boulevard. It got our attention, maybe because it looked a bit like Robert Frost’s “road less traveled.” We took Michael’s hands and scurried across the street.

The alleyway had an opaque plastic covering about two or three stories above us, probably to shield it from rain. It was closed to cars and just a handful of pedestrians walked down it. We were the only ones with a child and the only ones that didn’t look like they were hurrying to some penthouse office to sign a big-time recording deal for the next pop or country hit. But what really mattered, we found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where the price was right and there was no crowd. Moreover, the restaurant served gyros, with real lamb meat. Imagine that, lamb meat in Tennessee. We felt like we had come back home to our Kazakh village. Strangely, the smell of the searing lamb tugged at our taste buds so we hurried in and sat down, having no trouble finding a place to sit. The restaurant was just wide enough for the cook to move around at his grill behind a narrow counter and for the customers to have three or four tables pushed up against the opposite wall. The cook, a large jolly man clothed in the classic white smock, happily took our orders for gyros and French fries. We settled into our chairs, enjoying the peace and quiet of the quaint establishment. Before our food came another customer finished his food and left. While we waited I noticed a couple of handsomely dressed middle-aged women sitting in the far back corner, talking quietly. Our food came, the lamb was delicious, we ate our fill of the meat-filled gyros and Michael stuffed his chubby face with fries and drink. Good time had by all, time to go.

After a very satisfying meal we felt just about ready to face the big Music City again. Janna gathered up Michael and our things and I went to the counter to pay the bill. While I was digging around in my pocket for some cash, the cook asked where we were from. Uh-oh. I was thoroughly enjoying the anonymity of being a Southern boy in Tennessee and the last thing I wanted to do was reveal that we lived and worked at the end of the world in Kazakhstan. I said something or another about being a trip headed to Indiana. That didn’t seem to satisfy him. Just about then, the two ladies from the back corner table walked up beside me. For some strange reason I could feel their eyes upon me. The cook, with even more friendliness asked again where we came from originally. Here we go, I thought, now we have an audience. “Well,” I said, “Actually, we, uh, we work overseas, in Kazakhstan.” Our jolly cook friend looked up sharply, that wasn’t something he heard every day. “No kidding, where’s that?” There was no backing out, I had committed myself, so I told him a bit more about Kazakhstan and working there.

Meanwhile, the two ladies decided the conversation sounded quite interesting to them, so they leaned in closer, and Janna came up to the counter too, so there we stood, all huddled up in front of the cash register with our jolly gyros chef. Then what I had hoped wouldn’t happen did, one of the ladies joined the conversation. “Excuse me, but did I hear you say Kazakhstan?” Both of the ladies carried themselves with a certain air of maturity and culture. I felt embarrassed and partly just wanted to quietly excuse myself. “Yes ‘mam, Kazakhstan, we work with an environmental company” They both became excited and one said, “I thought I heard you talking about Kazakhstan as you ate your lunch. This is amazing. I know a man who works very near there. He also does clean water projects. His name is Bob Arch, I wonder if you know him, wouldn’t that be something if you did?”

The cook said, “I can’t believe this! Imagine you all in my restaurant here at the same time.”

I answered the lady, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t know that name.”

“Actually he works in Uzbekistan, in Tashkent. But he’s doing projects bringing clean water to people because of how bad the environment had become under the Soviets.”

I had to be honest, this impromptu gathering was intriguing. “Really? That’s nearly exactly what we’re doing in Kazakhstan,” I said. Just then I noticed in the other lady’s eyes one of the strangest looks I had ever seen in someone; it seemed as though her eyes were boring into me.

Suddenly she spoke, very deliberately, “Do you know Jake Wallis?”

Literally speechless for a moment, all I could do was look at Janna and back at the complete stranger, my mouth dropping open. Did we know Jake Wallis? In a split second the absurdity, or impossibility, or miraculousness---or whatever one could call it—of the situation crashed in upon me. In what I have come to call the GPS, God’s Positioning System, out of seven billion people living on planet earth, the Lord zeroed in on a precise location with special individuals, complete strangers to one another, bringing them together in a divine rendezvous with a common purpose. “Yes, I know Jake Wallis,” I finally said, “He’s our team leader in our village in rural Kazakhstan.”

Then to the astonishment of us all gathered in that back alley gyros grill somewhere in downtown Nashville, she replied, “We’ve been praying for you.”

I stammered, “but….how?  I  must still be asleep in the hotel this morning, this must be a dream.”

The gyros chef, now completely enthralled by the conversation shouted, “Man, I can’t believe this, this is absolutely amazing!”

She continued, “I get the Wallises’ newsletter and have been praying for your team for months. I remember reading that he was getting new team mates and we have prayed for your families to get settled.”

I tried to compose myself and finally muttered, “This is really all too much. Yes, that would be us you have prayed for.  But, where are you from? Someone from around here?”

“We’re here for the Women’s Aglow conference this week, it hasn’t started yet. We saw that this place served lamb meat. We had missed it since visiting some other countries a while back where we had lamb. I’m Carol and this is Delores. She’s from Colorado and I’m from California, but I’m moving soon to Illinois. I learned about your team last year when a friend of your team came to our home and made a presentation about the work. Ever since then we have been receiving Jake’s newsletter and praying for you.”

For another moment we all stood enjoying the wonderful, inexplicable work of God bringing us together. We then paid the flabbergasted cook and thanked him for the good meal, while he continued muttering about having feelings of awe that he had just witnessed a miracle. Someone suggested we step outside to continue talking in the alleyway. None of us had ever quite experienced anything like this GPS rendezvous, so we hesitated about what to say next. Michael started to get bored, having no clue at two years old what an amazing thing had just happened around him. I offered, “It would be foolish to have God bring us together like this and not stay in touch, could we exchange addresses?” Everyone was amiable to the suggestion. Then they told us a little more about their Aglow conference and we explained that we were driving across America on our way to Indiana to have the second baby, and that we would then return to Kazakhstan. Before parting ways, we all reverently gave acknowledgement that God had done a wonderful miracle in encouraging our hearts in our mutual work of prayer for the nations to come to Christ.

A few weeks later, I visited a former seminary professor Dr. Gil Stafford, who as a good friend and mentor had faithfully followed our ministry since graduation. I always respected how he maintained a balance in his teaching between scholarship and spirituality. While sitting in his office I shared with him the story of the Nashville GPS event; immediately a joyful smile came over his face, he popped up out of his chair, took me by the arm and rushed me down the seminary corridor and into the faculty lounge. I had never been in the lounge before as it had been off limits to me years before as a student. He found several professors sitting at tables drinking coffee and chatting. They all looked up abruptly at him and the intruder in his grasp. “I want everyone to hear this amazing story,” he said, motioning toward me, “Go head, tell them the what happened.” I related the story again, wondering that perhaps even the layers of cynicism that can sometimes build up in an academic community couldn’t deflect the implications that I had very simply seen a miracle of God’s loving care. Later I related the story to a good pastor friend of mine who has experienced God’s miraculous power on many occasions in his ministry around the globe. He listened with eyes twinkling then replied, “God was giving you a sign that he always knows right where you are.”

And what had God been telling the two ladies we met serendipitously in a nondescript grill in downtown Nashville?  Perhaps he was saying, “Your prayers have hit the bulls eye.” For all of us it was also a foreshadowing of heaven, when we shall meet many, many people for whom we have prayed, yet never personally met in this life. In that moment, when two strangers cross paths on the streets of gold some golden afternoon, they will chat, then discover that their lives had been connected when one was living on one side of the planet praying for countries or cities or villages or individuals on the other side of the planet. They will discover that their lives had been intertwined in the Holy Spirit, that they had helped bear one another’s burdens though they had never met face to face. They will share stories, discover a commonality, then say with delight, “I’ve been praying for you.”

11

The Garbage Dump

What with frequent presentations about our work in Kazakhstan, the birth of Calvin, an unplanned tonsillectomy on Michael, as well as numerous informal gatherings with friends and family, the maternity leave ended much more quickly than it came. Although we eagerly returned to the village, we dashed back overseas on a tank half-full. Little had transpired with Amman and Rumee during our absence. Shortly before the maternity leave they made a confession of faith in Christ and expressed interest in baptism, but a tauyp dissuaded them from following through. Over the winter during our absence the Wallises who had returned and the other team continued to visit them. There were a few hopeful moments such as when Amman welcomed the team members and an urban Kazakh believer into his home for Bible study. But then their interest would again wane.

The original vision of the team was to live among rural Kazakhs and eventually start churches that would multiply, starting more churches, crafted culturally and linguistically for their unique context. One barrier to this goal was the predominant, even imperialistic Russian culture. The Kazakhs associated Jesus Christ, or Isys Christos as they called him, with Russian culture, going so far to call Jesus the "Russian god." Icons and paintings of Jesus and Mary in the Russian Orthodox Church gave the Kazakhs a misperception that Jesus was the Russian god (different from the Creator God, who they called Allah).  Because we looked like Russians to the Kazakhs, we had to bend over backwards to identify with them, trying to win their trust and their ear. We sought to prove that Jesus is Lord over all nationalities, not simply a white man’s prophet incorrectly worshipped as a god. The pattern seemed to follow that foreign workers who identified with the urban Russified Kazakhs tended to limit their influence with rural Kazakhs. Correspondingly, it was unclear whether Russified Kazakh believers could effectively evangelize their country cousins. Upon our return we learned to our surprise that the team had made a shift in strategy. Just a few weeks before we returned to Kazakhstan, two Kazakh followers of Jesus moved to Sara Yer. Moderately Russified in their language and culture, they had heard, understood and received the Gospel through a Russian Baptist church in their previous town.  Enduring repeated rejection inside and outside their home, this teen-age boy and girl tried to win their parents. When they learned about our team living in the same village, they eagerly sought to spend time with team members. Their presence in the village, plus a growing group of Russified Kazakhs in the city, created sufficient influence to affect the direction of the team's ministry. Team members hoped that these Russified Kazakhs, in spite of the cultural barriers they also faced, would win rural Kazakhs more effectively than we could. In the spirit of teamwork, I tried to contribute to this new strategy, but my heart simply was not in it. I yearned for the Lord to somehow use me to lead a rural Kazakh to saving, life-transforming faith in Jesus the Messiah. Thus we persisted in Kazakh language learning and bridge-building with neighbors and friends.

Under the surface of Amman and Rumee's marital relationship, a crack had weakened to the point of shattering the bond. Up to then we were naive about the various problems common to Kazakh marriages. This was because Muslim culture is shame-based. In an effort to avoid shaming themselves and their families, Kazakhs meticulously follow social norms in all inter-personal relationships and conceal the reality of sin. In many cases the reasoning is that doing wrong is less serious than being caught. If a person is caught, this shames the family and carries serious social consequences.  For this reason, Kazakhs work very hard to keep up appearances, to save face. Kazakh marriages with problems that would have made an American marriage break up, keep going just to spare the family the shame of divorce. Sometimes, however, like marriages everywhere, theirs too reach a place of impasse.

One afternoon I innocently went to their home for a chat. Something was very strange about their tiny yard. Where's the big scruffy dog? Why aren't the children rushing out to greet me? Where are their toys made from scrapes of metal and wood? Cautiously I tapped on the door. An unfamiliar young Kazakh woman only partially opened the door peering through the crack, probably feeling as suspicious as I. No, she did not know Amman and Rumee. No, she had no idea where the previous occupants of the apartment had moved. The door closed firmly. My heart sank. My two closest Kazakh friends, like nomads in the night, had disappeared without a trace. A few minutes later, I was able to get a shred of information about their disappearance from my neighbor, who was the local gossip. It was one of the few times I saw anything useful come from a habit of hers that normally annoyed me. According to her, Rumee urgently sold their house and moved to Dalada with her children to live with her parents. She had nothing to say about Amman. I was in shock. In spite of all the time I had spent with them, I did not foresee this separation coming. For weeks afterwards the team prayed often for them. Even if we could have met with them, the wounds were too raw for the treatment needed.

My time of grieving was cut short in May by the medical evacuation of Jake. Chronic fatigue, swollen glands, and other persistent symptoms got the attention of the doctor representing his insurance company. Within a week of Jake first calling the doctor, he and his family were on a plane flying to California. He appointed Hank as the interim leader of the environmental work and me as the interim ministry team leader, with plans to return in four to six weeks. At that stage in the life of the team it was comprised of the Youngs, three single women, three single men, and our family, making the team the largest it would be during its life.

For several weeks my energies turned toward caring for the team and working with the new Kalasi Kazakh church. We still had no news from Amman and Rumee, but we hadn't forgotten them. For a while we began to think that our team's partnership with the Kalasi church was growing. The team worshipped with them one Sunday, Janna and I weekly attended their meetings, and other team members met during the week with their church members for discipleship. Some ambiguities existed in the relationship, but for the moment, they didn't cause any serious problems. In mid-summer Jake e-mailed to report his medical condition had not improved.  Therefore they would have to stay in America until the end of summer. Hank continued serving as interim director of the environmental work and I re-committed myself to bear with the change of plans.

At home Michael and Calvin kept us busy.  Michael, whose blond hair the summer sun had bleached nearly white, bonded with the culture so completely that one afternoon he ran to the mirror to check if his hair was black. Disappointed, he said to Janna, "My hair isn't black, what color is it?" For hours each day he played in the hot sunshine with his little Kazakh neighbors, chattering with them in Kazakh pronounced flawlessly. Calvin grew quickly. As a baby he was much more active than Michael.  He rolled off the bed so many times we nicknamed him the "fall guy" and decided his guardian angels deserved hazard pay.  Raising children overseas brought all kinds of challenges. For example, we used cloth diapers for Michael. That might not sound so challenging, except when considering we had no reliable indoor plumbing and no washing machine. More than almost any other hardship, washing cloth diapers by hand in a home with an unpredictable water supply, then sloshing the dirty water down the hole of an outhouse gave me authority to tell the Kazakhs that we loved them.  By the time Calvin came along, sixteen months of hand washing diapers was more than enough for me. So for Calvin we shipped several boxes of disposable diapers from the US. After all, we reasoned, the Kazakh government had called for modernization in the country and we wanted to do our part.

Diapers, given their purpose, are best not left sitting around the house accumulating in a pile. But we didn't have trash pickup. Burying them in the yard was unacceptable (especially for an employee of an environmental remediation company). And -- how can I say this delicately -- recently used diapers aren't combustible.  True to their name, they were designed to be tossed away somewhere far from people. On our many trips to Dalada the previous year, I had noticed a large municipal landfill a couple of miles from the edge of Sara Yer. Piles of dirt, scrap metals and a few pieces of plastic trash littered a large field. Masters of recycling, rural Kazakhs rarely throw anything away if a second purpose can possibly squeezed out of it. An article of clothing or a container passes through many hands before finally becoming unusable. Only recently with the advent of Western consumer goods has the volume of trash increased. This left plenty of room in the landfill for used American diapers.

The afternoon sun glared down on me as popped open the Lada trunk and pitched diaper-filled sacks and boxes into the sprawling landfill. For weeks I had been collecting them in a metal shed in front of our house waiting for a convenient time to transport them to the garbage dump. When I finished emptying the trunk, I realized Dalada was close by. With nothing else planned that afternoon, I decided to drive out and seek news about Amman and Rumee. If there was any, Rumee's parents would know it.

Dalada hadn't changed since our visit a year before.  Barefoot children chased mongrel dogs along the one main street. Long-eared donkeys and wooly sheep wandered freely across the road. Young Kazakh men squatting under shade trees gave me a cool stare through their narrow Mongolian eyes. My arrival would not go unheeded. Rumee's parents met me at their gate with a warm welcome. They always treated me as an honored guest. Strangely, in this tiny, remote village cut off from the rest of the world by thousands of miles of desert, I felt quite at home. The mother led me to a dark, bare room, seated me on a low platform, and served a little bread and tea to refresh me from my travel. The mood was somber. My eyes lit up when Allahdan came in and sat on the platform with me. Finally I would learn the painful story about my friends.

For many months Amman's mother had declined in health. A telegram arrived from his hometown in the far north imploring Amman to come see his dying mother while time remained. He immediately bought train tickets and departed. Then came the worse news. Salia, Allahdan's wife, abandoned her family and followed Amman on the train. Rumee, feeling deeply hurt, humiliated, and angry, sold their apartment in Sara Yer to pay off a debt they owed, then moved in with her parents. That day I met a stranger at their house was just a few days after Rumee and her children had moved away. Amman and Salia returned from the north after a couple of weeks. Thankfully, he refused to leave his wife for her. He claimed that Salia was to blame, that she had followed him without invitation, and that nothing improper had occurred between them. Rumee accepted Amman back for the sake of their children, but harbored deep bitterness toward him. For the time they were living with her parents, having no home of their own.

The tangled web was nearly impossible for me to comprehend. In English it would have been difficult to follow all the nuances of the story, but in Kazakh it required my utmost concentration. Allahdan was suffering. Although he was willing to take Salia back, she chose to move away, claiming that he was abusive and unfaithful. Sadly, she deserted their children to the care of Allahdan's elderly parents. Dejected and lonely, he spent most of his time at their house.

Who wasn't hurt through this outrageous episode? It demonstrated that regardless of a person’s race, culture, or religion, deviating from God's monogamous, life-time design for marriage only brings pain and destruction. I knew that only His forgiveness and love could bring healing to these broken individuals and their families. I thanked my gracious hostess for the tea and asked her to tell Amman and Rumee I had stopped in for a visit and asked how they were.

The next afternoon a knock came at our door. Were we expecting anyone? I couldn’t remember. I opened the door. Standing in the driveway, head bowed low, was Amman.  He could not have looked any more like my picture of the prodigal son. I could have wept. To talk in privacy, we did the Kazakh "squat" outside in the courtyard. His head still bowed low, he confessed sinning against God and asked if Jesus would forgive him. Would Jesus forgive him?! Yes! I said the death of Jesus on the cross was more than sufficient to forgive his sins. Furthermore, his resurrection gave great hope that God in his wisdom would use even this tragedy for greater purposes of good. Amman had reached a level of brokenness that was sufficient for God to begin using him to take His love to other broken Kazakhs. Diapers may be disposable…people are not.

12

Dreaming of Fields

Restoring betrayed trust in marriage calls for divine intervention. Not only did Rumee need her trust in Amman restored, she needed to settle the deeper issue of trusting God with her life. The circumstances tested her ability to trust the two most important persons in her life. She stood at the crossroads of gaining or losing all. Janna and I hardly felt qualified to do marriage counseling with Amman and Rumee. Our own marriage suffered at times from escalating conflicts, invalidation of one another, pursuing and withdrawing, and unloving attitudes. Perhaps knowing our own weaknesses kept us from counseling Amman and Rumee with an air of superiority.

The tallest hurdle to first overcome was Rumee's unforgiveness. Over tea in our home one evening we patiently listened to her unpack the pain and anger she felt about the episode. Without denying her right to be angry, we worked through Scripture passages about the marriage relationship. Forgiveness was possible, if she made the decision to give it. Amman plainly revealed his contrite heart for her to see. If she chose to withhold forgiveness, the burden of sin would be on her shoulders. Prayer, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit prevailed in the end. Rumee and Amman took a big step toward reconciliation before leaving our home that evening.

Next Sunday morning at seven the telephone startled me out of my sleep. The Soviet phone system was configured in such a way so that an unusual ringing pattern like the one that morning indicated a long distance phone call. On the other end of the line was a barely audible Kazakh voice. It was Rumee. She explained to me that after awakening from sleep, she had immediately dashed to her neighbor's home in Dalada to use their phone so she could tell me an amazing story. In the wee hours of the morning she had a mysterious dream. In the dream she saw a person clothed in lovely white garments, either an angel or the likeness of Jesus. He came to her and inquired, "Why don't you come?" The angelic personage repeated the question several times. “Why don’t you come?” On the phone, Rumee, still out of breath from running to her neighbor's house, said to me, "Olan, you've been urging me for weeks to visit the Kazakh church in Kalasi and I've avoided it. But I know God wants me to go, so our family is going today!"  That afternoon she and Amman stopped by our home on their way back to Dalada. We could even see in their countenances the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. Salvation had come to their home, touching their hearts as well as their heads. We could not help feeling a sense of awe.

Frequently Muslim background believers report that dreams played a role in their conversion to Jesus. This was indeed the case with Rumee. That week she had two more powerful dreams that revealed to her the authenticity of the Gospel and the lordship of Jesus. In her second dream, she observed a mighty river flowing past fields and plains to the distant horizon. But the river was foul and the land around it desolate. Though impressive in size and might, it offered no provision for life. Then someone appeared and led her in the dream to a spring of clear water bubbling forth from a rock.. The water was pure and sweet, a source of abundant life to whomever drank from it. Rumee inwardly understood the meaning of the river and the spring and gave us her interpretation. The river was Islam, to which her people moved en masse. The refreshing spring of water, which only a few discovered, was the news of forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus. She interpreted this as the truth of the Gospel that our team and the Kazakh believers had been proclaiming to her for months.

In the final dream, she saw the grand mountains and the vast open steppe of Kazakhstan, as if they were the entire world spread out before her.  Descending from heaven upon the mountains came a man dressed in flowing white garments, his face shining like the brightness of the full sun and his arms outstretched. The voice of God resounded from heaven saying to this heavenly man, "The world is given to you." As she recounted the dream to us while we drank tea in a neighbor's house, excitement bubbled up inside and I knew I had to immediately show her the description of Jesus found in the opening chapter of the Book of Revelation. We returned to our home and I asked her to read the first chapter of Revelation. We had to read from a Russian Bible because we still didn’t have Revelation in Kazakh at that time. Her eyes lit up when reading the description of Jesus and placing her finger on the text she exclaimed, "This is it, this is like the dream I saw!"

Many times since then we have pondered how the Holy Spirit used these dreams to contrast Islam and Jesus using images from the rural Kazakh world-view. He revealed in the dreams the superiority of Jesus over all things in heaven and on earth through vivid illustrations. By the late summer, the seed of Jesus having firmly taken root in their hearts through the witness of many, the reading of the Word, and the confirmation of God-sent dreams, Amman and Rumee requested water baptism.  No longer Muslims of the Qur’an, they became Muslims made whole in Jesus the Messiah.

13

With and Against the River

Water baptism, especially for Muslims, is a line of demarcation, a moment of death, and new birth.  Most Muslim peoples are highly ritualistic. From birth to death and beyond, Kazakhs interpret life through their Folk Islamic rituals. For a Muslim to learn a little about Jesus or give intellectual assent is tolerable. Many Muslims will say they love and respect the prophet Isa. Once a Muslim passes through the waters in the Name of Jesus, can there be any turning back?

Rumee, eager to be baptized, chose to take part in a baptismal ceremony performed by the Kalasi Kazakh church. We were out of the country at a conference and weren't able to witness her public declaration of faith. Amman chose to wait until we returned so I could baptize him near our village in the Talas river. That he postponed his baptism and asked that I do it was a tremendous honor for me.

Early autumn proved to be a time of numerous challenges for the team. Four days before we left for the conference in August, Jake phoned me to say his health problems required him to remain in the States for another year. That same week, Fritz, our Swiss team mate, packed his sturdy Swiss bags and pocketknife to depart for the Alps with no plans to return. He had served well and sensed the Lord directing him into new endeavors. A few weeks earlier, Hank and Cynthia had learned she was pregnant with their first child. Her had good health the first few weeks, but suddenly an unknown virus, possibly ingested from contaminated watermelon, caused her to have reactive arthritis. The slightest movement of her swollen right knee shot severe pain through her body. Medical personnel arranged an emergency evacuation to the States. In a period of one week our team lost two couples and one single, leaving five diverse singles, Janna, and me.

Yet Amman and Rumee had boldly and solidly declared their faith in Jesus. Was this the beginning of a rural Kazakh church? I chewed on that question during the week-long conference in the lovely, forested German mountains. The circumstances of Jake's illness and Cynthia's evacuation thrust me into leadership at a critical time. One afternoon I found a secluded pine grove in the forest and cried out to God. What did he want to do? We desired to help start a Kazakh church, but how could he work through such a weak vessel as I?  The Holy Spirit came, bringing the words he spoke to Joshua. "Be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go." With that encouragement and the exhortation from my field leaders to keep faith in God as church-planters, we returned to Kazakhstan.

Through the late summer and early fall Kingdom momentum picked up in the village. Amman and Rumee eagerly reached out to their neighbors with the newly found love of God in their hearts. In no time they led a young woman named Balia to faith in the Messiah. The first baptism in village didn't need to be a public spectacle. We knew the word would eventually spread that Kazakhs had come to Jesus, but we needed some time to firmly ground the church before persecution came. Following the Talas river one afternoon, I drove north of Sara Yer, seeking a stretch that was both deep enough for immersion and out of public sight. I found the perfect spot next to rusty steel girders that had apparently once supported a bridge. In spite of the bridge remains, the area was scenic and the waters clean.  Amman was thrilled to be baptized, or "holy washed" as the Kazakhs say.  Repeatedly he asked me if he would get a blessing in the Holy Spirit when he passed through the waters. I reassured him each that each time he obeyed God he would receive further blessing upon his life.

The day for the baptism arrived, generating great enthusiasm among the Kazakh believers and the team alike. Kazakhs dearly love picnics, an affinity that probably dates back to their nomadic life on the open steppe. They loaded the cars with sacks of food, blankets, and table cloths to celebrate the baptisms of Amman and Balia. Before baptizing the new believers, I met with them individually to discuss the meaning of the ritual and the permanence of their relationship with Jesus illustrated by it. I asked if they had renounced all animistic, Islamic, and occult practices.  If they had any occult or animistic objects, such as holy grass, amulets to ward off the evil eye, or other religious objects, we instructed them to destroy these. The break with the old life had to encompass all levels of their being. The first and only Kazakh I ever baptized was Amman. In a poignant moment, I raised my hand, led him in a prayer renouncing the devil's kingdom and confessing Jesus' reign, then plunged him in the cold, waist-deep river. The new church greeted him with claps and shouts of Halleluiah when he re-emerged from the watery depths. God had grafted a former Muslim, heavy drinker, self-styled mullah, and member of an unreached people into the Abrahamic covenant as his child.  He looked skyward with a beautiful glow of joy beyond any language, obviously getting the blessings that he had asked about and yearned for since he first heard about Jesus.

Balia entered the cold waters next. Amman stood on one side of her and I stood on the other. This time Amman led her in prayer and immersed her in the water. From the very beginning of the church, we encouraged Kazakhs to take ownership. This way the church could become indigenous more quickly and depend less on the foreign workers to keep things going. Ultimately we hoped this would result in more Kazakhs coming to faith in Jesus and more churches starting.

The fellowship afterwards was sweet. Kazakh women worked hard preparing a delicious array of food spread on large tablecloths. Lounging in the shade of wild olive trees near the Talas, we drank tea, talked, and sang, enjoying the awesome privilege of witnessing the beginnings of a Kazakh church.

Through much prayer, Amman and Rumee found assistance to purchase a house in Sara Yer. They gladly welcomed worship meetings in their home, regardless of the fact it was only four houses north of the police station. The church met Friday evenings, in an attempt to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks for Muslims, who regard Friday the holy day. At that stage, had we met on Sunday, the association with the Russian Orthodox church might have pushed people further away. Throughout the fall, the meetings grew quickly as new believers enthusiastically invited friends and neighbors. Every week new faces appeared. Some were uninterested or antagonistic, but some returned the next week. Until then, unbeknownst to me, the Kalasi Kazakh church viewed this newly formed village group as one of their own outreaches. The two Kazakh teen-age believers living in Sara Yer attended the Friday meetings with us and on Sunday attended the meetings in Kalasi.  Frequently a leader from Kalasi came too. The unplanned evacuation of our team leader and lack of good Kazakh speakers on the team hindered us from clarifying the relationship, causing us to rather naively head full-steam toward a major conflict.

One Friday evening several Kazakhs attended, some from Sara Yer and some from Kalasi. I delivered a lesson from the Book of Acts and the Pauline epistles. Using Paul's ministry as an example, I described the role of a cross-cultural worker. Halfway into the meeting Din-Koy, the primary leader of the Kalasi church, arrived.  In the message I plainly suggested that the Lord had allotted the Sara Yer fellowship to our charge and empowered the team of foreign workers to develop it until national leaders were ready to take the mantle of authority. We were there to actively evangelize and teach, rather than passively watch new believers fail to come together as a healthy church. At the conclusion of the message, Din-Koy invited everyone to attend the Sara Yer Russian Baptist church on Sunday. I felt betrayed. I couldn't imagine any better way to doom the formation of a rural Kazakh church. The moment a Kazakh stepped foot into a Russian church of any kind, their influence among other Kazakhs would be greatly minimized. Added to the cultural issues was the wooden legalism that can characterize some Russian churches. I cringed to think of Kazakhs, such as Amman and Rumee, exchanging the bondage of Islam for a new yoke of Christian legalism and formalism and losing their newfound joy and freedom in the Messiah.

Underneath those issues was the question of spiritual authority in the Sara Yer Kazakh fellowship. Did we have a right to lead it as foreigners? The next Sunday Amman and Rumee chose to stay home, casting their initial vote of confidence in our team. But sadly, the situation was forcing people to take sides. Over the  course of the autumn and winter months the conflict flared, causing anger and pain for all involved.

In spite of the tension between the Russian church and our team, the fire of God continued burning brightly in the new believers. Gaining an important breakthrough, Amman established a beachhead in a solidly traditional Kazakh village north of Sara Yer named Shabai (translated "seven riches.")  He made the in-road with his closest friend, a winsome Kazakh man named Kipchak. Each Friday evening Kipchak journeyed alone from Shabai to the meetings at Amman’s home, while his new wife remained at home in bed recuperating from a broken leg. Wanting to do more than wish her good health, Amman and I decided to drive to Shabai to pray for her healing.

Shabai looked much like any other Kazakh collective farm from my point of view, but the people had a different attitude. Hard times could not stamp out the air of pride they carried from bygone days of Soviet glory. The mighty Soviet industrial complex enabled Shabai to rise from the dust to become a local center of agriculture. Those days had ended. As we drove down the main street, idle Kazakh men and teens gave us the familiar cool, calculating stare. Kipchak and his wife Jibek welcomed us into their tiny duplex with abundant smiles and kindness. Six-foot cracks and exposed spots of dried yellow mud marred the exterior of their adobe house. Grease stains blackened the floor of the kitchen, giving it the appearance of a barn stable. A lone eighty-watt bulb shone in the back room, guiding us down the bare corridor. I learned how hard life could be the farther a Kazakh lives from the city. In typical Kazakh fashion, Kipchak urged us to "sit, sit, sit!" and have endless rounds of hot tea with them. Jibek sat comfortably on a pile of blankets and pads immobilized by her broken leg, apologizing repeatedly for not helping, a terrible shame for a Kazakh women. Another village woman named Naum stayed in their tiny home caring for her and serving tea to visiting well-wishers.

The conversation was polite and turned toward spiritual matters without much difficulty. Our main intent was to pray for Jibek's leg to heal properly. The neighbor Naum took particular interest in our prayers and words from Scripture. She was quite extroverted and admitted having been a tauyp once, but said she didn't practice anymore. While praying, a thought came to me I believed was from the Holy Spirit. I decided to share with Kipchak and Jibek that they would have a baby. This was not a common experience for me, and I shared with them in fear and trembling. Some days later, Amman excitedly relayed news from Shabai. Kipchak and Jibek wanted to learn more about Jesus as did their duplex neighbors. Moreover, Naum, the former tauyp, reported that when we had visited them, she felt a curious warming in her heart to know God. We felt the tremors of something big.

The next step we wanted to take was to show the Jesus film to all six adults. Naum and her husband Timor hosted everyone for feasting together and watching the film. Everyone received the message favorably. They communicated to us clearly that they wanted to know Jesus and have new life forever.

By that time in late November Tim and Erin Forden and their three-year-old daughter arrived, giving fresh encouragement to our team and the church. Janna and I were especially grateful for another foreign couple that could understand the needs we faced in our marriage and family life..  The team urgently needed their gifts for the growing Kazakh fellowship.

Kazakh villages are close-knit communities, where everyone knows everyone else's business. Word of Kipchak's new faith in Jesus traveled along the friendship and kinship lines, quickly reaching the believers in Kalasi. For the second time, our team moved straight toward a confrontation with the Kalasi church leadership. Winter came with decisiveness in 1995.  Temperatures plummeted turning the heavily trafficked roads on the steppe into solid ice sheets. Russians and Kazakhs bundled tightly in dark, heavy coats, distinctive fur hats, and knee-high black boots. The Soviet-looking silhouettes seen through the falling snow recalled images of a revolutionary 1917 Russia. Our family snuggled around the tea table in our warm cottage one night when Amman came to the door. Visibly shaken, he summarized the events of the past hour. Three leaders from the Kalasi Kazakh church stopped at his house for a serious visit. They questioned Amman and Rumee about our worship services and teaching, trying to find elements of heresy. Unable to find any problems, they left and drove to Kipchak's home in Shabai to investigate the baptism scheduled that week for all the new believers. This behavior deeply troubled me. We had enough resistance from the Muslims and Communists without our post-Soviet Christian brothers spreading doubt and disharmony among the new disciples with whom we worked. I suggested to Amman that we try to make peace with the Kalasi leaders, following the Scriptural pattern.                                   Somehow we managed to coax a spark into my Lada’s frozen engine and carefully drove the icy roads toward Shabai, hoping to get to Kipchak's home either before the others arrived or before they left his house. We were unable to do either.  On a lengthy stretch of open road going to Shabai we happened to spot Din-Koy's car. Both of us pulled to the shoulder of the road and everyone crunched across the ice to speak together. They had just returned from visiting Kipchak. I felt hurt and angry. Why had they visited them? Why didn't they trust us? For the longest time Amman and I talked with the three men from Kalasi, trying to understand each other. Headlights from passing cars illuminated our frozen breath hanging in the air. We tried to talk through the complex questions. In spite of our common confession of Jesus as Lord, we differed on practical issues, doctrinal issues, and ecclesiological issues. Feeling their growing independence, the Kalasi believers openly questioned the need for foreign workers at all. This is common in many fields. They claimed the right to oversee all the ministries in the area and wanted to institute a sort of bishopric. The strict dogmatism of the Russian Baptist church caused them to reflexively mistrust anyone outside familiar bounds. As with some churches in the West, their criteria for fellowship are numerous and difficult to meet. What did we believe about the Holy Spirit? Did we believe in miracles? Did we speak in tongues? Can a person who smokes cigarettes be baptized? Can you lay hands on someone when you pray? Who ordained me and sent me to Kazakhstan? How long did we plan to stay in the village? Why didn't we work with the Russian Baptists? Whereas I had thought the depth of mistrust between us was like a backyard stream, I soberly realized it was more like the wide Volga and would be very hard, though not impossible, to bridge.

After too many minutes on the icy road—I don’t know why no one suggested we table the discussion until we could get around an indoor fire sipping piping hot tea--Amman and I returned to Sara Yer, our feet and faces frozen, our minds deep in thought. The team members felt encouraged that he and Rumee stayed loyal to us, although we didn't fully realize how the conflict was beginning to eat away at Rumee.

Neither the conflict nor the winter weather could deter the will of the new Shabai believers from being baptized in the Talas river that Saturday. The six believers piled into cars with Amman and a few of the team members.  We drove to our preferred spot in the Talas river where the water was deep enough for complete immersion. The thick white haze hanging motionless in the winter air, moisture frozen on the bushes, and snow on the ground lent an ethereal feel to the spiritual ceremony. The Talas river never froze because an electric power plant several miles up the river dumped warm water into it year-round. Temperatures were low but we hoped not so low as to present a health problem. Though the water was bearable to get in, I volunteered to stand on the shore and direct the event while Amman and Dan Mezel, a single team member, baptized the Shabai folks.

In the work of church-planting among unreached peoples there are those rare, priceless moments that come only after protracted periods of searching and suffering. This was one of those moments. Each new Kazakh believer solemnly renounced the kingdom of darkness and confessed faith in Jesus as their Lord before briefly disappearing in the winter water. Each one came up, the light of hope beaming on their faces through the ethereal haze. We could sense that the baptism of six solidly traditional Kazakhs struck a jarring blow upon the stronghold of the enemy and gave great glory to God.

Back at Amman's and Rumee's home we celebrated with the new believers. Breads, candies, nuts, dried fruits, and other delicacies adorned a flowered tablecloth stretched out to cover nearly the whole floor of their tea room. We all gathered around the tablecloth, laughing, sharing, enjoying one another in a spiritual family that transcended our languages, cultures, and races. In that single room sat almost as many baptized Kazakhs as there had been Christian Kazakhs in the whole nation only eight years earlier. Along with other workers in the country, we beheld the beginnings of the Kazakh church.

The party lasted late into the evening and no one bothered to look at a clock. Due to poor public transportation, the believers couldn't easily return to Shabai, so I drove all the women back to their village. On the way, Naum, the former tauyp and most outspoken of all in the car with me, began unfolding a story that demonstrated God's sovereign power to gather people everywhere to Jesus. In the last days of the Soviet Empire, she started earnestly seeking God. In those days, the only religious people she knew were the tauyps and the Islamic leaders. After observing hypocritical lifestyles among them, she became cynical about the teachings handed down from her elders. In desperation, she sincerely prayed, asking the true God to reveal himself to her. For over two years she continued to pray, asking God to show her the truth. The day she met me at Kipchak's home, hope leaped in her heart that perhaps God sent us in answer to her prayer. That's why she was immediately receptive to our preaching, the Jesus film, and the Scriptures. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit specifically prepared her heart to lower her prejudices against "white" people. In several of her dreams she saw white, Russian-looking people speaking Kazakh, preparing Kazakh tea, and in other ways identifying with Kazakh culture. When white men and women first appeared in the dreams, she was frightened, but then they began speaking to her in the familiar mother tongue of Kazakh, disarming her fears. She explained to me that the baptism that day fulfilled one of her dreams in which two white men spoke Kazakh and led her to a mountain overlooking a large pool of water. In her dream she felt these persons could be trusted to help her find the way of life.  By the time her actual baptism came to pass, the soil of her heart had been tilled and fertilized with faith.

The story astounded me. Embedded in a people cut off from the Gospel, believers, Scripture, everything, a woman cried out to know the one, true God.  He heard her. Not only that, but to remove racial barriers that would hinder her from listening to the messengers, he gave her several dreams to say, "White people can know my ways and be trusted too." A shocking truth dawned on me that night. Those who are members of God's church may not be the only ones who importune him to send workers into the harvest. They may people who themselves are a part of the harvest.

14

Urban exile

We knew it was inevitable, it just came much sooner and with more intensity than we expected. The Apostle Paul had forewarned us in his words to Timothy, “all who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12 KJV). When the fury of the enemy against the growth of the Kingdom arrived, it struck with one intent, to stamp out any trace of a village Kazakh church. The largest city and former capital of Kazakhstan is Almaty. Since the first days of the new Kazakh republic dozens of hard-working foreign believers have served in the beautiful city situated on the edge of eternally snow-capped Tien Shan mountains. They and local workers have successfully started several churches of differing denominations among the Kazakhs. One of them, Joy Church with over five-hundred Kazakh members, is perhaps one of the largest local churches of Muslim background believers in the world. We had a good relationship with several of their members and leaders, so, recognizing the impact the church was having in the country, I proposed that we work in cooperation with them. We envisioned that our believing Kazakh friends could travel to Almaty for training and fellowship with other Kazakhs passionate about Jesus; in turn they could come to the village for experience in reaching traditional Kazakhs. The first two Kazakhs sent to Joy Church from the Sara Yer church for training and fellowship were Amman and Kipchak.

The sequence of events that followed close on the heels of the men's return from Almaty is difficult to put in order. Simultaneously, at several points, pent-up hostility erupted against the budding work of God, engulfing the team and Kazakhs alike. The persecution had two epicenters. Hostility toward the Kazakh believers reached a critical level in Shabai and two small villages near it. Fierce nationalism, xenophobia, fear of ancestral spirits, and fundamental Islam interacted to produce an acute aversion to the New Testament faith. The situation worsened when believers from the Kalasi church used literature in the Russian language for presenting the Gospel in these three traditional villages. Though the urban believers certainly meant no harm, the appearance of Russian literature came across as an insult to Kazakh culture and tradition, further enflaming the hatred of the villagers oppressed by Russians for decades.

Kazakh elders in one of the smaller village learned about the visits from the Kalasi church and began conspiring together against the Kalasi evangelists. As was their custom, three Kalasi men drove to an assembly hall in the village to do some preaching and teaching one evening. While they walked toward the building, the lights suddenly went off, leaving everyone in complete darkness. Several drunken young men jumped out of the darkness and pummeled two of the believers. At first, Kazakh thugs mistook the third believer for a foreigner and left him untouched. He revealed his identity when he yelled in Kazakh Tokta (stop) to the attackers. The thugs jumped on him too, beating all three men and leaving them in the street.  As quickly as possible, they managed to pick themselves up, return to their car and escape.

The six new believers from Shabai we baptized could not escape notice. In an area where 60% unemployment bred widespread idleness, the news about the persecution against the Kazakh "infidels" generated great agitation. Although our approach in evangelism among Kazakhs was chosen to cause fewer cultural offenses, the undertow of hostility soon seized the Shabai believers. Out of fear, perhaps for their lives and certainly for their well-being, the newly baptized believers broke contact with us and went into total silence.

Several months later we learned the full story of Shabai when Kipchak turned up unannounced one day in Sara Yer. We invited him into our team office and eagerly listened so we could learn about our dear friends. The story gave us shock and grief as Kipchak re-constructed the pain and suffering of our friends in Shabai. He explained that a group of village elders, men and women, were informed of the baptism and Kipchak's trip to Almaty. Enraged by the threat they perceived he posed, a group of a dozen of them arrived at his home the week he returned from Joy Church. Kipchak's elders publicly shamed and humiliated him. They interrogated him. Who gave him the New Testament? Did he lead the others into this strange faith? Why did he leave Islam? What are the Americans conspiring to do? His answered vaguely, in part to protect others and in part from his lack of maturity in Christ. Muslim leaders then broadened the circle of the interrogation. Officials ordered Kipchak to the village community center where in former days the Communists had shouted their slogans, and interrogated him before a crowd of over two hundred people. For two hours they pressed him with the same questions asked by the elders. In the days following, neighbors threatened and reviled him. The Muslims said they would unearth the bodies of his deceased parents and rebury them in the Russian cemetery. For a Kazakh, this was a great shame. The village major threatened to withhold employment and assistance. Persecutors threatened his life and property.  In the end, he told us he neither publicly confessed Jesus or denied him. But he did agree to discard his copy of the New Testament.

The situation in Shabai and the outlying villages boiled. Word came from Shabai that a large crowd gathered and torched their copies of the children's picture Bibles that had been placed by the Kalasi Department of Education in schools throughout the entire region. The yellow license plate on our car, marking us as foreigners, made it difficult to visit the believers. Demonic spirits masquerading as dead ancestors began appearing to Naum at night tormenting her and telling her to renounce Jesus. Family members harassed her ceaselessly. Isolated from the other believers and young in her faith, she crumbled under the pressure. Her husband refused to renounce Jesus and was beaten by a group of drunks. He and the remaining three withdrew into silence.

The epicenter of hatred toward our team was based in the city of Kalasi. A regional Russian journalist schemed with a high-level Muslim leader to concoct a defamatory newspaper story about our work. It appeared on the front page of a popular regional newspaper called The Magnolia under the banner title, "Crusaders of the Twentieth Century." Lack of fluency in the Russian language buffered us from over-reacting to the story in the first days after publication. For several days, with plentiful optimism, I dismissed it as a ridiculous article in an absurd newspaper. In reality it became a weapon of the enemy that proved almost lethal for our team's ministry. Two and a half years after the story hit the streets, the team still suffered from rejection and disrepute it created in the region. The strength of the article was the way it convincingly portrayed our team as frauds. The message implied we were fraudulent professionals and dangerously misguided religious adherents. The journalist skillfully distorted, shaded, and partially represented the truth to create a caricature the populace readily believed. In line with good Marxist-Leninism, she concluded that our dark purpose was to use religion as a tool for subduing the recently liberated Kazakh people. The article called for the Kazakhstan parliament to pass a law similar to one passed in Russia, banning all religions except Islam for the Kazakhs and Orthodoxy for the Russians. Was it good reporting? Kazakhstan Pravda, a national newspaper and former mouthpiece of the Communist party apparently thought so, because it picked up the article and ran it a few weeks later. As had been the case during the height of Communist propaganda, the well-known newspaper was unfaithful to its name. Pravda means “truth” in Russian; it hardly seemed like an apt description for the content of its pages. At that point, to coin an appropriate expression, we were "out of the steppe and into the desert."  Perhaps we could have contained the damage done by the regional paper, but the release of the article in the much larger Pravda would eventually make enemies for us in high places.

To give some balance, even during the times of persecution life carried on. I wrote a newsletter to supporters on March 2, 1996 saying,

We basically feel safe here; maybe more safe, even during times of persecution, than we would in some urban settings in the States. Day-to-day life is normal, except for the extra stress this brings. The chickens are still laying, the coffee is still brewing, and Michael still likes to watch Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as much as we dare let him.

The greatest need now is prayer. Our team has gotten down into some old-fashioned, gut-wrenching, soul-searching, heart-breaking times of prayer. Hardships are often the match that God uses to light our prayer candle when it begins to flicker.

At this time the persecution in the outlying villages intersected with the media slander against our team. Officials and Muslim leaders in Sara Yer decided to act against the new church. The imam (director) of the local mosque searched diligently in town for the people who hosted the Friday church meetings. His persistence flushed out Amman and Rumee as the culprits.  Friday afternoon he, the mullah who helped write the Pravda article, and two officials from the city administration arrived at their humble home. The interrogation ensued. The imam, a hot-headed youngster with whiskers just starting to sprout on his chin, railed Amman and Rumee about their faith in Jesus. His ignorance of the Qur’anic scriptures became apparent, arousing the older mullah's disapproval. Amman and Rumee in their confidence grasp of both the Bible and the Qur’an managed to set the two Muslims leaders arguing with one another over the identity of Jesus, not unlike Paul did with the Pharisees and Sadducees over the issue of the resurrection. The older man acknowledged the presence of Jesus the Messiah in the Qur’an, defended Amman and Rumee's faith, and went so far to complement their taking a stand for what they believe, even in the face of opposition. He said, “Some people would show two faces in hypocrisy, but you have been true to your faith." In the end, the city officials overshadowed this bright moment in the conversation. They ordered Amman and Rumee to be silent about Jesus. It seemed the dragon of Communism reared its wounded head. I recorded in my journal, March 2, 1996,

The Sara Yer officials demanded the house church to obtain a legal registration to continue meeting. They warned the church leaders that if they continue meeting without a registration, their family, including four small children, will be forced to move out of town.

Since that time they have been placed under surveillance by a secret police agent. Church leaders claim the request for a registration is unfeasible because there are no new laws or procedures for registering a church.

After we waited and prayed for several hours Amman rushed over and recounted the meeting, his voice trembling with both fear and excitement. We agreed that though the police would be watching us carefully, we couldn't stop gathering as a church. That evening I made the decision to stand with my Kazakh brothers, even if they were sent to jail for Jesus. At least for a few weeks or months, if the church was to go forward, it had to go underground.

15

Reclaiming the Land

"And therefore do not lose heart in doing good, for in due time you will reap if you do not grow weary." (Gal. 6:8).

The screaming headline "Crusaders of the Twentieth Century" nearly ended the team’s work in Sara Yer. Like a ship struck by a torpedo, we had taken on too much water to stay afloat. When the time came for our annual visa renewals, Sveta, our Russian environmental assistant and translator, informed us a new law required all foreign companies to obtain an operational license from the national Department of Immigration before applying for a visa extension. Team members began swimming through a sea of paperwork for the license. With time running out on our visas, we sent a team member and the documents to the national office in Almaty.  Officials accepted the application for the operational license and promised to issue it the following day. The next morning he entered the office of the head director to obtain the final signature needed. The suave, powerful Kazakh official coolly put into our team mate’s hands a copy of Kazakhstan Pravda containing the article about our work.  He gazed at him without hesitating and said, "I think we'll need some time to reconsider your license." No one needed a translator that time to get his real meaning, "There’s more hope for a fat sheep staying out of a Kazakh cooking pot than for you to get this license.”

With a one-month extension on our visas, graciously given by the local visa office, our team attended a regional retreat in Almaty. Only a few weeks earlier Jake had made a short trip from the States to discuss the future leadership of the team. Our company leadership had discussed the option of appointing me as permanent team leader due to Jake's on-going health problems. Jake didn’t feel satisfied with this arrangement and reassured everyone that he was doing better and would eventually return to the team as leader. But by the end of his trip in the village, it became less clear if he wanted to remain as the leader or not.  Our field director attended the retreat in Almaty and hoped to resolve the leadership question there while our whole team was in one place and we could talk things through more carefully in person.

The newspaper crisis, visa complications, leadership uncertainty, and persecutions taxed our wisdom and hemmed us in. The only way out was up. Not on an airplane, though leaving might have been easy. Farther up than we could see and closer than we might have realized God offered a vast store of grace flowing from His throne. In those days we lifted our hearts to that throne and found abundant grace to help in our time of need.

Early in the team retreat, our field leadership decided to resolve the leadership question by asking me to continue as team leader; but in the next breath after making the decision official they joked that with an impending expulsion on the near horizon my term might be very short lived. To be sure. A few days later, Sally Servill, one of the team mates who still had a visa, telephoned us from Sara Yer to relay an urgent message from the Kalasi visa office: we had ten days to get out of the country. After prayer and consultation we gave a definite response: no, we could not.

On what grounds could we say no to the regional immigration office? First, we did not believe the Kalasi Visa Office was itself acting within the law. Second, we believed there were other government officials on the regional and national level who did want us to stay. Third, and most importantly, God sent us to preach the Gospel to the Kazakhs. Armed with these convictions, we entered a month-long struggle to acquire new visas to remain in the country.

A song from my college days came to me in the period of exile from our humble home in the town of Sara Yer: It's no fun bein' an illegal alien. The first action we took was to contact the US embassy over the telephone. The voice of a friendly American reassured us.  Pete Carter was a new consular officer who had been in Kazakhstan only one week.  Fresh on the job, he was most eager to help. His counsel was to lie low while he presented our case to the US ambassador and the Kazakh National Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Though we had not desired it, our modest team of young expatriate professionals was becoming well known in high circles of the country.

God abundantly met our housing needs during the exile through a Russian member of Joy Church. His family rented the Fordens and us a spacious flat in the city. They and their two children lived in one half. Janna, the boys, and I had the other half. We had a communal kitchen in between.  During the day Tim and I scurried over the vast government centers of the capital lobbying for our license to be issued while Janna and Erin watched the kids at the flat. The two young mothers demonstrated tremendous long-suffering.  Having originally packed for just a few-day retreat, they kept their families nurtured for a month with only a suitcase of personal possessions and no assurance we would ever see our village homes again. Tim and I determined that by God's grace we would get new visas either through the help of the US embassy or through the National Ministry of Ecology. Several times in May we thought resolution was imminent, only to be disappointed by another bureaucratic road block. It seemed that Kazakh officials either loved us or hated us. Members of the Ministry of Ecology repeatedly assisted us with document preparation, communication with the licensing office, transportation, and moral support. But for every offensive they took on our behalf, the licensing office, which we were told was secretly connected with the KGB, stubbornly refused to grant a license. In Sara Yer a couple of the team members faced a grueling three hour interrogation with two KGB agents. The agents questioned them at length about the ecology work, meetings with Kazakhs, literature distribution, and the company's purpose for working in Kazakhstan.  Innocently as doves and wisely as serpents, the team members answered their questions without lying about themselves and our work. The agents left with no incriminating information.

The ordeal worked for many unique opportunities to talk about Jesus with influential Kazakhs. The ecology liaison appointed to our case pointedly asked one day, "My sister lives in Virginia, so I know how nice America is. What could possibly make you live in Kalasi, Kazakhstan with your families?" Tim and I smiled at one another, grateful for a window to present the good news about Jesus with this Kazakh lady. On another occasion, a sympathetic American lawyer arranged a meeting for us with his Kazakh colleague Mr. Ashuluk who was no less than personal advisor to the president of Kazakhstan and a proud thirty-second generation descendant of the prophet Mohammed. He canceled our first appointment due to an unexpected meeting with the president and his cabinet. The next day we humbly entered his office and presented our case, hoping for quick results. What we got was a vehement reaction. He reviled us for sharing our faith with Kazakhs. He said Islam was good enough for the villagers. “Hundreds of new mosques are being built daily, so why do they need your religion?” he demanded to know. We should stick with our environmental work and keep our religion to ourselves.  I believe that in a flash the Holy Spirit gave me a response to his objections. I replied that we can no more keep silent about Jesus than I could disguise and hide my relationship with my wife and children while away on a business trip. To conceal my marriage and my children would be dishonest; and furthermore, committing adultery out of their presence would reveal flawed love and character. I said that if our faith in Jesus was sincere, it would compel us talk about him with our friends and neighbors everywhere. We could make no separation between work and faith. Perhaps the analogy pricked his conscience because as I learned later the Soviet government had long held the custom of providing prostitutes for traveling officials, married or otherwise.  He didn't offer to get us visas, but we left knowing we had served the Lord and not man.

As the weeks in Almaty stretched out, Pete Carter continued to promise us that the US ambassador would sign and present a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appealing for our visas. By the end of May our endurance ebbed thin.  The women and children needed a place to rest and nest.  Tim and I had exhausted every thinkable channel. We had even tried to meet with the Chairman of Parliament. The only recourse left was the president himself and we had already had an intense meeting with his private advisor. On the Kalasi front our team mate worked with a lawyer to prove we could legally obtain visas without an operational license. The legal counsel indicated that the Visa Office was merely using that as an excuse for expelling our company, really it was a way for them to save face. In Kazakhstan, official law can sometimes take a back seat to informal interpretations made by local power brokers to serve their purposes.

The glorious day finally arrived when Pete informed us the Ministry of Foreign affairs agreed to address our problem. He also said, as a point of interest, that after becoming involved with our crisis, he learned that US embassies don't usually lend so much assistance in cases like ours. I would have dearly loved to watch God's sovereign hand move the hand of the US ambassador to sign the letter requesting our visas.  Someone later commented to us, “You must have some friends in pretty high places to get your visas renewed after they wanted you out of the country.” We could only smile a knowing smile. Though we don’t know if or how much our hardship and fight for freedom of worship may have played a part, we also learned later that during the Clinton administration of the ‘90’s, Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian republics became a special focus of concern for freedom of religion.

For what seemed the millionth time, we loaded our family into a taxi on the busy Almaty street and rode to the airport. We could go home. Back in our village many came out, neighbors, friends, and Kazakh believers embraced us in a welcome that revealed a depth of community acceptance we previously failed to believe existed. The Kazakh believers told how they interceded for our return. We rejoiced to be together again.  Matured and refined by five months of relentless pressure since the winter baptisms and outbreak of persecution, the team and the church stood confidently to reclaim the land.

16

Sweet days of summer

Summer in Kazakhstan is the best time of year there. Fresh raspberries and radishes, walnuts and watermelons, strawberries and cilantro are a sample of the abundant produce found in the bazaar. The village streets, gardens, outdoor bazaars, and sparkling river waters were a peaceful change from the hectic weeks of exile in the metropolis.  After the harrowing threat of sudden and final expulsion from Kazakhstan, we had a season of reprieve, when we could once again think about reaching the Kazakhs with the Gospel. The evening of April 14, 1996, shortly after our return to the village, I wrote in my journal,

We are immersed in a sea of people. To the east of us, just two hundred miles from the place I sit tonight, is the border of China, its population representing one-fifth of the total number of people on the earth. To the north is the immense nation of Russia; large not only in size but also in number of people. To the south, just a few hundred miles, is Iran and Afghanistan, representing some of the neediest folks in the world. In the more immediate vicinity are tens of thousands of Kazakhs, Russians, Turks, Uzbeks, and every other conceivable kind of nation and race. A sea of people.

Is life meaningless? Is it merely given to the survival of the fittest? In this tossing, frothing sea of humanity, one could easily become convinced that this is the case. Energy is expended on what? People labor to eat and eat to have the strength to labor. Solomon reflected on these questions many centuries ago and came to the conclusion that life is "vanity of vanities."

A sea of people. I've always been attracted to lighthouses, the kind that are built on rocky, windswept points somewhere along the coast of Maine or Michigan. Lighthouses are ancient ideas. Mediterranean nautical peoples designed and built lighthouses over two thousand years ago. They kept a large fire going throughout the night to guide the storm-tossed ships into safe haven.

An amazing thing about a lighthouse, is that a single one is adequate for a huge area. The thicker the darkness, the clearer and sharper its ray of light appears.

"Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them" (Is.9:2).

We are immersed in a sea of people...so they may know his light, so some may find their way safely home. Please lift us up so that our fire may keep burning brightly, even throughout the darkest, hardest nights.

The summer months passed quietly in sharp contrast to the previous winter and spring. The church continued to randomly move from one home to another to avoid detection by the police.  Once or twice Amman and Rumee received a scare from the secret police. A young agent visited their house with a document listing Rumee as an "agitator," whatever that was we could only guess. The KGB had the audacity to label a poor, unemployed mother of four children an "agitator" and subject her to surveillance. It demonstrated again how the Gospel, though contained in weak vessels, is mighty for the pulling down of strongholds in societies and a great threat to the kingdom of darkness.

I could also sense that our environmental company was now living on borrowed time. On June 6 I wrote an email to friends saying,

This dry, dusty land, sparsely populated but very needy, is watching us, to see what we will do now that we have finally been given six more months to live and work here. It is important that we become a component of the community which is an asset, not merely neutral or even a liability. Our aim now is to be an asset through more direct assistance to the Kazakhs by digging wells, funding medical equipment and projects and working to bring in western investment. Please pray that these things will happen and enrich this land and this people.

The trials we had experienced in the first half of 1996 made me question what God was doing inside me. Though the summer brought us relief in many ways, I still felt an acute need for God’s grace in my life to face each day. On June 29 I wrote,

Will we break, or will we make it?  It all comes down to character. Is our house built on sand, which represents our natural strength? Or is it built on the rock, which stands for the Word of God actively applied in our lives?

We are here to plant a church. The church will by and large take on the characteristics of the ones who plant it. If we are people of steadfast character, chances are, so will be the church.

Are overseas workers some kind of super-Christians? Hardly. The calling is high and worthy, but they are still just ordinary people. As with all of God's children, ours is a house of clay built on the Rock.

Our goal as individuals and as a team is to become ever-increasingly people of prayer. The grace to remain strong and flexible pours forth from above. If we abide in that grace, we will persevere and God's church will be planted and remain.

We've made it thus far, no credit to ourselves. It's because of an awesome God and many people who are praying for us. The Kazakh church is growing, perhaps the periods of persecution fan the fire. And, through it all, we trust that we are growing too, in the image of Christ.

The next evening I continued my thoughts about our need for God as weak vessels, writing to some friends,

Everything looks different from higher up. Things on the ground look smaller, the stars and moon and sun look closer, the horizon is broader, the view is bigger. From higher up one almost gets the feeling of being un-encumbered by the earth.

That's my perspective tonight. I'm sitting in the second floor study in the new house we recently connected to our old one. The mountains in the distance, which I could never see from our old house, are now in open view. The full moon is shining down brightly on the broad Kazakhstan steppe to the south-east of my window.

It's not only lovely, but it inspires me to consider what position my spirit is in. When I try to stand tall in my own strength, the problems and challenges which face me in our cross-cultural calling seem quite beyond the grasp of any mortal. When I kneel down, I suddenly find myself seated in the highest place of all. My vision grows, my faith excels and I am renewed again in my confidence that nothing is impossible for the One above.

Join me down here--uhh, I mean up here, as we together can move mountains in Kazakhstan through faithful intercession.

The most promising new believer who came to faith in the Messiah that summer was Yeradam, a neighbor of Tim and Erin. He, more than his wife, showed genuine interest in Jesus the Messiah. A good Russian speaker, he rabidly studied every piece of Russian literature we could give him. We usually preferred to talk about spiritual things only in Kazakh, but the amount of Kazakh Bible literature was small. Whether in Russian or Kazakh, Yeradam wanted to talk about Jesus all the time. Toward the end of the summer Yeradam and his wife Guljan showed interest in baptism. The church and team set up a picnic at our favorite spot to celebrate the addition of two new members to the church. The day was bright and sunny, the temperature pleasant, and the water cool.  Soaked in river water after his immersion, Yeradam flashed a toothless grin looking quite like a Soviet hockey player who had just won a gold medal in the Olympics. Rumee and the other women placed huge platters of rice pilaf on the picnic cloth and scattered dozens of freshly fried baursak fried bread within everyone's reach.

Though beautiful, summer in Kazakhstan fleetingly passes away, as does the rich, green grass that it brings on the foothills. Unable to indefinitely withstand the coming Siberian chill, the latter days of August urge Kazakh women to finish canning their garden vegetables and fruits for the barren months ahead. The cellar in our house was stocked meagerly that year because we were planning to take a three-month leave in the States. On the way to the US we planned to attend the international conference sponsored by our sending group for all its field and national personnel. So in August our family left for the conference in the Netherlands, before flying onward to the US. After also attending the refreshing gathering, the other team members returned to Sara Yer and guided the infant Muslim-background church through some new trials.

17

Pruned For Purity

Having failed to fully learn my lesson from the last home assignment to not overwork and pressured heavily by the Kalasi Visa Office to produce financial help for the oblast, I took a heavy schedule of speaking and fund-raising, giving little time to rest and renewal, further depleting the vital emotional and spiritual resources needed for life and ministry. E-mail communication with the Sara Yer team was spotty at best. For months we had attempted to construct a new e-mail system, but during that period before the arrival of fiber optics, poor phone line quality, plus numerous hardware and software glitches caused everyone on-going frustration. When we finally received a few e-mail updates, the news was serious.  By this time, our team was accustomed to dealing with marital problems among Kazakhs.  But this newest situation presented an unfamiliar degree of complexity.

In the team's absence during the international conference, Yeradam and Guljan increasingly fell into conflict. Yeradam left his home, moved to Kalasi, and stayed with another woman. Another man moved in briefly with Guljan and in a drunken state beat her.  She went to the police, who then incarcerated the accused man. This man's wife was unable to pay the bail (or a bribe) for his release, so he stayed in prison indefinitely. None of this legally involved the team, until Guljan told the police she was beaten because of her faith in Jesus. Meanwhile, Yeradam confessed to the team that he and Guljan never legally married each other, in other words, she was not his wife. They had only lived together for a few years. He also confessed being divorced from another woman in his home village several miles to the east and having some children from her. For weeks he wavered between obeying God and continuing in adultery. The local prosecutor pounced on the report Guljan gave of being beaten for her faith. This gave him an open door to further investigate our already infamous company. Tim, who was acting as director of the environmental work, received a court order to testify in the case. The local investigator questioned Amman and Rumee. The legal probe further threatened the security and stability of the church.

We returned to the village in early December from our short leave. In response to our requests for funding, a Christian relief agency generously contributed ten thousand dollars for well drilling in the desert areas of our region. Impoverished Kazakhs forced to  drink unclean water would receive the benefit of renewed wells. Furthermore, the sum gave us considerable leverage in requesting visa renewal for the upcoming year.

Once back in Sara Yer, the first item on the agenda was repairing the burst radiators in our house. Nearly every pipe had cracked during a week of deep freezing. Into the middle of the night a couple of scrappy, vodka drinking Russian welders systematically moved from room to room sealing the pipes.  I watched in fear and wonder as one would fire-up the welding torch, cigarette hanging on the edge of his lip, then commence to stare into the searing white light with the naked eye. For hours deep into the frigid night, with no electricity, they bulldozed ahead, fueled only by vodka and nicotine. I didn’t know whether to be more afraid one would self-ignite from the liters of vodka coursing through his veins or that they might blow up our house with all their gas hoses and torches. To my great amazement, everything worked perfectly when they packed up, shook my hand, and stumbled out the gate around 3 AM. The experience of seeing firsthand their strength, ingenuity and stamina gave me unique insight into Russian history, such as the time when Hitler’s armies met their doom on the Russian front.

The Yeradam-Guljan situation demanded attention, even though I tried to give it a few days before offering any counsel.  Guljan, embarrassed and afraid, fled the village. Yeradam continued living with his new girlfriend while shamelessly attending church meetings. The team, rightfully troubled by this, urged me to act.  Meanwhile, the prosecutor's interest shifted away from our team to Guljan and the accused man. The court eventually decided neither Yeradam, Amman, Rumee, or the team had broken any law. Now our attention could focus on the restoration of a brother in sin. Amman, Rumee, and I agreed to have a meeting with Yeradam. Following the pattern put forth in Matthew chapter eighteen, we confronted him about his sins: falsely portraying an image of marriage to Guljan and then living with a new woman. He could either confess his wrongdoing and ask the woman to move out of his apartment, or the matter would be taken before the church. If he continued to resist, we would disfellowship him from the church. After some discussion, he agreed with us to return to his estranged wife and try to seek reconciliation. We asked him to also provide some financial support for his children under her care. We hoped resolution for this problem would come quickly.

In reality problems between people rarely resolve instantly. The visit with his former wife was unfruitful.  Yeradam indicated that he would ask his girlfriend to leave. We watched and waited, unable to discern if he was truly living alone. According to him, the major obstacle to putting her out of his house was that she had no job, no home, and no relatives with whom to live. Here was a baptized Kazakh, divorced from one wife, recently separated from a live-in girlfriend, and currently seeing a new girlfriend. What teaching should we give him about marriage? Should we take the literal route, lay down the law, and say he should be celibate and single for the rest of his life? Before encouraging him to remarry, should church leadership require a period of testing his ability to live celibately? Could marrying his new girlfriend be an option? Just when we thought we understood the issues more clearly, Yeradam informed us his girlfriend was pregnant from their time living together. Now what? Was he obligated to marry her? Could he send her away with a promise to provide support for the child? Would they panic and try to get an abortion, the primary form of birth control in the former Soviet Union?  Evangelism and basic discipleship reached a virtual standstill as we prayed and deliberated about the right decisions for this crisis.

While we prayed, Yeradam and his girlfriend Parla made an independent decision to legally marry. In short, they eloped.  Again Amman, Tim, and I privately admonished Yeradam for acting in secrecy and haste. Perhaps, after some time of personal growth, God would have directed them to get married. Still, his habit of acting independently of Biblical counsel and church authority was foolish. Yet if ever I have seen God prove his Word that he works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes it was in this instance. Yeradam and Parla both submitted themselves to the body of Christ. They attended meetings, received instruction, and eagerly studied every piece of teaching material we supplied them. Yeradam confessed his wrong in being married without talking to the church first. He showed a sincere attitude of making this marriage work. Parla eventually had a beautiful baby girl. Changed by the grace of God, who never sees a lost cause, they vowed to raise their daughter as one of the first Kazakhs taught about Jesus from infancy.

18

Fire in the Fields

"For we do not want you to be unaware brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we aware burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead." 2 Corinthians 1:8,9

Joy Church in Almaty gained a major breakthrough in 1996 by obtaining permission from the National Ministry of Justice to legally register. To complete their national registration, they needed at least three affiliate churches in other parts of Kazakhstan. The Sara Yer church offered to be an affiliate. If we registered together, it would provide both churches legal protection to evangelize and publicly gather for worship.

The registration process was long and complicated.  In the spring of 1997, two members of Joy Church came to Sara Yer and assisted us in jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops. Dawn to dusk for three days, Amman and these two men rushed from one government office to another.  They paid fees, obtained signatures, and explained the nature of the church to former Communists completely unacquainted with church organization. The final unexpected hurdle was getting signatures of ten church members. Finding any village Kazakh on short notice is hard enough, but we only had ten adult members in the church scattered here and there. How could we find everyone and get signatures? With just minutes left in the late afternoon, we managed to secure the tenth signature from an sympathetic seeker who was willing to help. Amman returned from the Justice Department the next day, documents in hand and a look of great relief on his face. The first year and a half of the church's existence, Amman and Rumee served as Aquila and Priscilla did in the New Testament church, providing much of the leadership and stability. In 1996, the male team members laid hands on Amman, recognizing him as the first shepherd of the flock. We laid hands on Rumee and prayed for her as a deaconess.

No matter how full of the Holy Spirit, persons can become so burdened their strength fails them. This apparently happened to Paul and his partners during their Asian tour. In these times the enemy lunges upon the weakened individuals aiming to destroy them and their faith. For months, beyond our notice, excessive burdens piled higher and higher upon Rumee as a leader in the church. Persecuted, surveyed by the KGB, caught in the middle of the conflict with the Kalasi church, faced continually with poverty, and filled with anxiety over a daughter sick with tuberculosis, Rumee came to the end of her emotional reserves. We all felt very compassionate toward her and everyone offered to help however they could. The Kazakh believers depended on her wisdom and faithfulness. In one blow the enemy nearly defeated the fledgling work.

Days turned into many weeks that Amman had to nurse his wife. She became very depressed, angry, and on occasion irrational. Several years earlier doctors hospitalized her for similar symptoms and prescribed weeks of bed rest in the hospital to restore her health. With four small children, one of them still nursing, Amman was hard-pressed to meet all the needs in his family. Again it appeared God was taking him through the fires of testing and purification. This event also marked the beginning of my own personal season of purification. Rumee began yelling at me claiming she was doing Satan's work and would start another church in the village. When I visited their home, she burst out in anger at me. The stress of our precarious position weighed heavily on the team.

One Tuesday during this period I received a phone call from my mother. She told me the next day doctors would do a routine surgery to remove a benign cyst in her breast. In the wee hours Thursday morning the clamoring of the phone woke me abruptly.  Because it was so early I felt anxiety as I answered it. The familiar voice of my oldest sister came faintly through the ear piece. "James? This is your sister.  I need to tell you about the surgery." My stomach tightened and I tried as best I could to prepare myself for unexpected bad news. The cyst turned out to be a cancerous tumor and they were waiting for test results to know if the cancer had entered the lymph system. The fire got hotter...

...And hotter. Some seasoned workers have remarked that one of the most difficult stresses to cope with on the field, especially in isolated settings, is interpersonal conflict with other workers. Other expatriate friends and colleagues are so few that even small tensions are disruptive to well-being. There is no one else to talk to and get a fresh perspective, someone who can help see things in the bigger picture. Therefore it was no surprise that my emotional energy drained lower when I heard that Jake and his wife would soon return to the village, this time working with a new sending agency. Although his plans were to eventually relocate nearby and work with the Kalasi church, the unresolved hurt, lingering conflict with the Kalasi believers, and potential for competition in church-planting generated considerable heat.

Another difficulty for workers is the lack of regular communication with family and friends in their home country. We had used e-mail since our first days in the village, though it worked only sporadically and would transmit only the smallest kinds of text files. The internet was a new technology just taking hold in Western countries; it was unthinkable in rural Kazakhstan in the mid 1990’s. The fact that e-mail occasionally worked made it all the harder to keep our expectations low for reliable communication with home. I tried to share some of my frustrations with friends in a note on January 21, 1997 saying,

The last few weeks have been a test of our patience to do without electronic conveniences. E-mail is not functioning properly and hasn't for months. Also, electricity has been off for days, most recently for a period of ten days, with only one day in the middle with electricity.

Occasionally with email we are able to send things out, but so far, nothing is able to come through. We've talked to the e-mail folks several times, but they seem unwilling or unable to fix the problem. This has been an extremely important problem, as e-mail is our communication lifeline for our ecology work, logistical support, morale support, ministry issues, and perhaps most importantly, informing intercessors. There are some possible alternatives for email, but so far, we have had strange and frustrating technical problems. It seems we have been plagued with technical problems that should be easily solved, but haven't been so far.

We all had a few days to catch our breath when tests showed no cancer in my mother's lymph system and Rumee improved under the combined care of Amman, the church, and the local health system. We also saw marked improvement in our communication systems and public relations. I wrote on February 18,

I cried out, and he heard me. E-mail is now working normally it seems and the electricity has been on MOST of the time this past week. We can hardly believe it. After months of no email and several weeks of little or no electricity, we are suddenly back in the twentieth century. We have heard innumerable reports of people who made this a matter of urgent intercession. May many thanks now be given for the answer.

Furthermore, we were told that a radio program at noon today featured our ecology company and gave a glowing witness to our past accomplishments and future plans. The longer we've lived in Kazakhstan, the more we find ourselves saying that life here is either feast or famine. There is little in between.

One afternoon Janna and I visited another c-p team that had recently moved into a village about fifty miles to the west and shared in worship led by a group of visiting American pastors. The worship ended with an unrushed time of prayer for all the field workers, including us. Neither Janna nor I had shared how we were feeling, but through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, the pastors perceived our battle-weary condition and gently prayed that God would give us much-needed rest and refreshment. In an attempt to do our part in getting rest, I gave the team a week off during the spring. I encouraged everyone to stay away from the office and formal ministry. After accomplishing major goals in a few months, we now needed to pace ourselves for the long haul. For the first time in four years, I suggested our family drive northward into the real open steppe to find some Kazakhs who live in traditional felt tents and raise camels.

The pitted, two-lane highway carried us through several small villages perched on the edge of a shallow but wide gorge carved by the Talas river. We were so far away from anybody, I didn’t know what we would have done if a tire had blown out on the uneven pavement. This was the true frontier. The farther north we drove, the flatter the land became, until it stretched out in every direction like the waters of a calm sea. I finally understood why geographers have dubbed it the "land sea" of Central Asia, an ideal environment for immense caravans. As we sped forward into the unknown, a speck of pure white appeared on the horizon, shimmering through the heat waves flowing off the burning sands. We stopped the car so I could examine it carefully with a pair of binoculars. It still shimmered, but I could make out the shape of something dome-like. What could be snow white and dome-shaped in the middle of the semi-desert? A missile silo? A religious monument?  I felt nervous, hoping no police or KGB agents had followed us. For several more miles we drove toward the white landmark until it clearly came into view. It was a Kazakh felt tent, a yurt, probably constructed with white material to deflect the roasting sunlight. I wanted to stop and meet some semi-nomadic Kazakhs, but no one appeared to be home. We continued driving until another tent became visible about a half mile to the north along the highway. This time the whole clan was home. I pulled onto a dirt road, stirring up throat-clogging dust. A herd of sheep scurried up and down a dry creek bed in front of the tent, herded by a Kazakh on a horse and another one on a tall, long, loping camel. Directing our attention toward the immense cloudless sky, a gray thread of smoke swirled upwards from a small outdoor fire tended by a Kazakh woman. We had struck gold. True to the stories related by travelers of days gone by, the Kazakhs welcomed us into their tent for tea, no questions asked. Janna told the young Kazakh mother our story, but it was too fantastic for her belief.  It wasn't until we visited them a second time that we were able to convince them we really had traveled across the sea and steppe from America. On our first visit we took several pictures. When they got the prints a couple of days later and saw their faces photographed for the first time in a natural setting, they laughed at themselves and each other. My heart grew heavy when they described the lifestyle of drinking and animism entrapping them and stealing all hope.  We left a Kazakh New Testament, wishing we could do much more for our new semi-nomadic friends in one of the most remote locations on the globe.

The week of vacation gave back just a fraction of what we needed. But we were still very grateful for it, because it helped ease the blow of the next crisis. In May I asked Tim and Erin to assist Amman with the Sara Yer church. Being primarily evangelists, Janna and I had our sights on starting new church plants in neighboring areas. The recent persecution in the outlying villages put them out of consideration for the meantime. That left the city of Kalasi to the south with 250,000 people as new territory.

Just as Janna and I started praying and planning how we could start an outreach there, Tim received heart-breaking news. His father had a rapidly growing malignant brain tumor. Torn by the desire to stay with the Kazakh church yet longing to see his father for the last time, he and Erin made the hard decision to leave for the States immediately. The implications of their departure did not fully occur to me at first. Not knowing the length of their unexpected leave made it difficult to gauge how much personal and team energy we would have to spend on filling their vacancies. For Janna and myself their departure meant the complete absence of friendship with persons sharing our stage in life. For the team it meant the loss of the Fordens' gifts of offering wisdom, balance, and evangelistic fervor. Perhaps the most conspicuous void left by Tim was leadership for the environmental company. With only Janna, two singles, and myself remaining, we would have to spread our resources thinly to cover the spots remaining behind them.

Since adolescence I had kept a journal to process the kinds of issues teens deal with in their emotions, relationships and school.  That was a stage of life I needed some healthy means to express my most private thoughts and feelings. Years later in seminary I did some reading that confirmed how valuable journaling is for sorting out our thoughts, gaining new insights about God, and walking in his will. This habit of journaling became unspeakably important on the field, especially in this season of testing and purification. For weeks before the Fordens' departure I questioned if the time had come for the team to phase out of the village. A major factor I contemplated was the growing presence of other workers in the region.  A Kazakh believer affiliated with a campus ministry moved into our village. The Kalasi church attempted to start a small Kazakh Baptist church in Sara Yer. Jake and his new team re-located within twenty miles of our village. Originally, our calling to Kazakhstan was similar to Paul's desire expressed in Romans 15:20, “I aspired to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man's foundation...” Our team had successfully laid a foundation in Sara Yer. With other ministries progressing on all sides, the options for preaching Christ in a new region were scanty. The question to phase-out or not frightened me. What would the team members say? What would the Kazakh believers think? Where would our family go if we left the village? How about the leadership of our organization, what would they think? Would they support the move? Some days I scribbled furiously in the little notebook, wrestling with the pen and the words as if I was wrestling with a maverick horse.

The Sara Yer church began meeting in our home after the Fordens left. Janna and I felt very disappointed we couldn't try to launch a new church plant in Kalasi, but the appearance of new faces in the Sara Yer church heartened us. One of the new visitors was a Tatar, a Muslim people concentrated mostly in Russia. Her stronger commitment to Islam held her back like a ball and chain while she marveled at the speedy acceptance of the Gospel by her Kazakh friends.  Not forgetting their own life of oppression under Islam, they offered her words of wisdom and life and showed her acts of kindness in the name of Jesus.

The season of gazing inwardly seemed to be ending for the maturing believers as they talked more and more with people in the community about Jesus. Personally, my sense of well-being continued to deteriorate. As a young man who thought he had no limits, I was dismayed when I reached mine. Stress upon stress accumulated in me. I started losing control of my anger. Our marital communication frequently short-circuited. Like a granite wall looming before me was a chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder (which wasn't properly diagnosed until nearly a year later) mingled with depression that had started mildly in the spring and grown worse under the stress through the summer and into the fall. Having known better, I nevertheless allowed myself to lose my smile, my job, my hope and become depleted, or burned out as some might say.

The reality is that many cross-cultural workers tend to be driven people who rarely know when to slow down or pause. They generally don’t need to read The Purpose-Driven Life; but if there was a book entitled The Aimless Life, they should probably keep it on hand just for some balance. Frankly, the Holy Spirit uses these characteristics, enabling people to enter a foreign culture, endure amazing deprivations and suffering, and eventually by his grace bring centuries of pagan traditions and beliefs under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. These characteristics can also destroy a person when not balanced. The distance between the point our strengths are a help and the place they become a hindrance is measured by our level of trust in God rather than self. Trust in God moves us miles away from succumbing to our weakness. Trust in self leads us onto a layer of ice so thin, the slightest misstep takes us down.

The phase-out question and the depression began to do a little dance in my life for the remainder of the year. In mid-summer our family flew to Almaty for rest and counsel, thinking someone might encourage us to return to the States for better care. Time with other workers renewed our strength and gave us hope that enduring the heat would protect our calling to serve cross-culturally. After some time I sensed the Lord directing me to return to Sara Yer with instructions to humbly approach every estranged brother and sister to receive and offer forgiveness for real or perceived offenses. One by one I approached co-workers and Kazakhs seeking reconciliation. Some of the encounters encouraged me and some perplexed me. Yet my heart gave many thanks for the strength to obey God's word. I hoped that seeking reconciliation and walking in humility would bring either clarity to the phase-out decision or relief from the depression or both. Neither thing happened, the light stayed off.

The Kazakh government didn't care about our problems. Their attitude was the same as always: produce significant results in your humanitarian work or leave the country. I interpreted God's silence on the matter of phase-out as a green light to stay. Until he said otherwise, we would dig in our heels. We dug in by starting an English language and computer school. A relationship with an American businessman in Kalasi opened the door for our team to offer these much desired skills. Community response was outstanding, surpassing our highest expectation. The county mayor, the regional court chairman, representatives from the Asian Development Bank, and a television crew from a national news program attended the opening ceremony. In just a few days the classes filled with Kazakhs, Russians, Koreans, and people of other ethnic groups in the community eager to learn the international language. It seemed our residency looked secure.

Women overseas workers, especially mothers, encounter all sorts of obstacles to ministering meaningfully in the community. The unbelievable demands of home-making and child-rearing in a primitive village, with no hot or cold running water, no grocery stores, no packaged foods, and no real support group, can erode the sense of purposefulness and identity of these educated and able Western women.  Janna, who is a registered nurse, countered these feelings by joyfully investing herself in the children and Kazakh friendships. Her friendships with women served as a door into the church for several Kazakhs. Finding fulfillment in the home, she began to desire a third child and became pregnant that fall. She and I prayerfully discussed having the baby in the village, an option that made us and most other foreign workers in the country nervous. We added this to the list of decisions and waited for God to direct our paths. In the previous two pregnancies, Janna experienced some morning sickness, but nothing serious. The fact they both went so well made us more willing to consider having the baby in Kazakhstan.

When the morning sickness started in the first trimester we assumed it would pass shortly. Instead of passing, it worsened into a case of hyperemesis gravidarum, the medical term for what was basically a debilitating desire to throw up constantly. For weeks her stomach refused anything. Water made her sick. Normally a thin woman, Janna became dehydrated and dropped to a hundred pounds. I sought medical advice from an American doctor in Almaty, thinking she might have to be evacuated. His counsel for now was to try to weather the storm. After a month of no improvement, I telephoned the capital to request prayer for Janna at a conference. In the afternoon session dozens of people lifted her in prayer for healing of this serious condition. Within hours, she reported feeling stronger and asked for something to eat. The next morning a nurse from the c-p team in the village to our west came and started her on an IV to restore her fluids and electrolytes. God healed Janna, dramatically reversing the downward spiral of dehydration.

Somehow, though I had a sick wife and two small boys at home, God provided me enough time to meet weekly with Yeradam and Amman to train them in evangelism. We studied the Scriptural basis for evangelism, the message we have to offer, and practical ways of talking to people about Jesus. Each time together their teachability and enthusiasm for people to know Jesus refreshed me. They prayed as Jesus did, with loud cries and groaning. They understood, as few Western Christians can, how it feels to live in an unreached people, "having no hope and without God in the world." Newfound joy in the Messiah and deep sorrow for unreached countrymen caused these great-grandsons of Genghis Khan to fall prostrate before God, their sincere tears watering the fields of gold, preparing a harvest of hearts.               In November as the last leaves fell from the tall poplars lining the streets,  the grace of God that had kept us in Kazakhstan for four and a half years persevering through sickness, suffering, persecution, near expulsion, and the emergence of a village church, quietly ended. Heaven remained silent about phasing-out the team. The depression waxed strongly after waning for a period. Staying on the field is not everything; walking with God is. Recognizing the downward spiral from thriving to surviving then to diving, we arranged for some time away from the village at our company’s international headquarters in England to seek God's guidance in these matters and receive member care.

The time came to tell Amman and Rumee the situation. Janna and I joined them in their tea room, sitting upon colorful korpeshes, feeling as close to them as our own family. I explained my weariness and need for God's direction. From their own struggles over the past year, they listened with keen empathy. We told them we were leaving to spend time with our company "elders" and didn't know exactly when we would return. Always the expressive one in the family, Amman exclaimed, "I feel like a bucket of cold water has been dumped on my head!" I hugged him and reassured him that Jesus would be with them even if Olan had to leave. Rumee smiled and said, "I think it's good you are going away for a while, now we will learn to work for the Lord and not depend on the foreign believers." God's peace showed in her countenance. Amman then related a story.  Two nights before, in the wee hours before dawn, a feeling of fear aroused him from sleep. That night he was sleeping in a room with their youngest as the rest of the family slept in a separate building. Waves of demonic terror swept across him.  He gasped for air. Unable to summon his wife, and fearful for his life, he filled his one lung with air as best he could and called out "Jesus! Jesus!" Suddenly at the window a peaceful face appeared and the terror abated. Janna and I stared at each other in amazement. For in those same wee hours two nights before, Calvin called to us from his room and said, "Momma and Daddy, monster get Amman." Not stopping there, he continued to name everyone in our family and the two singles on the team. We prayed for the blood of Jesus to protect each one, as Calvin in his child-like way named them before God. This act of God's protection over our lives reinforced the truth that we could continue to be with the Kazakh church through prayer, if no other way.

19

The Road Home

For years I had wanted to see the British Isles, land of my roots, but not necessarily under these circumstances. The international office graciously received our travel-weary family in the rolling English countryside. The wet, green, forested, hills were a sharp contrast to the barren deserts of Islam. I could not help but imagine ourselves in Rivendell, the tranquil woodland dell described in Tolkien's story The Hobbit. We arrived just like the characters in the book--we needed rest and counsel.

On a personal level I began to sort through some of reasons for my depression and obsessiveness. Meeting with member care personnel helped me better understand my excessive intensity and distorted thinking that pushed me toward burnout. Little by little we developed a plan for me to have a more healthy, relationally rich pattern of life, so that I wasn’t trying to fill up emotional needs with work. I knew it would take patience and discipline to follow through with achieving a well-balanced life and be able to relate more lovingly with my wife, my children, friends, co-workers and others, but I was committed to making the changes so I could be fruitful and pleasing to God in long term cross-cultural work if He wanted to continue using me in that way.

As team leader, I was empowered to make many of the decisions. The philosophy behind the structure was that field leadership knows the context and issues better than do board members ten thousand miles away in a Western country. In many ways this model of leadership is useful. Teams are given freedom to try varied approaches. Workers can take the Gospel through open doors more quickly. Fresh ideas flourish. The disadvantage is the team leader inevitably bears much responsibility for many people; maybe too much. In some instances it can also tempt the team leader to assume too much authority, abusing his power. Although I spent several days with leadership at the international office, no one could or would make the decision about phasing-out the team but me. I had to make the decision about phase-out in a vacuum of experience. Because our sending company was fairly new at the time and works in difficult fields, most teams were still striving for their first converts. Kazakhstan was a rare exception with numerous believers and rapidly developing churches. Therefore, many of our questions went unanswered.  How many believers should be in the church before the team phases-out? How many churches? How many workers can serve in a specified locale?  We asked, waited, and prayed.  It was agonizing. My intuition said our work was done in the village, but I couldn't gather compelling evidence to that end.

Then new information received in England tipped the scale further in the direction of phasing-out. More Kazakhs were coming to Jesus in Sara Yer, Amman was leading the church with confidence, and the relationship with the Kalasi believers warmed. In those weeks the "lamp unto our feet and light unto our path" shone only a few inches in front of our toes. Like manna in the wilderness, we had enough direction for one day, usually no more. God daily led us along, until one by one the decisions were made. The team would phase-out by mid-1998, we would return to the States in the meantime to have our baby, and the Sara Yer church would work in a long-term partnership with Joy Church in Almaty. The team would leave the village with a long list of accomplishments both in the realms of environmental work and church-planting. The team watched God raise up two Kazakh churches in Kalasi Oblast, prepare Kazakh elders, provide 50,000 children's Bibles for the public schools, and distribute ten thousand Kazakh Scriptures. Both of the Kazakh churches entered relationships with other churches for support and accountability. Though different in some doctrines, they have taken long strides in showing Christian love to one another.

Informing the team of the phase-out was very difficult. The Fordens had been wondering about phase-out for months since their departure to be with Tim’s dad. For them, like myself, analyzing and praying about leaving was much simpler than actually doing it. The decision affected Dan less than Sally because he had already announced his plans to finish his term in Sara Yer by the spring of 1998. Sally deeply felt the pain of separation from the Sara Yer church, into which she had diligently poured herself.

Church-planting puts people in an awkward predicament. To survive they must establish deep emotional bonds to the land and people. Nevertheless, to successfully plant an indigenous church, they must someday leave the land and people they've grown to love more than themselves. Whether they must leave because of a completed job, sickness, or government expulsion, they learn something they wouldn't have understood before: leaving the field is harder than going to it.  Maybe this is one reason why gravesites in Africa, South America, and Asia mark the final resting place of many brave eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century overseas workers. That their dust would mingle with the dust of their adopted homeland was only natural since their hearts had mingled with the hearts of the people decades earlier. An accelerated world and a season of unprecedented breakthroughs in international ministry have somewhat outdated life-long expressions of commitment to a single locale. But the level of affection that enabled Paul to call Timothy his "son" will always develop between church-planters and their spiritual children until the Gospel reaches every nation.

Before the phase-out was complete, many practical concerns required our attention. The team had to inform the Kazakh church, sell property, and ship out private possessions.  Many expatriates across Central Asia bought real estate for homes and offices due to lax laws that allowed foreigners to own property. Properties heavily encumbered our team, slowing us like a pair of lead boots. I wondered if Paul would have planted churches so widely if he had been a property manager instead of a tent maker. Maybe he would have told the Macedonians, "Sorry, I would love to come over with the Gospel, but my real estate holdings in Antioch are too extensive."

Janna delivered our third son on April 8, 1998 in Indiana. We named him Paul in anticipation that God would again use our family as ambassadors of God's praise. I began to plan a three-week wrap-up trip to Kazakhstan in June. The Fordens, having returned to the village in March, reported that the church was still growing. Seeing the believers first-hand strengthened their confidence that the team's role needed to change. Janna and I were sad she couldn't return with me, but the good reports and the hope of bringing closure to this part of our lives gave me courage to face the challenge of saying good-bye to our best friends and closing our home of five years

20

New Stewards

The journey back to Kazakhstan in June 1998 was filled with unexpected blessings. In the Washington DC airport I was able to translate for an Uzbek lady and her daughter traveling back to Tashkent. In New York Kennedy airport I met a young American family and a single man traveling into Central Asia. When traveling into restricted countries, we are always careful what we said to everyone, American or otherwise.  I guessed these people were believing workers, but just to be safe I dropped a few hints to which they responded appropriately. Thus began our good fellowship which sustained us through the grueling twenty hours of flight.

Nothing cures jet lag like a night's sleep, a hot bath, and a good meal. In Tashkent God unexpectedly provided all three through my new friends. The next day I was refreshed for the five hour taxi drive to Sara Yer. Riding with an ex-Soviet Taxi driver is a faith-building experience. They race down a poorly maintained two-lane highway at speeds up to seventy or eighty miles an hour. If that isn't enough to build one’s faith in God’s protection, they pass vehicles in front of them while oncoming cars race forward in the opposite lane. Sometimes there are three cars abreast on the highway with just inches between them: the car being passed, the on-coming car, and the car passing in the middle. Taxi drivers are greatly offended if a passenger puts on a seat belt (assuming there is one to put on.)  My taxi had a seat belt since it was a foreign car, but the driver, feeling insulted by my lack of trust in his automotive skills, reached over, unbuckled it and said he had thirty years of experience. The ride built my faith.

I arrived early in the afternoon at Goldomolava street, our home. Out of eight years of marriage, Janna and I spent five of them in the little adobe cottage built by Germans exiled to Kazakhstan in the reign of Stalin. For five of Michael's six childhood years and all of Calvin's, the little boys crawled on the floor, learned to walk inside, made friends with little Kazakh neighbors, colored with crayons (occasionally on the walls), and drank tea at the low table next to the kitchen. If life could be measured by intensity instead of time, far more than five years were packed into the place we had learned to call home.

Amman and Rumee were the first people I wanted to see. We hugged each other, laughed, talked, and drank many cups of hot tea. They expressed sadness that the team was leaving Sara Yer and our relationship would never be the same.  But something had changed in them and in the whole church since we left. They knew who they were in Christ. Hesitations and fears no longer obscured their identity in Christ. Their worship, testimonies, and evangelism came from a depth in their hearts I had not seen before. The time was ripe to release them from our direct oversight.

I gave much of my time to packing our things and helping sell the property. Five years earlier houses had sold from two to three thousand dollars. The ailing Kazakhstan economy devalued all the property and created an excess of houses on the market. Everyone in the village knew the Americans were leaving, so prospective buyers waited, hoping to get a place for almost nothing. In the end we arranged for needy families to get the homes and for the church to get the team property for a new meeting place.

The nostalgia I felt as I sifted through Janna's Kazakh clothes and the boys' chest of toys would have been overwhelming had Amman not been at my side for much of the time. While we stuffed things into bulging bags I used practical stories and parables to discuss Amman's upcoming job as shepherd of the church. Amman's new responsibilities were not unfamiliar to him. Since the first months of his salvation I repeatedly told him that someday the foreigners would leave and the church would be governed by Kazakhs themselves. Along the way we studied Scripture texts about church leadership and I tried to model godly leadership. Now, knowing that my time with Amman was quickly ending, I wanted to pour as much into him as he could receive.

One Kazakh, not yet a believer, who I particularly wanted to see was Barish, a high-ranking government official with whom I had become friends. He and his wife warmly welcomed me into their home for a feast Saturday afternoon.  The previous fall I gave Barish a Kazakh New Testament and a hand-written letter sharing how God changed my life. Unlike some Kazakh officials, he was jovial and approachable in a personal way. At times during our friendship I got to talk with him about Jesus. Still, I wasn’t quite prepared for the surprise that afternoon. He said that during difficult times in his life he takes the letter out of his desk and along with the New Testament re-reads them to find encouragement. I sat in amazement to hear this Muslim, former Communist, and powerful government leader tell of finding in God's Word a peace found in no other place.

The course of events during the trip confirmed to me God's foreknowledge about our team's future. The environmental company through which the team obtained visas did not receive an operational license for 1998. A recent change in the law required the company to have a license for employees to get visas. Though it sounded like the same old trick the Visa Office used in 1996 in an attempt to expel us, this time it was true. But this time the change did not affect us since our team was already packing to leave. Days before the end of my phase-out trip, Jake Wallis and his wife, the founders of the environmental company and former team members received an expulsion order from the Visa Office. In spite of great effort on Jake's part to prevent the expulsion, the government declared the environmental company and all its employees illegal. If the team had not already volitionally agreed to bring closure to the village work, the government would have expelled it along with company and the Wallises. Interestingly, the expulsion order came the same week I visited the village to close the work. Having already been through one near expulsion, we rejoiced that God ordained our steps so we had enough time to pack our bags and leisurely drink tea a few more times with our good friends.

That summer a church in the US sent a prayer team to southern Kazakhstan for a couple of weeks. My trip and theirs coincided and they graciously offered to help carry my luggage back to the US. The Sara Yer believers, generous hosts as always, invited the prayer team and our team to a special feast our last day in Kazakhstan. The KGB, never wanting to miss a good chance to spoil a party, showed up at the Fordens' house an hour before it started. They came with visa officials to check passports. Not fully informed of the local laws, the prayer team had failed to register properly with the Visa Office, but an hour of negotiations brought resolution. When I came later the officials demanded to see my documents too, though I could see no laws I had violated. With nothing to lose, I reprimanded the officials for tirelessly standing in the way of legitimate humanitarian assistance and development. Five years of life in Kazakhstan and a decent grasp of the language enabled me to speak frankly and truthfully to them. They showed some remorse for their conduct, smiled, and returned my passport without looking in it.

Rumee and the other women lovingly prepared the traditional Kazakh meal of bishparmak. Americans and Kazakhs packed into the small apartment around a large table-cloth spread on the floor. Fried breads, raisins, fruits, and candies covered the table within everyone's reach. Amman said a few words before Rumee brought the steaming platters of bishparmak. While the Kazakhs and long-term workers eagerly dug into the huge mounds of hot noodles and chunks of horse meat, some of the visiting prayer folks respectfully tried to hide their aversion.

Tea followed the meal. Sipping tea and munching sweets, everyone lounged on the floor and against the walls as best they could without invading their neighbors' space. For the next hour the beauty, majesty, and mystery of new life in Jesus the Messiah unfolded before our moist eyes as one by one the Kazakh believers shared their stories. Amman told of being changed from a religious mullah and a rebel into a pastor and a family man. Yeradam told of true joy as a child of God. A young lady confessed being proud but finding humility and love in Jesus. Amman offered Rumee the honor of saying the final words. Her summary accurately reflected my feelings about our five years in Kazakhstan. She said, "First of all, thanks to God who has saved us. Then thanks to those of you who came as ambassadors for Christ, for coming to the village, working in these fields, breaking the soil, removing stones, toiling under stress and strain. For a long time there was no fruit, nothing to show for all you gave, but now there is fruit...." Her voice broke with sobbing and she covered her face. Kazakhs are normally stoic, so Amman explained the feelings, "Yes, Rumee's crying, we're all crying. I'm a forty-year-old-man, but my heart wants to cry too. It's hard to see God’s ambassadors leave." In that moment, I had a glimpse into the rich bond of love felt between the first apostles and the churches they started. We wept together with the Kazakhs as Paul had done with the Ephesians on the shores of the Aegean sea. I could hardly speak for weeping in my closing words. The memories of time together with the Kazakhs filled my mind. When one of our family members got sick, they brought food. When we felt alienated, they invited us into their homes and festivities. They took us in as one of them. Still, I had an important word to give them, so I fought back the tears. "I want to remind you this is God's church. Amman is the first shepherd. He can't do the work alone so please pray for more godly leaders. Your relationships with each other are different now. Love one another, forgive each other. Remember, you are not alone, stand firm with your Kazakh brothers and sisters in other places. Jesus will always be with you."

EPILOGUE

Lord of the Fields

The Kazakh church continues to grow. Estimates of the number of Kazakh followers of Jesus range from 15,000 to 30,000. There are three times that number of other Kazakhstan citizens of mixed ethnicity who follow Jesus as Lord. Since the team phased out of the village in 1998, Amman and Rumee moved to Kalasi where they have accelerated the church-planting effort, seeing dozens come to faith in Christ and starting several cell groups.  Their children have grown up and all become church leaders, helping lead worship, organizing cell groups and teaching. The oldest daughter has excelled in her university studies, earning a scholarship and distinction in the field of tourism. The two oldest girls learned to speak English and the second daughter is studying to work in international relations as a diplomat. Their third child, a son, is finishing architecture, and the youngest is starting college. Allahdan has stayed close to the church, but has yet to receive the Messiah. Rumee’s younger sister from Dalada became a believer and her son is now in seminary studying for pastoral leadership in the church. They have expressed interest in traveling outside of Kazakhstan to other Muslim countries on short-term ministry trips to share their faith.

After the team phased-out the Fordens took some time in the US to rest and evaluate their future, eventually choosing to relocate to Almaty to join a church-planting team. A few years later they became the team leaders. They have stayed in regular contact with Amman and Rumee till the present, offering encouragement and input as in-country consultants when needed. They produced a beautifully illustrated book of parables based on Bible passages and written in the style of Kazakh folk literature.

The unstoppable Jake and his persevering wife Lyndsey were deported, but eventually came back to work with a multinational corporation, giving them a sphere of influence wider than they had ever had before. They pioneered a Kazakh church-planter mobilization center and worked alongside Kazakh believers in cities across the nation helping start new plants.

The other team members have all moved on to new opportunities and fields. The Youngs returned to the US where Hank finished his seminary degree and they took up pastoral ministry in a church and teaching in the community.  Many of the singles have married and had children. One of them, our Japanese-American team member, married a Kazakh believer from the same village where the three evangelists were beaten for their faith. They moved to California where she learned to speak excellent English then served several years as a family working in another Central Asian republic.

In the broader picture, the Islamic wall is developing leaks from its western borders in North Africa to the Far East.  Government crackdowns including imprisonment and death cannot stop the exodus of Muslims looking for a way of life better than the "straight path" of Islam. This is not to say the world of Islam is reached. In reality it is far from it. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world, mainly due to large families. Muslims are more numerous in Great Britain than Methodists. In the United States, Islam attracts followers, particularly among anti-establishment African-Americans, who consider Christianity a religion of the white man. Prisons also have become major points of recruiting new Muslims. Nearly a billion and half Muslim men, woman, boys, and girls live with no hope of hearing the Gospel unless a messenger goes to them from outside their communities. The US church sends fewer than 1% of its full-time personnel and gives even less of its money to reach Muslims. Less than 1% of personnel and giving is routed into reaching these people, yet they comprise over 20% of the world population and over 30% of peoples who have yet to hear the Gospel of Jesus. These statistics reveal either the church's ignorance about Muslims or the lack of concern for reaching them. Jesus said that before the end comes, the Gospel shall be preached to every nation (ethnic, linguistic, people group).

Kingdom globalization ultimately rests squarely and securely upon the sovereign shoulders of God.  He can bring the unreached to the Gospel as easily as take the Gospel to the unreached. For the past few decades this is exactly what has happened when millions of Muslims have immigrated into Western Europe and the United States. Instead of viewing this as a threat, the Church in the West should view it as an unprecedented opportunity to start ministries to Muslims within the free democratic societies that protect the freedoms of speech and religion. Already some significant church leaders have come from Muslim backgrounds when a Western Christian took the time to love them and share the Gospel of Jesus with them, not intimidated by Islam, but trusting God to overcome the obstacles.

Praying for the Fields

The Muslim world covers a vast swath of the planet’s surface, from Morocco in western Africa to the Philippines and Indonesia in the Far East. More Muslims live scattered throughout all the other continents. Centuries ago, when the people of God encountered challenges before them, they overcame, as at Jericho, with praises and prayers. Praise and Prayer are the most effective means we have at our disposal to reach Muslims with the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah.

1. Beseech God to send out more workers into the fields of gold. (Luke 10:1,2)

2. Muslims rarely perceive their utter sinfulness and guilt before an absolutely holy God. Pray the Holy Spirit would convict them of sin, righteousness, and judgment. (Is. 6:1-7 and Jn. 16:7-11).

3. Pray the Gospel would come to them with power shown in meaningful signs and wonders like dreams, visions, visitations, healings, and deliverances. (1 Cor. 2:1-5 and 1 Thess. 1:5).

4. Workers among Muslims need the prayer support of faithful others. Pray for their protection in the spiritual struggle, for their work to be acceptable to God in the power of the Holy Spirit, and for God to strengthen them in the long-term. (Rom. 15:30-33).

Where are the Fields of Gold?

Country\Muslim Pop.\% of Total Pop.\% of World Muslim Pop.

(countries marked in yellow are over 50% Muslim)

Afghanistan                               28,072,000                            99.7                            1.8

Albania                           2,522,000                            79.9                            0.2

Algeria                                             34,199,000                            98.0                            2.2

Angola                                                190,000                              1                            0

Argentina                                 784,000                              1.9                            0.1

Armenia                                                    1,000                              0                            0

Australia                                                365,000                              1.7                            0

Austria                                        353,000                              4.2                            0

Azerbaijan                       8,765,000                            99.2                            0.6

Bahrain                                         642,000                            81.2                            0

Bangladesh        145,312,000                            89.6                            9.3

Belarus                                           19,000                              0                            0

Belgium                                         281,000                              3                            0

Belize                                             1,400                       0.1                            0

Benin                                      2,182,000                            24.4                            0.1

Bhutan                                            7,000                              1.0                            0

Bolivia                                                    2,000                              0                            0

Bosnia-

Herzegovina                               1,522,000                            40                            0.1

Botswana                                             8,000                              0.4                            0

Brazil                                                    191,000                              0.1                            0

Brunei                                                    269,000                            67.2                            0

Bulgaria                                                    920,000                            12.2                            0.1

Burkina Faso                 9,292,000                            59.0                            0.6

Burundi                                                    180,000                              2                            0

Cambodia                                      236,000                              1.6                            0

Cameroon                               3,498,000                            17.9                            0.2

Canada                                                    657,000                              2.0                            0

Central-

African Rep.                                      395,000                              8.9                            0

Chad                                             6,257,000                            55.8                            0.4

Chile                                            4,000                              0                            0

China                                   21,667,000                                   1.6                            1.4

Colombia                                   14,000                              0                            0

Comoros                                                        664,000                            98.3                            0

Costa Rica                                                         -                              0                            0

Democratic-

Rep. of Congo                         943,000                              1.4                            0.1

Croatia                                                                     18,000                              0                            0

Cuba                                                            9,000                              0.1                            0

Cyprus                                                          198,000                            22.7                            0

Czech Rep.                                             1,000                              0                            0

Denmark                                                 88,000                              2                            0

Djibouti                                                           838,000                            96.9                            0.1

Dominican                                             2,000                              0                            0

East Timor                                 43,000                            3.8                            0

Ecuador                                                            2,000                            0                            0

Egypt                                   78,513,000                            94.6                            5.0

El Salvador                                              2,000                              0                            0

Eritrea                                              1,854,000                            36.5                            0.1

Estonia                                                   2,000                              0.1                            0

Ethiopia                                   28,063,000                    33.9                            1.8

Fiji                                                        53,000                              6.3                            0

Finland                                          24,000                              0.5                            0

France                                     3,554,000                              6                            0.2

Gabon                                        140,000                              9.5                            0

Gambia                                     1,625,000                            95                            0.1

Georgia                                        423,000                              9.9                            0

Germany                              4,026,000                      5                            0.3

Ghana                                     3,787,000                            15.9                            0.2

Greece                                        310,000                              3                            0

Grenada                                          -                                            0.3                            0

Guatemala                                     1,000                            0                            0

Guinea                                     8,502,000                     84.4                            0.5

Guinea-Bissau                        680,000                            42.2                            0

Guyana                                          55,000                              7.2                            0

Haiti                                            2,000                              0                            0

Honduras                                   11,000                       0.1                            0

Hungary                                          24,000                              0.2                            0

Iceland                                            -                                            0.1                            0

India                                 160,945,000                    13.4                    10.3

Indonesia                          202,867,000                    88.2                    12.9

Iran                                                 73,777,000                    99.4                            4.7

Iraq                                                30,428,000                    99                            2

Ireland                                  22,000                            0.5                            0

Israel                             1,194,000                            16.7                            0.1

Italy                                         36,000                              0                            0

Ivory Coast           7,745,000                            36.7                            0.5

Jamaica                                          1,000                              0                            0

Japan                                183,000                              0.1                            0

Jordan                             6,202,000                            98.2                            0.4

Kazakhstan                      8,822,000                            56.4                            0.6

Kenya                            2,793,000                              7.0                            0.2

Kosovo                           1,584,000                            89.6                            0.1

Kuwait                            2,824,000                            95                            0.2

Kyrgyzstan                            4,734,000                            86.3                            0.3

Laos                                                         2,000                              0                            0

Latvia                                           2,000                              0                            0

Lebanon                                          2,504,000                            59.3                            0.2

Lesotho                                                         1,000                              0                            0

Liberia                                              483,000                            12.2                            0

Libya                                           6,203,000                             96.6                            0.4

Lithuania                                           3,000                              0.1                            0

Luxembourg                                 13,000                              3                            0

Macedonia                                680,000                            33                            0

Madagascar                               215,000                              1.1                            0

Malawi                                           1,955,000                            12.8                            0.1

Malaysia                                  16,581,000                            60.4                            1.1

Maldives                                              304,000                            98.4                            0

Mali                                  12,040,000                            92.5                            0.8

Mauritania                             3,261,000                             99.1                            0.2

Mauritius                                214,000                            16.6                            0

Mexico                                              110,000                              0                            0

Moldova                                  17,000                              0.5                            0

Mongolia                                133,000                              5.0                            0

Montenegro                                111,000                            17.7                            0

Morocco                    31,993,000                            99                            2

Mozambique                      5,224,000                            22.8                     0.3

Myanmar                      1,889,000                              3.8                            0.1

Namibia                                  8,000                              0.4                            0

Janna  Nepal                             1,231,000                              4.2                            0.1

Netherlands                         946,000                              5.7                            0.1

New Caledonia                                           7,000                              2.8                            0

New Zealand                                                37,000                              0.9                            0

Nicaragua                                                         1,000                              0                            0

Niger                                                15,075,000                            98.6                            1.0

Nigeria                                                78,056,000                            50.4                            5.0

North Korea                                                         2,000                              0                            0

Norway                                                              65,000                              1                            0

Oman                                                         2,494,000                            87.7                            0.2

Pakistan                                              174,082,000                            96.3                   11.1

Panama                                                              24,000                              0.7                            0

Papua New Guinea                            2,000                              0                            0

Paraguay                                                         1,000                              0                            0

Peru                                                                       1,000                              0                            0

Philippines                                           4,654,000                              5.1                            0.3

Poland                                                              48,000                              0                            0

Portugal                                                              15,000                              0.1                            0

Puerto Rico                                                         1,000                              0                            0

Qatar                                                         1,092,000                            77.5                            0.1

Congo                                                              59,000                              1.6                            0

Romania                                                66,000                              0.3                            0

Russia                                                16,482,000                            11.7                            1.0

Rwanda                                                            182,000                              1.8                            0

Saudi Arabia                                  24,949,000                            97                     2

Senegal                                                12,028,000                            96.0                            0.8

Serbia                                                            244,000                              3.2                            0

Seychelles                                                         1,000                              1.1                            0

Sierra Leone                                           4,059,000                            71.3                            0.3

Singapore                                              706,000                            14.9                            0

Slovakia                                                                                     -                              0                            0

Slovenia                                                              49,000                              2.4                            0

Somalia                                                         8,995,000                            98.5                            0.6

South Africa                                              731,000                              1.5                            0

South Korea                                                71,000                              0.1                            0

Spain                                                            650,000                              1                            0

Sri Lanka                                           1,711,000                              8.5                            0.1

Sudan                                                30,121,000                            71.3                            1.9

Suriname                                                83,000                            15.9                            0

Swaziland                                                         2,000                              0.2                            0

Sweden                                                           149,000                              2                            0

Switzerland                                  323,000                              4.3                            0

Syria                                  20,196,000                            92.2                            1.3

Taiwan                                               23,000                              0                            0

Tajikistan                             5,848,000                            84.1                            0.4

Tanzania                    13,218,000                            30.2                            0.8

Thailand                                           3,930,000                              5.8                            0.3

Togo                                             809,000                            12.2                            0.1

Trinidad and

Tobago                                                78,000                              5.8                            0

Tunisia                                 10,216,000                            99.5                            0.7

Turkey                                  73,619,000                            98                            4.7

Turkmenistan               4,757,000                            93.1                            0.3

Uganda                                           3,958,000                            12.1                            0.3

Ukraine                                              456,000                              1.0                            0

United Arab

Emirates                             3,504,000                            76.2                            0.2

UK                                                         1,647,000                              2.7                            0.1

United States                             2,454,000                              0.8                            0.2

Uruguay                                                         1,000                              0                            0

Uzbekistan                    26,469,000                            96.3                            1.7

Vanuatu                                                                       -                              0                            0

Venezuela                                  94,000                              0.3                            0

Vietnam                                              157,000                              0.2                            0

Western Sahara                  510,000                            99.4                     0

Yemen                                  23,363,000                            99.1                            1.5

Zambia                                                58,000                              0.4                            0

Zimbabwe                                109,000                              0.9                            0

Asia-Pacific                  972,537,000                            24.1                            61.9

Middle East-

North Africa                 315,322,000                            91.2                            20.1

Sub-Saharan

Africa                                             240,632,000                            30.1                            15.3

Europe                                  38,112,000                              5.2                               2.4

Americas                                           4,596,000                              0.5                               0.3

World Total               1,571,198,000                            22.9                            100[6]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From 1993 to the present James Wright and his family have lived and worked in Central Asia among Turkic peoples. During these years they have participated in helping plant new churches and developing media for large scale outreach.  He has a PhD in missiology and has published numerous articles and two books about the Muslim world.

[1] A people group is any community of people tied together by unique language and culture, known in the Bible as ethne’ or nation.

[2]

Names have been changed.

[3] Stewart, John. (1928) Nestorian Missionary Enterprise. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. p. 204.

[4] The Kazakh pronunciation is Almat-uh.

[5] Two-stringed Kazakh lute, often played with amazing dexterity producing amplified sound.

[6] Figures are based on the demographic study by the Pew Research Center report of Mapping the Global Muslim Population, as of 8 October, 2009.

Table of Contents

Copyright

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

1 People of the Fields

Waiting Through Winter

3 Into the Vastness

4 Transplanted

5 Wedding on the Steppe

6 Breakdowns

7 Survival mode

8 Seedtime

9 Farmland

10 “I’ve Been Praying For You”

11 The Garbage Dump

12 Dreaming of Fields

13 With and Against the River

14 Urban exile

15 Reclaiming the Land

16 Sweet days of summer

17 Pruned For Purity

18 Fire in the Fields

19 The Road Home

20 New Stewards

epilogue Lord of the Fields

Praying for the Fields

Where are the Fields of Gold?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR