Dealing with Requests

Elizabeth enjoying her pizza and E-shaped brownie on her birthday

Family and Friends,

Day 156 of our Haiti Adventure!

One of the biggest challenges when you work in an extremely poor country is to deal with all the requests you receive. People come to you, hat in hand, and ask for everything you can imagine. The most common requests are for shoes, food, and money. Occassionally people ask for Bibles. It puts you a little bit on the defensive, especially when you meet new people, because most of the time they are sizing you up and trying to determine whether they can get something from you or not. You have to be patient and understanding, though, because so many people here are legitimately living in poverty. The best thing is to take each case individually, pray about it, and try to make the best decision you can based on your resources, your relationship with the person, and how you feel the Spirit is leading you.


Below is a good example of what I am talking about. The following text is a letter I received a few days ago from perfect strangers. It was translated by Antoine:

Today is a big day for me to address you. The days of circumstance (are here). The problem is the house of mine has needs before I can get married. Can you give me a chance of the occasion of my marriage? I want to get married. Can you help me make it happen? Thank you very much ahead of time. We are Genez Pierre and Mr. Ranal Louis. Please do it for me. Thank you. I don’t have anybody to help but the Lord Jesus Christ.


This situation deserves some explanation. I’ve touched on this issue before in this blog, but people here put some pretty lofty requirements on themselves before they get married. Some of the pressure comes from the church, and some from the general cultural expectations. People think they need to have the house in order, a certain list of physical possessions, the money for a big wedding and reception, and sometimes other things as well in order to get married. If they can’t get all of that together they just live together and have children like a normal married couple, but aren’t technically married. This compromise forces them to function like second class citizens in the church, if they attend.

This issue came to the forefront in the recent Promise Keepers program put on by one of the teams during their visit here. Everything in that curriculum starts from the premise that you are to get married, make promises to each other (vows), and with the help of God and supportive friends keep those promises over the years. However, how do you adapt those teachings to a culture where so many people aren’t getting married, and part of the problem is that they don’t consider themselves worthy in the eyes of the church and others to tie the knot?

So this particular request letter comes from a couple who are trying to nagivate all of those marital issues. Chances are they are already living together, and might even have kids, so basically if I helped them “get married” I would just be buying them some stuff for the house so they could feel better about themselves. I think in this case Patchouko and I will try to sit down with them and talk about what marriage should be all about. Both Patchouko and I had virtually nothing when we married our wives, and so far God has provided, so that might give them some comfort. We’ll see. 

The point I am making in this post, however, is that people approach us constantly with requests, and it takes a lot of energy to deal with it all. There are plenty of stories of missionary families who have left the mission field over this issue, because it can become overwhelming. We have a couple of advantages, though. First of all, Mike and Pam have done a lot of work here through the years and laid a groundwork of how to deal with all of this and process the requests.

My seminary training also gave  me a chance to learn about relief and development and other key issues relating to making decisions about when and when not to give material things to people in need. That was a good foundation to start from even before we headed out to the field. Basically it boils down to disciplining yourself to only giving things or money to people when you know for sure they are going to die or suffer greatly without it, and working with all other situations through education, networking, short-term loans, encouragment, etc… That is probably too simple of an explanation of our strategy, but you get the idea.

When we take a step back and look at the situation, we have to be thankful as well and not consider these requests a burden.  First of all, we have been generously blessed by God with everything we need and more, and Jesus made clear that we are to make our abundance available to others who are needy.  What a privilege to be able to do that for people who truly need it!  Also, having people come to us puts us in a position to speak into their lives.  They respect us for the wrong reasons, but still they are listening.  
 
May God give us grace to handle these situations with patience and wisdom.
 
Be Bold in Your Adventure Today!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers