by Fenton Rees
October 7, 2015
That’s Pat, Lilly Ann and full-time Bongolo missionary, Dr Izzi, in the nearby town of Lebamba, with soft-serve ice-cream, (yes still on the “island”). This was while they were there doing some shopping and having some down time.
Interestingly, most of the shop or stall owners are not Gabonese, but come from the surrounding (and poorer) French speaking countries, and see Gabon as the land of opportunity, because there is more money here because of the oil. (But note that one third of the population in Gabon live on less than $400/year, so are as poor as anywhere in Africa).
Apparently many Gabonese prefer a job in a government related organization to the real economy, where you actually have to work.
And many of these store owners are Muslim, and they use their influence to advance their religion. Which leads to an interesting observation. In both Gabon and the US, Christian evangelism and discipleship is mostly via the local church or Christian School / University or Cristian Hospital. But not so much via business. One can think of a few US examples of Christian businesses, [Chick-Fil-A, or Hobby-Lobby or R G LeTourneau (1950’s)], but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. It is almost like business is regarded as not worthy of a Christian because it is corrupt or dirty. (and obviously it can be). I wonder if in both places (US & Gabon) the church is missing an opportunity for another kind of outreach?
Os Guinness in his book “The Call” (OK, only partially read), makes the observation that in many Southern European countries it used to be that their best and brightest boys were encouraged to go into the priesthood. But that meant that the ranks of business, law and government tended to be populated by the corrupt or incompetent or ideologically messed up; (Yes Italy, Spain and much of South America we are talking about you !). And how come in the US there are 7 Catholics and 2 Jews on the 9 member Supreme Court and not one evangelical Christian ???. Do we regard lawyering to be on the level of used car salesmen by definition ?
Which ties into one of the last articles by Chuck Colson that I just read in his final book (“My Final Word”) titled “Poor Bill Gates”. I thought it was so good, I have attached a copy. Colson says that Gates is on record for feeling guilty for his success at Microsoft, and now sees everything he’s done up until now as preparation for remedying the plight of the world’s poor. Colson thinks that Gates may never do anything as worthwhile as what he’s already done, helping to connect the world, even in the remotest regions. Gate’s guilt problem is a function of his not having a correct (ie. Christian) understanding of vocation. (OK, I know it wasn’t Bill Gates that invented the internet, but Al Gore, Ha !).
Yesterday Pat saw the advantages of this connectedness first hand, when one of the Gabonese docs used his smart phone to pull up an anatomy picture of the hand and show it to the resident who was operating;- as they were a little confused when trying to re-attach a tendon in a hand cut by a machete.
And for the last couple of days Dr Jerry has been working on a 4 year old boy who is in the hospital with complications from malaria (Blackwater fever). He too was able to use the available of the internet to good effect, and find some new research (thank you Google) that shows that some of the meds used to treat malaria on rare occasions predispose the malaria sufferer to that complication. You can pray for the boy, even with all the advantages of technology, he is far from being out of the woods.
OK, enough pontificating for one day,
Blessings,
Fenton & Pat