Unsung Heroes of the Faith

Here is the recently painted hallway in our house. I am staying with the circle motif.



Beginning to write after 10pm on Sunday night is now the rule of thumb and not the exception.  I have a very full week beginning bright and early Monday morning so I will need to make this short and sweet and complete before tomorrow because I do not know when I will be able to return to it.

I would describe this week, above all, as relational.  It is a very important part of life here.  In fact visiting people for social calls is a national pastime, and pretty much everyone in the country is out between the hours of 5 and 10pm visiting friends, family, neighbors.  Usually this is done without any invitation or warning that you are going to show up.  One just goes and is always welcome.  Hospitality demands that food or at least a beverage is shared--banana beer up country, but in town among protestants, a fanta suffices.  It is not unusual for the visiting party to have some request for money or other assistance, although conversation is not always an important objective, and folks will sit around watching TV or listening to the radio together for hours.

Rebecca and I usually do not participate in this ritual because of the kids.  (We do not have a nanny, which is the exception not the rule here, especially for Burundians.)  But this last week we actually headed out as a family for several visits.  The first one was on Monday, to the home of Jean Claude and Francine, some close Burundian friends who very recently had their baby 'Duke'.  This is their first, and Rebecca had given her the book "What to Expect When You Are Expecting" which was greatly appreciated by her before the birth.  (Books, as I have mentioned before are almost impossible to come by here), so this resource was a rare treasure, and I think Francine is now the local prenatal authority.

Duke is doing very well and David seemed interested in the new baby, although the kids spent most of their time running in and around the small house.

The other visit to Burundian friends was on Saturday when we went to Onesphore's home (our partner from Harvest for Christ ministries).  The occasion for this visit was to welcome back his wife Innocente who had been in France for a 2 year residency for her gynecological training.  It was such a blessing that this day finally arrived, as we were with Onesphore on the day she left.  It was a tremendous sacrifice for both of them as he was left here with their 2 small children Jim and Deborah.  They felt like it was worth it, and we are happy that the ordeal is over for both of their sakes.  (I think it must have been hardest for Innocente to be away from her kids for that amount of time, rather than Onesphore who had a lot of extra responsibilities, not typical of a Burundian father, but that he took on willingly.  (I have a picture of them together here).

Oren and David did make some social calls of their own to various friends including a visit to the house of the Horsts, our service workers where they enjoyed playing with the animals in their growing menagerie.  (Cat, dog, rabbits, chickens, guinea hens).  Jal, their son, had built a tree house recently with his Dad and Grandfather, which Oren was really excited about climbing to.

The work week was fairly normal, and did not involve any trips out of the city of country.  Our program officer Felix was out of town all week at a conference in Uganda called the Great Lakes Initiative (GLI) run out of Duke University.  It has been in Burundi the past 2 years in January (you can look at past blogs in the month of January if you are interested) and Rebecca and I have assisted in hosting it.  We were sorry to miss the very inspiring discussion that has come out of this gathering, but were relieved to not have to be responsible for the logisitcs of it for a third year.

For some reason, perhaps because we are coming to the close of our fiscal year, I have been thinking a lot about accountability, and particularly the field of accounting.  I have to admit, I have occasionally been guilty of what I would consider a societal stereotyping of the accounting profession.  Perceiving it, it at best as the dreary repository of nerdy number crunchers and at worst, (after the Global Financial crisis), as the lair of unscrupulous, sleight of hand, con artists.  But I have realized the error of my ways, particularly here in this context.  (For those of you old enough to remember the Monty Python sketch about the chartered accountant who wants to be a lion tamer, you get the picture of the cultural disparagement of accountants I chuckled at.)

I now regard accountants as truly the unsung heroes of our faith.  I say this because I have found that in terms of honesty and integrity, most flaws in our character show up, eventually, in the way we handle money.  In MCC, I have really been schooled in this fact because of the way in which we are subsidized.     Our position is technically 'volunteer' which is to say that we are not paid a salary, but rather our needs here are paid for out of the budget MCC provides annually for our country program.  That means we do a budget for the year estimating how much we will spend on our needs (food, schooling, housing, etc.) as well as the grants we give for the work of our partners, and the needs of our other MCC team volunteers.)  Because the budget is fixed, what I spend on food, directly affects what we are able to give in grants to help the vulnerable people our partners activities support.

Consequently, our family has to do a monthly report in which we have to account for every penny we spend every month, from vegetables we buy on the street, to gas in the car, and meals we eat out.  When I think that lowering our own costs makes more money available for the work we support, there is a real incentive to be as frugal as possible.

I will say that being required to keep track of everything I spend money on, and accountable for it to our organization has been a challenging act of humility and obedience, but not one I regret.  I have learned a lot about the extent to which I wasted money in my life at home in the US.  Being accountable in this cultural context where people have so little has been one of the hard lessons I have learned.

But that has given me a new appreciation of the profession of accounting, especially for us as Christians. I have learned that it is one thing to claim to be an upstanding person of integrity, but it is quite another thing to transparently demonstrate this by letting someone shine a light into the dark  crannies of all your expenditures.  Most of us might consider this to be invasive, but in a community that strives to be 'salt' and 'light', integrity begins in ones own wallet.  (Many of us hide secrets, and most of those secrets that need correction come at a cost and leave a paper trail.)

For our partners, we demand an equally rigorous amount of accountability for the grants we give them.  Every penny must be accounted for to demonstrate that it went to the purposes for which it was destined.  Although we deal with quite a bit of money, I do think about the fact that it is mostly collected by individual Mennonites, many of them rural farmers giving small but often sacrificial contributions into church offering plates, because of a desire to help those in need in other parts of the world.  I am glad that as a Christian, that someone is holding me and all of us working at distributing gifts, accountable to those gifts and to those people.  (I admit, it is becoming a pet peeve of mine to see Christian organizations and churches that distribute money on the basis of blind 'trust' that do not insist on accountability structures that assure that 'trust' is merited.  I have come to see trust as a verifiable action, not a feeling, or some abstract religious idea.)

So the people charged with keeping me fidel to my call, are accountants--in our program, in our partnerships, and at MCC headquarters.  It is a noble profession and one that is held in high esteem in the Bible.  In the Old Testament, the Levites were responsible with collecting and seeing that the tithes were properly handled. I even found in reading Nehemiah that modern structures of accountability were built in, with local Levites collecting tithes, but then having to give an accounting themselves to a priest in the temple.  (2 people)

In the new Testament, I think Barnabus was one of the first Christian accountants, charged with making sure that money collected for distribution to widows did not unfairly favor Hebrew widows over other minorities.


In Burundi, the biggest challenge for us to work here as Christians is trying to work with local churches here with integrity.  Accountability structures are non-existent in many churches here, even well established ones.  The offering, for instance, is often seen as the property of the pastor, who does with it what he pleases, but most often treats it as a salary or speakers fee.  Money coming in from abroad from international Christian missions, or the main branch of a church, is frequently misused, going into the pockets of leaders, rather than used for purposes for which it was destined.  To make matters worse, a pastor or church leader will often take umbrage at even being asked to give an accounting of how money given or collected is spent as if such a question directly impugn his calling (and status) as a 'man of God'.

To a great extent, that has been the work of some our Christian partners--to educate pastors and churches in accountability and setting up accountability structures to use money demonstrably honestly.  It is really a new concept in churches here and often met with considerable resistance, because unlike in the US, a local church is often seen as an income generating opportunity for a pastor, and Christian foreign aid is seen as a personal entitlement to those who are working in a church or other Christian project.

So I conclude by singing the praises of one group of unsung heroes of our faith: Accountants.  Those noble men and women who put time and effort into seeing that we are wise and discerning about the way we use our money, and that the use of our resources, reflect the values we profess.  If any accountants out there want to have some opportunity to capacity building here in Burundi with Christian partners, or churches, we could probably make an opportunity for you without much problem.

Bonus photo:  When in doubt about how interesting your writing is, add a picture of cute puppies and all is forgiven.  As you can see, they are getting bigger.  The boy is looking forward, the girls right.  Name suggestions anyone?