When we went to live with the tribal people we went through the same process - wanting to live as much like the people as possible, but realizing that doing so would mean that that would be all that we would manage to do - live there. The first several times in the village we lived in an Indian house, with the "kitchen" on the ground underneath the raised split-palm floor. We did have a small two-burner gas stove, but did some cooking on an open fire. We washed our clothes in the river when we went there to bathe, just like the people. After the first year we built a small house, 16 x 24. It was a board shack, but had an aluminum roof, so we could catch some rain water in a large plastic waste can. Five years later, after several failed attempts, we managed to hand-drill a well, on which we mounted a hand pump. Before that we had bathed & washed clothes in the river, and sometimes I spent an hour or more every day looking for a place where I could dip up some reasonably clean water for drinking. (During the transition between rainy season & dry season, and back, the best streams are either flooded or stagnant.) We purposely chose a hand pump, because one of the major needs of the people was clean drinking water. Before we got the well, we did get a larger water tank to collect water off of the roof, but I couldn't drink it w/o getting sick. The roof was not high enough to feed it into a shower, so I had rigged a shower bucket on a pulley system, and in the rainy season we could shower in the house, rather than go to the river. A 16 x 24 house is 384 square feet. We lived in that space with a family of five, and 1/4 of that space was a public room where the people could come in, and we also did all of our language work in that room. But just shortly before our youngest was born, we added a 12 x 16 section onto the front, which then became all public room, and school house, both for our children and the people. We showed the Luke film in that room, with people crowded in wall to wall, very much unlike their culture, which demands a LOT of "personal space". I later installed a toilet in the house, but we never had running water - we did bucket flush.Adam wrote:Those are fair questions, and I am happy to respond to them. On two occasions we lived for five weeks in a bush house without electricity or running water. Even then, we weren't living as the people here live because we didn't grow all of our own food, but rather we purchased it from the store. We came to the realization that, because we didn't grow up living that way, we weren't very good at it. And what took local people a few minutes to do (chopping firewood for example) would take me hours (I am not exaggerating). So if we were to live as the local people live, we would literally spend all of our time just trying to live, and I wouldn't have any time to do the Bible translation work that God called me to do. A second consideration was the fact that living as the locals live would indeed burn us out. I just can't eat sweet potato cooked in fire ash every day as my main staple. My daughter won't even touch sweet potato. My wife would burn out if she had to hike to the river multiple times a week and wash our clothes by hand. So we decided that if we were to fulfill the call God had on our lives, we needed to live in a way that was sustainable for us and would allow us to, in fact, do that work. For us, that means a western style house with power and a water tank.TeleBodyofChrist wrote:I am not trying to be smart but I am curious... how is it justified for you not to live like the locals because you do not feel like you can but someone else can not own a particular car because to you it is extravagant?
You said yourself your house is extravagant or more than what they are used to. Why not live like they do? You have just proven what Ernie said people judge because of what the see or think you have not really what your heart is doing.
I see this as a very different circumstance from the rich man who says to himself, "I've given a lot of money to charity already, so now I am going to reward myself and buy a Lamborghini." I just cannot imagine a scenario in which the purchase of a Lamborghini is necessary for someone to fulfill God's calling on their life. If a person really cares about the poor, and truly takes the words of Jesus seriously, I don't see how he can purchase a Lamborghini. I can, however, see the necessity of buying a Land Cruiser or something like that if a person is working in a remote area with bad roads and needs reliable transportation. A Land Cruiser is expensive, but I think it can be justified as a needed expense to accomplish God's work. There are many parts of the world that are quite inaccessible if someone doesn't have a durable vehicle like a Land Cruiser. However, I don't see how a Lamborghini could be justified as a needed expense to accomplish God's work.
I hope that clarifies my position for you.
At the same time that we added onto the house, we also built a small (2 x 3 meter) 'translation house' just into the jungle, where we could work away from the noise of the village.
I'm not saying all of this to brag, although some might think so. I'm not saying it to compare us with Adam & his family. Each situation is different, and each person comes to the work from a different experience set. (During my early years I grew up in a house w/o a bathroom, and until I was 11 or so we had to haul all of our water from town. We kids hauled water for the garden from the pond -about 1/8 mile away - on a coaster wagon in two 10 gallon milk cans.)
About food - we brought nearly everything in from the city (by plane), because there are no stores within a couple days walk. I planted pineapple & bananas, and we did buy some things from the people when they had extra, but to move in & "live off of the land" is an imposition on the people, depleting already limited supplies of meat & wild fruit. We brought in manga & jambo (English: mango & "Malay apple") trees and gave away most of them, to provide more fruit for the people right in the village area. But it all comes down to what Adam said above, If you want to live on a subsistence level like most tribal groups, that's pretty much all you will get accomplished, if you do not just burn out or die from it.