How much does a vote cost?

This is probably a theoretical question for most people, except maybe for professional campaigners that wonders how much money they can spend on advertising. Votes don't cost anything in a democracy, you can't buy them like you buy milk; people chose whom to vote for and the party or person that can present the best option wins, such is probably our thinking. Such is probably our view of democracy as well. Of course we are aware of that money hugely affects an election, the presidential campaign in the US is one example of that, but the effect is more indirect. How much a vote actually costs, how much you need to pay in cash to a voter to secure their vote, that question we wouldn't even consider, it doesn't really belong in a democracy. We think.

Paraguay is a democracy and the price of a vote is between 100.000-200.000 Guaranies, 25$ or 150 SEKrrr. In cash. This is how it works, at least where we are. Normally your family will be affiliated with a party, in the same it is probably supporting a football team. The party will hire people to walk around the town and visit people, encourage them to put the stickers and banners on their houses and pay them a sum of money. If you're not affiliated then you will get more visits. Then on election day they will pick you up and drive you to the voting station. It seems like the voting is secret anyway, so nobody can actually see what you name you put in, but people assume that you vote for "your" party. Another way to do it is that the rival party pays you and keeps your ID-card, in that way you cant vote at all.

There are of course loads of stories of how people abuse this system. In the preliminaries last year one man apparently gathered the identity cards for his friends and went as their representative to a politician to collect the money. He put the sum in his pocket, went back to his people and said that the politician didn't want them and they had to go somewhere else. 

For a westerner like me that is used to parties competing with issues and what they want to do, the campaign here in Paraguay is a bit confusing, Because issues aren't mentioned at all. So far we have received ONE leaflet that had anything practical to say about what the party wanted to achieve more concretely. Its all about connecting to a party or a movement within a party.

And its about money. Lots of money. The Liberal party is one of the two big competitors, and they just got supported by a 10% party. In return the state bought a big property for millions of dollars at over-prize from the party. A not so subtle pay  for alliance. But since the president is Liberal it can be done.

Where does all this money come from? The state. The people. And forgetting how sad it is to see the principles of democracy be misused, this is even sadder. In the second poorest country in South America, who only spend 8% of its budget on schools and health care, the peoples money are used to buy votes but even more line the pockets of politicians.

The empty tank

We returned just recently from a pastors retreat. Saturday morning we discovered that there was no water in the showers. Nor in the kitchen or in any of the taps. The woman responsible for the place explained that probably the pump to the big water tank had stopped working and the tank was now empty. But, she added, since the tank holds 10.000 litres it's impossible to say when the pump stopped working.

It seems to me like a good illustration. Many times we encounter a problem. Immediate, needing resolution now, like "no water in the taps". But the cause of the problem is not in the now, its in the past. That pump could have stopped at any time, no one would notice. Until the water ran out. We sort of live in a grace period until the tank finally runs dry. In this case the solution was quite easy: call the guy who came and looked at the pump and then fixed it. But many times the cause isn't so easy to see.

Let's apply this to a church situation. A pastor finds that her congregation doesn't respond to the challenges they face as a church. There's little movement or energy and an unwillingness to give or sacrifice. There's no water in the tank. It's easy to blame yourself in this situation. But, thinking a bit the pastor might realise that she didn't disciple the majority of the people. They picked up what the Christian life is all about somewhere else. Maybe there was a big youth group 15 years ago where many floated along without actually being personally challenged by Christ. They all became members (This is when the pump brakes) and are now the adults of the church. It's only when they need to suffer a bit that the shallowness shows up.

You probably have other examples from other areas of life. Me, I get helped in two ways by this:

• When I realise that it might not be my fault, that the reason is in the past, I need to study the process to see where the key strategic points are. (Keep the pump running in this case)
• When I understand where the strategic point is I need to make sure I do a good job there. (In the example, make sure people are personally challenged by Christ and learn to suffer for Him)

Until further notice

My wife was recently at a retreat for missionary women. She came back with some amazing stories of people who really had fallen in love with this country. And suffered here.

She met a woman who had been working on the countryside with her husband. He discovered by accident that he had a heart condition and needed operation. Instead of going back home to the US where healthcare is more developed he stayed and had his operation here. All went well but a short time afterwards the wife got hit by a truck while riding on the back of a motorbike, in a bad way. She needed several operations and are still having them as I write this. To add to the injury: the lawyer that was supposed to help them didn't do his job so they lost the chance to claim any money for the accident. and the latest thing is that the man who crashed into the motorbike will sue them for psychological damages! But she doesn't complain. Neither did they leave Paraguay.

My wife also heard about another tragic story. A young family that also moved to Paraguay as missionaries. After their first child were born they adopted a Paraguayan girl. They worked a few years and then the mother and the first child were killed, also in a traffic accident. The man and the adopted daughter was left. And are still here. They didn't leave Paraguay.

These are terrible and tragic events. But what struck me when I heard them was that these people had every right to say "enough, I will go back to my home country now". And nobody would have blamed them. But they stayed.

In fact many missionaries that we meet does not have a finishing date on their assignment. They are here until further notice, indefinitely. For us that has been a refreshing and challenging eye-opener since our mission works with 3-4 year contracts.

Really it's a testimony that God can place a love in the hearts of His people that makes them abandon "ordinary" for something very different!

Do missionaries get paid?

The world of missions is wild and wonderful and full of diversity. In the last post we touched on what missionaries can do, in this one we'll look into the question of how they sustain themselves. Like normal human beings they also eat, have bills and the occasional need for new clothes :-)

The modern mission era started in the late 18th century as believers were awoken to the fact that the world is big and in need and God means for his church to go out in it. They founded missions societies, basically groups of interested people that gathered money, prayed and sent out missionaries. Several denominations in Sweden started as these kind of societies. These organisations grew and matured, sometimes became denominations with a missions department (like the Southern Baptist Overseas Mission Board) or they became interdenominational mission agencies. Or in some cases became semi-independent missions societies within older churches, like within the Anglican church.

An important development came in 1865 when Hudson Taylor founded the first "Faith Mission , "The China Inland Mission" which emphasised that God would supply the needs of the missionary through prayer. Naturally through other people but in a much less organised way than the other models, and in this one the missionary was responsible for their own support. Today organisations like Youth With a Mission (YWAM) build on the same principles.

The differences in how missionaries get paid seems to me to depend on where on this development scale their supporters are. Some examples:

• The couple we met in Encarnacion mentioned in the earlier post are supported from a few churches in an independent style. They get paid when and if the churches send money. This would be a faith mission style even though they're not associated with any organisation.
• A missionary family associated with the Methodist church are part of a missionary organisation, or society, but are themselves responsible for raising their support. Not totally independent, but with a lot of freedom their pay depends on maintaining relationships with their sponsoring churches.
• Our own denomination, Interact, has with over 100 years of experience developed another model. Missionaries together with Interact raise support in the churches and when the pre-set quota of support is reached, the missionary is sent out. During the contract period the organisation is responsible to pay a set wage and other costs and benefits. The missionary is responsible to maintain contact with the churches that are supporting him/her. In our case we have about 15 supporting churches which we have contact with each month.
• Our teacher friends mentioned in the earlier post were paid by their mission society but are now paid by the school, like the other national teachers. This we have also met with Brazilian missionaries working in Paraguay.
• A version of the above is the missionary that supports herself through a "normal" job, what is sometimes called "tent-making" because the apostle Paul worked at times like that. 

As we see there are different ways of sustaining oneself as a missionary, from the very organised to the very improvised. Sometimes the less security you have, the more freedom you have in your work, but that is not always true either.

So what model is the best one? Hard to say really, they all have pros and cons and depend a lot on how well the sending organisations work. As is most cases, we probably need all kinds!

Is "missionary" actually a job?

Welcome back to this blog after a break caused by holidays, it's summer down here, and general lack of time. I thought we would start again with an important question: Is "missionary" actually a job? Well, maybe we have to rephrase that, because I obviously get paid for something! Maybe better: Is "missionary" a job description? Does it describe what a person actually does, like doctor, engineer or teacher?

I meet this quite a lot. There seems to be a kind of generic "missionary", a type of person that people automatic associate with the word. Perhaps the most common is the "pioneer-evangelist". Evoking a picture of a gentleman dressed in khaki hacking his way through the jungle to preach the gospel to some tribe for the first time. Or the modern equivalent. Today we would attach "church-planter" to this person as well. While a lot of missionaries do work with this it's worth remembering that the days are mostly over when you step off the boat as the first Christian person in the land. These days the missionary steps out of the air-plane and meets the local pastor.

Let me mention a few different lots of missionaries I've met the last few months:

•  Mags and Gwen are missionaries with SAMS, an Anglican missions agency based in Ireland. They've been in Paraguay for over 20 years dedicating themselves to the St Andrews school. Gwen is the principal for the school and Mags is vice-principal for the older students. 

• Ken and Christie spent their first few years in the south of the country starting youth clubs. The were very clear that they didn't want to start a church. In fact, when they came to the country their idea was to help out at a local camp site. They just moved to the city of Encarnacion where they want to start, you guessed right, another youth club.

•  Emivaldo and Ewa our new pastor colleagues in another CIBB church in the nearby town of San Lorenzo. They came from Brazil about 20 years ago and has worked mainly as pastors, but also other jobs in that time. Missionaries? They would definitely fall in that category.

Our own denomination, Interact, sends out doctors, nurses, economists, journalists, engineers and even pastors! Actually it's quite rare these days to send out pastors for a local church as its considered better if nationals do that job.

So it doesn't seem like a missionary is such a clear category after all. Maybe "missionary" really is something else, like a form of employment or a background motivation or perhaps as simple as the old definition, "someone who goes through salt waters for the gospel" (Sweden is surrounded by sea, so to get abroad you really have to cross a sea, hence the salt) I don't have a killer definition just yet, but I do have an advice:

Next time you meet someone who is introduced as a missionary, ask them what they do!

Speaking it out

"Everyone we pray for cry..." said the son to my wife after a meeting in a neighbouring church where we ministered. And the Spirit was really present in that meeting as were needy people, many from the nearby "asientamiento", settlement, which is a place where very poor people build their small shacks on given ground. That the presence of God makes us cry seems to be a universal trait.

What also struck me that night was the power of the spoken word. God used just basic affirmations from the Bible to touch and encourage people. They were built up and comforted by the words that we spoke out.

Last Sunday I prayed for a young man in our church and also then spoke out some things I had felt for him. In our conversacion yesterday he remarked on how that had impacted him and we spoke at length about those things.

Spoken words have a magic of their own, they create something. That can be misused, like in the election times in Paraguay at the moment. But when they are spoken with love and truth they can literally change someones life!

It seems to me that's there's a basic lack of affirmation and nice words in the world. And there's even more a need to speak out the truths of the Bible over our lives. And if the Spirit fills them and make them prophetic, wonderful!

But, and this is the challenge, there's an ocean of difference between having a nice thought and speaking a nice word. And right there's the decider if we're going to be important people for our neighbour.

Big or small government and paying taxes

The American election is now over. And the world sighs with relief. It used to be said that the US presidential election was often more important the a countrys own election, such is or was the influence of the US. These days perhaps what happens in China should be watched more closely.

A lot in the US battle centered on taxes and big or small government. As a European living in Latin-America I can feel I have a comment on that.

My home country Sweden is a typical big-government country, probably enormous by american standards :-) The post world war Sweden was built on a kind of cradle to grave mentality, where the state was involved in every level. The social democratic vision was one of equality and erasing poverty, among other things. These days we pay a lot of tax, at least 35% of your income and in return receive services like health insurance for all, free schools, care of the elderly etc 

My current country, Paraguay, sounds like a big government when you read the laws, but in reality it's a small government place riddled with corruption. It has one of the worst school systems in the world, the general health care is of low quality and a lot of people lack any kind of health insurance, and we could go on. But if you have money, well that is a different matter, then the doors are open for you.

Paraguay lacks any kind of income tax and Sweden has at least 35%, and after more than two years I know which I prefer!