by Stacy Eubanks
A few days ago, I stood in the middle of my pineapple patch just above the equator, tears of grief streaming down my cheeks as I gazed over the wall of our compound and reflected on the last few years. The grief was over my impending departure from a land and people I have grown to love.
When I arrived in Cameroon, full of hope and eager anticipation to get started on the mission to which God had called me, I had no idea the journey on which my Lord was taking me. The first six months were rough. For eight weeks I did not have a car and had to rely on teammates for every single outing. It was then that this independent woman began to learn dependence.
Next came culture shock in its various forms, the most difficult of which was realizing that I am “without honor” as a mature single woman in a culture where honor comes to women solely through marriage. A search for significance ensued, but I was not competent in ways valued here, and my areas of competence seemed null and void.
Then came the heart-shaking reality that the national church was not interested in the primary ministry in which I was sent to engage. Perhaps I had missed God? But He had given too many confirmations to conclude that. It was suggested to me that I consider requesting a transfer to another country where I could be more useful. I thought about it. Cameroon had been the last country on my list, and I only reluctantly agreed to come after some encouragement to trust God in this placement.
I decided to stay, to set down roots, and to bloom where I had been planted. It was then that God gave me the strategy for my first missionary term, the strategy that He would use to open hearts, melt barriers, and grant me favor that would eventually turn into honor despite my marital status. “Be with them,” He said. I understood that to mean that I should “be with” them in every way possible. And so it began.
Three Januarys ago I started going to 6 a.m. prayer service at the church I had only recently decided to regularly attend. I left at 5:15 every single day for three weeks, driving into town and quietly listening to exhortations from pastors and elders who were leading prayer each day. That caught the attention of the senior pastor, who pulled me aside one day to remark about it.
Prayer is a high priority for African Christians, and let’s just say that American Christians aren’t known there for our prayer prowess. I simply told him that I wanted to be with the church and with Cameroonians, in prayer and in everything. “On est ensemble,” he said. “We are together.” It was not the first time, nor certainly the last, that I would hear that phrase, and I was yet to discover the deep meaning it carries.
Being with people means doing life with them. It means traveling together when, where, and how they travel. It means riding in cramped public buses and cars with my luggage on my lap for ministry trips, learning to negotiate taxi fares from throngs of competing passengers shouting on busy city streets, and even riding motos to places cars cannot access.
It means eating what they eat, sleeping where they sleep, and speaking at 3 a.m. in all-night prayer meetings. It means learning how and what they celebrate, learning and using their languages, and wearing their clothes. It means attending birthday parties, weddings, and funerals, dancing with them and mourning with them.
“Being with” means not being in a hurry but willing to sit outside and crush leaves and palm nuts or wash dishes in the sun while repairing cultural misunderstandings or talking through life’s challenges. All these things say, “I am with you, on est ensemble.”
Being with people in these ways opens their hearts to you. They see that you want so much to know them that you are willing to become like them. It’s unusual and curious to them, and it makes them want to know you, to know why you are driven to integrate in this way. Paul said, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings” (1 Corinthians 9:22-23).
There is a price to pay for integration, though, and you must count the cost. It can alienate you from your colleagues who may not do it to the same degree or in the same ways. It can result in nationals making unhelpful comparisons, and you must guard your heart and become deaf to these. Integration opens doors to places you may not be prepared to enter where cultural traditions and rites intermingle with Christian practices in a cauldron of syncretism that can challenge your interpretation of Scripture and send you back to your Bible to sort it all out.
Integration also means that your life becomes closely connected with their lives, and your heart with theirs. It means you love and are loved, and that these people become your people. It means that the way you perceive and think changes; it becomes less like your birth culture and more like your host culture.
It means that when it is time to go “home,” you feel instead like you are being ripped from your home and community. You realize that it might mean you don’t fit anymore in the place you came from. It means that a few days before you depart you could find yourself standing in your pineapple patch, shoulders heaving, tears streaming because you are leaving home to go . . . home?
You know, as you gaze over the wall and observe your neighbors carrying water in large buckets on their heads from oldest to youngest, that nothing is the same where you are going. You know that the people you left behind years ago will have gone on with their lives, as you have also had to do.
The climate, food, sounds, smells, driving, clothes, customs, and rhythms of life will be different there, and you will have to learn to reintegrate without losing what you have gained on this side of the ocean. The truth is that people are lost in darkness on both sides of the ocean, and that means you will need to again become like those you are going to, in order to save some.
This is the price of integration.
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Stacy has lived in Spain, Peru, France, and now lives and serves in Cameroon, Africa. She works in the areas of theological education, compassion evangelism, women’s ministries, and discipleship.
