Teaching at ABC: Greg and Christina's March 2023 Update

(Picture of Greg Looking for Monkeys)

“Alright class, I have some good news and some bad news. And then maybe some good news.” Greg smiles as he begins his third week teaching Exodus to a class of about 80 first year liberal arts students. “The good news is that I finally got a copy of the book assigned for this class.” In the time it takes him to take a breath, a student from the front of class pipes up, “You didn’t like it.” As usual, he’s right on the mark. “No, I did not” Greg says. Then he challenges the class. “Why do you think I didn’t like it?” After a bit of mumbling, he has them turn to a passage in the book discussing the biblical event the class discussed last week – when Moses murdered an Egyptian. “What does the author say about that event” Greg asks. “That Moses likely killed the man in self-defense, because murder is bad and Moses was good” they summarize. “And what did we talk about last week?” he challenges them. “Moses looked to the right and the left before killing the man… It was premeditated!” they decry. “Exactly!” Greg says. “And we read in Acts that this can be seen as Moses, in his own strength, trying to help deliver Israel, so there is some good reason for his actions, even foreshadowing God’s actions in the story, but it still definitely seems to be murder.” Greg spends a moment reflecting with them about how the Bible is filled not only with people like Joseph who has close to no flaws, but also with very flawed people who make some bad decisions, and largely with people and scenarios that don’t fall neatly into either category, portraying things we really have to wrestle with to try to understand them for what they are. The brokenness and failures are just as important for us to remember as the triumphs and goodness of people, Greg explains, it helps us see God’s relationship with the world more for what it is than what we might imagine it to be. “Have you heard of eisegesis?” He asks the class. Even though these students are in the first year, they could explain the definition, that it was reading one’s own thoughts into the text. “This book is an example of eisegesis; the author wants to put a lens of positive morality on all that the characters do and to draw personal application from that. The book might have good insights in it, it might be a good devotional, but it’s not a book that you will need to read for this class.” Right about the time the students started to celebrate for this news of less required reading, Greg jokes “don’t worry, I’ll find you a bigger book to read.” Turning back to seriousness, he talks with the class about online resources, about ways that they will interact with the text for this class, about potential topics for the final. That last topic really gets the students’ attention. “Do you remember our first practice quiz question?” Greg asks, “The final won’t be as easy as that, just naming something that happens in the chapter. But it might be like the second practice question – name an event that happens and why it was important. I won’t be quizzing you about names and places, but you need to be prepared to say why something was important.” After talking a bit more about the overall story of the Bible and a bit of theology to add to understanding, Greg looks at his watch. “Well, we have half an hour left in class,” he says (this class is 90 minutes twice a week). A surprised gasp comes from the girl in the front row, which brings a smile back to Greg’s face. “Always a great sign to hear exclamations and groaning when students hear that there is time left in class…Alright, let’s end early today, I’ll go to the registrar and see if the class roster is ready for this class yet.” After a few minutes to make sure nobody came up for questions, Greg finds that the list is not yet ready and heads home. I’m happy to see him, to have a bit of extra time to walk around the yard and talk, to hear that things are going better than expected in my husband’s first-ever Bible class. This month, please pray for Greg as he continues teaching from the Bible. Please also join us in prayer for upcoming trainings with village pastors. Please pray for those who are hungry during this season before harvest. And thank you to everyone who prayed for our employment permits. We received them last week and we’re good through January 2025 - Greg + Christina

Miller’s February 2023 Update and Ministry Details

Public Health

Heavy rains this past month have meant flooding and loss of some crops throughout the country. People are running out of food early this year, and it seems hunger season will be particularly bad. We praise God that our pastor and community friends are continuing to honor God as they feed children and care for vulnerable individuals in their community. Greg is working with Nazarene church leadership and The Word Transforms to explore options for bringing trainings to pastors to help improve worldview and food sustainability in their communities. Christina is working with a women’s group in Mngwangwa to bring a training about Cholera to all the churches in their community. This is a particularly exciting opportunity, because there has been a lot of misinformation and fear regarding the Cholera outbreak, even coming from some religious institutions.

Weekend Trip

We got away for a relaxing weekend in Zomba with our good friend Roberta this month. Our gas was getting low on the way back, and every station we passed for over 20 miles on the main road was out of fuel. Praise God that we found a station off of the paved road which still had some, and we were able to get home before dark. We are thankful for refreshing times of rest this last month, and for God’s provision through the challenges.

Improving Physician Wellbeing

During February, Christina has been working with trainees from Loma Linda University to complete scholarly projects in resident wellbeing, which the team is hoping to submit as presentations at the AAFP Physician Wellbeing Conference, the American College of Physician Health Conference, and perhaps even publish as an article in the American Journal of Public Health. She is also helping prepare a lecture and materials for the Personal Wellbeing unit for the LLU School of Public Health’s graduate course in Population Health Leadership. While Christina enjoys academic work in Physician Wellbeing, her biggest passion is improving wellness for missionaries and helping physicians thrive as they find their callings through Christ-serving career fits. Please join us in prayer that doors will open helping Christina find roles which will allow her to help improve missionary wellbeing in the upcoming months.

Christina’s “Sabbatical”

Christina continues aiming for more intentionality about growth and rest as she marks her seventh year in Africa. She did take a couple vacation and sick days off this month (with ankle, foot, and back pain as well as a recent bout of gastroenteritis, she is starting to wonder whether her usual amount of stress was the major thing keeping her body together). She did work some 10-13 hour days in the second half of the month, and the hours more than cancelled those she used for her days off, but she is greatly enjoying her work and is taking more 5-10 minute breaks throughout her workdays than ever before. She finished reading 5 books in the last month, and has taken her time to slowly process information from an additional 5 books on positive psychology and spiritual formation. Reading outdoors in her screened porch, her shaded hammock, or the swing overlooking the flower garden is helping bring rest to most days. Greg is coming alongside her and helping her get out of the house for lunch and dinner dates, and they are establishing new restful evening routines involving an 8:00 reflection time and 9:00 pampering time which is helping Christina get to bed on time (at least on nights when she finishes work before 10, which she hopes will be more often next month).

Greg Teaching on the Plagues

(Didn't have a great picture for this! )

Greg is teaching about the ten plagues in his Exodus class this week. We’ve been talking about the story at home, about how one of the ways to look at the story is that the plagues demonstrated God’s power over the things that the Egyptians trusted in, perhaps even targeting Egypt’s gods one by one. So for today’s class quiz, Greg used a question I had suggested as an idea: “if God sent plagues today to show his strength against the things we trust in today, what would those plagues look like?” Personally, I was concerned that the responses might look a bit too much like real life in Malawi – power outages, floods, droughts, cholera, fuel shortages, the devaluation of the currency by 50% in one year. It was interesting, then, when Greg did ask the question, only a couple of students grasped the question, from the rest of the class he was met with blank stares. Of course, he’s really pushing the envelope in teaching by asking for an interpretation or life application instead of just a reiteration of items for the reading – he knew that and so he spent the first five or ten minutes of the quiz talking about the concept. After that, one student, the child of a missionary, raised his hand and offered up the idea of something like Y2K, or all electronics in the world going out at once. “Yes!” Greg said, “that’s a great example. Anyone else?” No other thoughts were offered, so the class moved forward. (Another answer actually written by a student in the quiz ended up being “That all false prophets could no longer speak.” An amazing and creative idea.)

They discussed the gods of Egypt – some of the class suggested strongly that these were entities which were entirely fabricated, based on convenience and dependencies on an agrarian society. Others started mentioning that these could be actual entities, true spiritual powers with the ability to influence outcomes on this earth. Greg made it clear to the class that even if these gods were real, they were definitely part of creation, beings created by God, though now fallen. And the plagues, he explained showed that God had power over all of creation, including any other earthly powers. Actually, he went on to explain, another way to look at the plagues is creation amid the relative absence of God. Creation is structured and ordered and good. Without God however, that is no longer the case. Pharoah wanted to be God, God let him have his way, but without the creator of life, light and everything else, there was only darkness, death and chaos. It did not work out to well for Pharoah.

Returning to the topic of “powers” other than God, Greg changed the topic to another real-life implication. “I have been thinking about these things recently,” he began, “because this month there was a tragedy with one of the pastors we’ve been working with. He was a great guy who was doing amazing things for his community, building churches and brining water and education. But he was driving his motorbike in a storm, and he was struck by lightning and he died.” Greg went on to explain that as an outsider, he was curious to know how people might interpret what happened. He was concerned that people might think that God had struck this pastor down. “No!” the entire class nearly roared at once. Being struck by lightening in Malawi was not an act of God, it seemed. “How about random chance?” Most likely the most common answer by far that westerners would give, there was also a decent amount of agreement from the class for this possibility. Greg then asked the class, what would people in the village say, how would they explain what happened. No one would speak up directly, but there was a lot of whispering. Whispering so loud, in fact, that Greg could hear multiple people mentioning the word “witchcraft.” He asked the class again and again, but nobody spoke up. Finally, he said, “So I hear people mentioning curses and witchcraft. Do you think people would say that this pastor was cursed by spirits?” The response was a crowd of students answering in the affirmative with various sounds.

Greg went on to explain that the idea of spirits and curses killing someone by lightening was the same as the concept of Egypt’s gods having power, and that a key point of the Exodus narrative is that God has power over all of creation, including spirits and powers of evil. That other “powers” are not powerful at all next to God. This is definitely a novel concept for many in Malawi, many people in Malawi would say that God operates in his own sphere of influence and spirits operate in their own sphere of influence, with little interaction in between. This is a big part of what we are aiming to address with theological education in the colleges and transformational development in the villages – that God has power over all of creation, and that he has power over spirits and curses. That might be harder to explain – why a good pastor might be struck by lightening if God was all-powerful, but it’s a different discussion than the one circulating in our church circles currently, which is essentially “Who’s next? I heard that someone else is cursed!” Fortunately for Greg, he still has most of his semester ahead of him, and he has a bit more time to try and influence these 78 young minds about what the scripture narrative might mean for their own lives and their own theology. In the village, too, we are making plans to visit the pastor’s widow, to affirm the good work being done in the community, and perhaps even to do a teaching about Cholera and what the people of the church can do to bring hope and healing to their communities.