This post comes from Scott Koehn, a member of Southwood's Tanzania team who recently hosted a visitor from Tanzania.
This past weekend, Saturday afternoon until Tuesday morning, we have had a Tanzanian named Munguatosha staying with us. It was his first trip to the United States and we spent all afternoon Sunday touring Lincoln.
He was amazed at the homes people live in, the shopping malls, the automobiles with only one or two people in them, the downtown area, and the university campus. As we passed a small used car lot he couldn’t believe the number of different cars and trucks there were for people to choose from. In his country walking, bicycles, and buses, are what most people use for transportation. I next took him to the new car lots on North 27th streets.
He asked how people could purchase such nice vehicles and live in such nice big homes. I tried to convince him that not everyone was so fortunate and drove him to some of the poorer neighborhoods with small houses and apartment buildings. He pointed out that people still had cars or trucks there as well.
We ended the trip by driving by a Starbucks and store that was marked Pet Hotel. He looked at me and before he could ask I said yes people pay money to leave their pets there while they are on vacation or out of town.
On Monday night I took him to small group where we went through the first chapter of the book “Enough” He sat and listened quietly to us talk about “affluenza” and “credititus” and keeping up with the Joneses. He listened quietly to us read and discuss the Bible verses. As we went through the discussion questions he talked about coming back from Henry Doorley zoo earlier that afternoon and seeing storage buildings where people stored there “stuff” they didn’t have room for in their homes and garages. Then I sat and became quiet. I thought about my own life filled with consumerism, all the stuff I had, and being driven to work hard to get a large enough retirement account that some day I could retire. But the thoughts and questions remained unanswered. How much is enough?
Munguatosha left Tuesday morning to visit other places in Nebraska. As Faye and I discussed the weekend’s events and our visitor around the dinner table Tues, evening, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. I laughed out loud when it dawned on me the answer to my thoughts and questions had been with me all weekend. Munguatosha’s name translates to “God is sufficient”.
Our God is all we truly need.
Recent Comments