Missing Afghanistan:
When the time comes to say goodbye
Pioneering programmes, new personnel, exciting news. These are the stories you usually hear from BMS World Mission. Today, BMS worker Rory* reflects on leaving a much loved nation after two decades, and what it’s like to say goodbye.
Of things we know we’ll miss about Afghanistan, and the culture, and the way things are done… it’s the people. Friends. And I think that slightly more random way of doing things, maybe. You don’t realise how flexible or reactive you’ve become until you come back somewhere, where, if I want to go and see my brother, he’s got to get his diary out and tell me when, three weeks from now, they’re next free. Whereas if your brother came to see you in Afghanistan, you literally drop everything and make some soup. And they stay with you for as long as they want. I think [we’ll miss] that level of open generosity and flexibility and willingness to stop what you’re doing because of people.
When it comes to new projects… you have this vision, and you know ‘this is something God’s put in my heart to do’… and you do plant a few things, and not everything comes up. Sometimes, you just have to let go and step back, and just let things either grow or kind of fade away – and say, ‘what God wills will continue’, and trust that. Because there is a lot of what we do, even with the best intentions, that is really driven by our own human ambition or ego or experience. God works in partnership with us as we try and achieve things – and God is very adaptable and flexible – he’s not depending on us to get things right, otherwise it would all fail.
When tough things happen… you don’t know whether what feels to you like a bad thing is actually from the hand of God, or whether it’s something God is allowing to happen for a purpose of bringing about good, or teaching you. It’s like Joseph when he was in prison, saying: ‘Other people meant it for bad, but God intended it for good’.
In terms of moments of joy, where things were made possible… there’s been a lot. Catherine*, my wife, has been part of trying to set up a mental health project, in the kind of context of mountain villages that you see in Life’s First Cry.
She wanted to get this really professional team from a major city to work with our little village team, and between them, they’ve come up with their own idea of what rural mental health outreach looks like. That synergy between these two teams that we’ve been working with for a long time, developing them, has meant they have been able to get together during this Covid year, in the absence of [many of us being with them] on the ground. Encouraged and enabled by us, they’re creating a new thing to meet serious, huge needs, of drug addiction, youth suicide and depression and just hopelessness. All these sorts of things afflict families in ultra-poor parts of the world anywhere, but particularly Afghanistan, with the violence overlay from the conflict on top of it. So that’s been a real positive, even coming out of this year. I was not so much surprised, but just impressed and glad that the local leadership stepped up, took charge, and took responsibility for some really tough decisions during the last year.
Some of the standouts for me have been… making the film of Life’s First Cry. That was super fun. But also, the way we just turned up in village after village and got these true stories from people without any priming, just hearing genuine stuff where people’s lives and children had been saved. That was just such a tribute to the village team in what they’d been able to achieve, with willing helpers in the villages to help teach the material.
Another one was a drought recovery programme, bringing decent wheat into places where they had to eat their seed reserves over the winter, and they didn’t have anything to replant. Being able to see people’s livelihoods coming back and them actually having surplus crops again – that was really good.
As today’s story illustrates, while the right time may come for our workers to leave a country, they never truly say goodbye. Rory and Catherine are confident that the team they’ve left behind in Afghanistan will continue where they’ve left off, but there is still much need there. They’ve asked us to go on praying for Afghanistan, for its people, and for the friends they’ve left behind:
- Pray for peace, and for people to be able to live at peace with each other. Pray for some level of actual justice and reconciliation to go on.
- Pray for rain and snow at the right time, and people not to suffer the extra hit of a famine and then loss of food.
- And keep praying for the people who get named in the news, but for all the unknown people as well who are trying to do some good.
Words by Hannah Watson, Editor of Engage, the BMS World Mission Magazine.
*Names changed.
