Experiences

Celine and Firmin were a childless couple in their 60s when I met them. Celine is a lovely, kind-hearted Flemish lady who will be 80 in May 2005. Her family are all in Zelzate and she enjoys their company very much. Her brother's annual themed birthday party was an event that they prepared for all year. I never once heard her complain about her life. She used to prepare words and phrases for me each week so that when I went to visit her on a Friday afternoon she had something concrete for me to learn.

Firmin, on the other hand, was a very odd man. He was somewhat leery - I would certainly never have spent time on my own with him. He complained about everything - I think moaning was his chief delight in life. He would never go to Celine's family's parties - he wanted nothing to do with such things. He was also given to strange obsessions. His garden was full of gaudy gnomes, and he had a bird, perhaps a mynah bird, which lived in a cage outside, but he would sometimes bring into the house on his shoulder. One time he got a marker pen and wrote my name all over the bike I was using that day.

The nearest that Celine came to criticism was her description of him as a very "bijzonder" (special /peculiar) man. One time she told me that I should never marry a man that my family did not approve of. Knowing her situation, I knew that that was spoken from the heart, and I have never forgotten it.

The year in Belgium was a very formative one for me. I was on a training programme with an evangelical missionary organisation called Operation Mobilisation. The programme was partly study and partly language learning and friendship evangelism through contact with local people.

My knowledge of the world expanded a lot as a result of contacts with people in and from many countries. I learnt to take an interest in the news, particularly international affairs. And I started to learn about different "world views" and "mentalities" as well as the more visual /physical aspects of culture.

I also learned principles for dealing with other cultures which I believe are sound ones. "It's not better or worse, just different" was a mainstay. I believe it is important to learn about other cultures from their point of view, rather than always making judgements through the lens of our own culture. In a book I read recently, the writer talked about breakfast as a measure of our integration into another culture. I think he has a good point - what you are prepared to stomach first thing in the morning can be a good indicator of your attitude.

Another mantra was FAT - flexible, adaptable, teachable. And I still think that those are all useful attributes for life.

I had never come across evangelicalism before and so was completely unaware what I was letting myself in for in this area. My experience isn't very broad, but even if I had been aware, I think it's true to say that OM Belgium exemplified a somewhat extreme evangelicalism.

I learned for the first time about the evangelical view of the Bible. I also learned experientially about evangelical norms and expectations, and about how leaders can abuse their position of authority. I was told that I wasn't a Christian - that my faith was a well-acted, elaborate fake. A language helper once said that it was a sect I was involved in, and it's true that there were many characteristics in common with cults - restriction on being able to leave the group, lack of freedom to express opinions which did not accord with the leaders, etc. Both my suspicion of that brand of evangelicalism and my fear of exposure and rejection resulting from the experience remain to this day.

From your correspondent in Belgium