Dogs, Dumpsters, and Lunch

Once a week we make a hot lunch at our missions base and invite the men who live at the dumpster behind our building to come and eat with us. There are above-ground hot water pipes that run behind the trash area, and the men put their clothes and old mattresses on the pipes and sleep there. The pipes are a warm respite in the cold winter for those who are homeless.


While the girls and I make macaroni, hot dogs, and mugs of steaming tea, my husband Rashid goes out back and invites the men to lunch. Since Rashid was gone on a trip to the Arctic last week, I went outside myself, along with another guy from our mission.


With me leading the way, we wound around the dried out leaves and scraggy bushes down the path to the dumpster. I boldly marched up to the water pipes, where I could make out a figure slouched down and sleeping. I opened my mouth to call out to the man, but before I could make a sound a dog--black as night--came flying out of the air above our heads. He lunged for us and began barking and growling and showing his teeth.


This girl-who's-never-had-a-dog-before-in-her-life froze in fear. The dog continued to jump and lunge at us, barking sharply and snarling, but the man slept on. I was too stunned to do anything, but take little steps backward each time the dog jumped. Soon we were pressed back against some scraggly bushes and could go no further. I began to call out to the man, whom I recognized. "Valera! Call off your dog! Valera! Valera! Wake up!" He sat up and looked at us groggily, as if he couldn't remember where he was. At this point the other missionary at my side sprung into action, and jumped between me and the dog, spreading his arms out to shield me.


A guard dog is a great, sometimes life-saving asset for a homeless person. The neighborhood is not happy that some men are living behind the dumpster, and a few weeks ago someone set fire to the men's belongings. They lost most of their mattresses and warm clothes. The men are alcoholics, and spend the better part of each day sleeping, so a guard dog's protection is a necessary thing.


Waking up fully, Valera said one quiet word to the dog, and he immediately backed down. He still growled and snorted a bit, but stopped lunging. After trotting in circles in front of us for another minute, he disappeared.


Heart still racing, I quickly invited Valera, who was the only man there that day, to lunch. The rest of our time together followed the usual routine: thorough hand-washing, prayer of thankfulness for the food, lunch and reading the Bible together.


As one missionary read from the life of Jesus, he stopped to explain how Jesus befriended and ate with tax collectors, who were hated in that society. But Jesus didn't care what others thought, and loved and accepted all people. Valera listened intently. "You've done the same for me," he said. "You accepted me and spend time with me, even though you know I'm a drunk. Thank you. I sincerely thank you."


"It's Jesus who loves all people, and told us to do likewise," we told him. "That's why we do this." Solemn, Valera nodded, rose, and left to return to his place at the water pipes.


We've been trying to get the men into shelters, but they often don't want to go. Perhaps it's the lure of being one's own boss, or maybe it's the excitement of living in the risky underworld of homelessness and delinquency. We placed one man in a shelter successfully, only to have him run away a month later from warmth and food and choose to live on the streets. Despite these discouragements and challenges like attacking dogs, we continue to reach out to the homeless, believing that God loves all, accepts all, and desires to rescue all.

Spitting, Babies and Beauty

Life in Russia is full of adventure, and since my eldest son has started public school, I am amazed at the new insights I've received almost daily into Russian culture.


A few days ago I was helping him with his reading homework. We were reading a skazka, or fairytale, and it was full of magic and superstition. "What's superstition mean?" my 7 year-old asked. As I struggled to define the word, I had a flashback of the perfect example that happened 6 years ago...


I was sitting on a hard bench in the loooong hallway of my neighborhood health clinic, trying to hold my squirmy baby boy. It was one of the first times I had taken him to see the Russian doctor, and I was nervous about saying or doing the wrong thing. Russians love systems and uniformity, and being a foreigner meant I was always outside the box--outside the system.


As we waited my bouncing baby boy cooed and gurgled to the babushka, or elderly woman sitting next to us. She smiled at him for a while, and then eventually shook her head and...spit on him three times. Well, ok, it wasn't real spitting, she fake spit. Just made spitting noises. She continued to smile through the whole thing, so I knew it wasn't meant maliciously...but still, did this woman just spit on my baby??!!


I didn't know how to respond, and she seemed to see nothing wrong with it, so I made a mental note to ask my husband about it later. Even though he is Ukrainian, the cultures are very similar.


That night he explained it to me: spitting is to ward off the evil eye. Supposedly if you have something of value, like a beautiful child, then others may become jealous. In their resentment of your good fortune, they may give you the evil eye--so that you lose whatever you have that is valuable. Thus spitting is a way of "tricking" the evil eye--such as if I spit on him, then it means he's not a beautiful baby, and thus no one will be jealous of him and no one will be able to curse him with the evil eye. I even heard stories later of it taken to such a degree in parts of this country, where a baby is born, and no one is allowed to say anything positive about the baby for the first year. Instead only insults are to be given as "protection." Spitting is not just for infants, but can be used as protection in any good occurence or windfall.


As I told my son this story he got hung up on the saliva ("it was pretend spitting, honey") and I again tried to make sense of this huge, fascinating, terrifying, and enigmatic country, that has been my home for 10 years now. I see how the father of lies can so twist our perceptions and escalate our fears that we proclaim something beloved and perfect to be hateful and marred. My prayer is this: Help me Father, to see the beauty in this great nation and people, and to voice it, compliment and extol it. Help me not to be intimidated by the pressure of conformity around me, but to stand for truth and love.