The Phone Call That Changed My Life (Part 1)

It was a Thursday morning in the middle of January when I got the call. Actually is started with a Skype chat. My friend Seng, who is also the Regional Finance Manager (Region = Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi & DRC), Skyped me to see if I was free and able to leave the office so he could call me. I was; so I went outside, took his call and began walking laps around the FH compound. Now I was expecting Seng to ask if I would be interested in doing some regional training. We had Skyped about the option a few months back, so that was what I was expecting. Instead Seng shocked me into silence (something that doesn’t happen too often!) with a request to consider the position of Finance Director in FH/DRC. I was stunned to say the least. We talked for quite a while about the situation in the DRC, how they hadn’t had a Finance Director for over a year, how hard the transition was to the new Sun Systems, how deadlines would come and go without the necessary work being completed. I spoke of my love of Uganda, the connection that I have here, the life that I had created for myself, the roots that were starting to settle.

The reason Seng asked if I would consider a move to FH/DRC was because he was aware of how under utilized I have been in the FH Uganda office. When I first arrived I spent time training the field coordinators and accountants in the use of Excel and the new financial system. This, coupled with a big learning curve kept me fairly busy. However, now that we have settled into the new financial system, my main role has been adding the receipts sent in by the field and ensuring they match the journals they have sent in. It is important work, but not very challenging and not the best use of the education and experience I bring with me from Canada. My life in Kampala is wonderful, but something was missing at work. I knew God brought me to Uganda, but I just wasn’t sure if this is what I was supposed to be doing. I figured I would wait it out; see where things would go. Have patience that God had a plan for my time in Uganda that He would reveal when it was time.

So back to the conversation with Seng…I was obviously not going to be able to give him an answer then and there, not did he expect one. He asked me to give it some thought, and that if I had any further questions, Dwight Jackson, the Regional Director, would be at my office the next day. So I went back to work, completely stunned and unable to talk to anybody about it. Well, actually, I went directly to my friend Julia (who works with the Go-Ed Students). I had to tell somebody! Then it was back to work. It is fairly hard to concentrate when someone has just asked you to consider a life changing decision. But somehow I managed. As soon as I got home and my parents came on line, I Skyped them to tell them the news and run things by dad. We talked and I cried for two hours. Dad and I went round and round and round. He kept asking me questions, trying to help me make a decision. Just to give you an idea of what was going through me head during this time: I have taken two accounting classes and spent five months working in NGO work…what were they thinking? There was no way I could do the job they were asking. Then there was the thought of leaving Kampala, my house, my friends, my church, the youth group and BUFUKULA. There was just no way I wanted to leave all that to go to a country I had never been too, where they speak French, and to a job that was bigger than my schooling and experience.

By the end of the conversation with my dad I had decided that what I really love best is training and Uganda and that being in the Director of Finance position in the DRC would not allow me to do that. I was completely prepared to tell Dwight Jackson, thank you but no thank you. I met with Dwight that morning and started by asking him for some more information about the situation in FH/DRC and for information about the DRC. I wanted to make sure they new they were asking someone with little finance experience and no schooling and almost no NGO work. Dwight was wonderful to chat with. He told me God works with our weakness and turns them into strengths; that there are things that can be taught, but that my leadership and management qualities were something they needed desperately in the DRC office. Some other things he told me. FH/DRC is the largest field in all of FH, size and money wise. It has an approx. $11 million budget in USAID grants with the potential for another $33 million over the next 5 years. As Dwight said, “It’s like we have a six inch pipe and are trying to shove a ten inch pipe inside it.” By the end of our conversation I was convinced I could do the job. He also told me that there was no way I could make a bad decision; if I stayed it was a good decision if I went to the DRC it was a good decision. So…instead of telling Dwight I was not interested in the job I told him I needed more time to think it through.

To give you an idea of the time frame, the day I spoke with Dwight was Friday January 18^th. For the next two and a half weeks I went back and forth and back and forth. I spoke with several of my ex-pat FH friends and with friends from church. I wanted to say no, yet couldn’t. A few things stood out for me during this time. First, I spoke with Gary Zander who is a Canadian on the board of FH International (actually with the name change FH Association). He pointed out to me that what I was experiencing was grief: the grief of leaving Uganda and all the ties that I had made. Understanding what I was feeling was a big step forward. Once I understood what I was feeling I was able to begin working through the grief and explore the possibility of leaving. Second, in one of my many conversations with my friend Julia she asked me if I wanted the job. I had never asked myself that question. I was focusing on could I do the job and did I want to leave Uganda. Third, Julia told me to stop stressing about the decision.

So I did. I stopped stressing and I stopped praying about it. I completely stopped giving the decision any attention. And that is when the work started. I would be in morning devotions and would be banging my head on the table as we sang Trust and Obey. We were working through the book, On Earth As It Is In Heaven by Darrow Miller and Bob Moffitt, during our devotions. Little things would have me shaking my head. It was as if the words or phrases were directed right at me. Finally Seng came to Kampala and we sat and chatted. I told him all my reasons for wanting to say NO, but that I couldn’t and had to see what that meant. I still wasn’t saying YES, but I was ready to move to the next step. That step was letting Kostas, the Country Director in FH/DRC, know that they had approached me for the position of Finance Director. I should note two things here: first, at this point the only people who officially new about the offer were me, Seng and Dwight and second, there was another offer on the table. That other offer was the option to be a regional trainer. It was something we had talked about in our original phone conversation and that I had talked about with Dwight. But their first priority was finding a Finance Director and this was the answer I had to give them.

The next day Seng asked me to send my resume on to Kostas and about three days later Kostas called. We chatted for a while and it became clear that the role of Finance Director was not suited for me (something I kinds knew already) but that there were many other ways they could use me in their finance department. In his own words, “We’re drowning here!” I got off the phone excited about the options and ready to take a trip to Bukavu (where the office is located) to visit and flesh out some of the options. But now the cat had to be let out of the bag. Elaine had to be informed and more importantly (sorry Elaine!) Sang Hoon, my country director had to be told. This is where things hit a snag. I talked to Elaine that very night. She was wonderful although it was a little faux pas on my part not to have told her sooner. And I Syped with Seng, told him I was ready for a visit to Bukavu but that Sang Hoon had to be told. He asked me to email Dwight, as it should really come from the Regional Director that they wanted to move an SIS from one field to another. The problem was that Dwight was in the US interviewing for the new Country Director position in Uganda. So I waited and I waited and didn’t hear anything from Dwight. Seng was in the dark and Kostas kept sending me photos of Bukavu to show me how beautiful it was there.

During the next two weeks, as I waited to hear from someone, we continued with the Bob Moffit/Darrow Miller study in devotions. There had been little pieces here or there that seemed to be speaking right to me, but then we came to the chapter on servant hood and we read from Philippians Chapter 2:

¹Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. ⁵In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: ⁶Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

This verse and the phrase a servant is some who voluntarily and sacrificially serves changed the whole course of my decision making. I began to see that perhaps it was God calling me to the Congo and as such, I had no option but to obey. I was felt that my answer had to be YES. But…I still wanted to visit Bukavu, meet Kostas and his team in FH/DRC and discover what role they had for me to fill.

Almost two weeks later, I received an email from Kostas telling me that Dwight had contacted him and that I was to go ahead and tell Sang Hoon what was up. This was not cool with me! Kostas volunteered to be the one to tell Sang Hoon although in hindsight I should have been the one to do it. Actually, it should have been Dwight, but that is a whole ‘nother story. I was on Skype with Seng when an email from Kostas went through to Sang Hoon (it was Seng who told me he had received it). About 10 minutes later Sang Hoon called me into his office. I was a little worried; this came out of left field for him. But he was so gracious. He had first served in the Congo over 10 years ago and the country has a special place in his heart. He also recognized that when looking at the region as whole, the Congo is where there is the need for the most financial help. Lastly, as an SIS himself, he recognizes that as SIS we follow the call from God; if that is where I felt God was leading me, he couldn’t stand in the way.

Everything went very quickly after that. This was early Friday afternoon. By 5pm my tickets were booked for me to fly to Kigali the following Monday evening, then on to Kamembe/Cyangugu Tuesday morning (to get to Bukavu, you fly first to Kigali then to Kamembe/Cyangugu which is a small airport/town on the Rwandan side of the Rwanda/DRC border)