Beiumy

[sojourner]

Hi, friends. I have been following Leo for 2 years now and although have never posted on friends I have listen to hundreds of hours of his YouTube talks. Nice to "meet" you all!

I have a pretty unique background compared to most quote-unquote average Americans. When I was 19 years old, I joined a very strategic and intentional denomination of sorts in the Evangelical, Protestant, Christian Church.  This denomination had a four-year intensive training program that equipped its members to go and live in the most remote parts of the world to translate the bible into indigenous tribal languages all over the world and essentially to teach the biblical story from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible in the native languages of these people.

After I joined the denomination, at 19, I was tested and found to have exceptional intrinsic, natural linguistic aptitude to analyze unknown languages to me. So, I made a plan to go to the most remote part of the world as far as most Bush pilots and tribal linguists website. After my 4 years of training (both Biblical and technical) I moved to the Jungle of the Star Mountain range on the island of West Papua, Indonesia. I moved with my chill little boys and one of my little boys was born there. My now ex-husband surveyed and Hiking into the middle of the Jungle and found a group of tribal people AKA indigenous people and communicating through the national language, Indonesian, found some men who are fluent enough to understand and asked if it would be okay if our family built a home in the middle of the Jungle with them. The tribal group approved and were very eager to have any of the goods from the outside world that might come with our presence in their villages (the people had never seen white foreigners before, are former cannibals, where penis gourds, grass skirts, and no tops to give you an idea I've had desperate they understandably are for help from the outside) and we proceeded to build a house out of jungle wood and use solar panels for electricity. We lived in this location for years. I did learn the extremely difficult Papu in tribal language just from spending time with the people and also spending time analyzing the grammatical structures that I discovered. One of my tasks was to write a 75 page grammatical description of this language that had never been studied by outsiders before, which was to be  the foundational grammatical work that was needed for Bible translation to begin.

I'm sorry this post is so long already but I really wanted to give you guys an idea of my background before I post my question to The Forum.

Anyway, this life was my dream life at the time. I spent 12 years in indonesi in the jungle doing this kind of work with one specific tribal group. All the while, my husband at the time and the father of my three children who had a pastoral status and so on was verbally abusive to me starting from the age of 20 and this continued throughout our missionary career and indonesi behind closed doors. But, of course, any time we were in public whether it be with the Nationals meaning Indonesians or the tribal people meaning the popcorn's, he had on his pastoral face and although those closest to him new how narcissistic and emotionally and verbally abusive he could be toward people he works with and people he lives with, the general public had no idea. My job was to smile in public and eventually I developed a survival system in my own mind which essentially was focusing on my love for the tribal people that we lift rest, my love for the Indonesian people, my love for Linguistics, my love for cross-cultural living, my love for being able to help those in need, my love for my children, and my love for the lifestyle that I was leading which was very exciting to say the least. It was a dream come true except for that one detail, the emotionally abusive and mind-controlling husband.

Fast forward to 4 years ago, my family had to suddenly leave the middle of the Jungle because my ex-husband had developed hereditary coronary disease. He had been going to a doctor in Singapore every 6 months and eventually, he had a consultation with the doctor while I was still on the island of Papua, and the doctor told him that his life could be at risk if he stayed --That he needed to be able to be near hospitals and to have a better diet available to him other than eating the tubers and greens that we were primarily eating in the jungle with the tribal people.

At least, that is the official story that we told our financial donors and financially supporting churches in our newsletter.

although it was true that he had a bad report from his regular doctor in Singapore, we could have easily stayed in the jungle and he could have taken medications to lower his cholesterol and so on. But the real reason that we had to leave the jungle was because my husband at the time could barely greet the tribal people in their native tongue although we had lived there for years. I was fluent completely in the language and was able to speak on a heart level with the people about their inner desires, their fears, the things that motivate them in life, and high-level topics such as these at length. And my ex-husband simply could not live day-in-and-day-out being belittled by the tribal people (their culture is such that to try and motivate someone, they make derogatory remarks and call names such as stupid and idiotic and dumb and ask questions like "What's wrong with you? Why can't you speak like your wife?" and things like this--This is simply a cultural difference because it's also the way they motivate their own children and one another, LOL) and most of all, his ego was being hurt as he watched me thrive in our village situation.  I was so blind at the time, but now I am as certain as I can be that he is a bona fide narcissist and this was just torturous for him. He lives and breathes and makes every decision subconsciously based on feeding his ego and still does to this day.

So, we left the village and a lot of crying faces behind in the jungle 4 years ago.

We moved back to the US and quickly I realized that our missionary marriage was emotionally abusive and they denomination that I was a part of I slowly begin to see as being essentially a cult. we taught our children as does every member of that denomination that the only true spiritual person in life will be a missionary with that specific denomination to those specific kinds of people and do those specific tasks for the sake of Eternity. Now I can see that the group was extremely explosive and 90% of what we did was judge others outside the denomination, even other Evangelical Protestant Christians were not as good as us in our minds. It all is so interesting because supposedly in the basis of our religion was Jesus Christ and his preachings centered on being non-judgemental but our thought patterns revolved around us being God's gift to the Earth.  It's quite sickening now in reflection. 

 

 

 

 

[i am I AM]

Fascinating story. Yes, actually judgment is not necessary at all once you become aware of hypocrisy. After all, awareness (observation from silence; meditation helps with this) is all you need. Have you ever heard the expression "life will give you all you need, plus more"? If you want true happiness, it is right in front of you, non-hypocritically.

It was very courageous of you to put your saga "out there". I don't know if I will be ready to do that for awhile! +, mine is a little more localized, so the mind tells me.