A disgusting towel
In spite of his comfort with the conditions in the backcountry, Lumaf has still faced challenges in his missionary work. He mentions one particularly horrifying experience, an occasion on which he had hiked through the mountains for days to attend an important missionary event. Attendees trickled in, all of them praying and singing in sweltering heat. The organizers had provided only one towel for everyone to use to mop up the sweat pouring out of them. Just one towel, passed hand to hand from dawn to dusk, with which to wipe off everyone’s hands, necks, arms, and faces.... Lumaf recalls that by the time it reached him, it looked like sausage meat, a long strip of blackened, yellowed fabric twisted and wrinkled beyond recognition. The solicitous event worker who passed him the towel said he looked beat, and suggested he wipe the sweat from his brow. Lumaf hesitated for a moment, wondering, “How can I wipe my face with this!?” But he then recalled Paul’s admonishment to the faithful to be all things to all people. He therefore calmly accepted the towel, wiped his face, and passed it on to the next person, saying: “It’s hot and you’re sweating. Here’s a towel to wipe your face.”
Doctors had told Lumaf that his stroke had left him infertile. He and his wife accepted the news, and consoled themselves with the thought that not having children probably made it easier for them to pursue their vagabond lifestyle. They were therefore flabbergasted when she became pregnant in their seventh year of marriage. “It was completely unexpected. We were amazed by the news.” They named their boy Mu’en (“grace”) in the hope that he would spend his life living in God’s grace.
Lumaf’s other “child” is his recently published account of life as a missionary, Letters from Mountains Flooded with Showers of Grace. The book documents seven years of his life in the mountains in poetic prose of philosophical depth. He says that every time he thinks of the refugee camps, he remembers a pair of hopeful, tear-filled eyes. “I ask myself, if I were in the same boat as those people, if I had nothing at all and were living in danger, would I still have faith and compassion?” The answers to such questions are not “blowin’ in the wind,” but are found through the practice of love.