David:         In our 60 and counting years of marriage, one of the things we have done a lot of is traveling.

Karen:         We certainly have. We once totaled all of the countries that we’d been in cumulatively. You know, we weren’t together as a couple.

David:         Could have been, but it could have been just you or just me.

Karen:         Yeah. As far as we could tell, it’s been 55 countries that we have visited. And we did intentionally, knowing that we would get older and wouldn’t be able to travel.

David:         Yeah. So, our travel days are much less than what they used to be. All that traveling resulted in us forming some rather strong beliefs about the topic. And we will share those with you on this visit.

Intro:            Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:         Okay. If I said, let’s plan a trip to Africa, you would probably say, “Let’s think about it.” Is that right?

Karen:         Well, I’d probably say, hey, hey, hey, you think we really can do that anymore?

David:         I think we were wise. We did our traveling when we were younger. And we did an awful lot of it.

Karen:         What was the first country you remember traveling to that was out of the state?

David:         My uncle, John D. Jess, said, “David, I want you to go with me to Haiti.”

Karen:         Okay.

David:         He had been there a number of times and that was my first exposure to real poverty. And I would also say it was the first time I gained an incredible appreciation for missionaries. I never really understood what they did until that trip to Haiti and that opened up all kinds of different places in the Caribbean and then over to Europe and all parts of Africa.

Karen:         So, you’re probably in your early 20s, maybe at that time?

David:         I would say probably middle 20s.

Karen:         Middle 20s.

David:         Yeah.

Karen:         The first place I can remember traveling outside of the country was to Mexico. My mother was the secretary to the international director at Youth for Christ at that time. And so, they were taking a group of donors and interested partners to Mexico, and she brought me along. And one of the great memories I have of that, we took a train down and we got off the train at a train station; and was reboarding and repacking people up. And there was a mom sitting beside the train boarding area with a little kid. He must have been about two and she’d give him a little push and then this little child would put his hand out and say, “Cinco, Cinco, Cinco.”

So, it was the first time I ever saw a process of begging with this mother using this little child. And that has stayed in my memory. I’ve seen all kinds of beggars in all kinds of places around the world. But that first experience was transforming for me.

David:         I saw that a lot in India. I think I was in India probably seven, maybe eight times after a while. One of my great memories, Karen, is a little odd incident. I had become friends with K.P. Yohanan who began Gospel for Asia. And he said, “You have to come to see what India is like.”

But before I did that, I took on the sponsorship of what he called a national worker or a native missionary. And I prayed for this man, and I had a picture of him. But it was kind of impersonal, because I would give every month to see that he was supported. I was in the middle of nowhere in India and there are a lot of those middle of nowhere. And I was speaking to a group, okay, KP had arranged all this and there were a lot of people. They were in the hundreds. And there was one gentleman, I had noticed him when I talked. And then afterward he kind of hung around and he smiled. And I thought, I wonder who that is. He cut us that out. And when most of the people had cleared away, it was his turn and he came up and he said, “Aytayagi.”

Karen:         Oh. So sweet.

David:         Taiyagi was my national missionary. I couldn’t say anything more to him. I hugged him. It was a marvelous experience.

Karen:         But we’ve learned a lot from our travels. In fact, so much so that it’s become a framework of being for us. We don’t think people can be educated unless they’ve had travel experience. Not really educated. I mean, you can have formal schooling. But that look at the global condition of the world and being exposed to it here, there, you know, 55 different places is so transforming for us personally, even in the way we view God’s work in the world, that for those who can travel, we would highly recommend that they make this a priority in their lives, that they begin to travel to the places in the world to learn about the world, but also to see the work of God around the world because that also is a corner.

David:         Karen, it’s everywhere. It’s absolutely everywhere. The extent of the kingdom is phenomenal. No matter where you go, sooner or later you’re going to run into a believer and they’re going to be passionate about the things of Christ. One of the obvious realizations is that you are coming from a wealthy country.

Karen:         Oh, my goodness.

David:         The other nations of the world, for the most part, there are some exceptions, but they don’t have anywhere near the wealth that America has.

Karen:         I had the opportunity. Well, actually, I think it was an invitation that came to you first to travel with Larry Ward, who was then the president, CEO of Food for the Hungry, literally around the world.

David:         Yes.

Karen:         But you were really tied up with broadcasting. It felt like you couldn’t take, what was six or seven weeks?

David:         Six weeks, you were gone, yes.

Karen:         Six weeks, but you said you really should take Karen because she’s the writer in the family. So, I appreciate that because that meant you were home with four kids running them through their schedules. I mean, I set up someone to do the laundry and a friend who volunteered to help. And as I remember, a day after I had left for this five-to-six-week journey, Jeremy Mains, our youngest, came down with chickenpox. You had to deal with that.

David:         I remember that. Where’s Karen when I need her?

Karen:         But that journey just absolutely changed my life. The vision of the world and of God’s work in the world and the need of people. And the privilege we have as Americans. We have taken it so for granted. We have no idea what people endure or live with until you’ve seen it.

David:         Your experience of seeing the boat people trying to escape.

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         That was Vietnam at the time.

Karen:         Right. So, I can’t remember where we were exactly. It was right at the beginning of that world trip. Let’s just say we were in Southeast Asia somewhere. And Larry Ward, who was always talking on the phone in the middle of the night, I mean, I had a room next to his and his wife. So I think, “When does this man sleep?” And that was the time when he could talk with his staff at home. But he’d received a phone call that there had just been Vietnamese refugees who had actually been thrown into the waters from their little ship. They were escaping a little fishing boat. Pirates had taken everything they had and then threw them in the water. That was a deliberate attempt to kill them so they will drown. But there happened to be a rescue ship. And if we hurry, we could get on the rescue ship and do interviews before they were processing them because they were from Vietnam in Southeast Asia, one country somewhere.

So, we did that. And of course, I couldn’t speak their language, Vietnamese, and they couldn’t speak English very much. And but at the same time, I was deeply, deeply moved. So, we kind of threw a lot of body language, finding words that were common. I said, “Why have you come? I was talking with two sisters, beautiful little gals in their early twenties. “Why have you left family and home and your country, language, everything?”

Why have you come? And her answer was to be free, to have freedom. Now, if that doesn’t put you to shame as an American, you know, we’re so proud of our freedom and our liberties. But until you’ve not had them or you’ve been exposed to people who have not had those liberties, who were in danger for their lives, living under a communist system at that time. You don’t have the meaning of that word until you’ve had that kind of encounter. So, travel often provides us with those learning experiences that come through the people we meet on those journeys very often. That totally changes our world perspective.

David:         I have those feelings about Kazakhstan. I couldn’t have told you where Kazakhstan was on the map. You know, it was one of the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, obviously under communism. I went after the Soviet Union had fallen, so now it was separate from Russia, but it was still communist. I had gone there, actually, it was under the auspices. We didn’t make it something we talked about all the time with the Billy Graham Association, and I was teaching a small group. There probably were about a dozen people in the class, but I remember walking around and you get this uneasy feeling that, “Do they know I’m here?” You know, I’m not anybody famous, but they know I’m American.

Karen:         Someone may be watching or listening.

David:         My passport said it, and you have this awareness. These people are living under this all the time, and yet the kingdom is there. All those people who had come to learn, they were all kingdom members. Now, a lot of people are not going to have experiences like we had, but I still want them to think kingdom was. In fact, one of the things, Karen, that’s interesting to me, I have come away from my travels saying the Bible is really almost more relevant for many of these countries than it is for America, because they know the soul going out to sow the seed, and all those agrarian illustrations.

Karen:         Well, I had the same thing happen when I was in Kenya. There were a group of Kenyan women, and they were talking about a Bible passage. It was the Bible passage where the woman who marries David, I can’t remember who he is, she was married to her husband dies, and she sets up a marriage for herself as one of David’s wives. And as I heard those women from Kenya describe how each of their tribes treated the widows in their tribes, I actually thought this is a passage that is not for the Western world. This is a passage that these women relate to, understand its meaning.

David:         Husband dies, they have nothing.

Karen:         They have nothing and have experienced, I mean it was very humbling, and it was a meaningful passage to them because it addressed who they were and what they lived. So those kinds of things that come your way when you travel are just invaluable.

David:         You mentioned Kenya, so I’m going to give an illustration of what I would like to share as a great lesson. All right. If I put the lesson into words, it would be as followers. We recommend that you include kingdom thinking as a part of your travel and our vacation plans. Think about the kingdom and most of the time I don’t think people do.

Let me give you an illustration. You said Kenya. Okay, we’re going to say expenses. We’re not worried about expenses. Just say everybody’s got enough money. And if you say, “Where would you recommend people go for the most wonderful of vacations?” I would say, “Go on safari to see zebras ” and all that.

Karen:         See the land rover open-sided for the most part.”

David:         Yeah, and then the guide pulls right up next to where maybe four or five lions are.

Karen:         The pride of all.

David:         He says let’s watch them.

Karen:         It’s right there in the ground.

David:         That’s an experience that is absolutely breathtaking; but to draw in the kingdom thoughts, in addition to this wonderful thought of going on safari, which gives you an appreciation of God’s creation, also you see nearby on that same trip we could visit the Kibira slums. Now the Kibira slums are not a tourist area, but they are a wonderful area for believers to visit to realize the poverty that people live in. These vast areas. And you walk through, and you say I can’t believe this exists. You went there and you were touched deeply by that.

Karen:         I was. The way we did this travel was we connected with Christians in the country who were either leaders in the country or part of the missionary community who were working with a world relief and development organization. So, they had the entrée, they had the knowledge, they knew where to go in the slums.

David:         They were like tour guides.

Karen:         They were, but they had organized themselves to expose Westerners deliberately to this sort of thing. In fact, the people I happened to be visiting at that time, one of them was meeting an air load of businessmen. They flew into the airport who were coming to see Kenya, and they were going to take them to see all of Kenya not just the safari or the beautiful places but to expose them to God’s work in those very slums.

Now the interesting thing about that relationship for me was that we had started the Global Bag Project. That was an idea that came out of folk who lived in Africa that would give work for women seamstresses, but we had to also provide sewing machines. They had to have training and sewing.

One of the most beautiful memories I have is there were 12 Kenyan women who had taken the courses in sewing and had become certified as sewers. They sew matching like Moomoo’s dresses, and they all had these sewing certificates.

David, for people from the slums who’ve not been educated that is meaningful, deeply, deeply meaningful.

I remember going into the slum to visit them in their little hovels where they were and one woman had a sewing machine they were treadled because they either didn’t have electric power or the power went off and she was sewing these bags and there was nothing but dirt floor and I thought how do you do this and not get your material dirty but she did it fine turned out beautiful bags. So, those realities are just, you know, you don’t ever recover from the information and learning that they give you.

David:         I would say as a similar illustration if you go to India you’ll want to see the Taj Mahal. And there’s nothing wrong with going there it’s a hard place to get to it’s an Agra and it’s going to take a day journey but it’s worth it and you can say, “Yes I stood there and I marveled at the beauty,” but also figure out how you can see the incredible beauty of an orphanage. Hear those little kids sing.

Karen:         Yeah. Sing Jesus songs.

David:         Know that they were picked up off the street and probably would have been sex trafficked or whatever you know and then…

Karen:         … child labor is a big thing.

David:         Christians and ministries like Gospel for Asia with my dear friend KP. They had a heart for these kids. And so, you see not only one side, but you see the kingdom side. And I don’t care where you go in terms of the world there are always those people who can show you the kingdom side.

Karen:         I would say that you cannot be really educated unless you travel. And I know that everyone can’t travel but for those who are able to travel who have the means or can gather the means then this needs to be a priority in their lives because you will not understand globalization which is a huge move in our age. You won’t understand that there are other ways of thinking that are probably sometimes better than our American way or our Western world way.

David:         Or better for the people as to where they are.

Karen:         Right.

David:         They’re intelligent people.

Karen:         I have a prime example of that. One of the great efforts for well-meaning people in the Western world to provide clean water. Women sometimes walk three to seven miles little girls together water. So, in our great Western enterprise systems some about 10,000 wells or at least that many were built in Africa without much conferring with the national leadership. There are now 10,000 unworkable water system, wells that have been dug in Africa that have been abandoned. They were made in a way that could not be maintained by the local people. The local people were not consulted as far as was this workable for your community or your regional area. But we came in as Westerners thinking we know everything.

David:         So, that they were well-meaning.

Karen:         Well, it is well-meaning but it is out of a place of ignorance. So, that’s why we have to learn what the world is. We have to train ourselves. We have to listen. We have to read. And when we visit, we have to have that mindset that says “I’m here to receive more than I am to give.”

David:         Yeah.

Karen:         Very hard sometimes. But those things changes they effectuate a kingdom value in us that we don’t have actually here in the States the way they have it in some other places in the world.

David:         On the good side of all that I think of ministries like the Mercy Ships. You know these doctors who volunteer their time, nurses.

Karen:         Extraordinary. Right.

David:         Go in and you see these little children and there’s no hope and the parents are devastated by a cleft lip or whatever and suddenly hope arrives in the name of Jesus.

Karen:         Every village wants a clinic and one of the organizations I worked with decided that not everyone could attend a clinic but they could teach them healthy ways of living. Wash your hands. Teach your children to wash your hands. Separate the animals out from the path so they’re not defecating on the paths in the village.

There’s this whole system of training people in their own countries so that they can identify their problems. First of all, they can solve the problems without the Westerners help. They can empower themselves. They can say well these are the things that we can do. These are our assets. We have these skills and then they can set those things into motion and that kind of teaching is maybe one of the great gifts the Westerners has brought so that when the Westerners leaves or when the Westerners’ money leaves and when there’s no more United Nations funding, those sorts of villages will thrive because they have been taught that they can solve their own problems. They have gifts. They have assets in their community that can be exercised. So that’s one of the goals I think of those of us who go into the world to help is to teach people how to do it themselves. That’s a great gift that can be left behind.

David:         If I go back to the essence of what we wanted to say, usually people have a vacation period a week or two weeks. And then they think, “Where shall we go? Let’s go to Disneyland.”

Karen:         Nothing wrong with that. Great experience. All kinds of people, parents and kids.

David:         But it would be a good idea we say to along with the vacation or the enjoyment side of it even if you’re traveling just in the States to say, “What about kingdom things? What about on Sunday when we’re away? What could we pick up that would be beneficial to us as far as ministry, as far as the thoughts of Jesus are concerned?” Whatever you have in mind the one country of the world I would like to visit because of my roots, and I never have would be Ireland. So, there are a lot of things about Ireland I would like to see before I go but on top of that what do I want to find out kingdom-wise in terms of Ireland? What is their history? Who was St. Patrick? What do I know about him? So, you include that kingdom element in terms of those times that you have opportunity to travel. That’s basically what we’re saying. It’s not that profound a teaching but I think it has value because we live in a global world, don’t we?

Karen:         Yeah, we’re wondering how many people listening to us are planning a vacation. Great!

David:         Probably a double vacation after COVID.

Karen:         We think that’s fabulous. Don’t forget that there are kingdom influences here that you can expose yourself to and we’re just saying be intentional about that. Make that a part of your travel plan.

David:         And if it’s maybe a little bit of a push to figure out how you’re going to do that? Good. Sometimes that’s what we need and sometimes Karen it becomes the best time of the whole trip. Aytayagi, I hadn’t anticipated it but that was so, so neat.

Karen:         Aytayagi. What a way to end.

Outro:         You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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