Looking back once again at 2008, I think we could say that it was the year of the robbery for us. Up until this past year I cannot remember ever being robbed, even in all my travels around Latin America, nor can I remember ever even being threatened with robbery. Oh wait, by bike was stolen freshman year of college, but that was it I guess. Then this year Ann and I have been robbed 5 times total.
This first was in Chattanooga. We stored our bikes inside the stairwell of our apartment building where they were locked up safe and dry. Then one night I look in the stairwell and they are both gone. I assumed it must be our neighbors who share the stairwell that have something to do with it since only they have a key to the door and they happened to sell drugs for a living so the people they let in probably wouldn't have a hard time stealing a couple bikes. So I went next door and told them what happened and that we were filing a report with the police. The next morning we woke up and the bikes were back. Our neighbor explained that he went to his friend's house and found them there. So in the end nothing lost there and we were still friends with the neighbors.
The last three cases have all been since we moved to Bolivia. The first happened to me. Ann and I were at a large festival in a city near ours one night. While we were walking through a very dense crowd of people some spit the biggest loogie on my next. I reached up to wipe it off and 5 seconds later realized that I had taken my hand out of my pocket, and sure enough, the cell phone was gone when I reached back down.
A month later Ann was sitting on a bench in a plaza reading and waiting for me to meet her there when two small boys stuck her in the knee with a kitchen steak knife and told her to give them her money. Shocked and surprised she pulled out her change purse and gave them some change, but they insisted on having it all, so she gave them the rest. What the boys didn't know was that Ann had just cashed her paycheck and had a lot of cash on her at the time. Thanks to God she had just bought that little change purse a couple weeks earlier so the boys assumed that is where she kept all her money.
Another couple months later Ann and I were going on a weekend trip with some of my school friends to a nearby town. She and I were going to meet my friends and had to walk through the market to get there. Suddenly we realized that Ann's backpack was open. We searched it carefully and it looks like they only grabbed our flashlight.
Then in December while on our visit to Peru we took a bus from Lima to Arequipa-- a 16 hour ride. When we arrived the next afternoon and got to a hostel we discovered that our bags which we had checked in the bottom of the bus had been completely searched through and all our cash was gone. We had hidden it quite well so they had plenty of time to search our bags. It had to have been the bus crew because only they can access the storage of the bus. I was extremely upset and embarrassed and even more upset that the company refused to take responsability when we went back to tell them what had happened. It was ironic because just before we left Lima our friends we stayed with there had told us of how embarrassed they are of their own people who would rob like that.
So what can we learn from all that? I am most grateful that neither Ann nor I were harmed physically or emotionally and that in most cases it was something of little value. I can say I had a hard time letting go of that money (It was a good bit. However, thanks to Christmas presents from family members I think they covered almost the same amount so we try to see it like we didn't lose anything). Which did show me that even though I preach against it I still rely too much on my own resources. I really don't know still what it is to rely fully on God for my provision. Certainly robbery always reminds us of this. But how have these events changed the way we live. Or should they? Would it be right to live in complete paranoia, thinking that every person I see on the street is a potential robber? I know lots of missionaries and other travellers who live in constant fear of everything outside their walls. Is that how we are supposed to live? Of course there are certain precautions we can all take, but we must eventually recognize that God is in control and there is no burgler-proof system. Certainly I look back and see we can learn from those situations. Hopefully we will be able to live smarter and prevent those things from happening, but we certainly will not let fear rule our lives. We will not let it prevent us from living and serving in places where risk exists, but those robberies were reminders to me that I sometimes get too comfortable in a place where I know I should not be, as in the case where my phone was robbed (I had been warned it would happen if I went but I was too confident that it could never happen to me.).
But most of all I don't want it to let me start judging others and shutting myself off from opportunities that come up to interact with strangers. I can think of hundreds of cases of the love and hospitality and friendliness of people here and in Chattanooga for every time we have been wronged. I know that people who do that often come from very difficult situations and it motivates me to work harder to work in the world to bring about a more just and equal society where Shalom is King and we no longer need to rob. I think we as Christians should always give the other the benefit of the doubt because we know that Love hopes all things and believes all things and when that trust is broken it turns the other cheek and endures all things.
So those are just some thoughts I guess.