Hello all,

Last week I set off to visit the village of Nok Dara with two female teachers as my guides. There is a primary school there under the supervision of Father Felix. I went to assess the population in the area and its need for healthcare. Leaving the road behind, we climbed together up through the traditional villages. With one ear I was listening to the wind rustling across thatched roofs, children whacking down grass for the livestock, foot operated rice threshers pounding out the kernels and a wooden plow quietly slicing through the earth and with the other I was listening to the 2 Lepcha teachers chatting in Nepali between their puffs of breath.

“Did you hear the new ring-tone I put on my mobile?”

“No, what?”

“Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams”

“Oh, really I love that one and what a great ring-tone!”

Unexpected paradoxes and juxtapositions come part and parcel with living in India. The old and the new live in such a strange tension here. Who would expect village schoolteachers who earn $40 dollars a month to have mobile phones? Who would expect to hear about ‘Summer of 69′ in the middle of a non-road-accessible Lepcha village perched in the Himalayas?

Father Felix led me to another remote village called Puchowk to say Mass in a local house. I had heard that one of the daughters, Adrena, had MS. The mass was being said for her. Drinking tea soon after our arrival, I looked up and saw Adrena come out of her room. She clutched at a fence; her legs were obviously withered. She moved about with difficulty but finally reached her seat. In contrast, her eyes were bright and her English excellent. I was amazed to find out that she was studying for her Masters degree at the University of North Bengal. It seems that her brother accompanies her and carries her on his back to her classes. Despite having an incurable disease that will drastically shorten her life, she was one of the most curious and energetic people I’ve ever met. She fired questions at me with machine gun rapidity about current events and global politics. “Sir, why is there no peace in the Gaza Strip?” “How about this new president Obama? Do you think he will change things?”

In the same fashion she inundated Father Felix with questions of even greater gravity. “Father, what does the Bible teach about human suffering?” “Why do you think God chose to give me a disease like this?”

Around sunset the Holy Mass began. In front of the picture of the ancient Christ there were two artificial candles with flickering light bulbs to simulate flame. From my seat on the verandah I listened to the old liturgy and stared out at the ramshackle cowshed and earthen walled kitchen-house. On Adrena’s lap her mobile was flashing, indicating a low battery. In front of her Father delivered the age-old sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. In the pale light of dusk I could see a small band of women cooking the evening’s rice on a glowing fire. Under a burning electric bulb I watched Father Felix breaking the daily bread. Contrast makes life so vivid.

Last week, the Bishop of the Darjeeling Diocese unexpectedly stopped at the convent we’ve been staying in. The next day he was planning on traveling through some areas we needed to explore, so we decided to join him. In the front seat of his Bolero he was sending messages from 2 different mobile phones and thumbing in his day planner. From the back seat, we had the opportunity to chat about our intention to improve conditions for delivering mothers and newborns. Bishop Stephen was very excited and kept interjecting statements like,

“You can turn one of the rooms at the school in Kaffer into a clinic if you want to!”

“You know we have a piece of land in Samthar, why don’t you build a house on it and work from there?”

“Oh, the Nurse Sister in Nimbong is getting very old. You could stay at the convent and help improve their dispensary!”

“We’ll do whatever we can to help.”

After a visit to the convent at Nimbong and Bagrakote the Bishop suddenly said, “Hey let’s take Asher to the beach, ha ha ha!”

Despite the fact that the Bishop was running late for several Masses in different locations he was scheduled to give, the vehicle stopped beside the Lesh Khola and we all got out. For 10 minutes Amanda, Asher, Bishop Stephan and I sat skipping stones on that sunny afternoon. He turned and said to me, “This is the river you walked up to build that bridge in Rateygaon, huh? When I was a little boy I lived in the village of Suruk. We came walking this way, 16 miles in fact, to sell our oranges at the market. You see I can understand what the people in the village need because I’m just a village boy myself!”

A Bishop, a big man in an important post with a personal car and driver, a man in demand, a village boy, a man of child-like faith, a simple servant… all at the same time.

I mentioned in my last update that the last two things we’ve been holding onto might be about to slip from our grasp. Well, now they have.

Since late November our contacts in Bhutan have been silent. One day, they simply stopped replying to our enquiries. So we’ve decided that for us enough is enough. A solid decade and many thousands of dollars were spent trying to gain access to the Kingdom. Our project proposal reached the Queen and our efforts still haven’t born fruit. There are people in India that need us right now. There are people giving us open invitations to work in India right now. There are visas in our passports for India right now. We can work simply and cost effectively in India. Imagine if the Good Samaritan, upon seeing the man bleeding on the side of the road, said to himself, ‘I shouldn’t waste my money for I might happen to encounter a beggar in Jerusalem’. So would it be for us if we continued to aim for Bhutan. So the dream, which has, until now, shaped our entire adult lives, is over.

Secondly, we have sent in a letter of resignation to IDEAS. Over the last several months our vision, our lives and our work has changed drastically. Likewise, within the last several months IDEAS has implemented many changes in line with the new direction the organization is headed. As a result we came to a place were we could no longer work in a way that we felt was true to our vision and context and meet the organization’s standards, norms and guidelines. We still have great respect for the organization and we will be parting ways simply as friends heading off on different paths. If you would like to know more of why we are resigning from IDEAS, I have attached our letter of resignation below. So the last vestige of our old lives is coming to a close

Tomorrow, we will return to our old village of Daragaon. We are going to visit our friends and pick up all of our old tools, books and equipment. It’ll give us a chance to check in at the Swasta Kendra and hear what all has happened since we left. For 5 years we lived and worked in that village trying to do something new. We built a new school and health clinic and introduced a village to an entire new world of ideas. From the beginning we tried to get the Christians to participate in this new thing that we were doing but they seemed quite content in their prayer house (Prakash’s family being the only brilliant exception). The Hindus and Buddhists worked with us very diligently and sacrificially but we found that there was still something missing for us personally. We need a family of faith to strengthen and support us since, for us, providing healthcare, education and development is first and foremost a spiritual undertaking. It was always frustrating to think of what we were doing as a ‘new thing’ considering that the church has been commanded to do such things from the beginning. Without like-minded brothers and sisters in the faith I don’t think we will last much longer.

We will pick up the pieces of our old life (which was trying to do something new) and those pieces will become new as we move into a community that is doing something very old. The Catholic Church has understood the Christian call to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, help the poor, care for the sick and dying and teach the ignorant for a very, very long time. She has been doing so (only a few valleys away from Daragaon) since before my mother and her father were born. So we are trading something new for something old, or something old for something new depending on how you look at it.

Many view the Catholic Church as an old archaic institution devoid of life and full of empty ritual. For some people in some places, this may be true. But for us this old thing is new, fresh, alive and bearing beautiful fruit. We are looking forward to doing the things we did in Daragaon all over again with new faith, new love, new hope and a new family to support us and for us to contribute to. The other day we were joking with Father Felix, “Sounds pretty strange… Americans coming to India to become Catholic, huh?” and we all laughed together.

Oh, the paradoxes and odd juxtapositions of living in India. But is it really that surprising? Saint Thomas reached Southern India circa 50 a.d. and established the church there… long before the barbarians of Northern Europe had heard of this Christ and long before Christian pilgrims found refuge on America’s eastern seaboard. This is why I love India. It is a country where everything is ancient and somehow, at the same time, eternally new.

In Him,

Ryan, Amanda, Asher and the one we get to meet in 22 weeks.

LETTER OF RESIGNATION FROM IDEAS:

To Scott Grandi, IDEAS and others who may be concerned,

Scott, thank you for answering our questions about insurance and IDEAS’ administrative costs/policies related to long-term assignments. The email you sent with the proposed Long Term Budget was missing the attachment. Still, thanks to your last email, we were able to get a good picture of what would be involved.

We weren’t surprised that flexibility on upgrading to the new insurance isn’t an option. This seems to be a norm for organizations based out of the States, and we understand the complexities of running an organization in such an environment. One thing that either we had forgotten or were never clear on was that there would be a flat administrative fee of $800 dollars a month for families on long term assignment. This amounts to an annual cost of $9,600. Even if the fee is adjusted to $600 a month for 2 years as suggested, this expense is inevitable. This added to the $8,400 annually for the new insurance plan and other IDEAS related costs, i.e. conferences, debriefing, contributing to the group 401k, etc. pushes the amount required for us to be part of the organization well over $20,000. When our personal expenses (flights to and from the USA, living expenses, etc.) are included, our personal budget would be near if not over $30,000 annually. Amanda and I are fully aware that such budgets are normal for international workers in US based organizations. Truth be told, these expenses are probably well under the average for comparable organizations.

Between 1999 and 2003 Amanda and I spent a significant amount of time traveling and working overseas. During this time period we had a series of experiences with missions organizations that turned us off to ever working with one. We intended to work independently so as not to become entangled in the red tape and associated costs of being part of one of these organizations. But in late 2003 we became very interested in IDEAS because it seemed distinctly different than any other organization we had seen. Its vision and methodology were exactly aligned with the work that we had begun in 2002. It was a great relief to find like-minded believers who we could partner with located so close to our Denver home. At the time we held the convictions that having health insurance and saving for retirement were incompatible with the life we were planning to live. We soon realized that these convictions would have to be flexed to become part of IDEAS. At the time, these convictions were for the most part sentimental and therefore expendable. The Christian community, networking, and logistical support that IDEAS offered us was sorely needed, and it seemed that there was enough flexibility to keep costs related to insurance, retirement and administration at a minimum. The other great benefit that we saw in becoming part of IDEAS is that we would have a name behind us. This would be essential for gaining permission to work in Bhutan.

Since joining in 2004, IDEAS has been a great support to our ministry. In fact, we could have done the things that we did without its aid. Every step of the way the members of IDEAS gave us their support and encouragement. We have learned much from the vast array of individuals involved in this organization. Its vision and methodology have helped us refine our vision and our mission. Over the years, throughout all the changes in our work and in our hearts we always found ourselves supported by the guidance of an experienced staff, especially you, Scott. For this we are and will continue to be thankful.

Despite all these things which we have appreciated so much Amanda and I have come to a place where we must resign, for the following reasons, our position in IDEAS.

Reason 1: There are certain norms and standards which organizations based out of the USA must follow. These involve group insurance plans and group retirement plans. Without a group insurance plan in particular an organization becomes vulnerable to multiple potential pitfalls. Individual insurance plans tend to be much more expensive and have less benefits than group plans do. Group retirement plans produce better returns than individual plans do.

Our personal convictions on insurance and retirement in 2003, which were mostly sentimental, have since become an actual part of our beliefs. We have felt an awkward tension for sometime now but have been able to dismiss our conscience due to the fact that IDEAS permitted us to have a low cost insurance which was appropriate for our location and conditions. The organization also requires finances to survive, hence the $800 dollar a month administrative fee. All of the other members of IDEAS are saving for retirement, hence the group retirement plan.

For us not to contribute (as all the other members of the community are) to the collective insurance, administrative and retirement pool would be wrong. We would be a parasitic presence taking advantage of the benefits of IDEAS without contributing our share. But now that these requirements are changing we are forced into a difficult place.

Reason 2: From the beginning we have worked according to a few simple beliefs:

1) That the vast majority of the donations we receive should go directly to the local people, in one form or another.

2) That our projects should be low cost and simple, relying mainly on local participation and divine providence rather than big budgets.

3) Our budget should always remain low so that maximum time is invested in the local community and minimum time spent drumming up Western support.

4) That our projects should be done with integrity, because the way a work is done is more important than the work itself.

So our quandary is this: if our personal budget is nearing $30,000 dollars, we will have to have a much larger budget to stay true to belief #1. But then… how will we get rid of so much money and stay true to beliefs #2 and #3. In addition, how can we carry out projects with integrity (belief #4) when we are living in contradiction to our convictions simply to remain as part of an organization? How can we spend $8,400 on insurance for ourselves and simultaneously ask our impoverished neighbors to sacrifice and work hard in support of our projects knowing full well that many of them do not even have enough cash to reach the nearest hospital? How can we ask our donors in the midst of a financial crisis to begin to donate much more to something we do not feel is valuable or necessary for our work? These are personal convictions applied to our individual context. We do not wish to apply them to others who are working in different contexts and have no intention to judge others in their positions.

Reason 3: IDEAS exists to empower and enable Christians who wish to use their faith in a creative way to impact the lives of neglected communities around the world. They have certainly done as much for us. But at this crossroads, quite suddenly, it seems that our presence in IDEAS will inhibit rather than empower us. This is not why IDEAS exists, nor does it exist simply for its own sake. I feel sure that if IDEAS, as an entity, could understand that it would be having a contrary effect on our work it would wish us to move on.

We understand fully that this resignation will present many difficulties for us on the road ahead. How will we raise money? Upon hearing this news many of those who donated and supported us may lose confidence and stop. We will have to spend more time on certain logistics without IDEAS support, which is contrary to our aim. With less funds etc. we will have to radically simplify. Our intentions for Bhutan will no longer be possible, but chances of these being fulfilled seem to have faded again anyways. These unwanted costs were counted before making this decision but the cost of sacrificing our integrity would be even higher.

We still fully believe in IDEAS’ vision and methodology and will remain excited to see the organization’s impact around the globe. Our hope is to remain good friends with all of the wonderful people we have gotten to know over the last 5 years. It is not in a spirit of division or judgment that we move on but in a spirit of concern that our continued presence would be parasitic and negative to the community’s well being. God bless you all in all that you do. Thank you all for the sacrifices that you have made on our behalf. Scott, thank you in particular for your guidance and support in our work. Please let us know what we need to do to fulfill our responsibilities in regards to this decision.

Sincerely,

Ryan and Amanda Phillips