It was a task destined to take up part of any trip: souvenir shopping. After changing dollars into kwacha, the local currency, the group headed into downtown Blantyre to find a little something for everyone back home—sarongs printed in Malawi, jewellery, games, cards, snacks at a local shopping mall and, for Ethan Brown, a new wardrobe to replace one that missed the flight from Johannesburg.
But at the end of the day, as they all sat in the courtyard of the hostel, some of the youth admitted their internal state didn’t fit with their actions.
“I felt uncomfortable shopping today,” Sarah Smith admitted, adding that she didn‘t know why she felt that way, and that despite her feelings she still shopped.
Others voice similar feelings, or express their unease when they had refused to give money to children who asked them on the street.
“I felt selfish,” Sarah said. “We had wallets full of money we brought to buy stuff for ourselves.”
The debriefing began with Mark 7:31-37, a passage in which Christ heals a man who is deaf and nearly mute. “Ephphatha!” he tells him in the story: “Be opened!” Immediately the man is able to hear and speak.
“Be open is a command,” trip leader Mike Burns observed. “Who’s he commanding? The person? The ears or eyes? … We must also be opened before we can be healed.”
