Wellingtonians David and Maria Cross are dedicated to living a lifestyle very different from their 20- and 30-something peers; both in New Zealand and soon, they hope, overseas.
Living with urban poor isn’t new for David and Maria, who have been involved in Wellington’s Urban Vision for eight and five years respectively. Urban Vision is a group of households that seeks to live among and build relationships with those on the margins of society.
In Manila, David and Maria will be part of a team from Servants for Asia’s Urban Poor, which is an international organisation that was started by Kiwis 25 years ago. Servants has teams living in slums in the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Canada and two Indian cities.
The Rev Jono Ryan, who ministers at Highgate Presbyterian Church in Dunedin, also works part-time for Servants, and Maria says their relationship with Jono has been key in preparing them for the step overseas.
Since David and Maria married three and half years ago, they’ve been living in a council flat in Wellington’s Mt Cook, as part of an Urban Vision team operating in the area.
This meant having a home that was always open to neighbours dropping in, as well as trying different ways to engage with the neighbourhood.
It was a noisy environment, Maria says, where you were constantly aware of being surrounded by people 24/7. “People would walk past and say ‘hello’ multiple times
a day.”
Many residents experienced mental illness and overcrowding could be an issue. Everyone shared a laundromat, which became a good place for building relationships over frustrations with the washing machines, she says.
Maria and David spent a lot of time with children of the complex, who hung out in the concrete alleyways.
She says they would play boardgames and help the children with their homework.
“The children were so excited to have people there who were interested in them, who were safe and who treated them
with respect.”
Maria and David both worked part time (without receiving any other funding), so that they could become fully involved in the community. “We were choosing to sacrifice some of the other things we might have had, so we could centre ourselves there. We had a very simple lifestyle.”
“You felt like you could share so much of life more deeply.”
David did communications and events work for Downtown Community Ministries, which helps the homeless in Wellington, while Maria has been working as a community nurse in Newtown.
It took time living in the flats to build up trust, Maria says, and sometimes they took risks and got involved in people’s arguments.
“Our relationships with them were quite up and down, depending on what was happening in people’s lives.
“We were constantly asking ourselves, ‘what’s the good news for this person?’”
They had always planned only five years of involvement with Urban Vision, having felt a strong call to go overseas.
Last year, Maria and David spent two months visiting the work of Servants’ in Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, to explore where they might go.
Maria says it was inspiring meeting people who were committed to the long process of community development or seeing transformation happen in communities, “and giving up quite a lot to do it”.
“We realised that we wanted to be involved in a neighbourhood of urban poor that we can share life deeply with, so it needed to be a place where that was possible for foreigners to do.” They also wanted to be part of a strong sense of community among the Servants team, and were inspired by what they learned of their work in Manila, which Maria describes as a “holistic ministry” including some environmental projects, which isn’t common for slum ministry.
Servants already has seven people in Manila; three Kiwis and the rest from Switzerland.
Maria and David hope to join the team in April, funding permitting.
Their first two years in Manila will be spent “as learners”, Maria says: of the language (Tagalog), about the culture, and about how relationships function.
“Hopefully out of that will come some specific work we can get involved in.”
When they arrive, Maria and David
will arrange to live with a local family in the slum.
They’ll take only a suitcase each, and become used to temperatures around or above 30 degrees. While there’s some sporadic illegal electricity, there will be no refrigeration, oven, or washing machine.
The experience won’t be totally foreign to them, after spending a month in a Cambodian slum during their 2009 trip.
While the makeshift houses are run down, people have “a real sense of pride in their homes,” Maria says. “But there are definitely rats running around.”
Forty percent of Manila’s residents live in slums, which are particularly vulnerable to flooding. Maria says typhoons and fires in the past year have had a huge impact, with political upheaval also likely in the lead up to this year’s elections.
Maria and David are thinking long term in terms of their work in Manila. “It could be ten years. We’re dedicated to it being the long haul, as much as that’s possible for us.”
What they’ll miss most is friends and family, especially “the ability to be there when there’s things going on for people”.
They won’t be earning money in Manila and need to raise $25,000 in funding each year, most of which goes towards insurance, regular breaks away from the slum, team office space and flights home every two or three years. Rent and food costs are minimal, Maria says. “It doesn’t cost much to live in a slum.”
Maria describes the fundraising as feeling “like quite a risk in terms of testing
our faith”.
But it’s not just financial support that they’re after. “Part of our role is to build some bridges between people here and in Manila, whether that’s prayer or receiving our newsletter.
“It’s a challenge to find ways to connect it to people so that they can be a part of it.
“There’s so much to be gained for churches in New Zealand to have a real relationship with people overseas.”
David and Maria have been part of Island Bay Presbyterian for the past three and half years. Maria says the church has been very supportive and interested in their work and its implications. “We’ve really appreciated their friendship and fellowship.”
Maria says they’d be keen to help out hosting the slum immersion trips run by Servants for young people or youth groups. Each person goes by themselves to live with a slum family. “It’s what we did 10 years ago that lead us here now.”
Maria says our New Zealand lifestyles mean we can’t avoid having an impact on the poor.
“We’re exploiting the world’s poor every day whether we realise it or not.”
But she says we can choose to develop real relationships that can “challenge us much more deeply about our choices and how we live here”.
“A lot of people find it too hard to see any steps they can take, so they put us and our ‘radical’ choices in a box that’s completely different from their own.
“But anyone can be making a choice about how to radically love their neighbour.”
By Amanda Wells
Want to get in touch?
Contact David and Maria at mariaanddave@gmail.com