No room for jealousy, or is it envy?

You would think that by listening to how people make small talk and how people interact with each other on social media that jealousy is something cute and harmless.  We banter about the phrases, “OMG I’m so jealous!” and “look what I’m doing, are you jealous?”  I think we’ve numbed ourselves to how cutting and dangerous jealousy really is.  If you don’t believe me, just try being genuinely happy for someone who has succeeded in life.  Hard, isn’t it.

Deuteronomy 5:21 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Jealousy has a sister named Envy.  I actually had to google the differences between these two words because in our culture, they are often interchangeable.  However, they are indeed different, according to one of my favorite nerdy websites “Grammar Girl.”  Jealousy is usually a relationship type of word meaning “apprehensive or vengeful out of fear of being replaced.”  Jealousy is the emotion you feel when you fear that you will lose someone you love to another.  Envy, on the other hand, means “to bear a grudge towards someone due to coveting what someone has or enjoys.”  Envy is the emotion you have when you want what someone else has.  So grammatically speaking, it is more accurate to say, “OMG I’m so envious!”

BEEN THERE DONE THAT

However, both jealousy and envy will tear you apart if you let them.  It is highly possible that you have looked longingly at the details of someone else’s life and envied them.  Perhaps you’ve envied their status or their possessions.  Perhaps you’ve envied their physical appearance or their lifestyle.  I’ve been there myself.  Honestly!  I had a Facebook friend that I hardly knew, but her photos showed such a perfect, carefree lifestyle that she made me pea green with envy!  I had to hide her posts or I’d have to repent every time I logged on.  (Turns out her husband was professional photographer who retouched all her picts before she posted them.  So that made me feel a little better.)  So I know Envy, personally!

But here’s my point, when you envy someone, you never see the whole picture.  Your mind zooms in on the detail that you are fixating on, and you don’t see the negatives at all.  You don’t see the price that the other person has paid to get that rock hard body.  You don’t see the pain that they have endured in failed relationships crushed by climbing the corporate ladder.  You don’t see the sacrifices they have made to get where they are.

NOT WILLING TO COUNT THE COST

As a missionary, yes, I could talk all day long about how wonderful it is to live in the tropics.  And you may envy me the life I live.  But you have the luxury of asking your parents to babysit your kids while you go on a date night with your spouse.  My parents live 3,000 miles away.  You have the potential to own your own house while I will borrow used furniture to fill a rental house for a year when I come home on itineration next spring.   I don’t own a house.  We have one car which belongs to the mission.  And this morning when I made my breakfast I found ants in my French Press… AGAIN.  You don’t see all that when you envy a missionary.

You also don’t see the hours spent standing in lines in government offices.  You don’t see the “tips” paid to police officers to ensure that they don’t syphon gas out of your car at night.  (Yes, police officers.)  You don’t see the mounds of trash that pile up in the streets or the stray dogs that tear into the bags and spread it all over your driveway.  You never give a second thought to flushing your toilet paper.  You don’t think to thank God for a hot shower.  And you’ve never had to use a bigger shoe than the one you were wearing to kill a cockroach.

So yeah, you may envy the pretty pictures of nature that the missionary posts, but unless you’re ready to live in that nature as if you were camping in your own house, you better just look around you and appreciate all that you do have.  Don’t zoom in on one detail of the missionary’s life while ignoring the high price he’s paid.  Walk a mile in a missionary’s shoes and you probably won’t covet what he has.  Envy isn’t a good thing.  Be thankful for what you have and don’t try to take what others have.  That’s healthy living 101.

Psalm 16:6   “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

 

What the heck am I doing here?

Every once in a while I go through a “What the heck am I doing here?” phase.  Other missionaries might relate to this feeling.  I look at the things that consume my time every day, and I feel like very little that I do has spiritual significance.  I sweep and mop floors, I fold laundry, I teach ordinary school subjects to fifth graders, I make dinner, I pack lunches, I pick up toys, I walk to the grocery store to buy bread… I do all the ordinary daily life tasks.  However, here it takes me twice as long to do most things with twice the effort that it would in America.  All that to say, daily life kicks my butt most of the time!

I start thinking about how easy it is to live in America, how I could do twice as much in half the time and still have time left over to minister to people.  I wonder why I’m here.  How can THIS be considered Kingdom work?  I imagined being a missionary to be more like living on a missions trip!  But it’s not.  Daily life becomes daily no matter where you live.  I DO love when teams come down on trips because I get a taste of what drew me to missions in the first place… but that’s not how I live every day.

It’s a part of my personality package to search for significance and meaning in my life.  I would be happy and fulfilled if every detail of my life had spiritual implications, but I just can’t reconcile washing the dishes for the Kingdom of God.  That doesn’t equate in my mind.  If I were the apostle Paul, I would want to spend all my time preaching and none of it making tents.  But the bills must be paid- so I teach school.  Dinner must be made- so I go grocery shopping and prepare meals.  Children must be cleaned- so I do laundry and bathe the kids and teach them to brush their teeth, etc.

I start to feel like a fake when I call myself a missionary and the next question is, “well how many people have you gotten saved?”  It’s as if my life is being weighed in a balance and I come up short.  I am worthy of my calling only if X number of souls have come into the Kingdom.  When that’s not how the Kingdom works at all.  God’s Kingdom is not mathematical.  If it were, then the worker who worked all day long would receive more wages than the ones who arrived on the job in the last hour or two of the day.  But in that parable, Jesus said all the workers get paid the same regardless of how long they worked.  That’s neither fair, nor logical, nor mathematical.  If that’s not proof enough of the inefficiency of the Kingdom, then just look at the life of the missionary for more evidence.

If God were interested in the efficiency of numbers and equations then He wouldn’t ask a foreigner to go to a strange country, learn a new language, and speak to people with child-like simplicity and painful inaccuracy of pronunciation and grammar.  That just doesn’t make sense.  But He does.  This is how He works- mysteriously and sovereignly.  But I still think he could do this thing quicker and cleaner if he called and equipped locals only.  Why throw the messiness of missions into the pot?

When I am deep into my “what the heck” phase, I see all the messiness of missions.  You can’t bring cultures into close proximity without both of them being changed- and not always for the better.  Early missionaries brought sicknesses and diseases that the natives didn’t have the immunity to fight off.  Imperialism was a blight on early missions efforts- and this deadly fungus is still infecting the image of missions to this day.  Modern technology literally destroys simpler and older ways of life, often creating new problems even as it solves others.  Nothing we do is clean cut and free of the tarnish of human motivations.  Everything we touch becomes tainted, and God asks us to put our hands all over every detail of this life.  “How could he WANT it this way?” I question.

I don’t have any answers to this question.  I muddle through my own feelings of uselessness and futility even as I long for purpose and meaning.  I long to be useful.  Yet the only thing within my power is my own obedience.  I wish missions were clean and tidy.  I wish obedience was simple and easy.  But it’s not. It’s daily.  It’s messy.  It’s complicated.  It is impossible to sound the depths of the human heart and it is impossible to write up a how-to manual for building the Kingdom of God.  It can’t be done.

Photo credits:

Kitchen sink, Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeangenie/178780382/”>jeangenie</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</>

washing dishes in Honduras Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/lonqueta/3532526536/”>Lon&Queta</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com/People/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</a>

The Check is in the Mail

A friend of mine named Anna is a teacher at a language school here.  Most of her students are missionaries of various denominational flavors.  Once, about 5 years ago, one of her students expressed his gratitude to her as a teacher.  He said, “I am so thankful that you have patiently worked to teach me Spanish.  How can I repay you?”

Anna was not sure if he meant to give her a gift or what.  She wisely replied, “When you preach in Spanish and someone gets saved, that will be my pay check.”  She saw her ministry continuing through HIS future ministry.  She saw with Kingdom Eyes that we are all interconnected when we work for the Kingdom of God.  She kept up contact with this student through email over the next year.  He went on to El Salvador to be a missionary.

One day Anna got an email that said, “Here’s your check.  This weekend I preached in Spanish for the first time.  I asked if anyone wanted to ask the Lord to forgive their sins and to come into their heart.  Three people got saved!!”  Anna wiped away the tears when she told us how honored she felt to be a part of something bigger than herself.  Her ministry reached to El Salvador because she was diligent, her student was persistent, and God was Faithful.

My English student Leticia. I’m so proud of her!

Today is a very special day for ME as a teacher too.  I too have been a language school teacher.  And today one of my first students will be getting on an airplane and flying from her home in Chile to her mission field in India.  I taught her English for a year, and she worked so hard!  I am so proud of my student for sticking with her dreams and seeing them through.  I worked patiently, forming and crafting her English.  She worked persistently, pushing herself to study and learn.  Then God was faithful in her fund raising efforts as well.  Now, FINALLY, she is leaving for India today.

Pray for my student-missionary Leticia as she travels alone to a country where she’s never been before.  Pray for Leticia as she works to communicate in a second language.  Pray for Leticia today.  I look forward to the day when I receive a message from her saying that she prayed in English with someone and they received the Lord into their heart.  I thank God that some day soon MY check will be in the mail, metaphorically speaking.

Happy Day of the Dead! (a continuation of missionary pitfalls)

I decided to just sit quietly and let the students hash out this cultural dilemma amongst themselves.  It was nearing the Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead, and our Christian university students were arguing about what was appropriate for a Christian to do or not to do during this holiday.  Since I was still in the cultural learning phase and didn’t fully understand all the implications of the holiday for Mexicans, I decided to keep my mouth shut and see where this conversation goes.

“Yes,” said one guy in the group, “I know that we don’t want to glorify death, but what about eating the Pan de Muerto (the traditional Bread of the Dead was sold in all the stores this time of year.)  My Grandmother makes it, and it’s SOOOOO good!  Do I offend her?  Do I NOT eat the bread?  But I reeeeeally like it!”  A hot debate burst open between the students who argued that the Pan de Muerto symbolizes everything they were wanting to avoid, and those students who felt that you can’t become corrupted by what you eat like Paul arguing about food sacrificed to idols.  I could see both sides of the debate.  Personally I was thinking about how shocked and offended our students would be if they knew that I had 3 carved pumpkins in my backyard as we spoke!  Heathen!!

In the end, the Pan de Muerto issue was not resolved, but the students agreed to make their own “ofrenda” or display to show their campus how Christians view death.  They constructed a cardboard coffin and painted it black.  Inside the coffin they placed a mirror at head height.  Around the mirror they wrote scripture verses, “It is appointed unto man once to die, then after that the Judgement,” and “I am the resurrection and the life.  He that believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live.  And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”  I was impressed at what they came up with!

I was inspired by their solution.  So at our own house we decorated for Halloween, which is just starting to catch on as a candy-centered bonus to Day of the Dead.  I bought a ton of candy, pulled out a box of pocket sized Bibles in Spanish that a team had given us, and fired up my computer to print up some bookmarks with those verses on them in Spanish.  That night as the Trick-or-Treaters rang my doorbell, I gave out 75 Bibles and 125 bookmarks with Bible verses on them!

Secretly, I also bought a loaf of Pan de Muerto just to taste it.  I wasn’t impressed, so that detail no longer tempted me.  But you can see that as a missionary, I had to decide how to handle a holiday that is based in the pagan culture.  What does it look like from the perspective of the Christians in THIS culture?  How do I go about becoming all things to all people so that I might win some?  Can I use the base of a pagan holiday as a tool to do something good for the Kingdom of God?  Heck yeah!  The Devil is always trying to take our good stuff and twist it for his evil plans, so I just consider this and eye for an eye.

What NOT to wear

One of my favorite “junk TV” shows is a catty little fashion show called “What NOT to wear”.  Basically the witty, yet snotty, hosts hijack some poor fashion disaster, trash her hideous wardrobe, and then take her on a shopping spree in New York City.  They give her shopping guidelines to follow based on her body type and her previous fashion faux pas.  I have often wished that someone would give me some fashion guidelines for dressing myself in another country.  It would make things a whole lot easier.

I stand in my closet and think, “Hmmm, What to wear, what to wear…” If I were in a country where the locals went naked, would I consider following the local trend? Probably not, but how “native” am I willing to go?  Sometimes that’s not a difficult adjustment to make and sometimes it’s super challenging.  For example, here in San Jose, Costa Rica a modest woman does not wear shorts in the city.  I wear pants, jeans, capris or longer skirts.  Now the locals can also wear super short skirts if they want to, but not shorts.  I personally get stared at enough as it is, being a white woman with blue eyes, so I prefer not to wear mini skirts and get too much of the wrong kind of attention.  It’s not a sacrifice; it’s my preference.  Actually it’s the jeans that cause me the most consternation.  When it’s hot, jeans feel like insanity!  Yet people wear them… and wear them tight!  UGH!  This American thinks that is crazy uncomfortable.

As a Christian we also have a tighter set of fashion standards that we have to think about too.  For example, I have a friend who grew up in Africa.  His parents were missionaries to a tribe of people who basically wear strings tied around their waists and nothing else.  In an early attempt to bring Christian modesty to the tribe, the missionaries imported a box of T-shirts and passed them out to everyone.  The people were thrilled!  However, the missionaries were less thrilled with the results.  The following week all the women showed up at church with circular holes strategically cut in their T-shirts to make nursing their babies a convenient activity while the pastor preached with a tomato-red blush on his white face.  Fail!

So the question remains for the conscientious missionary:  Are you going to “go native?”  Do you wear what the locals wear?  Or do you require that they convert to Western clothing when the convert to the Western Jesus?  If I am a woman in a Muslim country, do I veil?  What is Biblical and what is my culture and what is my responsibility to the people that I want to minister to?

You want ME to teach THAT?!?

In addition to teaching 5^th grade, I also teach Bible class for 9^th grade.  The theme for this class is the book of Acts.  (I tried to get out of teaching this class by telling our Baptist administration that I’m Pentecostal, but they were willing to overlook that fault.  They just wanted me for my Bible School training.  I asked them, “Do you REALLY want someone who’s Spirit filled teaching ACTS?!?  ‘Cause if it’s in the Bible, I’m teaching it.”  They were nervous, but desperate.)  We have taken a long pause in Chapter 14 to talk about an event that happened on Paul’s first missionary journey.  Because about half of the class is missionary kids, we are really taking time to pull apart these lessons for missionaries that we find in Acts.

In Chapter 14, Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra and they heal a crippled man.  The locals are stunned by this miracle.  They shout in their local dialect, “These men are gods in human bodies!”  They decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus and that Paul, because he was the chief speaker, was Hermes.  The temple of Zeus was located on the outskirts of the city.  The city also had a belief that once the gods had visited the city in human form and no one honored them with a sacrifice.  So the gods destroyed the city.  The people didn’t want to repeat their mistake, so they prepared to sacrifice oxen to the apostles at the city gates.

Unfortunately, Paul and Barnabas didn’t speak the local language.  They spoke Greek which was the language of commerce of the Roman Empire, the only language they had in common with the people.  So they were slow to catch on to what was happening, and they didn’t know the history of the gods’ previous, disastrous visit to the city.  So they were at a distinct disadvantage in this story.

When they realized what was happening, the apostles dramatically protested and interrupted the religious parade.  This made the locals irate.  They stoned Paul and threw him outside of the city, assuming he was dead.  He was one tough missionary though.  He got back up and went back into the city.  Paul and Barnabas later escaped with the help of their friends.  It was not a good day for these missionaries, but it was a lesson for us to learn.  It is important to know the local customs and to speak the local language, if possible.

Here we paused to discuss how modern day missionaries can find themselves in similar cultural blunders or dangers.  We talked about how a missionary must consider, before hand, what is actually a Christian, Biblical mandate and what is just part of our culture that we brought with us from our home country.  I gave my class 8 different categories that contain pitfalls for missionaries, things they must consider.

For the next few days I am going to blog about stories that I have heard from other missionaries or things that have happened to me related to these 8 categories:  clothing standards, holidays, governmental or political issues, Church and State relations, vices, virtues, living conditions and material wealth.  So join me for the next few days as I tell stories of how some missionaries have struggled to find harmony between their own cultural assumptions and the reality of the culture they hope to minister to.

Paul said that he tries to “become all things to all people so that he might win some”, but what does that look like, in a practical sense, for the modern day missionary?  I will show you some possibilities.  If you have stories of your own, I would love to hear them!  Leave a juicy comment below.

Missionaries on “Survivor”

I know my limits.  I know that I could never be on the T.V. show “Survivor”.  First of all, the first meal I missed my blood sugar would plummet and I would go cannibal on someone.  Second of all, hygiene is super important to me.  Third of all, I would suck at the social element of the game.  I was never good at lying.  I really couldn’t give a crap about who’s popular and who isn’t.  And I’m sure I would spout off my mouth and make too many people mad at me.

But having said that, sometimes I feel like us missionaries are playing our own personal game of Survivor… minus Jeff Probst.  For example, I’ve been to the beach, and I can tell you that after a few hours, you are ready for a shower just to wash the sand off of you.  When you can’t get all the sand off of you, it’s irritating.  And so it is the same with life on the mission field.  Sometimes we have irritating little problems that just won’t go away.  The tiny grain of sand gradually becomes all you can think about.  It could be the constant traffic, the annoying way that the locals do that one thing that you hate, or the unrelenting drip-drip-drip of daily troubles like power outages and the internet signal faltering.  Whatever it is, after a while those little annoyances become huge aggravations… and there’s no way to escape them!

For me, there are cultural things that act like little grains of sand stuck to damp skin.  I don’t want to make specific complaints, but I do want to express the fact that this kind of thing- being annoyed and irritated- happens to missionaries.  Even missionaries who love their country and who love their work, we all have those little things that get under our skin… and we can’t escape them!  Our only hope is to win the next reward challenge and pray that it’s a bar of soap and a dry towel.

Honorary Auntie

Missionary families often say that the hardest part of our job is being far away from family.  Especially when you have a close and loving extended family, you miss them a lot.  When we were preparing to become missionaries, the “experienced ones” all told us that the other missionaries on your field become like the aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas for your children.  I was offended by this idea.  My kids already HAVE aunties and uncles and grandparents.  I didn’t want them forgetting their real family, and I didn’t want them replacing those roles in their hearts.  And I wasn’t really keen on the idea of someone else’s kids calling me Auntie.  I wasn’t impressed with this substitute idea of family.

But time has passed and my attitude has softened.  My kids have NOT forgotten their real family and thanks to Skype and Face Time, we can talk to them face to face whenever we want to!  They know who their real family is and they love them like no other.  But it can get kind of lonely and sad out here.  There are no relatives to babysit for you when you need a date with your spouse.  There are no proud grandparents taking pictures at your school plays or sporting events.  And don’t even get me started on all the birthday parties that my family has missed and we have missed in our turn!

So here is where the missionary family comes in handy.  We KNOW we aren’t really related, but we ACT like we are.  I have taken care of children who are not mine– overnight, while their parents were out of the country.  I have pulled loose teeth, tucked them into bed, bandaged owies, and packed school lunches for kids who are not mine.  I have driven kids to school, picked them up again and taken them to youth group.  I have watched school plays and cheered at sports games.  I’ve taken kids to the movies and McDonalds and go carts.  I’ve attended every birthday party we’ve been invited to.  I’ve earned my Auntie status in a million ways.

It in no way diminishes my love and connection to my real family, but we all need a “Jesus with skin on” so to speak.  We all need the Village to raise a child (we just hope and pray that our village isn’t full of idiots!).  And we try to be that kind of community for others that we are missing ourselves.  It’s about living in harmony with people that you don’t get to choose… just like a family.

Doing the Birthday Party Rounds!

What will my obedience cost others?

When I was in college I had to read a book called “Silence” by Shusaku Endo (1966).  It is a historical fiction novel about Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who are sent to Japan to investigate the alleged apostasy of one of their superiors.   In Japan, the church is “underground” meaning they are persecuted and can not meet in public.  When the the main character (one of the Jesuit priests) is finally betrayed and arrested, he is threatened with torture unless he commits apostasy by placing his feet on an image of Jesus placed on the floor.  He is hung upside down until he bleeds from his eyes, and yet, he still will not give in.  Then he is told that a little boy will be tortured in his place until he relents.  At the thought of his stubborn refusal hurting an innocent child, the priest relents and puts his feet on the image of Christ.  Though he is released, he is forever disgraced among the Japanese Christians.  He concludes that the apostasy of his superior was not as simple and straight forward as it appeared back in Portugal.

I have thought of this book often, and my opinion of the message behind the plot has changed as I have grown spiritually.  I am now resigned to the thought that my obedience will also cost others.

On one of the missionary group/chat pages that I am a member of someone recently opened up a long thread based on the lament of leaving behind aging parents in order to go to the mission field.  This honest missionary was deeply conflicted and pained by the grief his decisions caused his parents.  He was taking the grandchildren far, far away.  When he should have been home helping with his ailing parents, he was leaving, abandoning his post.  His obedience was costing others.

I enjoy reading the devotional “My Utmost For His Highest” by Oswald Chambers.  In January, the daily reading talks about this very theme.  Chambers writes:

If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins.  If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight.  But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal.  If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset.  They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?”  We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God.  We must let the cost be paid.

When our obedience begins to cost others, our human pride entrenches itself and we say, “I will never accept anything from anyone.”  But we must, or disobey God. We have no right to think that the type of relationships we have with others should be any different from those the Lord Himself had (see Luke 8:1-3).

A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves.  And actually, we cannot.  Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him.  Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent?  Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”?  We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience.  We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him.

Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.  (Emphasis is mine).

Jesus himself said only if your love for God exceeds your love for your parents and siblings and children… only if your love for God makes your love for your family look like hate, will you be worthy to follow Him.  It’s not that we DO hate our family.  No, we love them, but in comparison to our love for God, family love takes a distant second place.  Let the chips fall where they may.  God will reward and repay.  God will comfort and console.

In the same way that they seized a man named Simon and forced him to carry the cross for Jesus in Luke 23:26, sometimes our commitment to pick up our cross and follow Jesus will cost  the innocent bystanders in our lives.  Our decision to be missionaries is not made only with ourselves to consider, but neither does our concern for our loved ones water down our passion to serve Christ.  Our obedience will cost others.

My Tribe

I used to think that “Kindred Spirits” were rare kinds of friends, few and far between.  

The other night I was thinking back over our 18 years in ministry.  There was a time in my life when I didn’t have any real friends.  I had co-workers in ministry, but I didn’t share my inner most thoughts with anyone at all.  No one took the time to get close to me, and I opened up to no one.  I blamed it on a lack of time.  I blamed it on my need for strength and my fear of weakness.  I blamed it on a need for confidentiality between pastors and congregations.  I blamed it on the fact that I saw no one around me who was exactly like me… as if that were really the only kind of person that I would enjoy being friends with.  I was very busy, but when I slowed down I was deeply lonely.  I didn’t like slowing down.

I remember the night that we “graduated” from School of Missions and we were commissioned to become missionaries.  My parents were standing somewhere in the crowd behind us, supportive, conflicted, and tearful. I was so excited to finally be in the group of people that I had longed to be a part of ever since I was 10 years old.  I was finally “in” the tribe that I had admired for so long.  Then I turned around and saw the sad-proud looks on my parents’s faces and I realized in one sinking moment that they were not coming with me.  They were not joining the club.  I was leaving one tribe to be a member of another tribe.  Yes my family would always love me like only family can, but the people who would UNDERSTAND me were other missionaries. My family was left standing on the outside, separated by more than the physical distance between counties.

More than 8 years later I have reached a new, fresh level of life in ministry.  Here overseas I have made more life-long friendships than I ever had in full time ministry in the States.  Here I have nothing but time on my side.  I have shed that old, tight friendless skin and have embraced a softer, more flexible and friendly  sort of skin.  The friendships I have here are deep and satisfying, giving and being filled up at the same time.

I can honestly say that the change probably occurred when I was pummeled into tenderness during our time at Language school.  But that time of trial and transformation is yet another point of connection that I have in common with my tribe mates and fellow missionaries.  (So I don’t begrudge one moment of the beating.)  I have never felt such deep camaraderie in ministry as I feel with My Tribe.  My cup overfloweth with friends.

Language School graduation, surrounded by our Tribe who knows “what it’s like”.