Missionary Musings...

I remember when I was little, sitting in church listening to the missionary speakers and always getting that rush of sympathy for all those adorable, starving, half-naked children. That desire to help. That awe for the person who had given up everything to live among them and share God's love. I was never bored when missionaries spoke. I loved hearing the stories, seeing the photos on their slide shows, fingering the foreign objects on their display tables.

But when the service was over and the missionary left, my family would return home, and all such sentimental musings (for that is all they were then) would exit my mind as quickly as they had filled it. Sometimes my friends would tell me how they had spoken with the missionary and heard even more stories. They would say how neat they thought it was to find out that missionaries are real too, normal people just like us. Of course I knew they were real, but normal? Just like us? No way. They were specially chosen by God, and they had faith I'd never before seen in normal people.

Even last summer during my own speaking engagements at camps and churches, I hesitated to use the term "missionary" to describe myself. After all, I was not qualified to be an actual missionary. But the more people I met during my travels, and the more conversations I had, the more time I spent with the Dorce' family, the more I learned how completely wrong my perception was. I realized that not only are missionaries normal people, missionaries have normal feelings, likes and dislikes, just like us. Missionaries need help, missionaries need encouragement, missionaries need affirmation, missionaries need friends, just like us. Just like me.

Suddenly all the memories came rushing back. Missionary speakers. Missions conventions. Missionaries spending the night at our house. Meeting missionary kids and playing with them at Vacation Bible School. All those opportunities I had missed to be a friend, an encouragement, to someone who needed those things just as much as I did, if not more.

Unfortunately, it took me a time of walking in their shoes to realize that fact. Until I experienced it for myself, I never knew what I was missing out on. What I had caused those others to miss out on. And so I'd like to take this opportunity, on behalf of all of us missionaries, to thank those of you who have treated us just like real, normal people. Thank you for housing us, for encouraging us through letters, e-mails, or spoken words. Thank you for heart felt prayers said in our absence, and for sincere, spur-of-the-moment prayers said with and for us. Thank you for filling up our gas tanks, for taking us out to lunch, for kindness to our children. Thank you for everything I haven't mentioned. We could never tell you exactly how much you mean to us.