Quick and Candid

I just want to take a quick minute and write about what’s been floating around in my head for the past couple of months.  I’ve been writing my blog and sharing what weighs heavy on my heart but there is a part I’ve been leaving out.  The whole point of my blog was to share what being a missionary is really about.  Is it really all about excitement and the miraculous?  What happens in between?

Well, after five months of being a missionary in a country that is plummeting faster than I can report, I’m here to tell you there is a lot of “in between.”  And since this is a quick and candid entry I will feel free to ignore run on sentences and bad punctuation. (Oh my college professors would be cringing.)

OK.  So most of the missionaries I’ve met in my life have been complete families.  They go out onto the mission field and do amazing things.  But what about the single ones??  I just want to say that being on your own in a dangerous place is something completely different.  I only recently realized that no one here has my emergency contact info.  Um…  Really!  And when the city you live in goes into lock down what does a single person do?  Well, I now know each and every crack on my ceiling…  Oh and the best is when you look at your account balance and it says -$100,000,000 (Ok so I’m exaggerating a little) and then you meet a child who desperately needs antibiotics.  Or two little friends at your door that need food.  Or an elderly father of 2 that tells you he needs an $80 treatment or he will die.  What happens then??? 

When I ask for help I think my favorite responses are when well-meaning people tell me what I should do to raise money (like it should be common sense.)  The ideas are great but do they realize I’m not good at EVERYTHING?  Web design and mass marketing were not my best subjects…

And what about the Catholic missionaries?  I recently had the opportunity to see what kind of accommodations they had here in Honduras.  My reaction was “Wow! You can drink the water?” and “You can flush toilet paper?” and “You have residency status already?!” 

Alright, ending what should have been a short rant … I’ve also ran across a few blogs of missionaries who freely write what they think.  Whether offensive or not, they take free liberty in expressing their feelings.  I can barely get through their blogs without thinking they must be fully funded.  Because really??  If I said that sending your troubled teenager to a 3^rd world country was only doing your child good I would lose funding! (oops I probably just did)  But really, in truth, to make a difference in the lives here we need continuous support.  Handing people a bag of rice and beans only makes their week a little better.

Well thanks for listening (if you made it this far.)  I promise to give a more candid report from now on - like it or not :)