Blessed to have a Second Year

          Returning to the mission field for a second year is a harder transition than it was the first time. Prior to coming the first year, everything seemed so glamorous and heroic. The whole idea of living in a bamboo hut in the middle of the jungle among a tribal people seemed very adventurous. Even the idea of having a bout of malaria sounded alluring. I was raised listening to stories, read from mission magazines, about heroes of faith and people who dared to go where no one else wanted to go. I had always wanted to live out the stories for myself. I had a mental picture of an Indiana Jones adventure mixed with Hudson Taylor in a place only captured in movies but secret enough that only a few outsiders had ever laid eyes on it. All the thoughts of fear and uncertainty were removed by the excitement of possibly achieving my highest expectation. So with the support of many people behind me, I set out on a life-making experience.

         When I arrived last year, I was high on adventure getting to try all kinds of new foods, hiking challenging trails, learning a new language, and seeing sights beyond my imagination. Even when the honeymoon period was over, and the real work and daily grind set in, I was still enraptured at the thought that my dreams were coming true. I remember moments of nostalgia where I had to figuratively keep my feet on the ground so I didn’t float away. Even after my first bout with malaria, I still didn’t lose that excitement.

          Slowly though, after one too many nights of lost sleep, after seeing demonic harassment face to face, after having a child die as I carried her to the lowlands, everything started to become all too real. The stress of working with different personalities and different cultures began to wear on me. Night after night of hiking home in the dark, after finishing my work, became a begrudging task, especially when the late night hike was followed by an early morning when I needed to be at school by 7am for my first class. The excitement had passed. The things once adventurous became normal and my stress level was close to maxing out.

          Daily, I laid myself before God having to rely on Him alone. Exhausted, I would teach my math classes, and He would carry me through every time. He would bring to my mind examples to explain concepts that were completely foreign to those whom I was teaching. In answer to prayer, God would bring understanding between other missionaries and I. Yes, days became harder and the work load heavier but His strength still remained. Language learning was now full of realizations of how I had been saying phrases or words completely wrong and I had to break poor grammar habits. But I started to realize that indeed I was still breathing, my head was in fact still above the waters of this seemingly impossible work. But somehow, something had to give. Something needed to change or I was going to crack. That was around the time that I began to realize something wonderful.

          These people I had been stumbling through words with, the ones I was trying to teach every day, and the ones who came weekly to our clinic, were no longer just people, they had become something much more than that. I didn’t realize this until when I went to the lowlands for a week long stay. My body found relaxation and so did my mind, but something was missing. It was as if my heart ached for something still, like there was unexplainable hollowness. I found myself humming songs in the native language and in my mind I could picture the smiling faces who sang these songs so often. My heart found joy. These people, my friends, had won my heart.

          In all of these struggles and trails, they had been the only ones I could turn to for interaction and gave me moments of relief from stress. No longer did these smiling children, who sat on my lap, speak words that didn’t make sense to me. They would tell me how their day was and how this foot I was putting a band-aid on was cut by the mean rock on the trail. The men would express their joys and struggles to me and I was able to respond and every so often tell a funny joke to them. It had become nice to laugh with them instead of being laughed at by them. They were the one’s ministering to me when all this time I thought it was I who was helping them. Because of all this, I had found a little place to call home.

         Like I said before, it was hard to leave friends, family, and even the comfort of a warm shower in America for a second time. But, when I finished the first long accent hiking back into the mountains for a second year of what others would call service, that same familiar feeling came back into my heart, I was back in my second home.

PS: Now, I’m sitting here in the school at my desk grading homework and exams. I took a little break to write a letter to say I’m doing fine and that I’m here with my extended family.