Sometimes my wife, Janice, accuses me of thinking like a bachelor. I’ll have some grand idea, like buying two motorcycles and going on a romantic roadtrip across the United States. She’ll say something like,“You forgot we have kids, didn’t you? We can’t go galavanting around willy nilly!”
“Yea, yea,” I’ll say and sigh a little. I like to say that I’m a visionary person with big ideas. But I think the term “emotionally unstable” is closer to the truth. But then again, if you could see the genetic pool from which I was constructed, you’d be amazed at how rational I can be.
I’m bringing this up because recently I’ve had someone ask me how I got into missions, like I became a nuclear scientist or something. The requirements aren’t that stringent. Having two feet and a heartbeat are the basic qualifications. Having feet isn’t even a requirement. Of course each mission organization will add their own additional set of requirements on top of my rather basic list, but really God can use anybody to reach the world. Obviously, if you wanted to be a missionary surgeon, then the path to achieving that would be a little more complicated than walking into a jungle and trying your hand at brain surgery.
But I think that’s why I got into missions: I had rather idealistic big dreams. I wanted to change the world, save lives, make my life worth more than just a fleeting vapor. Trying to make yourself valuable isn’t a bad thing, but it’s also slippery slope to puffing up your own ego. Inside every believer is the capacity to do amazing things, and the ugly inclination to think they’re amazing for doing them. It’s important to examine your motivations.
As far as motivations, I think wanting to do something eternally significant with your life is a good start and not a bad motivator. Jesus urged us to invest in eternal things. I also loved traveling, and doing mission work promised that sort of lifestyle so I was drawn to it.
But I didn’t just jump into full time mission work. I tried my hand at a lot of smaller mission trips.
It’s important to realize that going on short term mission trips and becoming a full time missionary are different. Being a full time missionary means staying in a foreign country long after the intoxication of the new surroundings, strange food, and friendly coworkers has worn off and you find yourself struggling with an electrolyte imbalance, a medical condition that is still unknown to science, and a nasty temper that rears its ugly head whenever the electricity goes out… again. When you’re on a missions trip, you leave before trouble finds you. When you’re living on the mission field, you see trouble creeping up on you but there’s nowhere to run. You just have to deal with it like a lone gazelle staring down an approaching cheetah. And you’ll find that once the fun is over, your “calling” to missions might get a little shaky. I’m not saying that in condemnation, I’m saying that from experience.
That said, short term trips are a good gateway into full time missions so don’t be discouraged from going on one. I simply want to adjust your expectations because expectations are like relatives after you’ve won the lottery: Many of them you didn’t even know you had and it’s surprising how many are broke.
I want to get off my high horse, if only for a bit, so I can tell you a story of a missions trip I went on once, back when I was single and could galavant around willy nilly.
My friend, Huey Hippenhammer (not his real name), was living in Southeast Asia where he was involved with a ministry that smuggled Bibles to believers in a certain Communist regime. I was friends with Huey’s brother, Herman, who also happened to live in the same house as I did. In fact, Herman owned the house. This made our friendship a little tumultuous - especially when I didn’t pay rent or I wanted to change the oil in my motorcycle while it was parked in the living room. Since I couldn’t park the motorcycle beside the couch I had to park it on the back porch. It didn’t take long before it was stolen. Herman never seemed that sympathetic, but we’re still good friends.
Anyway, Herman and I decided we would fly over to the undisclosed country to visit Huey and help him make some deliveries. While we were there in the organization’s office, we found ourselves looking at a world map hung prominently on the wall.
“You know…” Huey said, “This other country (which we’ll call Zamboni) isn’t that far away from here. I bet airplane tickets are pretty cheap this time of the year.”
“I always wanted to go to Zamboni,” I said. I always wanted to go anywhere, really. Except New Jersey.
“We have some contacts in one of those Communist countries bordering Zamboni,” Huey said, “I bet we can set up some deliveries. After we’re done with that, we could go sightseeing for a few days.”
So we soon found ourselves in a little apartment in an undisclosed border town in Zamboni with stacks of Bibles in the garage. The organization used the house as a staging base for deliveries but apparently it was unused for some time, or else they were using it as a holding pen for cattle. It was absolutely filthy. So filthy, in fact, that three bachelors who were staying there for only a few days voluntarily took it upon themselves to get down on their hands and knees and clean it. That’s just one of the perils of mission work, I guess.
The next day we emptied our hiking backpacks of all our personal belongings and stuffed them with Bibles. We fit several hundred of them in each of our bags. We were trying to maximize our efficiency since we weren’t sure how many trips we could make before we got caught. We grabbed our bags and hoisted them over our shoulders, being careful to blink often so our eyes wouldn’t pop from their sockets. Our packs must have weighed over a hundred pounds!
“Now it’s important to act like your pack isn’t heavy,” Huey said. Huey had experience making deliveries so he had a few pointers. “If you act like you have an engine block in your backpack, the border folks will get suspicious and search you. So act normal.” Apparently that’s a trait common to smugglers: They fill their bags too full. It’s a red flag if someone has a heavy bag.
“No problem,” I gasped as my wobbly legs drug my squeaking sneakers across the tile floor. Squeak. Squeak. We staggered out into the bright sunlight and then huffed and puffed down the sidewalk to a main road where we could hail a rickshaw (a local taxi) and get a ride to the border. Rickshaws are motorcycles which have been converted to tricycles. A bench is installed over the back axle and passengers pay for the privilege of sitting there, which is a marginally more pleasant experience than walking. The front half of the the bike is still roughly the same as a normal motorcycle, and that’s where the driver sits, piloting his spaceship through a chaotic universe. The whole jalopy is fitted with a windshield and covered with a roof then decorated in vaguely the style of a flamboyant Indian restaurant.
We waved down a rickshaw. The driver was very friendly, as they usually are when you’re offering them money, and he made it obvious that he wanted to load our bags for us. We politely declined. Our bags weighed almost as much as him anyway and we didn’t want him getting suspicious of what we had in them. Even though we were still in Zamboni and it wasn’t illegal to have Bibles, the authorities didn’t want people smuggling anything - Bibles or drugs - into neighboring countries because it could have hurt diplomatic relations if they left it unchecked. So we needed to fly below the radar. We gently eased our packs onto the very back of the rickshaw, rupturing our spleens but doing it quietly so as not to raise any suspicions. The rickshaw sagged and creaked noticeably, as if a whole library had just settled over the axles. Then we hopped onto the bench behind the driver. “Okay!” We gave him a thumbs up. He twisted the throttle and the engine responded weakly from somewhere underneath the contraption. We puttered about fifteen feet into the flow of traffic before the driver suddenly got frantic and began hopping up and down on his seat and wiggling his handlebars around. He hopped off the rickshaw.
“Wow! That was a short ride,” I said. “Did we pay him enough?”
“What’s wrong?” Huey asked.
The driver pointed to his front wheel and jabbered something excitedly. We all dismounted to see what drama bewitched us and found that, since our packs were so heavy and we loaded them all behind his rear axle, his front tire was completely off the ground! This made steering impossible. He ran to the back of the rickshaw and tried to move our bags but quickly found that the only thing he could move were his own legs, which were spinning wildly about, scattering dust and debris and starting to smell a little like hot rubber. He soon gave up. Then he stepped back from the rickshaw and sized all of us up. He pointed to me.
“Me?” I asked. He nodded excitedly. He explained, using universal hand signals, that I should sit with him on the front of the rickshaw. Apparently I was the most effective counterbalance in the group. It worked! Barely. If we hit a bump too hard, we lost steering for a few moments until the tire touched back down, but it was good enough. Off we went!
The delivery went well and soon we were returning to our house in Zamboni. Our backs were sore, our spirits were high.
I was sitting at my desk reminiscing about my trip to Zamboni when I suddenly had a crazy idea. “Hey Janice!” I yelled. “We should go smuggle Bibles in Zamboni! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
She seemed distressed. “AGH! We have children, remember?! We can’t pull them out of school! What about this?! What about that?! And how much will it cost?! You don’t even know how much it’ll cost! Plus we’re going back to Papua New Guinea soon! I can’t even believe you….” She wandered down the basement steps and her tirade settled into a low, ominous rumbling. Or maybe that was just the drier.
At any rate, it’s tough being a visionary person. It’s even tougher being married to one.
