"You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion." - G.K. Chesterton
It's not something we expected. It's not something we planned for. Oh, sure, we said that at some point we might like to live overseas. We even went so far as to say maybe it would be to do something good for humanity. But then it just sort of happened.
My name is Theo*, and I'm a missionary.
* My name isn't really Theo.
It all started out innocently enough. My wife and I were living the dream – double income, no kids. Then one of our cars started acting up and it looked like it was time to replace it. No problem, we could budget for that. We did the research, took our prospective vehicle on a proper winter test drive, and made a decision. At least, we thought we did.
Somewhere between deciding on the car and actually going to the dealership to sign the papers something happened. If you're signing a financing agreement for a four year term then naturally you are going to ask yourself where you see yourself over that period. That opens a door that is not easily shut.
In short, after much soul searching, we were surprised to find that we felt called to let go of everything that we were holding onto – our lifestyle, our toys, our financial security, my Scotch collection, the prospect of the new car we had painstakingly researched – and go overseas as missionaries.
The idea of a calling is not necessarily unique to adherents of any particular faith, nor to faith at all. Our modern term “vocation” is derived from the Latin “vocare”, which means to call. In our case, though, faith was the critical piece.
There are far too many examples of people who have claimed to have heard from God and gone on to do terrible things. If I make this same claim, I recognize that I may alienate those who might otherwise think me a reasonably harmless do-gooder. All the same, I do claim this but with the provision that whatever I believe I heard from my God puts an onus and a responsibility on me, not on anyone else.
Even with those whom I ask to support our work financially, it is not my call that I present to them, but the work itself, work which I believe is worth doing. What I am doing must be objectively evaluated based on something other than my heart being strangely warmed by the prospect of doing it.
And so, here I am. I'm a winter-bred Canadian living in the sweltering heat of Southeast Asia. I find myself among people I love but whom I do not understand – both locals and fellow missionaries. At any moment they're going to figure out that I'm not a “real” missionary. I'm the guy who sat at the back of the church and thought that being a missionary was something that happened to other people. Weird people.
But I'm still here. I believe. I'm called. I filled out every form with complete and sometimes humiliating honesty and someone somewhere said “yep, he'll do”.
And so we come to the asterisk next to my name. I'm certain many of my readers know exactly who I am (hi mom!) but I'm still using a pseudonym. Why? Am I ashamed of what I'm posting?
The short answer is no, I am not ashamed and I am not hiding. But my name does not belong to me alone anymore – it is easily linked to the organization I work with. I am often irreverent and perhaps slightly inappropriate (see the blog name) and the responsibility for that should fall on me and me alone, not on the organization under whose banner I have been generously allowed to work.
Missionaries often struggle with being able to relate to people back home when they return. In journalling some of my experiences I hope to work through how to communicate these things myself, as well as provide for my readers a sense of what the world looks like from the perspective of an overseas faith-based aid worker... a "missionary position", if you will.
Theo
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