The Very Worst Missionary

by Jamie Wright

  Back home, tales from this trip earned us a reputation for being adventurous and spontaneous. Like the one where we accidentally followed a one-lane road that ended at a river ferry preparing for its next departure and, rather than turn back, we drove right onto the ferry and landed in historic Jamestown, Virginia. Or when we visited a “museum” somewhere in the middle of Kansas that was really just a hoarder’s house at the end of a dirt road surrounded by cornfields. It was filled with odds and ends like creepy dolls, two-headed animal taxidermy, and fetal pigs floating in jars of formaldehyde. We paid something like two dollars apiece to enter and wander through a little old man’s junk piles, and it was weird, but I felt kind of proud of him for at least turning a small profit on his dysfunction.

  It was a great trip, a wild and wonderful family vacation. And it plays a pivotal role in the story of how we decided to sell off our easy suburban life and move to a foreign country.

  * * *

  See, it takes a certain amount of confidence and—let’s be real—a hefty dose of arrogance to believe that God is calling you to go out into the world and “be the hands and feet of Jesus,” especially when you don’t speak the language, don’t understand the culture, and can’t find the freakin’ place on a map. I’m not saying perfectly humble missionaries don’t exist, just that the recipient of such a call must be more than a little self-assured of their ability to handle the challenges that come with such a move. On some level, they have to believe that they are intrepid enough to overcome any challenge and flexible enough to deal with any circumstance of living in a foreign environment. In other words, they need to be adventurous and spontaneous.

  You see where I’m going with this?

  Yeah.

  Steve and I went on our first short-term mission trip less than a year after we went on a crazy cross-country escapade where we discovered that we were adventurous and spontaneous. Whenever anyone from our church found out we would be chaperoning the youth-group kids on a trip to Costa Rica, they said things like “You two are so adventurous, I could see you packing up and moving there!” or “You two are so spontaneous, I wouldn’t be surprised if you never came back!”

  Thus the seed was planted.

  Our wildly spontaneous family adventure preceded our first trip to Costa Rica as youth-group leaders by a matter of months. We made two more trips with teenagers in subsequent years, and aside from a few minor snags here and there (a kid stepped on a nail, the van got a flat tire, I had to yell at some students over a five-dollar dare to take a dump in the volcanic hot springs, etc.), each trip went off without much drama. The North American kids were paired off with Costa Rican kids to stay in homes for a true “Tico” experience, and each evening everyone came together for a barbecue or a soccer game or just to hang out.

  It hadn’t yet occurred to me to wonder about the real value or long-term purpose of these trips, but even in retrospect, as far as short-term mission trips go, I think this was actually a pretty decent experience for everyone involved.

  We were there in partnership with a local youth group for the mutual exchange of ideas and cross-cultural exposure (which included bringing the Tico youth group to the United States for their own short-term mission trip). While we were there, it was somewhat challenging for the North American kids, but there was no opportunity for gross self-congratulation, no pretending to change the world. They might not have had hot water or a washing machine at their disposal, but in Costa Rica, our high school students went to the mall and the movies, they played video games, they passed car dealerships, they ate at Papa Murphy’s pizza and Burger King. They saw the many ways in which Costa Rican teenagers are their smart, funny, capable peers and not their poor, needy, incompetent counterparts.

  Since I didn’t grow up going to church, the missionaries who hosted us were the first missionaries I’d ever met. (Here’s an embarrassing confession: For a really long time—I mean, like, way too long—I thought missionaries were mercenaries. So I would pray, like, “Lord God, watch over your missionaries. Bless all those badass motherfuckers who sneak into heavily guarded compounds under cover of night with hand grenades and rocket launchers to rescue foreign dignitaries and high-ranking hostages from the clutches of evil.” But then, I also thought it was “for all intensive purposes” well into my thirties, so now you know exactly what kind of person you’re dealing with.)

  The missionaries we spent time with seemed pretty cool and down-to-earth, but mostly they just seemed like regular people. A few of them might even be the kind Steve and I would be friends with if we lived right down the street; they liked beer with lime and salt, meat cooked over fire, and off-color jokes. We said things to each other like “We could actually hang out with these guys.”

  And so it was on our last flight home from a short-term trip to Costa Rica that Steve leaned close to me and said, “I’m going to say something crazy, but I don’t want you to freak out.”

  I said, “Oookaaay?” and acted like he was being dumb even though I knew exactly what he was going to say, because I was just about to say the same thing.

  He whispered, “I think we should become missionaries.”

  And I nodded. “Me too.”

  He said, “I really think we could do it.”

  And I agreed, “Me too.”

  And then we both looked a little bit ill, like maybe we’d just invoked the Holy Spirit to set our house on fire. Which, in a way, we had. We just didn’t know it yet.

  Here’s what we did know:

  1. Based on the grand total of twenty-seven days we’d spent there, we thought Costa Rica would be a super cool place to live.

  2. Normal people could be missionaries.

  3. We were normal people!…Okay, normalish.

  4. We were on the same page, like, actually in agreement over this pretty major life-changing thing, when we usually couldn’t even agree on where to eat.

  5. We were adventurous and spontaneous.

  6. Please. What more could Jesus want?

  Since I’ve done it, people always ask me how to become a missionary. I’m happy to share, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if they feel relieved or appalled by my answer, because I usually just shrug and say, “All you have to do is raise your hand.”

  Sure, there are a few other details that need to be managed. You have to find a church or church organization to sponsor you, raise funds, buy Crocs—but the only real requirement for you to go anywhere you want, to do anything you want, and to have other people pay for it is that you have to volunteer.

  Oh, and don’t forget to say it’s for Jesus, because, let’s be honest, if you say God is “calling you,” who’s gonna argue?

  If you don’t already have a specific plan or goal for your mission, no worries. Every day a soulful hipster from a sceneless small town in Nebraska decides he needs to go and be present as a coffee-shop missionary in Portland, or a young Spanish major from Atlanta makes a case for the necessity of her very Christ-like presence for a summer in Madrid. But Steve and I didn’t really like that idea of being present. We were new to the missions game, but even we could see that it’s kind of stupid to pay someone to drink coffee and read novels and be friendly to random strangers in some destination-quality city like it’s their job.

  No, seriously, we wanted our work to have purpose, and not just the made-up kind. We wanted to do something worthwhile, and while we did that special something, our plan was to “love on people” (yeesh), get involved in the community, and make organic connections with our neighbors. (Let’s not talk about how we were already doing this quite effectively where we lived. It bums me out too much.)

  The world was at our fingertips, and with nothing to hold us back, we struggled to figure out where God wanted us to go and what He wanted us to do. So we turned to the professionals. We applied to the missionary-sending agency we’d become fam
iliar with through our trips to Costa Rica, and we thought it made sense to ask them for help with our dilemma. Since we were so adventurous and spontaneous, we told them we were open to going to work anywhere, and we figured these people who sent batches of missionaries out three or four times every year would help us narrow down our choices.

  We didn’t want to go for the sake of going, and we didn’t want to go wherever we felt like going. We wanted to go where God could use us, where the mission needed us, and where the people would want us. Steve and I spent months talking about it, praying over it, and seeking the right place for our family. He’d always been a handy guy, and he dreamed of leading building projects and working side by side with other guys. I still loved my work with high school and college girls, and hoped for a way to carry that over somehow.

  It’s kind of hard to explain how we ended up deciding on Costa Rica as the right place for us to go. All I can say is this: It felt like we’d been asking God to tell us where to go for a long time, so when an American missionary on the Costa Rican leadership team served us our dream jobs on a silver platter, the invitation to live and work in Costa Rica was too good to pass up. Steve was offered a job managing work teams and overseeing the physical operations of the mission’s buildings and facilities, and I was enticed by an “awesome opportunity” to work with a “great program” for college interns (which, it turned out, didn’t actually exist).

  Looking back, I have a hard time thinking about that conversation without feeling like we were blatantly lied to. I mean, maybe it wasn’t an outright lie, more like a car salesman’s lie—the leaving out of certain facts and information to make the situation appear more appealing than it really was. And maybe it wasn’t even as sinister as that. It’s possible we were sold on an idea that came from the glowing perspective of a dreamy (albeit entitled) optimist, one who viewed the world through missionary-colored lenses.

  After we received an official invitation to join the team in Costa Rica, we went to bed starry-eyed, and the very next morning we set about preparing for an international move. We had to break the news to our families. We had to get rid of all our crap. We had to rent out our house. Or sell our house. Or rent it? Or sell it? We had to decide what to do with our house. We had to host a silent auction, followed by thirty-five garage sales and twelve trips to Goodwill. But most of all, we had to figure out how to ask everyone we’d ever met for money. (We were going out as “support-based” missionaries, which means your paycheck comes from a combination of corporate church giving, fifty bucks a month from random old ladies, and a fat check from your husband’s parents.)

  It took six months for us to sell off our junk, rent out our house, and raise the funds required by the sending agency. Or I should say, it only took us six months, because for real? Look around your house and imagine selling or dispersing every bit of it, piece by piece. Furniture, dishes, mattresses, art, books, board games, wooden spoons, mixing bowls, picture frames, toys, tools, everything in every basket, drawer, and cupboard, and don’t forget the garage / attic / yard / shed / junk drawer, nearly all of your clothes and shoes, your waste baskets, your potted plants—everything must go! It was a big job and it went surprisingly fast, and while it wasn’t easy, it didn’t feel like it was as hard as it should have been.

  We turned our lives upside down like an old sofa, shaking out every loose penny, stale cracker, lost remote, and dried-up marker until there was nothing left to do but drag it out to an empty field and set it on fire. We destroyed the life we knew. By the time we were done, we were out of a job and out of a home, and we could carry everything we owned in ten duffel bags and five backpacks, but finally we were ready to go in every way!

  Except for all the ways we weren’t.

  There were a few little things that had me worried, like how we didn’t speak Spanish, and how our kids had never even seen their future country of residence, and how, just weeks before our departure, Steve and I got in a massive fight, and when he threatened to call the whole thing off, I threw the phone at him and yelled, “Do it!” He dialed the agency’s number on speaker, and when it started to ring, we both lost our resolve and agreed to hang up. We each knew the other was bluffing, because we both knew we were in way too deep to turn around.

  I’m sure it’s natural to be filled with fear and anxiety when you’re dragging your family to a foreign country where none of you speak the language and you’re only loosely acquainted with a handful of people you’ve barely met. Anyone would have second-guessed themselves in our situation. We were still excited to get to Costa Rica, and we still believed we were following God, but the closer it got to go time, the more we started to see some of the holes in our process. Once it was just us and the duffel bags, we could see ourselves more clearly, because all of a sudden there was nothing left to hide behind. Our marriage now looked terribly precarious, our confident kids seemed sad and confused, and our personal demons were clearly alive and kicking.

  But we’d volunteered for this, and we had every intention of moving forward. Besides, even if we had wanted to back out, it’s hard to argue with the Christian narrative that promises your only job is to raise your hand and show up, and then God will sprinkle pixie dust all over your life. And it’s still kind of embarrassing to admit this, but in the deep, dark recesses of my heart, I was holding on to a secret hope that if we obeyed God—like, if we made this great big dramatic sacrifice and became missionaries—God would fix us. We would serve God, and God would heal our hurts.

  It seemed like a fair trade.

  * * *

  Before we left for Costa Rica, we drove to Chicago to attend a five-week missionary training thingy. It was very serious. There was homework to do and papers to write, team-building classes, guest speakers, and even a course in language acquisition. To experience diversity we went on field trips to cultural centers: a Muslim mosque, a Hindu temple, a Mexican restaurant. Cross-cultural instruction also included playing games where half the people in the room wore a green plastic hat and a sock on one hand, and then the rest of us had to figure out what the deal was with the hats and the socks by overcoming a fake language barrier. Interesting concept, though awkward in practice, but it was all in good fun. When they taught about fund-raising, they mentioned starting a blog to keep our family and friends up to date on our work, and they said that would keep the cash rolling in. Steve took diligent notes and did most of the homework, and I did my part by listening to “Recycled Air” by the Postal Service on repeat and crying myself to sleep.

  And that, my friend, is how, after six months of begging for money and five weeks of missionary “training,” Steve and I landed in Costa Rica with nothing more than our shiny blue passports and three travel-weary children. Ten duffel bags followed us off the plane, and what was in them at that point was anybody’s guess.

  We tried so hard to be smart with our limited luggage space, but it was unbelievably difficult to decide what was important enough to take and what wasn’t. There is no premade packing list for “moving indefinitely to the tropics with three boys of varying ages.” I swear, ten minutes before we left for the airport, we were still trying to figure it out—packing, unpacking, repacking—frantically trying to weed out all but the most important items. It was pure insanity. Finally, with five seconds left on the clock, we grabbed everything left within arm’s reach, shoved it wherever it would fit, and ran out the door. Great plan! Highly recommend this method. Things that made it to Costa Rica included a men’s XL cold-water wetsuit, with flippers; a gallon-sized ziplock bag full of broken crayons and chewed-up, eraserless pencils; an out-of-date hardbound Guinness Book of World Records; several pairs of mittens; and a shoe without a mate. We’d spent months preparing for that moment, and somehow we still managed to bring about 150 pounds of useless crap with us.

  Sadly, I can’t recall much about the first day of our first year in Costa Rica. Only that as we slowly made our way t
hrough customs and immigration, my charming boys got into a heated argument over who had to poop the most, who had pooped last, and who would poop biggest as soon as they got a chance to poop. Judging by the lingering cloud of farts that followed us through the line, I’m guessing it was a three-way tie.

  We arrived at night, and a couple of our new teammates were waiting outside in the heavy Costa Rican air to pick us up in two cars. Steve went with the luggage in one car, and I took the kids in the other. They immediately fell asleep in the backseat of the big white SUV that would take us through the city of Heredia and winding up the mountain in the dark. The driver and I made small talk (he and his wife would become some of our dearest friends), but it was all I could do to keep it together while I watched the colorful little houses and barred storefronts streak by in the headlights. I didn’t know a person could feel so happy and so sad at the same time.

  I had raised my hand.

  I showed up.

  Now it was God’s turn to do something.

  Our first year in Costa Rica was full of surprises. We were surprised to learn what we loved (mango) and what we hated (papaya), and sometimes we were surprised by what surprised us. Like a coffee field in full bloom across a rolling hillside, an unexpected sea of fragrant white flowers waving in the breeze. There were good surprises, like the full flavor of a ripe banana plucked right off the tree. Surprise! That’s what a banana is supposed to taste like! And there were some not-so-good surprises, like parasites. Surprise! You just shit your pants.

  Each new day of our first year in Costa Rica seemed like its own adventure. We woke up on bright, sunny mornings to the bitter, burned-toast smell of coffee roasting in the valley and fell asleep at night to the sound of geckos chirping. Our weekends were filled with expeditions to white-sand beaches, misty green rain forests, and lively farmers’ markets, and I was struck with awe and wonder by the simple fact that we were there. I experienced a new kind of fullness as I fell in love with the remarkable little country we were lucky enough to call home. It was so unbelievable to me that we lived there, I felt compelled to announce at least six times a day, “We actually live here!”