The Very Worst Missionary

by Jamie Wright

  As I sorted everything into piles, then loaded the washer, I had to hold my nose to keep from gagging. But I found myself smiling, because the whole scenario was so damn funny. We had come to Costa Rica with our sights set on Sunday-morning programs, but God was using us for bigger things under Friday-night lights.

  I don’t know if you ever noticed this, but football players aren’t usually built like soccer players. They’re usually a lot bigger (and by “bigger” I mean fatter). That said, the introduction of North American football to the area shone like a beacon of hope for Central America’s, ahem, larger athletes. Finally there was a local sport for big-boned, lumbering lard-ass brothers—a place for the bulky guy with a healthy competitive edge who’d been sized off the soccer field since fifth grade. Of course, football attracted all kinds of well-rounded jocks, but American football flipped the script in Costa Rica. A lean, fast running back could always be recruited right off a soccer pitch, but now a big beefy lineman was a truly hot commodity.

  Our players came from all walks of life. They were college students, mechanics, engineers, salesmen, musicians, real estate agents, sports bookies, pizza couriers, IT guys, and customer service reps. A handful of them worked for U.S.-based companies like Microsoft, Sprint, and FedEx. One guy might show up to practice with his own gear in the trunk of a shiny German sports car, and another might have had to take three buses to get there, then rummage for shoulder pads and a helmet in the pile of communal equipment owned by the team. But these differences quickly disappeared beneath the solidarity of the jersey.

  In the love our players developed for one another, the spirit of belonging they shared, and the promise of community that comes with being part of a team, the little world of Costa Rican semipro football felt in many ways like a church. Steve and I discovered that the growing connection and increasing intimacy we had within our football family felt more alive and meaningful than any part of the “work” we were doing on campus as so-called missionaries.

  Still, we hesitated to call any part of our involvement with the team “ministry.” We’d seen a lot of missionaries refer to the people in their lives as “opportunities” and “undertakings,” talking about them in monthly newsletters the way you’d talk about renovating your bathroom. I’ve spent many hours with Maribél, and after investing in her for months, I feel like it’s starting to pay off. God willing, soon she’s really gonna shine! Even the hired help (nannies, maids, gardeners) often turned into pawns in the game of making everything look incredibly spiritual and eternally significant, as they were regularly identified as the oh-so-grateful recipients of hand-me-downs, financial gifts, invitations to church, and unsolicited prayers.

  To see some of these interactions firsthand and then come across the subsequent retelling of the moment for the benefit of supporters was a lesson in Missionary Manipulation 101. A missionary could say “God bless you” to the sneeze of a mere acquaintance with a head cold while they were out buying bread, and hours later you might find the very same incident, retold on Facebook, looking an awful lot like a heroic step in the direction of a man’s salvation. Had a wonderful opportunity to pray with my dear friend Luis the baker. He’s been fighting illness and was so grateful when I stopped in the middle of a busy day for a moment of prayerful intercession on his behalf. #Blessed

  True? Pretty much.

  Misleading? Abso-fuckin’-lutely.

  I have to admit, I had used such tactics on occasion. I’d chosen from a selection of vague vocabulary to humbly suggest that anything and everything we touched was #blessed by our presence. When we spent time with Christians, we were “making disciples,” and when we crossed paths with non-Christians, we were “planting seeds.” Either way, we were the ones God was using, and they were the ones who needed it. The gross imbalance in this power dynamic never occurred to me, until one day when I heard another missionary talking to Steve about what a great opportunity the football team was and how (despite the fact that he knew nothing about football) he’d love to “get in on it.” When he called the team a “missions gold mine” and “ripe for the picking,” I thought that if our football players heard anyone talking about them like that, I would die.

  These were our friends, and whether or not they wanted or needed to know Jesus was not something we were going to exploit for a paycheck or a newsletter. No way. The details of our personal relationships would not find their way onto the Internet or into a newsletter, couched in the mystery language of missions.

  Steve’s connection to football would help us to see many new truths about the muddy intersection of the church and the world.

  A few months into Steve’s first season with the team, they went out to participate in a sports clinic hosted by a Christian athletic ministry from the States. The group would donate used football gear and a few hours of specialized instruction in exchange for the opportunity to evangelize. Every team in the league agreed to this deal from these complete strangers because they needed the gear, and extra training was always helpful. On the morning of the event, though, this is what Steve witnessed: Local coaches and players who’d attended the same clinic the year before took a few minutes ahead of time to solicit volunteers to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. On our team of fifty, the head coach assigned a half dozen guys to raise their hands at the appointed time. Everyone else was urged to play along but not overdo it, so that the missionaries would feel successful and keep coming back.

  After practice, the guys were asked to huddle up and take a seat on the grass. Right on cue, a couple of enthusiastic short-term missionaries got up to share their personal testimonies through a translator. They wrapped things up with an altar call, imploring everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes and asking anyone who felt led to “invite Jesus into his heart” to raise a hand. None of our players actually invited Jesus into their heart that day, but six brown hands shot up into the air, and everyone left happy.

  Later, knowing we were still technically missionaries, our friends playfully teased us about the incident and pointed out that “our kind” would continue to be welcomed with open arms, because we always brought free stuff and because we funneled so much money, by way of tourism, into the country, year after year. They said missionaries could be counted on like arms dealers to smuggle any manner of American merchandise, undeclared, through customs and immigration. If it meant they could get out of paying Costa Rica’s astronomical import tax on helmets, pads, cleats, and whatever else they needed, and if it created jobs for their friends and neighbors, our guys would gladly pretend to become Christians annually and bend over for a condescending pat on the head from a few well-meaning North American do-gooders.

  “It’s mutual exploitation,” explained Mateo, who worked for Intel and played tight end. “Everybody wins.”

  Caught between these two worlds, Steve and I felt conflicted. It was great to see the teams getting resources and support. But we knew those missionaries were gonna go back to their home churches and celebrate a false account of changed lives. They’d share pictures and tell stories and talk about how “blessed” a bunch of underprivileged third-world football players were to receive pads and helmets and practice jerseys. All the churchy people who wrote checks and stayed home would feel good, and when they heard how many guys committed their lives to Jesus, they’d pop a spiritual boner. They’d gladly send a group back to Costa Rica the next year, ostensibly to hold a football clinic but really (wink wink) to “build relationships” and “love on people.”

  Yeesh.

  * * *

  I’d begun to see a similar scenario playing out in the community I mentioned earlier, where some friends and I put on a weekly kids’ club. The Precario, which amounted to an expanse of shacks on a muddy hillside, had become a regular destination for short-termers. They usually arrived with garbage bags full of used clothes and shoes, performed a puppet show or a skit, and handed out loads of c
andy.

  Whenever a short-term team arrived, the Precario mothers sent all of their youngsters, because they knew their kids could play gringos like a fiddle. Older boys and girls would run to greet these missionaries with huge smiles on their dirty little faces, while younger siblings held back, giving the foreigners something to work for. The kids marveled at cameras and cell phones, as if they’d never seen either before in their whole entire life, happily climbing onto complete strangers’ laps for selfies and grinning for photo ops. But the really clever kids stood apart from the group, looking forlorn and doe-eyed, until one of the anguished suburbanites singled them out for special attention. Before the hour was up, that kid was usually wearing a new bracelet or carrying the new key chain they’d begged off their empathetic benefactor.

  Waving like crazy through the windows of their rental van, the group would leave, delightfully heartbroken, feeling like they’d done something special to touch the lives of needy kids in an exotic country. As soon as they found Wi-Fi, they would hit social media to thank everyone who gave money or donated used clothes to make this life-changing trip possible, relaying the story of how thrilled the kids were to see them and how they came running when the team arrived. Once back home, the missionaries would go on and on about how blessed they were to have so much in the United States while at the same time admiring how joyful poor people were, despite having so little. (Of course, no one ever asks if by giving all those joyful poor people more stuff we’re messing with their joy, because it’s just too confusing to think about, and it fucks with the tidy narrative. But whatever.) Pleased with the outcome of their mission, they would immediately begin preparations for next year’s short-term trip. Everyone knows it can take a while to come up with the $35,000 needed to send fifteen people to Central America to drop off six garbage bags of old clothes and pass out 280 lollipops.

  Meanwhile, the Precario would be littered with candy wrappers and, after being shuffled around the community, the clothes nobody wanted could be found covered in dirt and human waste, mixed in with all manner of refuse that lined the sludgy walking paths throughout the shantytown. The kids, many of whom stayed home from school to take full advantage of their gringo visitors, would fall even further behind in their subpar education—taking another tiny step away from any hope of escaping their dire circumstances: an ironic guarantee that in the years to come they’d still be there to teach their own kids how to grin and graciously accept handouts from helpful foreigners. Lord knows they would get plenty of practice. Within a month, another van full of short-term missionaries would come bearing gifts, wide-eyed and well intentioned, and the kids would do it all over again.

  To be fair, I’d been struggling with my own presence in the Precario for quite a while. I’d seen how the young men stood and watched us from afar, jaws set firmly and arms crossed. They were allowing us to be there, allowing a group of wealthy white women to come into their community because we brought healthy snacks and fun crafts for the kids, but they were not happy to see us and they wanted us to know. I was also struck by how virtually all of the kids’ parents disappeared whenever we arrived. Ignoring the fact that with so many unemployed adults living in such close proximity there was never any shortage of child care, I let myself believe everyone took off because they were grateful for an or so hour of free babysitting. But really, would I want to stand there and watch while someone else fed my children? No. I would walk away too. I would let them feed my kid and I’d probably even be grateful, because a free meal is a free meal, but I would not stick around for the show.

  The more time I spent in the community, the more I realized that poor people are poor and perhaps uneducated, but they’re not dumb. They knew the SUV I drove up in was worth more money than their family would see in twenty years. They knew that my kids went to private schools in Costa Rica and that I lived in a good house on a paved road with a whistle-blowing security guard who patrolled on a bicycle. And while I do think they knew we meant well, I’m pretty sure they also knew we were utterly clueless.

  No doubt the paths that lead to poverty in Costa Rica are not unique. The residents of the Precario suffered from alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, lack of education and opportunity, government corruption, mental illness, and broken families. But programs that keep poor people fed and clothed often fail to address the problems that keep them poor. In other words? Poverty is hella complicated.

  I loved the kids who came to our clubs, and I genuinely wanted to help them, but when I looked out across the expanse of tin and plywood shacks (many of which had DirecTV satellite dishes but no plumbing), it dawned on me that maybe I had no idea what changing their lives would actually require. I could show up every week for a decade to hand out bananas and help toddlers glue cotton balls onto coloring pages with Bible verses, but the complicated lives of the Precario kids would remain just as messy and complex as the first time I’d arrived to “help.”

  Was I called to love and care for the poor? Most definitely.

  Was I equipped to love and care for Costa Rica’s poor in respectful, sensible ways that went to the root of the problem? Like, not even close.

  As hard as I tried to apply all the feel-good Christian clichés we use as permission to descend on impoverished communities, I couldn’t keep pretending that it was actually accomplishing significant change.

  * * *

  I used to joke around that when we flew off to the mission field, Steve and I were like the Apostle Paul going blind on the road to Damascus: later the scales would fall from our eyes. I had completely bought into my cause, was fully immersed in the journey with no intention of turning back, only to learn with sudden clarity that I had been wrong about so many things on so many levels.

  I was blind but now I see.

  Now I could see how our uninvited arrival as missionaries was, in itself, patronizing. Now I could see how truly helping people is far more complex, costly, and time-consuming than I’d ever dreamed. Now I could see how well-meaning but ignorant humanitarian aid efforts can actually hinder a community’s progress. Now I could see how our failure to ask questions and seek answers before we even got on the plane was failing everyone involved.

  As the scales fell away, each new revelation left me feeling more foolish, angry, and afraid.

  I desperately wanted to do good, but after seeing how easily our best efforts can miss the mark, I found the fear of trying something new and doing it wrong debilitating. I never stopped trusting God and I never felt abandoned by Jesus, but now that I could see? I felt utterly paralyzed by the thought of creating or condoning the next trend in nefarious church bullshit. There was simply no margin left in my weary soul for the catchy clichés, false promises, and overspiritualized expense reports that had played such a pivotal role in my life up to that point. Like a huge doofus, I’d given up everything and turned my children’s lives upside down for what I’d finally come to view as a false gospel of Christian missions created to help folks back home feel better.

  How could I have ever believed that God was calling me to be a missionary? I was a cranky, cynical, opinionated, depressed, introverted, moody follower of Jesus who, at best, hobbled along on the fringe of the church, unable to get with the program.

  What on earth had compelled me to think I could bring anything good to a Central American country already teeming with white weirdos from the North?

  We made a good life in Costa Rica, but every morning I awoke feeling a little more unsure of my place in the world and the church. I would daydream about packing up and going home, but I still felt the gentle prodding of God to look and listen, to stay there and figure shit out. Meanwhile, right under my nose, my whole life was taking a strange and wonderful turn. While Steve, the Very Best Missionary, worked on campus during the week and rolled around in the mud with grown men on weekends, I stayed home in my pajamas with two dogs curled at my feet, and accidentally became a write
r.

  That might seem super obvious, since you’re reading a book that I wrote, so I’m just gonna go ahead and point out that the kind of girl who drops out of high school in the tenth grade isn’t usually the same person who daydreams of growing up to write essays on purpose. And I am no exception. I had never done any writing prior to taking responsibility for communicating back home about our missionary life, and I was as surprised as anyone to find that the whole thing came sort of naturally. When thoughts from my brain mixed with feelings from my heart, and then I wrote them down, they came out sounding less, y’know, stupid. It’s not that I love writing (I don’t), but somehow I just am a writer.

  To be clear, I’m not saying I’m a good writer, only that, for whatever reason, I express myself better with my fingers than with my mouth. (I’m totally judging you, pervert.)

  Blogging as Jamie the Very Worst Missionary (thank you, Mrs. Eatadick) rather than as a representative of my family, my home church, or my sending agency, gave me the freedom to write about anything that struck me as worthy of a few words. I shared silly stories and half-baked thoughts about life and faith, marriage and motherhood, friendship, food, football, and just about everything in between. Sometimes I wrote about the big, important things I was wrestling with, like mental illness and body image and stuff about God. But just as often I wrote about things like the time I accidentally threw a field mouse into the washer with a load of towels. Or how one of the dogs snatched a wild parrot right out of the air and left the most beautiful carnage, a rainbow of bright, sparkly feathers, floating softly around the yard. (Fun fact: The prettier a bird is, the worse I feel when my dog murders it.)