We just spent a week with a missionary team in Concepcion, Chile, and I was once again reminded that missionaries are a little crazy. Really.
Consider this:
1. THEY TALK LIKE CHILDREN – While most of us spend our young lives striving to become mature adults (or at least master our language enough to give the impression that we are mature adults), they have put themselves in a situation where they sound like little children.
Sounding like a child when you are child is one thing–sounding like a child when you are an adult isn’t so fun. Just when the members of the Chile team reached the age to be taken seriously, they moved way down south where they are surrounded by Spanish–a language that none of them grew up speaking. They have become like children just when they became adults with a college degree in one hand and a wedding ring on the other.
That’s crazy .
2. INSTEAD OF CLIMBING THE LADDER OF SUCCESS, THEY ARE DESCENDING- While their friends who they went to college with are entering the job market to climb the ladder of success, the members of the Chile team chose not to even take the first step up the ladder. Most of them have master degrees in their areas of specialties (audiology, theology, speech pathology, marriage and family therapy, and management), yet they are living in a country where some of their degrees are not even recognized.
That’s crazy (and not good resume building).
3. THEY TAKE JESUS SERIOUSLY – They seem to take Jesus seriously when he says to love him more than their own family. Chile is too far away for a weekend trip to visit the parents, too far away to visit a grandmother in the hospital, or for the grandparents to take care of the newborn for a Friday night out.
Those couples are trusting Jesus’ promise that he will bless them a hundred fold as they love Him more. We preach that verse from the pulpit, but it’s a little crazy to be living it.
I suppose that if we were looking at the life of Jesus then we would think that he was a little crazy too. On the way home from Chile I started wondering what kind of craziness Jesus is calling me to live out.
Is your life looking a little too normal?
Related post – When your kids take Christianity too seriously
Wonderful analogies! So happy you got to visit-I can only imagine what this means to the team.
Wes’s Gam
Wise thoughts, friend!! Glad you got to visit the Chile team; I’m sure they were refreshed by your visit. They seem like a great group. Thank you sharing your crazy perspective.
Hi Frances,
My wife Paulina shared this blog with me. Your reflexion not only apply for our dear friends in Concepcion, Chile. Also, has a lot of sense to us. We met Wes, Ellen, Meriden and Raid few years ago when they just arrived to our city. We are from Concepcion and we moved to USA this year to serve as missionaries in Florida. My wife is a lawyer and she was working in a very good job in Chile. She cannot work in her profession yet. She is learning to speak English and she feels like a child too. Yes, missionaries we are crazy.
Hope to meet you someday.
Miguel & Paulina
[email protected]
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I wish that we could have met you before you moved. They told us about your move to Florida and how much they missed your partnership. May you have perseverance through the transition!
Frances
Gracias por esos locos y locas! Han bendecido nuestras vidas, y nos invitan a vivir la fe de manera extrema, a hacer una verdadera revolución a través del amor! Les queremos, y esperamos que nuestro CHile les brinde tanto amor como el que ellos entregan.
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