Yesterday, I hit my 300th day on the Race.
When my teammate announced her calculation, my response was pretty basic: Dang. That’s a lot of days. Did I never notice how quickly they added up? Taking the Race a day at a time is great, but then you realize you’ve been gone for almost a year.
In just a couple days, it will have been one year since I went to Georgia for the first time in my life for Training Camp. Man, if I could only relive Training Camp. (said no one ever)
With these milestones sneaking up on me, it’s got me thinking.
On our first day in Belize, I found myself scrubbing doors at my ministry host’s pregnancy center. It’s the kind of thing that I would normally think nothing of. But for some reason, I was reminded of my time as a CA (that’s what we called RA’s at my university) and how that, too, required me to show up and be willing to do whatever was asked (for real, being an RA is not too unlike being a Racer).
Suddenly, I had the strangest thought, a thought I hadn’t thought in almost a year: In another month, I could be getting paid to work.
Paid to work? The concept was actually mind-boggling.
Facing the reality of the last year provided footing: For the last year, I’ve been on the mission field; that sentence always sounded so serious in my support letters!
For 300 days I’ve been a missionary. In the last year, I’ve observed as friends from home become grad students, husbands, wives, and people with the kind of jobs you get after you’ve got a bachelor’s degree.
And me? A missionary. It’s harder for me to put a finger on or put that in a box.
These were my thoughts as I scrubbed doors. But the question, “What does it mean to be a missionary?” didn’t leave me.
When I was thinking of my 300 days as a missionary, and of my limited number of days left on the field, something my host said last month in Guatemala came back to me, as it frequently has.
Juan had told us his story on one of our first mornings in Chichicastenago. He told us about his childhood in Guatemala, facing poverty I could barely comprehend. He told us about his time in various states and churches in the US. He told us about the time he’d spent on the streets of Seattle, homeless and asking God for everything.
And then he said something I’ll never forget, something that convicted me and still sends me reeling in introspection.
“I didn’t know it, but God was preparing me. Because when I was a homeless man, God was preparing me to be a missionary.”
W H A T ?
I was stunned. Being homeless prepared him to be a missionary. Going without food, shelter, and comfort? That’s what prepared him to be a missionary?
And here I was, a year ago, thinking preparation to be a missionary meant buying the right kind of sleeping pad, planning fundraisers, and figuring out how the heck to get to a town in Georgia I’d never heard of.
As you can imagine, it was quite the reality check.
I’m not saying us Racers or other short-term missionaries are “less.” I’m recognizing the differences (and similarities) between my 300 `days and a life of sacrifice for the Kingdom.
Juan’s words reminded me of my host in India. My three teammates and I were in a rural town, living with a pastor and his family, tenting in their church that was attached to their house. We rarely left the house during the day, and every night we went to a different village to preach a message, “lead worship” (we were 4 not-musically-inclined-girls, and our translator literally made us stop once), encourage the local pastors, and pray with families.
We did this ministry at night and didn’t leave the house during the day for our host and his family’s safety. Real-life, bodily and social safety. Preaching the gospel is illegal on a tourist visa, and even more dangerous for Indians. Indian and Nepalese people face ostracization from their communities and families—a sentence that surely spells out homelessness and persecution.
I can only imagine the danger they face hosting foreigners to preach the Gospel. My host, and other Indian hosts, were taking real risks with their families’ safety to host us. They consider the Gospel and the Kingdom worth that sacrifice.
And here I thought that learning sacrifice as a missionary meant learning to eat tuna a different way every night of the week. I thought sacrifice meant coming to terms with acne scars brought on by dirty water, constant sweat, and foreign skin products. I thought it meant giving up my workout routine and preferred diet. I thought it meant accepting damaged hair, forgoing bagels, and having obscene bathroom experiences.
Juan was homeless, my Indian host risks his life, and here I was pissed that I didn’t have the friends I wanted on my team after our last team changes.
I know that this whole time I’ve been talking about being a missionary, but what I’ve actually learned from my 300 days is that my time as a missionary might actually have little to do with the amount of time I’ve spent on the Race.
While the Race is an incredible way to set aside a year and experience what missions is all about, it’s (thankfully!) neither the beginning, nor the end, of my time as a missionary—because I’m learning to lead a missional life. I’m thankful that I haven’t had to be homeless (yet?), or risk my family’s safety on a daily basis, but witnessing those extremes has made Jesus’ words to his followers in the Bible—like about the Son of Man having nowhere to lay his head and letting the dead bury their dead—come to life for me. The Race has exposed me to sacrifice that I might not ever have encountered in my Christian life in Alaska, but it isn’t what made me a missionary.
Deciding Jesus was worth following—that made me a missionary. Like it or not, I should have shouldered that much earlier in my walk. That makes me a Christian with a missional life. The World Race has taught me that the decision to live missionally is a daily decision.
For example, in Antigua, some squadmates and I decided to check out a place to dance that had been recommended. I wouldn’t necessarily say we thought we had our “missionary” hats on, but we still weren’t the average tourist looking for a party in Antigua—we weren’t drunk, made up, or dressed up (we were wearing Chacos…clearly not serious party-seekers). As we walked through the main square, a man called out to us. The six of us that heard him stopped. He tried to sell us a coat—but we ended up sitting with him, listening to his story, encouraging him, and praying for him. Tourists passing us eyed us curiously and warily, probably thinking we were being duped by a sob story.
Hello sir, meet your divine appointment for the day, K-Squad edition.
The truth is, the reason something like this can happen isn’t because we’re on a sweet mission trip. This can happen because we have the Holy Spirit living in us, we were obedient to Him, and we have the Good News about Jesus to share. So, so simple.
I was a missionary even before I was a Racer—but I might not have given that part of my faith the weight it truly has. I now see a much simpler equation in living out my faith: if I’m a Christian, then I’m a missionary.
I know we’ve read it before in the Great Commission (and to be fair, we do leave youth group and BCM super stoked on those nights after a message on it). But I’m learning to live a life fully aware that there’s not a spectrum with “#basicChristianthings” on one end, “#11n11” in the middle, and “#fulltimeseriousgrownupmissionary” on the other end. We exist in one of two places: in the Light or in the dark. And if you’re in the Light, you’re reaching out to the dark. It’s not a matter of signing up for a mission trip, and it certainly doesn’t start at Training Camp.
My host this month, Craig, had a really neat way of illustrating this. It was a basic truth, and maybe I over-thought it, but in my opinion how can you think too much about truth?
It was an adventure day and Craig took my team to Blue Hole National Park. We took a trail and went exploring in St. Herman’s Cave. As we descended, our headlamps and flashlights became more and more necessary.
We reached the bottom of the stone stairs to the floor of the cave. We could make out an underground river, a giant stalagmite, and a sign that said, “CAUTION: Use a guide beyond this point.”
“Alright, everyone turn their headlamps off!” Craig announced, and I wondered if something down there would glow (exotic bat poop or something, you know).
Every light was turned off. Nothing glowed. Slightly anti-climactic.
I’ve been in the dark before, but there was something different about this-maybe because I knew I was underground or maybe it was the cold, close air. I almost reached out and grabbed a teammate to make sure they were still there because it was so dark. I could see nothing at all—I was in darkness. My eyes were wide open, but I couldn’t see. As my senses scrambled for anything and my eyes struggled to adjust, I half-imagined shapes in the darkness, like when you close your eyes against light and see weird forms dance on your eyelids. Shapeless, shifting semblances of light. I imagined what it would be like if I was actually lost in the dark: I would latch on to or chase anything that even appeared to be light. I would make myself believe I’d found a way; anything would be better than the darkness.
Craig clicked on his flashlight. More than one of us breathed a jittery, “Wooo.”
“The world is in darkness,” he said. “But when even just one light is turned out, darkness dissipates. Even a small amount of light pushes back the darkness. We have the Light of the world living in us, Jesus Christ. And it’s our job to bring Light to the darkness.”
I know, I know. Your elementary school Sunday school teacher probably turned off the lights and said the same things.
But Craig’s little lesson stuck with me. If there’s any light at all, there’s no longer darkness. If there’s any light at all, people don’t need to grasp around and chase what appears to be light. And light doesn’t have to try—by nature, it expels darkness.
That’s the simplicity of the nature of our lives as Christians. Light doesn’t have to sign up for a mission trip or travel to a different country to do what it’s created to do. If we are in step with the Spirit, we will bring Light to every workplace, university, and country.
That is the power of realizing the weight of the missional call in our Christian lives. I said it before: if you’re in the Light, you’re reaching out to the dark; not because you’ve been a missionary for 300 days but because it’s what you were created to do in the hands of your Creator. We just….do. We have a light source that never fails, and if we will discipline ourselves to reflect Him, darkness can never win.
My time as a missionary doesn’t have to end when my Race ends. I may or may not be called to higher levels of sacrifice, but I can commit to follow Jesus—and be his messenger—on any path he may want me, whether that message is legal or illegal, welcome or unwanted. While I feel that I may go out again, if that’s not the case, I’ll still be a missionary, just like I’ll still be a Christian.
Just like light will always dissolve darkness.
