April 2007 Musings

What makes a missionary? Does it take moving out of one's comfort zone? Does it take being able to communicate God's love to the world with words? Am I a missionary when I stay home and care for my young children or when my days are totally taken up with homeschool, meal preparation, and interacting with my family? If so, then why did God decide to uproot my family from Central Oregon and transplant us on the other side of the world in Thailand? Weren't we being missionaries at home and at work?

I'm struggling right now with figuring out where I fit in the grand scheme of things. In Bend I thought I knew where I belonged. I was comfortable in, if not totally happy with the way my life was. I saw that I had ways to minister to the world, to be a missionary of sorts. I could be friendly and talk with the people God brought into my life when I shopped or went to the doctor or dentist or even when I walked for exercise, sharing my faith in God when opportunities arose. I could minister to my fellow church members by helping my sister on her worship team, by teaching or contributing in Adult Sabbath School, by being a part of a women's Bible study group. I could encourage Christians of other faiths that I got to know through teaching classes at COCC--they always found me out! I even had a way to minister to our local community by helping out with cooking classes and a Depression Recovery Program. And with a predictable outside structure in my life, I found it easier to see what God wanted from me in the areas of finance and parenting and simplicity.

But now I'm living on the other side of the world in a totally different culture. And even more unsettling is the fact that there's one "culture" on the Mission College campus, one in Muak Lek which has been affected by the presence of Mission College and even a different one outside those "boundaries". In the States, I thought I knew how simple God wanted my life to be. But here, even with unloading over half of our belongings before we left the States, I still struggle to come to terms with the question, "How simply does God want me to live now that I'm here in Thailand?" What does He want me to do? How can I be a missionary in Thailand when I don't even have time to learn more than the most minimal basics of the Thai language, when I struggle with depression, when I want to hide in my house and use the very expensive air conditioning all the time?