A letter to my pre-missionary self.

Dear Ellyn,

Oh, my dear. The first year will be hard. The first year will be confusing. The first year will come with the tough lessons. Don’t give up. Because these lessons are the valuable ones. The life-changing ones. The ones that will build a foundation. The ones that will break off pride and break off stereotypes and break off racism and break off cultural barriers and break off self dependency and break off fear.

Don’t try to save the world. Don’t try to change the country. Just show up. Show up and love the people. Aim for love. Love is the greatest gift that you can give them. 

Poverty can’t be solved with handouts. Do. Not. Give. Handouts. Give dignity. It is so much better to give a mother a job and a source of income than to hand her money. You don’t want to be the rich American that buys her children toys. You want to enable her to buy her own children toys.

Mothers are the same all over the world. We dream for our babies. We weep for them when they hurt. We rejoice when they take their first little breath. We hold them and rock them and love them. You will find something magical in sharing motherhood with these foreign women. You will begin to feel like they are not so foreign. You will feel love that crosses all borders when they accept you into their circle, arms open wide. Let them love you.

Missionary is a strange word. You will let it define you for a time. You will shrug it off and fling it to the floor for a time. You will wonder, always wonder, if missionary is better explained as friend, or family, or sister, or brother. Something incredible happens when the people you showed in pictures on slide shows and newsletters, the ones you talked about while raising support in the months before leaving the states, become your best friends. You will feel weird that you showed their faces to strangers back home. You will wonder if you would do it that way again and know that you probably wouldn’t because now it’s so much more personal. And you really never stop wondering about everything.. about missions, about Christianity, about love… And you know what? It is OK to keep wondering. It is OK not to know.

The time you have  in Peru is a gift. It could be a short time, it could be a longer time. Don’t wish the days to pass for something greater or something bigger. Trust Him with it. God orders your steps and each day has its purpose. Let Him lead. 

You can’t explain it all away. You won’t be able to wrap it all up and put a bow on top. There will be a time whenever words won’t come because the emotions are too deep and the hearts are too raw. And it’s OK. It’s OK to be silent for a time, to process full and long. To give yourself time to overcome. 

You will miss “American” church with a passion. Everything about it. You will long for home some days and you will cry for your family, your friends, all of the normal. Some days you won’t want to live so far away and you will question everything. That’s OK too. Be kind to yourself. Call your Mama. Listen to some 90s music. Go to Chili’s (because they have those in Peru) and pay too much for chicken fingers and fries just so you can dip them in REAL ketchup (hallelujah). You can get through this.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. You won’t know how to buy chicken or how to cook on a gas stove at first. You won’t have any idea how to make Peruvian food or what to do when the power goes out for days. You will mix up the Spanish words for cookies and hen. (galleta & gallina… common mistake!) Have a good sense of humor and just laugh. This is all part of the journey. One day you will laugh at the time you told your friends that you had a whole pen of “cookies” back at home!

Church is crazy. Religion is crazy. You will say it a million times, exasperated. Christianity is not the same as it was in the Bible Belt when it is mixed with South American religions and witchcraft and superstitions and strange doctrine. No one has heard about freedom and grace. For the first time, you will feel so truly kindred to the disciples and to the first Christians. Alone in a world where you seem to hold an incredible secret that everyone must know. The opposition that comes with the news that threatens the law and the religious leaders. The excitement that blossoms in kitchens and around dinner tables when the gospel is shared in its truth. Transformation of lives and hearts, an eternal thing.

You will “GO” thinking that you are being sent to change the people. And yes, in a way you will. But even more so,  they will change you. A whole other culture, people, language, and tradition will begin to take residence in your heart and you will grow more and more humble. You will learn more in that first year than you ever thought possible. Your heart will break, living on this side of missions. Let it. You are blessed to know these people, to live this life with them, to see missions and church and life from their perspective.

Yes, my dear, the first year will be hard. You will be asking the hard questions and finding the hard answers.  Rest in The One who has all of the answers. Because in all things, whether American or Peruvian, here or there, poverty or abundance, He will carry you through.