Fairly recently in the grand scheme of things I made the decision to pursue mission work full time. Now depending on who you ask I was already in full time missions when I was an educator in the public school system. For the sake of simplicity here I’m going to refer to a missionary as someone who goes overseas or has the intent to go overseas in the near future. That is the historic understanding in American Christianity so hopefully most of my readers can excuse this narrow definition of the word for this entry or two.
I’m on a flight currently back from Scotland and Spain. We went to Scotland to house and dog sit for a missionary family who are dear friends of ours. Probably more than that, Ryan was my mentor for 10 years when I lived in Sarasota and someone whom I still seek counsel for major life decisions. We also went to Spain to scope out possible ministry opportunities there.
Both places were great, but I’m going to focus on Spain for this post. What I’ve learned so far about missionary life is that it will be incredibly difficult but also incredibly rewarding. It is not a life for the faint of heart. While the scenery in our chosen location is absolutely gorgeous, I have no doubt it will be an incredibly hard life for several reasons.
First, we have to learn a new language. Spanish should be a relatively easy language to pick up, but as my Regional Director told us, learning a new language is akin to ditch digging, it’s not something you just ‘pick up’ even though that’s how we speak of it in American vernacular.
Secondly, we will be living far away from our families and friends. That alone constitutes a huge difficulty. I’m a very social person and thrive around people I know. That will be suddenly be taken away when we move to Spain. As a result I’m finally starting to see the wisdom of full time language learning for the first 6 months. How else am I supposed to make friends and deep relationships in the culture over there?
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