Reflections of Being a Missionary

I am very thankful for the opportunity to have been a missionary for over 30 years.  I have been blessed getting to know so many wonderful people of many cultures.  The people I have come to know are poor materially but have often been very rich in generosity and values.  Often they have taught me to improve my own values to things of more importance. 

For example, my next door neighbors in a small village in Guatemala taught me generosity.  The wife had just left the hospital from a difficult miscarriage.  The husband had a hernia that kept him from working in the fields to plant their food crops.  The two eldest children abandoned the farm and went to live in the city to work.  The two older girls were both developmentally disabled with violent tendencies.  The other two children and grandchild that they were raising were all too young to work.  Thus they were very poor and to me needed lots of assistance.  

The wife would offer me dinner with them so I would not have to eat alone, offered me clothes when I got wet from the rain and heated water for me frequently on their fire.  One day they asked if I had any food and if I had time to visit a family with them.  Off we went.  This family that I considered very poor took me to visit what they considered poor.  There was a family of 5 with four of the adult children severally handicapped and unable to walk or even stand up.  The mother of 97 years old who had taken care of them all had recently died so we brought them food and cleaned the house.  My “poor” neighbors went weekly with food and help to this even needier family.

Another example is when an elderly couple in Guatemala taught me the importance of relationships.  I was new to Guatemala and visiting a distant village staying in a home.  When the husband returned from the fields he told his wife all that had happened in the fields and then she told him what she had been doing.  I asked the husband, who had been planting and harvesting a corn crop three times a year for over 60 years, what he thought of his wife’s work.  He said “oh my poor wife.  She works so hard all day long inside the house and never gets to be outside!”  I then asked the wife the same question and she said “Oh my poor husband.  He has to work outside in the sun and rain.”

With my upbringing of constant stimulation and change of pace activities I thought to myself ‘What can they possibly have to talk about doing the same activities for all their lives?’.  They were interested in what the other did and valued what the other did.