Featured You know you're a missionary if...

Hi, Martin.

Looks like a great work, but I've not heard of it. Our ministry was on Hokkaido, the Northern island, far far away from Osaka.

 

You know you're a missionary if you've ever been in a huge crowd and yours was the only foreigner's face!

In Japan we was always been the gaikokujin (foreigner, literally "outer country person" or "outsider"). Wherever we went we heard whispers of "foreigner!" This can be disconcerting, and occasionally shades over into racism so that the foreigner is discriminated against. Usually, though, it's just shock that right before their eyes is someone who is not Japanese.

I heard about a Japanese boy whose family went on a trip to America. When they arrived at the airport the boy looked around and said, "Everyone's a foreigner here!" His dad replied, "No, son, we're the foreigners." The boy replied, "No way!"

I've been in Hong Kong, Bangladesh and Africa, and looked around at a sea of dark or Asian faces, knowing I was the one who was out of place. Until you've had this experience, you don't know what it's like to be a cross-cultural missionary.

Now I'll grant that there is an experience in the homeland that is similar if you have worked with native Americans, in racial conclaves (black, Hmong, etc.), with deaf people, etc. But you see, those are all to one extent or another cross-cultural experiences. Now imagine living that way every single day.

 

You know you're a missionary if you've ever led a soul to Christ in another language.

Granted, you can do cross-cultural evangelism in English, since it is a lingua franca. And many others besides missionaries study foreign languages. But if you are doing evangelism in another language you are definitely doing cross-cultural evangelism. It may be in the US in a native American tongue, or to a targeted people group here in the US. (The prof of linguistics in our college speaks Hmong with that people group in Milwaukee.)

My first stumbling effort at soul-winning in Japanese occurred about 4 months after arriving there. A lady came up to me while I was passing out tracts in front of a train station and asked questions. I was thrilled and started witnessing to her until she declared Jesus was not God. Then I saw her NT and knew she was a JW. I stalled at my vocabulary limitation and just said, "He is, He is!"

Some weeks later at the same train station while doing dendo (evangelism) by myself I witnessed to a boy in Japanese, and listened carefully and then said he was accepting Christ. A short time later the senior missionary came back and quizzed the boy, then told me that I had indeed communicated successfully. That was a red letter day, let me tell you--the first time I led a soul to Christ in Japanese.

 

You know you're a missionary (or other expatriate) if you check the exchange rate for the dollar all the time.

I still check the yen per dollars in the paper, though we don't live there. I worry about my missionary friends, since it is down to 101 yen per dollar right now, though it was about 120 yen when we retired from the field two years ago. Imagine having a 20% cut in your pay over a few months, and you can then understand a little what those missionaries are going through.

When we went to Japan in 1981, it was about 230 yen per dollar. Over the years it has continued to go down until it is where it is today at about 101. At one time it went down all the way to 79 per dollar, and the missionaries in Japan were all having a very rough time. God always took us through and supplied our needs.

Once when we lived in Yokohama and the dollar was so low, the church for US servicemen 30 at Yokosuka Naval Base had a food shower for us. God was so good to us those 33 years in Japan!

 

That was cross-cultural! Many US servicemen don't take advantage of their wonderful opportunities to see and minister in another cultural.

 

A sad but common story.

 

You know you're a missionary if you are in a ministry where there are not 200 different Bible translations in the language! And 200 is, of course, a conservative estimate of the complete number of translations in English. The number of English translations is embarrassing to me, in light of the 1000s of languages which have not even a word of Scripture.

Nations that have been evangelized for awhile may have several translations: China, Japan, Spanish-speaking countries, etc. Such countries might could use another translation. But a new translation in English? Puleeeze!

In Japan, you can buy a classical Bible, an ecumenical version, a colloquial version from 60 years ago with many mistakes, or a NASB-type version. So our new Japanese version is from the TR, the first in modern Japanese from that text. It is being put into the public domain so anyone can print or use it, unlike the NASB-type version.

I'm a consultant for a new version in a Pidgin Bible (the 2nd, with the first being DE) and one in the Beba language of Africa (never been one before). Such efforts are worth supporting.

That, folks, is where Bible translation ought to be going--not to revisions of best-selling Bibles done by 100 scholars, most of who have never been to a mission field.

 

You know you're a missionary if your home country is a foreign place to you.

I am reminded of the story of the missionary family in Africa who, in planning a furlough, did their best to prepare their children for that strange place, their country of citizenship. Finally the day came for their trip. Fortunately, it was uneventful until they arrived in the airport of destination. Walking through the airport, the parents noticed people looking and snickering. They glanced back at their children only to see a line of kids, each with their suitcase on their heads.

Coming back to the States in 2014 after 33 years in Japan, we had some tremendous adjustments to make. This is not the country we left in May of 1981. So many things are different: the slang, the TV shows (most of them filthy and crude), the society ("gay" marriage? really?), politics (from Reagan in 1981 to Hilary & Trump????), and so many other things.

Of course we had been in the States for furloughs, funerals, etc. But that's just not the same. Now we actually live here and have to do everything here. We had reverse culture shock, big time.

It may be hardest on the missionary kids (MKs). When they come back for college they don't know the teams, the pop groups, the comics and so many other things. They are foreigners in their country of citizenship even more than their parents. I know of many cases where the MK decided to live in the country of their parents' ministry rather than the US.

The redeeming doctrine is that we are all foreigners here on earth. Every single believer in Jesus Christ is a foreigner, though many don't realize it. We are all like Abraham.

"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. 11:8-10).

 

You know you're a missionary if you live among a tribe with no written language. My friends who went to Africa this year fall in this category. The tribe among which they live have an unwritten language. Fortunately Pidgin, which they know, is a trade language and they can communicate in that.

I have huge respect for the missionaries who go to live with jungle tribes with the goal of translating the Bible for them and reaching them for Christ. I have autobiographies of several such missionaries, and these stories reveal huge sacrifices made for the cause of Christ: being constantly misunderstood, constantly risking malaria and other tropical diseases, learning a language without a language school, having to write their own dictionary and grammar, eating things the average American would consider an abomination, even risking death if the tribe is warlike.

I mentioned one such autobiography above. One of the best of this genre is Jungle Jewels and Jaguars, by Martha Duff Tripp. She lived with and reached the Amuesha tribe who live at the headwaters of the Amazon. Another good one is And the Word Came with Power, by Joanne Shetler with Patricia Purvis. Shetler lived and worked with the Balangao people in the Philippines. Thousands came to know Christ.

The most famous of such stories is that of the five martyred by the Auca tribe in 1956: Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian. This tribe was later reached for Christ by Elizabeth Elliot, Jim's widow.

There are such missionaries reaching tribes in Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, South America, Papua and other places. The need is still great, with hundreds of tribes not yet reached.

 

You know you're a missionary (or other expatriate) if you've had surgery done by doctors speaking a language not English.

Some years ago I glanced at my stomach and saw a bulge that should not have been there. Uh, oh, a hernia. Now you never diagnose yourself to a Japanese doctor, since that is quite offensive to their authority. So when the doc said, "What's your problem?" I answered, "Well, I've got this bulge and it might possibly be a hernia." Yep, it was, he said, "And you need surgery, or major complications can develop."

My surgery was scheduled for a small hospital (of which there are many in Japan) in a small, neighboring town. For all the time there I was the only foreigner, so I was an object of great interest. Many there had never talked to a foreigner before! Among other memories I have is that of a man with stomach cancer who stood up in our large hospital room and exhorted the men there (about ten of us in the one room) to hang in there because things could be worse. Well, his ailment was certainly much worse than mine! And by the way, Japanese hospitals are kept very hot, but a couple of the men objected strongly when I opened a window for some fresh air.

The day came for my surgery and a pretty nurse gave me the stuff designed to clean me out. Nuff said about that--a really embarrassing experience.

The surgery was done with a local anesthetic--well, they said it was local, but the numbness crept all the way up my chest during the surgery so that my whole lower two thirds was immobile and I was starting to worry about my heart and lung muscles! I was probably the biggest man they had ever done surgery on (though I'm only average size in the US), so they may have gotten the dosage wrong. The anesthesiologist stood by my head the whole time encouraging me with such questions as, "How far up is it numb now?" In the meantime, the doctors and and nurses spoke in very colloquial Japanese thinking I couldn't understand them, but we had been in Japan more than 25 years by that time. I can't repeat some of what they said about their foreign patient!

A couple of days later I was due for release, so the doctor came by for a last look-see, and pulled the curtain around my bed for some privacy. The idea of privacy was a laugh, though, because it looked like every single doctor and nurse in the hospital was gathered there at the end of my bed for one last check on the results!

I was okay, so they let me go. And to this day I often feel that mesh they put inside of me and remember without fondness my surgery in a Japanese hospital.

 

You know you are a missionary if you have suffered severe physical hardship for the cause of Christ. Remember Paul's testimony in 1 Cor. 11:

23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
24 Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.
25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;
26 In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

Just yesterday evening in training union I saw a video of a missionary to Peru and an American companion who go into the jungle about once a year to seek out an unreached, uncontacted tribe to give them the Gospel. In their 2014 trip they were unable to find the tribe for which they searched. Traversing for weeks the most difficult river they had ever yet found in the jungle, they eventually ran out of their rice and other food. Killing a crocodile with a sheath knife for food, they later prayed for days for food until they were able to catch a fish. Their video camera gave out, as did their communications gear and their GPS. Though completely exhausted, they were able to climb a 30 foot cliff, only to see a huge, uncrossable valley.

There they were, lost in the jungle without food, helpless before God. All that was left was prayer. Unknown to them, their contact in civilization began to worry about them, and hired a jungle pilot to find them. Knowing the general area they had gone to, the pilot was finally able to find them, drop them some food, and later land his seaplane on the river to rescue them.

Was their trip in vain, since they were unable to find the tribe for which they searched? No, not at all. Seeing the foreign missionaries go into the jungle, the national Christians said among themselves, "We should be the ones doing this." Later, the national Christians were able to make first contact with that tribe, and give them the Gospel!

 

Definitely. And welcome to the Baptist Board.