Missionaries

I'd like to tell you a little story, from 1990.  Something on the radio this morning reminded me of this.  I'm going to be late to school now, but oh well.....

To this day, I'm ashamed of how I reacted. My parents taught me not to be unkind to others, and I definitely was. But the accusation! The implication! To say that I was lying.... it infuriated me past my boiling point.

We were sitting in GA's in 6th grade. That's "Girls in Action" for any non-Baptists out there, a missions class for kids at church.  Looking at the leaflet to see which missionaries we would be studying this week, I noticed my friends The Lyons!  So I quickly told the girls in my class, "Look!  I know them!  Lindsay and I were best friends when we were in kindergarten!!!" I don't know what reaction I expected; honestly I had just spoken out in quick excitement.  But most of them argued with me at first, thinking I was joking.  Eventually, I held my ground and the group backed down.  But this one girl, this one red-haired girl who constantly picked on me, she wouldn't let it go.  We got into a huge fight and I ended up saying something horribly mean about the way she styled her hair.  (see, I love red hair but she didn't do much with hers; come to think of it, we all looked like a bunch of toy poodles back then... it was the early 90's, so I don't know what I was thinking, criticizing someone else's hairstyle! ha ha)  Anyway, the words from that day that haunt me are not the accusations about me lying, although they still annoy me.  What haunts me is that I have that ugliness inside me.  We all do.  It's one of the ultimate backbones of prayer - God knows we would leave Him alone completely if we didn't need Him.  So our goal on earth may be perfection, but we should realize we will never attain it here.  So I think it's finding a balance between striving for it, and accepting the fact that we can never get there, that brings fulfillment in Him.

We MUST pray for our missionaries.  I know missionaries can be local, but I'm emphasizing foreign sites.  I don't know what it is; why they are perceived as such "celebrities" at church sometimes.  It should be in a good way!  But if it keeps people at a distance, prevents them from knowing these amazing people, prevents them from praying for them, then it's a wrong perception.  I've known so many missionaries that I feel blessed to have a healthy image of them, as real people who serve the Lord in a different country, in a different way.

Pray for them!  Find a website; get one of those missionary calendars; do something to make these people real to you today. Please!  My own cousin and her husband were missionaries in Namibia for about 2 years.  My best friend's mother has been in Russia and Zambia.  These people are real, and they need our prayers!