Explore Training

In 2018, I moved to Anapolis, Goias in Brazil to plant a Nazarene church with a missionary team sent by a mission organization called Extreme Nazarene, which later became Ardeo Global. Our project contract ended in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Throughout the next year, I prayed a lot about what my next steps should be, and God clearly called me to continue working at our church plant here in Anapolis. It has been the perfect place for me to be and I’m so glad I still get to live and work here. (By “perfect” I don’t mean easy in any sense) At the beginning of this year, several of you spoke with me about becoming an official missionary with the Church of the Nazarene. I prayed about it and God did not confirm or deny specifically what I should do, but I felt peace about starting the application process and learning more about this option. That’s still where I am now. I’ve finished most of the application process, but we are still talking about logistics and whether this is a good fit for everyone. I’m sharing this as an update, asking for your prayers for wisdom, and because we did some training a couple weeks ago that I wanted to share with you about.

 

This is actually the third time I’ve done the church’s training for missionaries. I participated as a senior in college at NNU and then again seven years later at MVNU for training with Extreme. This time, I did the training online in Portuguese with Brazilians who feel called to be missionaries in other countries. It was a great experience. The best way to do missionary training is when you are already a missionary! I remember being so nervous the first two times, trying to wrap my mind around learning another language and culture. This time it was just fun to listen, reflect, and learn from other people’s experiences.

 

There were a couple highlights, including seeing the pastors I worked with in Argentina present on two different subjects. Towards the end of the week, we were told that we would have to prepare and film a special missionary meal. Some of the presenters had shared about eating monkey meat in other countries, so I was expecting something very different, but I wasn’t sure how I would buy and prepare something that different where I live. We each got an email with instructions on how to prepare and film our meal. We wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything else between lunch on Friday and breakfast on Saturday. My special missionary meal was four saltine crackers, two spoonfuls of jam, and a cup of water.

 

I was shocked, mostly at my own ignorance. I hadn’t considered that “different” cultural food experiences include dealing with a lack of food. Not a lack of certain foods, but a lack of food. And more importantly, a lack of water. I’ve been trying to drink more water, and it was humbling to realize that my “effort” to drink more water is an enormous privilege. So many don’t have access to enough water to hydrate their bodies.

 

In order to prepare my missionary meal, I had to make a special trip to the grocery store to buy jam. I love jam, but it’s expensive here and more of a luxury item. Eating crackers with jam was kind of exciting. Like discovering how cheap avocados and mangos are in Brazil when I first got here. It’s an automatic reaction to become fascinated with the apparent luxuries of a different culture, luxuries we don’t experience at home. It is easy and seems right to value and appreciate the apparent rich aspects of another culture (They have avocados the size of my head! They eat crackers and jam every night!) and equally easy to miss the reality of having mangos and jam and still going to bed hungry at night.

 

Speaking of privileges, living in another culture is a huge one. At this point I’m basically just rambling, but if I’m going to share my musings about culture, this blog seems to be the best place. One of my bigger struggles when I first became a missionary was discovering the differences between my culture, the culture where I was living, and the culture God wanted to create among us. They say we don’t understand our own culture the same way a fish doesn’t understand water. It is just everything, there’s no way to differentiate it from anything else. Until you live in a different environment. I was so afraid of imposing my American culture that I worked hard at accepting every aspect of Argentine culture. Eventually my pastor was able to remind me that as a missionary I needed to be creating God’s culture, which is neither American nor Argentine. That’s the privilege of learning other cultures, I get to actually learn my own, separate it from myself, examine it, reject the parts that don’t align with God’s culture. And now use what I learn to help Brazilians do the same with their own culture. Rather than “accepting our differences” it has become about aspiring together to be transformed in love.

 

There are already Brazilians serving in Nazarene missions all around the world. This new group could be sent out any time in the next year. They are wonderful people and it was so encouraging to hear their stories and dream with them about all that God is calling them to do and be!

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