Author: Amy Medina Page 22 of 231

I thought I was doing fine, and then I watched The Office episode in Season 7 when Michael leaves, and found tears leaking out of my eyes all over the place. And Gil looked at me bewildered, and I choked, “I had to say goodbye to an office too!” So I guess I’m not always doing fine.

I didn’t just inhabit Tanzania; it inhabited me. The humidity settled in my hair, frizzing it out, it dwelt in my skin; I never needed lotion. The tropical sun beat down on me most days of the year; I look at my wrists and neck now, places I didn’t regularly wear sunscreen, and I see that my skin has aged more than my 44 years deem appropriate. My legs and feet were accustomed to sandals and skirts almost every day, not jeans and socks like today. The words I spoke were different–not just when I used Swahili, but my English vocabulary too. My muscles were trained in different patterns; the rough ground I walked on, the way I drove, my routine in the grocery store.

I suppose it’s understandable, then, why I have felt disoriented for so long. My body was yanked out of Tanzania, but for a long while, Tanzania still dwelt in me. It’s not just my mind that has needed reorienting, but my body as well.

In Tanzania, I spent many hours at my tiny kitchen sink, washing dishes. I would stare out the screened window into our backyard watching the dogs and the crows and the occasional chicken. There wasn’t much of a view, mostly just the top of the underground water tank and a cement wall that surrounded the yard. But fuchsia bougainvillea grew on that wall, and several coconut trees towered behind it, their papery leaves rustling in the wind.

It was such a very, very familiar sight to me for many years. I looked out that window when Josiah was two years old, whining at my knee, and when he was twelve years old, making a peanut butter sandwich next to me. Last year, I can remember looking out that window and wondering what it would be like to not look out of it anymore. It was hard to imagine.

My life in Tanzania went on for so long that for a long time, I couldn’t visualize the end of it. Life beyond Tanzania seemed like a fuzzy black hole, out of focus.

You Are Going to Hate It

By Amy Medina

On February 9, 2021

In A Life Overseas, Thoughts on Missions

I wrote this piece for A Life Overseas, with the intended audience of missionaries preparing to serve or just arrived on the field. It might give you a glimpse into what they experience. But you know what? I wrote this based partially on my experiences in re-locating back to the States. These thoughts really can apply to many different good, hard things that God has called us to do. I hope it encourages you today.

You know that country you’ve been dreaming about? The one that you have been praying over and researching? You’ve been talking about it endlessly these days, building a team who will support you when you move there. You are ready to uproot your family, your job, your entire life to pour your soul into the place you love so much.

Call me a party pooper, but today I’m here to tell you something important: Shortly after you finally arrive in that country, you are going to hate it.

It might take a few weeks, or maybe a few months, but at some point it’s going to happen: You will wonder why on earth you thought you would love this country. You will question why you enthusiastically raised support for so many months to go live in a place that you actually despise.

When America Makes No Sense

By Amy Medina

On February 5, 2021

In How Americans Think, Living Like a Missionary

You can’t understand Tanzanians without understanding their view of the spirit world. It permeates every facet of life. Witchdoctors are often present at national soccer games, fending off the curses of the other team. Albino children have been known to have a limb cut off in the middle of the night, the appendage sold by a family member to a wealthy businessman who uses it in magic rituals. A herd of witchdoctor’s goats on our street ran free, tended by a spirit creature.

These beliefs were not just seen as superstitions or old wives tales. They were embedded in the worldview, part of the air the people breathed. Coming from our western, enlightened, scientific worldview, our heads would spin from these stories. But we learned, early on, that this was serious business. We needed to pay attention.

If we had come in scoffing and mocking, critical and judgmental, how well do you think Tanzanians would have listened to us? They would have written us off. Though some stories were speculative, every Tanzanian has experienced situations with the spirit world that defy western imagination. They know what they have seen, or felt, or heard. Blowing it off was not an option. If we wanted to have a voice in Tanzania, we needed to first be learners.

Steven Hawthorne* wrote, “If our impression of another culture is that it ‘makes no sense,’ then we can be sure that we are not making sense to them either. The solution is to become a learner.”

My job these days is to help prepare new missionaries to move overseas. What I am discovering is that the same things they are learning can be just as easily applied to American Christians.

Rain, Reconsidered

By Amy Medina

On January 25, 2021

In Re-Entry to America

I miss the rains down in Africa. This mamsy-pamsy California rain doesn’t make the cut.

Rain didn’t play around in Dar es Salaam. When it rained, it rained with purpose. This rain wanted you to get wet; it was pointless to pick a fight. It was determined to make its presence known, creating rivers where there were none, punching the tin roofs, angry not to be let in. It pounded hard on the earth, awakening toadstools and millions of flying termites, sprouting grassy mold on shoes and beds and belts. The sky was electric; the lion’s roar ruptured the heavens, demanding to be heard.

But it’s the smell I miss the most. The scent of that rain would filter through our window screens, filled with growing things, animated with life. It carried on it the savannah of wild antelope, the ancient strains of the baobab tree, the underwater gardens of coral. I inhaled, and I breathed Africa into my lungs.

These days, I find myself gasping for breath.

Why Did It Take War to End Slavery, and Not Revival?

By Amy Medina

On January 18, 2021

In Race and Diversity

Why did it take a war to end slavery in America, and not revival?

Are you familiar with the two Great Awakenings? In the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Americans were turning to Christ. It wasn’t just lip service; society was transformed by Christianity. The Industrial Revolution, the modern missions movement, and even our unique political system are all credited to these revivals.

Yet slavery carried on, unchallenged. Human beings, made in the image of God, were bought and sold because of the color of their skin. Children were torn away from their parents, strong men were forced to work themselves to death, young women were beaten at the slightest whim. Even while Christianity was sweeping the nation.

Since the Great Awakenings brought about such stirring influence in politics, business, and individual character, why wasn’t there nationwide repentance over slavery?

Sure, many slaves were part of these revivals. And some abolitionist movements were awakened. But it wasn’t enough. Because it didn’t take revival to end slavery in America, it took war.

Yet even the war didn’t change hearts. Not long after the Civil War, Christians all over America enacted laws and policies that kept black people dehumanized, brutalized, terrorized for another one hundred years. While millions of Americans sang hymns and pledged allegiance to the Christian flag and sent missionaries to foreign lands, black Americans were being lynched in front of immense cheering crowds of men, women, and their children.

This shakes me to my core.

Author: Amy Medina Page 22 of 231

Writing In Past Tense About My Missionary Life

You Are Going to Hate It

When America Makes No Sense

Rain, Reconsidered

Why Did It Take War to End Slavery, and Not Revival?