How an innovative internship changed a missionary’s trajectory—and a church’s heart for missions.
It was a shot in the dark, but that was all Angela had left.
In May 2022, Angela showed up at First Free in St. Louis, Missouri, on a Sunday morning straight from the airport, luggage in tow. She wasn’t expecting much to come from it. Visiting a church cold turkey usually doesn’t.
But desperation makes you willing to try anything.
In 2019, Angela had returned home to Ohio after spending two fruitful, energizing years with ReachGlobal in Athens, Greece. Less than half a percent of Greece’s population is evangelical Christian, and God gave Angela a deep love for Greek people and culture. She knew God was calling her to return for long-term ministry, helping to revitalize and strengthen the local church. So, she went through the long-term application process with ReachGlobal and made the transition to become a career missionary. With it, the budget she needed to raise nearly doubled.
Angela was just starting to raise additional support when the pandemic hit. Months of lockdowns, personal illness, and turmoil in her home church brought her support-raising process to a grinding halt. And she just couldn’t get it going again. After almost three years, she was defeated and demoralized and questioned whether she would ever get back to Greece.
During that time, Angela tried just about everything. She had contacted everyone she knew. She had offered to speak at any possible venue that would host her. Once, she even set up a table outside of a car show! She reached out to hundreds of EFCA churches. Yet she’d hardly received any response at all.
I had the joy of walking with Angela on this journey. Go here on the EFCA blog to read the rest of the story!
I had forgotten many things in four years: the feel of my bare feet on smooth tile floors. The sounds of critters in the ceiling above my head when trying to sleep. A fancy wooden chair leaking sawdust from termites.
We arrived at the Dar es Salaam airport at 3 a.m., an hour later than scheduled, which meant that four flights arrived at the same time, overwhelming the baggage workers. It took two hours to get our luggage, and we blearily exited the airport at 5. There were 11 of us total: six Medinas and five Snyders, them with a decade of living in Tanzania, us with 16 years. You probably think we should have known what we were doing.
Almost instantly, we all realized that we had also forgotten how hard it is to live in Dar es Salaam – especially arriving at the airport all on our own, with no car, no home, no SIM card. We felt like brand-new foreigners all over again.
Our AirBnb host had offered to send a car to the airport to meet us, but the driver missed the memo that his job was to lead the two vans that followed him with our luggage and the rest of us. Most houses do not have addresses, and the pin on AirBnb was incorrect, which meant that we spent a good portion of our first morning directing our van drivers in circles as we tried to find the house—with no address and no local cell service.
When we finally arrived at the AirBnb we discovered there were no towels and no top sheets and no drinkable water and a pre-paid electricity allotment of only eight units a day, which was barely enough to keep the lights on. So we dug into our jetlagged brains and remembered again how to buy more electricity and how to find bottled water and breakfast for our cranky children and cranky selves.
After the first few days, we planned to move to a bigger AirBnb because the Dunkers were flying in from Kenya to join us. But the day before, I discovered this second house did not exist.
Sometimes, all you can do is laugh. We resurrected this dormant skill.
Still, I asked myself, How did I love this place? Everything is hard. Everything is frustrating.
But then I remembered.
Soon after we discovered that we had nowhere to go, well, we suddenly had a place to go. Carley, who has been our friend since 2005, heard about our plight and invited us all to stay at the Young Life ministry center. We found ourselves staying at a place that was way better than any AirBnb. Our kids hung out with her amazing quadruplets while Gil and the Dunkers held the Reach Tanzania Bible School reunion and Ben and Lauren and I made plans for our team, who would be arriving soon.
I was reminded of how we navigated the hardness and frustrations of living in Dar for so many years: we had an extraordinary community. Oh, right. This is why nobody new was ever allowed to arrive without a host. Shame on me for assuming we could handle going back to Tanzania on our own without leaning on our community. In four years, I have become so American. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. We can handle this independently. No, we couldn’t.
A week ago we held an Open House to celebrate Grace’s graduation and I was expecting 30 people or so–family, our Home Group, some teachers. But unbeknownst to me, when I told my gregarious oldest child that she could include “a few friends,” she interpreted that as, oh, say, 50 or so. In my last post, when I said that my girl loves people, well, there’s the proof.
So when 75 souls–more than half of them teenagers–paraded through my house over the course of three hours, well, let’s just say there wasn’t any salami or cheese left by 5 pm.
I was exhausted, yes. But I also stood back and marveled: we’ve come so far in four years. I think of my sweet lost girl four years ago, torn from the only home and country and school she’d ever known, starting her freshman year sitting masked at a computer in the school library while her teachers taught in empty classrooms. I remember her telling me of the shy girl who sat next to her, never saying a word. “Grace Medina,” I chided her. “You go in there and win that girl over. Do your magic. That’s what God created you for.”
So she did.
I think of Gil, one of those teachers in an empty classroom, struggling with new curriculum and new students and hating every moment he had to talk into a computer instead of real faces. He came home miserable every day, reminding himself that the only reason he took this job was so that we could put our kids in a great school. Yet– last year, he was chosen by the seniors to be their commencement speaker, and this year he was chosen as Teacher of the Year. At Baccalaureate, two of the five student speakers talked about how his Worldviews class changed their lives.
His life has changed too.
I think of my own days sitting at my computer in my beige apartment, entering a church and a school community at a time when no one knew what the social rules were anymore so everyone gave up trying to be social. Emptiness gnawed my insides, reminding me moment by moment of what I had lost, who I had lost, myself that was lost. Sadness hung around me, limp and raggedy, all of the time.
My life is still quieter than it used to be, but I love what I do. My work introduces me to the most interesting and wonderful people whom God is calling to do interesting and wonderful things, and I get to have a part in their stories. My life is full and my garden is growing and I had 75 people in my house last week, which is one of my most favorite things of all.
Not all the loss is replaced. I don’t think it’s ever supposed to, completely. If it were, then it would somehow demean what you left behind. I started out wanting to replicate the richness and meaning of my life in Tanzania, and because it could never look like that, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be happy again. Yet, here I am, living a life of contentment with pockets of joy, which is just about all one can hope for on this side of heaven.
So, it feels like perfect timing that God is giving all six of us Medinas the chance to visit Tanzania again this month. And even sweeter, a team of people who represent our lives from school and church are joining us. We get the unusual and poignant opportunity to collide our worlds. My two big kids each have one of their besties on this trip–which means that for the first time in their lives, they get a chance to see their old world through the eyes of someone in their new world. I’m praying that they return back to their new home standing a little straighter in who they are and where they came from.
Planning the logistics for this trip, alongside the many activities of the end of the school year and Grace’s graduation, is the reason why you haven’t seen me in this space very much in the last few weeks. And it’s the reason why you still won’t see me for a few weeks more. But I’ve got lots to say, all stored up, and I’ve even got an exciting writing project to tell you about. So please don’t stop coming around. You all are the best, and you keep me writing.
Raising you has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.
From the first day I laid eyes on you and you gave me your radiant smile, you have been sunshine in my life. Happy and fearless—that’s the way I would describe you from the time you were a baby. You sang “Amazing Grace” to an entire school full of kids when you were just two years old. Dad taught you to do backflips into the pool when you were three. You are always ready to jump into the next adventure with both feet.
But one of the most special things about you is your love for people. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone more people-oriented than you. When you were a toddler, I remember showing you the HOPAC school yearbook and being flabbergasted by how many names you knew of students and staff. As you grew up, whenever you met a new friend, you would always run into the kitchen and grandly announce, “I love [this person!] and I love her mom too!” I don’t know if you’ve ever met a person you didn’t like. God gave you the gift of loving others enthusiastically. 😊
It’s that time of year when school is at its craziest! Maybe you’ve got a moment or two to read some good stuff. Here are my recommendations from this month.
I love asking people good questions, and this is one I hadn’t thought of before. “When I ask others why they do what they do, I’m often blessed to hear them describe their love for things I’ve never considered lovable: crafting beautiful smiles from misaligned teeth, bringing order from numerical chaos, instructing children in the basic skills of life. As I listen and ask follow-up questions, I learn—I learn to appreciate what I have often never considered before and even what doesn’t especially enthuse me.”
I used to be an enthusiastic teacher of how human adoption mirrors God’s adoption of us. As I’ve raised my children and come to know the complexity of their experience, I am much more careful to say this. This article by an adoptee explains it well. “We look at the Bible’s picture of God adopting us and are grateful. Adoption as a theological truth is glorious. But we ought to be careful to not overplay the parallel with human adoption. There are important, inglorious differences that hinge on the experience of the adoptee.”
This book was already on my list to read, but after reading this article, it’s moved higher on the list!
“After the test was finished, most of these students agreed that they’d checked over 90% of the above statements.
Then I unveiled the big shocker (spoiler ahead!) from Wilson’s chapter: every single one of these statements would NOT have been true for almost everyone before 1776.
So, I told them, “You’re WEIRDER. You’re Western, Educated, Industrialized, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic. And that means your thoughts, assumptions, values and experiences are far more culturally specific than you realize.”
I wish this wasn’t as radical as it feels in America, because really, radical hospitality is the way we were created to live. This engaging book left me encouraged and inspired.
Our Home Group went on a weekend retreat together…we rented the biggest AirBnb we could find for the cheapest price we could find…which meant we ended up out in the middle of nowhere. But it was awesome!
