Living as a foreigner taught me how to live as a Christian
Imagine you read this in a newsletter from a cross-cultural missionary:
We didn’t expect Hindu beliefs to be so strange. We were expecting the people to think more like us, and their differences are making us very uncomfortable, even angry.
We are especially worried about how Hindu beliefs are influencing us and our children. We don’t want to expose ourselves to these lies. We only let a few safe people, usually other missionaries, into our home. We want our children to have only good Christian influences in their lives.
Would you question whether these missionaries understood what they signed up for? Would you wonder if they are having any impact at all? This is not a true story, but there’s something to notice here: all Christians have been given the same Great Commission, yet sometimes we hold missionaries to a different standard than we hold ourselves. Can the missionary life illustrate God’s intention for all believers?
When a foreign country felt like home
I was a missionary kid in Africa for half of my childhood, and then my husband and I lived in Tanzania, East Africa, for 16 years. We adapted to driving on the left side of the road. We figured out how to combat millipedes and centipedes. We learned to snorkel; we knew where to buy the best roadside barbequed chicken; we hailed three-wheeled rickshaw taxis in Swahili. We formed tight bonds in the community. Life in Tanzania was not always easy, but we felt we belonged there. Visiting the States felt stressful; Tanzania felt like home.
Yet, no matter how much I wanted Tanzania to be my home, it never really could be. Tangible reminders of my status as a foreigner followed me everywhere. Every two years, I had to reapply for a residence permit. I was not permitted to own a home. I could not vote. No matter how hard I tried, I would never look the same, sound the same, think the same as the people around me. I was always an outsider.
Scripture often refers to Christians as strangers (Heb 11:13), foreigners (1 Pet 1:17) and exiles (1 Pet 2:11). Making my home in a foreign land gave me this perspective. It granted me a picture of what my life as a Christian should look like in my own home country.
Now that I’m living back in America, I discovered that living as a foreigner taught me much about living as a Christian.
My parents, Kim and Margaret Coutts, have been married 50 years this month, a milestone that only 5% of American marriages achieve. They have extraordinary lives, worth writing about.
My dad was serving as a pharmacist at a military hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey when a fellow officer knocked on his door and asked, “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?”
My dad was irritated – angry, even – but couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was just one of many instances in their early adulthood when God inserted Himself into their story, and it wasn’t much longer before they turned their lives over to Him. It wasn’t a flippant decision. It was the beginning of an entire re-orientation of their priorities.
About four years later, my mom and dad attended a missions conference at First Baptist Church in San Jose – the one whose foyer boasted the spiral ramp that surrounded the two-story fountain. When the speaker gave a challenge, while the background music played, they walked forward to the altar to offer their lives in missionary service.
They spent almost a decade of service in missions in Liberia and Ethiopia, despite my mom crying every single day for the first six months. It was a sacrifice: her own mother refused to write or speak to her for the entire first two years. My mom taught elementary school, and my dad served as head pharmacist at ELWA Hospital, then as hospital administrator.
The year we returned, while still working as chief pharmacist at Kaiser, my dad went on to revolutionize the missions program at Hillside Church in San Jose. He started the partnership with Tanzania that changed the course of my life and dozens of others. He began a missions prayer ministry that has continued for three decades. He led numerous other short-term trips and developed several other overseas partnerships.
Meanwhile, while my mom taught kindergarten, she launched a ministry in the low-income neighborhood down the street from our church. Thirty years later, that ministry has flourished and is thriving. My mom invested in scores of children in that neighborhood, including taking in two of them for several of their college years, enveloping them as surrogate daughters.
My parents have done some big things in their 50 years of marriage. But what strikes me the most is how they have been faithful in the little things, the things that most people don’t see.
I remember all the dogs at the Dar es Salaam airport. Usually people don’t travel internationally with their pets, but in the spring of 2020, nothing was normal. The dogs were restless in their cages, but the rest of us stood unusually still, tense, our faces strained from lack of sleep, frantic packing, a thousand unknowns.
I remember the recorded British voice that politely reminded everyone every five minutes: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania. In a dark humor, I thought, How about infectious diseases?
Just a few days earlier, we got a call in the middle of the night telling us to book a flight as soon as possible. Many in our community were making the same decision, but it was even more significant for us. We had planned a year earlier to relocate to the States in the summer of 2020. So this early, frenzied departure meant leaving a life of sixteen years with no closure, no dignity, no RAFT.
The memories of these moments in March 2020 are sharp and vivid, as if they happened three days ago, not three years.
In the five days before our departure, I can picture myself lining up my kids’ baby shoes, carefully saved for so many years, and taking pictures of them before handing them off to a friend. I remember making broccoli beef for my last meal in the crock pot I’d owned for 12 years. I remember how our feet echoed on the empty marble floors of the Ramada hotel restaurant on the night before we left.
I could list thousands of tiny, minuscule details of those five days. My focus was razor-sharp. My emotions were not.
Other than a couple of bursts of despair or panic, I went numb during those five days. And then during the long, unpredictable journey to California. And then during the next three months when we lived like vagabonds, trying to hold together our jobs in Tanzania while applying for new ones in the States.
If you had asked me how I was doing, I would have told you I was okay. I wasn’t happy, and sometimes I was decidedly unhappy, but I didn’t fall into a depression. I got out of bed every morning. I wasn’t crying all of the time. I wasn’t having panic attacks. I wasn’t having nightmares. Well, not many.
I am task-oriented. I did what I needed to do. And big feelings were not on the agenda.
But I was not okay, and that fragility manifested in unexpected ways. Suddenly, I had an aversion to anyone outside my immediate family. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even people I normally would have been thrilled to be with. (Pandemic restrictions made this easy.)
Another A Life Overseas writer asked me to be on a podcast of people who were evacuated because of the pandemic. A little voice in my head said, “You like things like this.” But a bigger, louder voice said, “No. No. NO. Not even an option.” The big voice didn’t give me a reason. It just bullied me into saying no.
I stopped writing. I went months where my mind was mostly devoid of anything to write about, even though it was usually the best way to process my feelings. It was like my emotions froze, and I became a robot.
I was trying to adapt to a new life, and I was restless and impatient. I wanted to feel productive and meaningful again. But I had no energy, no creativity, no mental space. I could only focus on what was directly in front of me. I was frustrated that I couldn’t do more, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I thought I was fine. I knew I was sad, but I thought I was handling our transition well.
I wasn’t. Not really.
About a year and a half after our arrival, my brain and body decided to shut down, and I stopped sleeping for ten days. I finally got help. I told the urgent care doctor, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know what anxiety feels like, but this is different. It’s like I’m on overload and can’t get my pulse to slow down.” That admission was the beginning of feeling better.
I’ve been back three years, and it’s taken me that long to figure out what was happening inside me during that first year and a half. I only see it now in hindsight.
There are times in life you know you’re a mess; the pain or the fear is big and consuming. Every moment of every day feels like a fight. (I’ve had seasons like that, and this wasn’t one of them.)
But other times, you don’t realize you’re in a fog. You are coping quite well. You are doing what you need to do. You don’t realize your soul is actually withering. Then one day, the sun breaks through the clouds and triggers a distant memory: Oh yes! This is what warmth feels like.
This is what it feels like to be creative, my mind brimming with ideas. This is what it’s like to live without a constant sense of being overwhelmed. This is what it feels like to be happy.
I didn’t recognize that I wasn’t doing well until I started to feel better, and to remember what it feels like to be fully alive.
Today, I love being with friends and meeting new ones. I’m doing seminars for small and large groups. I was a guest on a podcast. My brain comes up with way more things to write about than I have time to get them out.
I don’t think I anticipated the jarring effect the transition would have on my body, mind, and soul. Or that it would last as long as it did. Seeing this in myself has given me empathy for others around me who are in transition: the new parents, new empty-nesters, the immigrant. How can I show them grace? How can I help to bring light into their fog? How can I walk alongside them for as long as it takes, knowing it will probably take longer than anyone anticipated?
But also, I want to remember to give myself grace the next time. To be more patient with myself. To remember that some of the hardest parts of life must simply be faced a day at a time until they get better.
This morning at church, a song unearthed a sweet memory of Tanzania, and I cried. For what I left. For what I’ve missed. For what I’ve gained. For how far I’ve come.
I recently gave a seminar to a group of EFCA church missions leaders on how to create a missions culture at their church. This is a summary of that seminar…..
The missionary wall at Hillside Church in San Jose, California had over 40 pictures on it.
But missions leader Kim Coutts wanted something more. He didn’t just want his church to financially support missions, but for members to experience true partnership in missions. He wanted to create a culture of missions at Hillside.
It was 1996. Kim searched among ReachGlobal missionaries for a partner location, and settled on Tanzania, East Africa, where missionaries labored to reach Muslim coastal tribes and the Indian diaspora community.
Kim targeted key Hillside leaders to join on trips to Tanzania. On the very first team, Kim recruited both the elder board chairman and the lead pastor. Over the next eight years, Hillside would send 20 teams to Tanzania. Around 65 members participated, and a bolt of missions lightning spread like wildfire through the church, transforming many hearts to partner with international missions. For some, Kim’s missional focus set them on a new life trajectory.
Perhaps the best example is someone whose name is easily recognized within the EFCA: Kevin Kompelien. Kevin was the lead pastor of Hillside in the 90s, and the church’s partnership with Tanzania opened doors for him to serve in other parts of Africa. In 2006, Kevin was invited to become the Africa Area Leader for ReachGlobal. That led to deeper connections in the EFCA, and in 2016, Kevin was voted in as president of our movement.
Kevin Kompelien (right) with Rwandan church leaders
Imagine what God could do by creating a missions culture at your church. Do you have a passion to see missionaries cultivated in your own congregation? I recently asked several missionaries what their churches did to contribute to their desire to serve overseas, and I hope you are inspired by what they shared.
How do we spark a culture of missions?
1. Kindle a fire for missions in the next generation. Barna tells us that only 10% of Millennial churchgoers can define the Great Commission, so that’s a good place to start. But among young people, perhaps even more important is challenging underlying attitudes. Mobilizing Gen Z tells us, “[Gen Z has a] tendency to avoid risk. They have grown up surrounded by anxious adults, in a culture promoting safety as a priority, with devices that convey 24/7 the world’s trouble, personal conflicts, and cruel criticisms.” In trying to hold back a global pandemic, we may have inadvertently absorbed the idea that we need to prioritize safety above all else. But is this perspective compatible with the Great Commission? Elevate missionary stories – past and present – of those willing to count the cost to take the gospel to the nations.
2. Challenge their parents too. Perhaps this is just as important. Mobilizing Gen Z references Barna when explaining, “Career success and physical safety are the top concerns [of church-going parents]. Nearly half said, ‘I’d rather my child get a well-paying job than be a career missionary.’” In my experience in missions mobilization, I have seen first-hand that Christian parents are sometimes the biggest detriment to potential missionaries.
I also recently posted this one over at A Life Overseas:
The Hidden Super-Stars of Missions
I coach new missionaries as they prepare to go overseas. I’ve found I can often predict how quickly they’ll be able to raise support based on one crucial factor: whether they have an advocate who will come alongside them.
What do I mean by an advocate? Let me explain.
Raising support has got to be one of the most daunting experiences in any missionary’s life. So God’s called me to India, but I need you to fork over some cash so I can do it. Sound good? Awesome. What can I put you down for?
Let’s hope it doesn’t come out exactly like that, but it’s what missionaries dread. Raising financial partners has extraordinary joys, but it also comes with dark lows. It’s incredibly intimidating. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of friends ghosting their calls, emails that don’t get replies, events where no one shows up. It can be one of the most demoralizing experiences in a person’s life.
Who can turn that whole experience around? An advocate.
Lois was only a few weeks away from death when I visited her in a nursing home. Lois was a widow, and she supported our ministry in Tanzania at $200 a month as a widow. By the time I could visit her, she had developed cancer. I told her how grateful we were that she supported our family so generously for so many years.
“It’s my pleasure,” she told me, her eyes bright with the energy her body lacked. “You know, I discussed this with my kids. They agreed that they didn’t need a big inheritance. They are okay with me giving away my money to missionaries.” I sat there dumbfounded, tears in my eyes.
In Tanzania, we attended a church where we were often the only non-Africans present. One Sunday, the preacher spoke passionately about God’s call to cross-cultural missions. Afterward, an African woman I had never met approached me. She smiled and said, “Thank you for serving as missionaries!” She handed me an envelope containing about $75 – a considerable amount for many Tanzanians. My eyes gaped. My mouth gaped. I’m sure I looked like a codfish. All I could think was, She probably needs this more than I do. Yet I knew it would insult her to refuse, so I sputtered out my thanks and hugged her.
Our mission organization keeps a database of every donation we’ve received since we first moved overseas in 2001. Sometimes I look at the cumulative totals our donors have given us, some going back 20 years. They could have gone on a nice vacation with that money, I think to myself. Maybe an Alaskan cruise. That family could have remodeled their kitchen or bought a car with these donations. And in one case, They could have bought another house with that money. Not kidding. A whole house.
