Tag: Re-Entry to America

The Quiet Summer

On October 6, 2020

These past three months, my life has felt very small, and very quiet. It has been good, but strange. In many ways, it’s been an about-face of the life we left behind.

My recent years in Tanzania were extremely busy and crowded and turbulent. I was working over 50 hours a week in a job where I interacted with hundreds of people every day. I had lived in Dar so long that it was unusual to go anywhere without seeing someone I knew. The city of Dar es Salaam is chaotic and noisy and full of buses and animals and honking and heat.

Then came the spring of 2020 when we were evacuated, and we lived for months in a haze of stress and sadness and uncertainty. We moved to a different house every few weeks, each time living in someone else’s space, blessed by the generosity of our families but with an undergirding of restlessness, rootlessness, and tension.

So moving into our Southern California apartment in late June brought with it a huge sigh of relief. And after all of the bustle of filling up our home with the things we needed, we were able to take a deep breath. Because we were new and didn’t know anyone in our city other than the Snyders, and because almost everything in the city was closed, our summer became very, very small.

After the bigness and busyness of Dar es Salaam, it is strange, suddenly finding ourselves in a place where we know no one and no one knows us, and the things we needed to do could be done on a computer. Everyone was supposed to keep their distance from one other and no one had quite yet worked out the rules of what kind of interaction we’re allowed to have. Our lives have felt very quiet and inconspicuous.

Mostly, this has been a good thing. Our souls needed restoring. We needed time as just the six of us. We walked to the grocery store on Wednesday nights all summer long and argued in front of the ice cream freezer over what kind to buy. We watched Hamilton and The Mandalorian. We read The Hate U Give (heavily edited), and struggled through hard conversations on race and rioting and America and the war zone we have just brought our children into. The kids checked daily to see if our complex’s pools were open, but they never were. They fought over who would get to check the mail, because what else was there to do? There was way too much Fortnite, but for Josiah, that was his only connection to friends. We helped Gil get his classroom ready. And we waited, and waited, as the start of school kept getting pushed back. Some days we went stir crazy. There was yelling.

There were a few moments of excitement. Grace decided to break up the monotony by getting appendicitis in August and spending 24 hours in the emergency room. Another child (who shall remain nameless) left the water running in a bathroom sink, which flooded the bathroom and the floor, which then rained onto the car in the garage below it. There might have been some yelling then too.

We really needed school to open. Finally it did, though with the dates and protocols changing daily, it was the most anti-climactic start of school ever. But hey, these days we take what we can get, right? I have two kids doing in person learning and two kids doing distance learning (but on campus–yes, it’s weird) and a husband who is teaching remotely from an empty classroom. But some sports have started, and we go to church on a lawn, and I have some new Facebook friends. I am telling myself to be grateful for what we do have, and patient for what we don’t.

For three months, I’ve written very little. That hasn’t happened for twelve years.

But it has been good to be quiet for a while. My soul has needed settling. My thoughts have needed to untangle themselves. And somehow it was easier for me to give a commentary on American life when I was standing outside of it. Now that I’m living it, I have been feeling a bit shy. Like I needed to stand back a while, and just listen in. I wondered for a while if it was time to stop writing completely. Publicly, at least.

But since you are reading this, you know that I decided that I still need to keep writing–mostly for myself. But as I apply my 22 years of life as a missionary into my life on American soil, I pray that together our perspectives may be transformed.

We all worked hard to create Gil’s awesome classroom. Unfortunately not many students have been able to see it yet.

Another set of braces have entered our family.

Grace decided getting your appendix out isn’t so bad when grandparents send you goodies.

Why I’m Becoming a Third Class Missionary

By Amy Medina

On July 10, 2020

In Living Like a Missionary, Re-Entry to America, Thoughts on Missions

This time last year, Gil and I made the decision that we would be relocating to the States in 2020. As we started thinking about where we would go and what we would do in America, there were a lot of possibilities on the table.

There was one thing, however, that I was adamant about. Whatever we decided to do next, I did not want to be in a support-raising position. One of my most popular-ever posts is In Defense of Second Class Missionaries. If being missionary teachers made us second-class missionaries, then living stateside on support would put us in third-class missionary status. No sirree; I was not going to do that. It was hard enough raising support to live overseas, but stateside missionaries don’t excite anyone. We would get regular jobs that paid regular salaries and we would be regular Americans. So no matter how cool an opportunity sounded to me, if it required raising support, I was out.

But I have this wonderful friend, Alyssa, who has this habit of drilling into my soul. So when I told her my intention of finding a regular, non-support-raising job, she was not satisfied. “Why not?” she asked me. “What if God shows you the perfect job that is a perfect fit for you, but you have to raise support for it? Would you still say no?”

Of course, since I wanted to sound like a good Christian, I sighed and promised that I would do my best to keep an open mind to whatever God wanted me to do. But inwardly, my mind was still made up. No way. I’ve lived on support for 18 years. And I know what the American church thinks about third-class missionaries. It’s time to move on.

Throughout the fall, Gil and I had numerous conversations with various ministry leaders, some from Reach Global (our mission agency) and some with other organizations, all desiring to recruit us. They were support-raising positions, and some sounded pretty enticing. However, it was during this time that we came to the conclusion that we wanted to live in California, and that we wanted our kids in Christian schools. That meant either Gil or I would need to work for a Christian school in order to afford it. So it wasn’t difficult to say no to those opportunities.

Then came a call in late December from the leader of the Engage Division of Reach Global. He was encouraging me to consider joining their team as a Pre-Deployed Missionary Coach. The leader described the position: Interviewing potential missionary candidates, coaching and training accepted candidates, and helping them discover where in the world God was leading them.

Despite my best efforts to not be interested, I was instantly energized during this conversation. This would be a job I would love. This would be a job I would be good at. And I could do it from anywhere in the United States.

But I was still very determined that I did not want to accept a support-raising position. So it was off the table….right? Besides, either Gil or I needed to teach at a Christian school. That was the first priority. So I couldn’t say yes….right?

Yet, I couldn’t shake the idea that I was uniquely qualified for this job. Not only had I served in missions for 16 years, I also had been a missionary kid. During our years in Tanzania, I reveled in helping new missionaries adjust to life overseas. Being part of a missionary school, I worked with missionaries from a multitude of countries, ages, and seasons of life. I’ve experienced the ugly, the crazy, and the beautiful in missionary communities. I’ve been writing for A Life Overseas, a blog dedicated to missionaries, for five years. Promoting missions, and enabling missionaries to do their jobs well, is a passion of mine. Plus, I now have three years of experience in administration. Interviewing, hiring, coaching, and training have all been a part of my job as principal.

Yet I did not want to raise support. Period. I battled with God on this. I had done my time, right? This was my chance to be a regular person with a regular job. Meanwhile, Gil and I were busily applying to Christian school jobs all over California. Some teaching possibilities opened for me, but they were not in great locations for our family. So I kept those on hold.

Then in late May Gil got the perfect job at the perfect Christian school in the perfect location. And suddenly, I had no more excuses.

I talked to Alyssa again. “I really want to do the Engage job,” I told her. “But I just don’t want to raise support.” And Alyssa, in her kind but soul-drilling way, said to me, “Amy, you don’t whine very often. So when you do, I know you must be trying to avoid something that you know you are supposed to do.”

She got me. I knew she was right. So I forced myself to take a good hard look at why I was so opposed to taking a job that required me to raise support. And the picture that came to my mind was my friend Lois.

Lois was a widow. Lois supported us at $200 a month for several years as a widow. She developed cancer, and a few years I ago when we were in the States, I visited her in her nursing home. I talked with her about how grateful we were that she supported us so generously for so long. “It’s my pleasure,” she told me. “You know, I discussed this with my kids. They agreed that they didn’t need a big inheritance. They were okay with me giving away my money to missionaries.”

And I just sat there dumbfounded. I still am dumbfounded. Why would anyone do that? Why would someone make that kind of sacrifice? For me?

Lois died about six weeks after that meeting. Recounting that conversation still brings tears to my eyes. I have dozens of stories like this. There are so many who blow me away by their consistent, faithful, sacrificial generosity.

And I am humbled. That’s it. That’s the clincher. I realized that’s why I have been so opposed to staying on support. I think of Lois, and so many other scores of faces, and I am ground to the dust in gratitude. Basically that’s why I was kicking and screaming all this time: I was too proud to admit how much I didn’t want to be humbled. And knowing that I would be demoted to third-class missionary status didn’t help. Though I knew I would love doing this job, I wouldn’t have any cool Africa stories any more. I wouldn’t be on the “front lines.” I would be behind the scenes, which definitely isn’t very glamorous. I knew it would be a lot harder, and a lot more humbling, to raise the support I needed.

Which, when I finally admitted it to myself, was not a reason at all. As a child of God, if this is the job I am called to do, then I should welcome the big gulp of humility I must take by remaining dependent on God and His church to provide for my needs.

So about a month ago, I accepted the job. I will officially start in September, and I’ve made an initial commitment of two years. I am very excited, but nervously trusting that God is going to make this work.

And, for the first time ever on this blog, I’m asking you, my readers, if there are any out there who would be interested in joining my financial support team. If that could be you, then please read the information at the bottom of this post, or click on to the next post for answers to frequently asked questions.

Some of you may have been wondering what is going to happen to this blog now that I’m no longer in Africa, and I’ve been thinking a lot about that too. I know I need a re-design, and I’m working on that. One of the exciting parts of my new job is that it will allow me to continue to keep reading, thinking deeply, and writing about missions. I hope you’ll come along as I start Part 2 of my life as an enthusiastic, third-class missionary.

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If you would like to partner with me in this role, pray for me, or support me financially, please read on…

If you would like to be on my mailing list (if you are not already), please email me at everyoneneedsalittlegrace(at)gmail.com and I would be happy to add you! No more cool Africa stories, but I will be sharing about how God is using me to send new missionaries around the world.

If you are interested in supporting me financially, you can go here to donate. All donations are tax deductible.

Remember, click on to the next post if you have additional questions about how this works.

You Can’t Really Call This Moving

By Amy Medina

On July 7, 2020

In Other

During the last three months, I owned practically no possessions. I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced that. The boxes we brought from Tanzania consisted of wall decorations, photo albums, and Christmas ornaments. Important, but not exactly essentials for starting a new life.

When it came to actual useful things, the only things I brought with me were my Cutco knives, my cheese grater (because it’s awesome), and some clothes and shoes. Josiah would include his Xbox in that category, which he carried over the ocean in his backpack.

Aaaand….that was pretty much the sum total of our possessions. The things we had left in storage in our parents’ garages consisted of plenty more non-useful things like books of stories I wrote in the third grade. Amusing, but not particularly practical.

So when I say that we moved into our apartment last week, I don’t think moved is the correct verb. More like, we opened our Rubbermaid totes full of colorful African-styled picture frames to hang on the empty walls and I put my Cutco knives into the otherwise empty drawers and we stacked up our clothes in our empty closets and spread out sleeping bags on the floor. But there isn’t a verb for that.

So this was my first time needing to buy, well, everything. When we got married we had a wedding registry as well as the bits and pieces Gil and I had collected from single life. When we moved to Tanzania, we borrowed furniture at first, and then bought an entire household of furniture/appliances/kitchen stuff/car from a leaving missionary. We still needed to fill in some gaps, but generally, we had most of what we needed, all at once.

So you could say that our moving day this time was a bit anti-climactic. Pretty much everything fit into our van, which we had just purchased two weeks prior, financially benefiting from the fleets of vehicles dumped by car-rental companies. Thanks, COVID, for a great van. We’ll call it a consolation prize for everything else you stole from us. The last two weeks it’s been our collecting van, as we have been driving all over a 40 mile radius, picking up furniture from people selling online. It’s like the Great Medina Scavenger Hunt of 2020, and that van managed to squeeze in (not all at once, of course) a sectional couch, two bunk bed sets, a desk, a coffee table, and three trips to IKEA. (IKEA is one of the happiest places on earth, and now it’s even more like Disneyland because you have to wait in line for 45 minutes just to get in.)

Hey, did you know that IKEA sells mattresses wrapped up like a burrito, like one of those magic grow capsules? Except, instead of putting it into water, you just cut the plastic off and watch it magically grow into a mattress instead of a sponge dinosaur. Now you know. You’re welcome.

Lily and I went to Walmart the day we moved in, and I should have just told a worker, “Give me one of everything you’ve got, please.” We walked down every aisle and filled two carts to overflowing before we called it a day. I needed to buy a stapler, because we didn’t have a stapler. How many times in a life do you need to buy a stapler? Not very often. Only when you own no possessions.

We now have visited every thrift store in the city and can speak with authority about our favorites. We made a garage seller’s day when we showed up and bought out all of their furniture, lickity-split, in 5 seconds flat. I’ve discovered that the words “estate sale” are especially thrilling. Josiah and Johnny even found a $20 like-new Foosball table.

Thankfully by now everyone is sleeping on a bed and almost all of the clothes have somewhere to go and my knives have friends in the kitchen drawers and I even found a large set of used Fiestaware dishes, which make me happy every time I see them. The Tanzanian decorations are on the walls and finally, finally, finally we are starting to settle. Johnny has asked at least three times, “So we are living here now?” and I don’t think he really believes me since we’ve been changing locations so often these months.

But we have keys. We have an address. It’ll do for home.

America Doesn’t Know What To Do With Us

By Amy Medina

On June 11, 2020

In Other

America, apparently, doesn’t really know what to do with people who have spent 20 years in Africa.

Several weeks ago, we started the process to buy a house. We’ve never owned a house, but we had spent the last few months Googling, “how to buy a house” and “what is escrow.” We had some savings and no debt. We had done the math; we knew what we could afford. We had researched the neighborhoods that were in our price range. We were ready!

That is, we thought we were ready. Then we got on the phone with a loan officer. After answering questions about Gil’s employment history, he asked me about mine. “We’ll need W-2s and evidence of your work history for the past two years,” he told me.

That’s when things got awkward. “Oh, so, um, I actually haven’t received a salary in fifteen years,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been working and all. I’m a qualified educator. I’m actually an elementary school principal. I just don’t get paid for it. I’m a missionary, a volunteer….”

Silence.

That should have been my first indication that things weren’t going to go well. But we plowed on, and I managed to gather the evidence he needed to prove that I was actually employable.

Then he called with more bad news. “You don’t have a credit score,” he said. “You don’t have a bad credit score, you just don’t have any credit score. We can’t get you a loan without a credit score.”

I guess that would be because the last time we had credit cards was 2014. Oh. So just having no debt and some savings isn’t good enough in America. You need credit.

Never fear. A friend told us about another mortgage company connected to Dave Ramsey which doesn’t require a credit score. So I called them up. “Yes!” the agent told me confidently. “We do not require a credit score. No problem! So all I need is proof of utility payments at your home address from the last twelve months.”

Uh oh, I thought. I cleared my throat. “So, you see, we didn’t actually have a physical address, only a P.O. Box. And [ahem] we didn’t have any utility bills.”

Realizing how strange that sounded, I rushed to explain. “See, electricity was prepaid in Tanzania. There was this little box in our bedroom, called a Luku box, and we would use our phones to buy electricity units which came as a code in a text message that we punched into the box….” My voice trailed off. I was babbling. Better stop now before he thinks I lived in a mud hut.

“Okay,” he said, less confidently. “How about phone bills? Internet?”

“Also, prepaid,” I said miserably, knowing what was coming.

“Water?”

“Oh, that was a bill!” I said. “Except….the bill came as a text message to my phone. And I paid it using this system called M-Pesa and the receipt also came as a text message and the receipts are all in Swahili…..”

Silence again.

“I think you need to call me back after you’ve lived in America for a few months,” he said.

Seriously though. Wouldn’t Dave Ramsey himself approve of Tanzania’s prepaid system? Much less debt, obviously. But apparently not good enough for America.

So the end of the story is ….(drumroll)…..we’re renting. Which is fine. We found an apartment just a half mile from school, so that’s happy. After being turned down for a loan (and even having trouble getting credit cards–apparently you need credit to get credit cards), we were thankful to just get a lease. And after three months of living out of suitcases, I really don’t care anymore where we live. I’m just thankful we’ll have a home again. We move in in two weeks.

This does feel like some kind of time warp, though. I may be all grown up now, but coming back to California, I feel like that inexperienced 23-year-old newlywed moving into her first apartment. Sure, now I have 20 more years of life experience, but it’s with paying Luku using M-Pesa. I can speak with authority on the various pros and cons of Tanzanian internet providers, but haven’t a clue which one to choose in America. I am familiar with the various ways to send money around the world, but I haven’t had a credit card in seven years. I’m 43, but I still had to Google the word escrow.

So I guess it’s fitting that I’ll be moving into an empty apartment that we’ll be filling with used furniture and random finds from thrift stores, just like Gil and I did 20 years ago when we moved into our first place. After all, I still have some growing up to do in America.

My kids and their cousins being super-cool Americans.