Storybook Ending

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A note from LCMS World Mission missionaries James and Christel, April ‘11

Written and Illustrated by James Neuendorf

Once upon a time, I thought that for-eign mission-work was romantic. Like some-thing out of the chronicles of Lawrence of Arabia, or the adventures of Sir. Percy Fawcett the Amazon explorer, I thought that sharing God’s good news for the nations meant visit-ing exotic nations and cultures for short and exciting experiences. Nearlythreeyearsonthefieldlaterwehave a very different picture, missions is a day to day activity! Your immersion into a foreign culture is not a temporary experi-ence, you’re there all the time, even when you don’t necessarily want to be. Rather than feeling romantic or heroic, you spend much of your time feeling confused and awkward, if not outright annoyed. Looking back at our experiences over the past three years in Panama, now coming to a rapidly approaching close, it is striking to see this difference in our perspective.

Rather than being foreigners and the “object” of our mission, we have come to understand the various people of Panama and Latin America as distinct and unique individuals and friends. Next month we do not step from one adven-ture to the other, we leave behind dear friends and beloved people. We will be the last LCMS missionaries to leave Pan-ama, making our move an important symbolic milestone for the Lutheran Church of Panama. We aren’t leaving a job, we are leaving our dear friends and brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is important for us to remem-ber as we think about our move to the Dominican Republic, these aren’t statistics or stereotypes that we are

going to work with, they are real people with real lives. We are trying to learn as much of the new rules of society in the Dominican Republic as we can right now, reading up on their history and culture. This is a society we will soon be expected to live in and interact with, day by day. Dominican society is complicated and full of contrasts, integrating will be chal-lenging. We know that our move will not be romantic (it’s already had it’s share of chal-lenges)andthatourfirstfewmonthsintheDR will be full of mistakes, we also know that our ending in Panama will not be like a romantic story. Lots of tears and hugs will eventually end in just another airport termi-nal with tinny music over the speakers. Yet what is fascinating is how as much as our experiences take the romanticism out

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of the job that we have; the Bible puts things back into an epic perspective! The mundane experiences of our day to day work become incrediblestorieswitheternalandinfiniteconsequences. A lost sheep who hears the Gospel and repents causes hundreds of thousands of angels to rejoice in the heav-ens! Those who come to faith are adopted as sons and daughters of the one who created the very universe and all the things that any romantic story aim to imitate! Viewed in these terms, our journey to the Dominican Republic and the relation-

ships we will build there with the people who live and work in that society will rival Homer’s Odyssey or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for its adventure and excitement! Our daily conversations become charged with the joy of eternal consequences for God working in someone’s heart. While our work in Panama will not be ending like an epic novel, nor our beginning in the Dominican Republic, we do have an incredible new beginning to look forward to when Christ comes again in glory!

New Mission in Chilibre TheeveningofPalmSundaymarkedthefirstworshipserviceintheChilbremissionledbyPastor Rubén Ávila (who is the current pastor at Gloria Dei in Los Andes). Pastor Rubén and his wife, Gladys and family have been reaching out to the community for a long time through their pre-school led by Gladys and as simply being a part of the community of Chilbre. There were upwards of 50 people there who had joined us (plus other members of the churches from IELPA) who had come from an invitation based on the relationship built by Pastor Rubén and his family. There was no building, no program, no bulletin, simply the Word of God preached and demonstrated through the Panamanian Lutheran church body. Please keep pastor and his family in your prayers as well as the community of Chilbre. -Christel