Missionary Magic

It's these stories I heard as a kid, the ones that seemed so fun and faraway.  The missionary stories.  The ones with people with normalish names who talked in funny languages to people with funnyish names.  Where animals often played a role.  Or huts.  Or people who wanted or used some kind of magic—but the missionaries' magic was always better.  Always better.

And then I grew up and became more interested in... I guess just everything else.  But still hearing those stories now and then in church or something would make my insides heavy and a little bursting and I had to use the utmost control to maintain my passive front.

And so it is.  Even—or especially?—after going out as a "missionary" myself.  And probably will always be.  And such it was today when I read the story of The Witch Doctor and the Preacher.  I've heard of the Stahls, Ferdinand and Ana, and how they were the pioneering force for Adventism in Peru and other places.  And perhaps even more importantly, I saw those same shepherds' huts and traveled through some of those same mountains.  I think that's what made the story a little special to me today.

Maybe someday I, too, will be a real missionary at heart.