Monday, February 11, 2008

The Glamorous and Adventurous Life of a Missionary

Some of you read this blog because you are interested in Honduras, some because you are interested in blogs of homeschoolers, and some because you are related to me, and you know I'm going to check and see if you're keeping up with the family news. But some of you read this because you are interested in missionaries, and missionary work.

As I child, I enjoyed hearing about the work of missionaries. It seemed so adventurous and important. Even glamorous, to someone like me, with a slightly skewed idea of the meaning of the word. As an adult and real-life missionary, I enjoy reading missionary biographies to my kids, as a part of their school curriculum. It still sounds exciting in the books.

But, it's funny - now that I'm a missionary, my life doesn't seem to be especially adventurous or glamorous.

Today, for instance, here is what I did, pretty much all day. I sat on my couch, and my strong 13 year old son, Christopher, brought me large black trash bags, stuffed with donated used clothing. I opened each bag, and sorted the contents into two piles, determined by the condition of the clothing. "Like new" clothing went into one pile, to be used in Christmas gifts for the pastors and their families. Everything else (from "slightly used" all the way to "rags") went into the pile to give away, to these same pastors, but not as a "Christmas Gift." As I neared the bottom of each bag, Chris brought me another bag full of clothing, and took away the bags of non-new clothing I had packed up. The non-new clothing will be stored until we have enough bags to fill the back of a pick-up truck, and then we will arrange for a pastor to pick this up. Throughout the day, Rachel and Bethany would swoop in from time to time, and take the pile of Christmas-gift clothing I had made, sorting it further by gender and approximate age, and adding these to existing piles, which have been cluttering my living room for over a month now.

By my estimation, I sorted approximately 60 large black garbage bags full of clothing today. I made a significant dent in the pile on the carport, which was the goal of the day. I need to get a lot of the shipment stuff moved out of the carport, so that I can move the piles from the house onto the carport, so that the house will look better when the potential buyers come to see it.

I'm thinking this is going to make a particularly boring chapter in my missionary autobiography, someday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh Trish, isn't life much more of unpacking trash bags than adventures? : ] At least it seems that way to me. It is when we look back over the terrain of a lifetime (about the time we have time to write a life story) that we see the mountains and hilltops of adventure rising up above all those valleys of "daily stuff." Even Jesus spent almost thirty years of just living and three years of Big Adventure. Hang in there! And thanks for sharing all these portraits of you--Mom, homeschool teacher, missionary, wife, writer, and friend. It brings me such joy to "check in" through this blog every few days.
Love Beth

Anonymous said...

Bless your heart! May God bless you for your service and obedience!

I found you through the SL forum. Thanks for sharing.

Laura of Harvest Lane
Happy at Home