Telling The Children

It was a warm and sunny day when my parents sat me and my sisters down. Ok, I’ll be honest, I don’t remember the weather. That first line sounds good but it could have been 30 degrees for all I know. I was around 10 at the time and I had been through this before. My mom and dad would sit us down and explain that we were moving. By the time I was 10 we had moved at least 4 times. At the time the average time a Southern Baptist preacher would be at a church was around 2 years so we had bounced around. Nothing though could prepare me for this one.

I recall asking if they were going to tell us about something fun. “In a manner of speaking it could be fun,” my father said. Fun isn’t exactly how I would describe what came next. They informed us that they felt that god had called them to be missionaries overseas. The obvious next question was “where are we going?” The answer was that it was between Bosnia and some place in the Caribbean.

I’ll spare you the explanation of it all, but Bosnia ended up being the choice. Litigating the validity of the voice of god is a topic for another time, but they felt he was pushing them to Bosnia. I knew nothing about Bosnia at the time. My mom and dad told us there had been a war there and we needed to help. Their idea of helping was evangelizing the locals and starting churches. Very well, let’s do the thing. This all made sense to my 10 year old brain.

Missionary Training

You read that right. Missionary Training. Off we went to Richmond, VA for missionary training. This was where all the families that were about to go overseas met and prepared for what was to come. It included the children. This was the first time I recall having it pointed out that I sounded incredibly southern. There were people from all over the US and about 10-12 kids my age. They were very quick to point out that I sounded funny. They weren’t wrong. Insert whatever the most country thing you can think of here. That’s what I sounded like.

Up until this point in my life I had really only been in Mississippi. We didn’t travel. This was all very enlightening and eye opening. This also happened to be the first time I ever saw snow.

All in all I do remember this portion of the journey fondly. I enjoyed interacting with kids from different regions of the country and backgrounds. There were lots of activities to do. Basketball, movie nights, sledding, etc.

There was one recurring them though that I remember quite vividly. I was frequently told that being a Christian in some parts of the world is not looked upon favorably. I had, of course, read all the books on martyrs and people who had died for the sake of Jesus. It was not something that I had ever really considered though. Clearly our beliefs were right. Why would anyone disagree with us? It’s so simple. We clearly hold the truth and just want to share it with others.

It wasn’t until we arrived in Bosnia that I saw the dirty side of what Christianity has to offer.