Inner Turmoil

This is a continuation of the last two posts (which you can find here "I am NOT going to the jungle" and "Have you ever considered being a full time missionary?").

When I returned to the US from my second trip to Peru, my heart and mind were burning with the question I had been asked, "Have you ever considered being a full time missionary?". This question actually caused a lot of inner turmoil for me. One of the main reasons this was such a difficult question was the fact that I was at a place in life that I had always wanted to be. I had a car, a house, and everything I thought I wanted. I loved working with the youth at church, I had friends that I enjoyed spending time with, and I was teaching elementary school music at a school that I loved. I had a plan. I was going to teach my 30 years and then retire and go work at Disney World. Was I really considering giving all of that up?

Another factor in all that I was dealing with was the fact that I had a lot of difficulty returning to my normal habits and routines after returning from both of my first Peru trips. It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong with me. Why on earth would I have such a hard time going back to the things I knew so well? How could I be suffering from 'reverse culture shock' after only being gone for a week at a time? Everything I thought I knew was being shaken to the foundations. There were times that I considered just finishing out my contracted year, selling everything, and moving to Peru without really knowing anyone or the language. The compulsion to jump fully into what I felt like I was being called to was so strong, I often thought, "surely it would be best to just 'rip off the bandaid'" (as the saying goes).

One of the people that helped me the most through processing all of this was someone I remember meeting on my second trip to Peru. It was a very short encounter, but one that stands out very clearly in my memory. When we were leaving the church service we attended the night we arrived in Iquitos, I remember standing back waiting for everyone else to get in the motocars to go back to the hotel. While I was standing there, someone walked up with a baby in a carrier strapped on. She said hi to me, and I remember thinking quickly, "Oh! I know who this is! Charles told me that the youth pastor is married to someone from the US. That must be who this is." I called Charles over, and we talked to her for a moment. That was the whole first encounter. When I returned to the US from that trip I added her on Facebook because I thought she would be a good contact to have.

A month or two later, I noticed that she was coming to the US with her family to do their tour of the churches that supported them as missionaries. She was also advertising her book that she had written on her early experiences as a missionary to the jungle of Peru. I bought the book, and read the entire thing the day it arrived. (I HIGHLY recommend it!) I was deeply impacted by all of it, but especially in the second chapter where she talked about when she first moved to Iquitos. She basically did everything I had been considering, and didn't recommend doing those exact things. That very night I sent her a message on Facebook sharing a little of what was on my mind, what I felt God was calling me to do, and I asked if she had any advice. She recommended that I spend a longer time there to kind of test out whether I really believed that was what God was calling me to do before making any kind of drastic decision. Not long after that we arranged for me to spend the next summer with her and her family in Iquitos, Peru.

-Amazon Missionary Moments: Memoir of a Poured out Life - By Jennifer Arimborgo