What a Missionary does: the inside story

I know that my information gets existential and that I can ramble on about whatever book I'm reading or whatever spiritual battle I've won or lost, but I think it's time you know the nitty-gritty.  What is it that I deal with on a daily basis?  Adolesence at it's height, magnified and multiplied by a hundred, and demands that I exaggerate in my head, but nontheless are quite demanding.

I live in a dorm room with nine girls ages 11-15.  This is not the ideal living situation for ANY young single woman trying to make herself known, write a book or two, get at least one measly story published anywhere, work on her skills as a photographer, find herself a man, AND never really quite getting around to doing those things because she has to figure out why a girl's period is awry, or someone's sick or needs to study.

Aside from all that I work in multimedia and audio/visual departments for Living Hope International, a non- profit in Puebla, Mexico that is really the big-wig name they put to gosh-darn successful orphanage that runs like an oiled machine, thanks to the fine folks who give their lives to such an endeavor.

My role seems to be diminishing in importance, though others around here would insist otherwise. Let's talk about what the heck "multimedia" is anyway. I'll tell you, I still haven't figured it out, but there is such a thing as social networking - not the kind we used to do at the chairman's cocktail parties, but the same breed of networking that our high schoolers are doing to scare up a date for Friday nights' bowling bonanza.

On top of that I write, and then re-write, and have other people step in and re-write it again just in case I might have mis-spelled "organisation." As if that would happen.

Then I am a photographer.  The greatest trial of a missionary, or anyone who serves the Lord, or just breathes air for that matter, is the mundane.  I am the toilet-scrubber of all photographers, and creativity, art, and expression is substituted for a word that I have grown to both embrace and develop a certain distaste for: "concept." Oh, this is the first word you'd hear in a marketing meeting, so it's logical it would come up in the same discussions for a bi-monthly newsletter, but that's not the point.

I can deliver!  I don't disenjoy the execution of such duties, and thank God that I have this opportunity to try to squeeze in some of that creativity and expression in these works of missional art.  I admit my pride likes to squeak in and I get a little huffy on the inside because sometimes the concept wasn't "my" idea.  A lot like being in an assembly line, painting the toy airplane a beautiful red even though you wanted it to be electric blue because it's "more to your taste."

In this same vein I also edit video content, though I will say in this I'm a general novice, though I have great potential.  I realize I'm tooting my own horn, but in a way not really - I only repeat what I've heard on the street.

Then, and this is the great majority of who I am on this field, I am a mother. Not the lucky biological kind who got to have a little fun on the way before she earned the right to the title "Mom." Rather I'm the kind that decided out of the kindness of her heart, or out of selflessness (later to be dubbed "insanity"), or some-such thing to take care of some girls who would otherwise be sifting trash or worse. 

Pretty sure I have those same momma bear instincts, and goodness knows that a 13 year-old is going to get picked on just for the sole unvirtuous fact that she is loud, flirts, slams doors, and generally defies authority.  Poor things. 

But in fact this internal "stereotype" they've been labeled with is strikingly accurate, and my above sentiment quite sincere.  Daily they help me remember what a confusing time adolescence was, and how emotions are all over the place, and how much make-up or a braid could cheer me up.

This is my life, this is an outline, a very sterile outline of what I do with my time, with my life, and with my heart.