What makes someone want to be

a missionary? 

I am no closer to understanding that today than I was yesterday. Yes, I went to another funeral yesterday. I suppose I am getting to "that age" where funerals are becoming more frequent, especially in the generation above me. 

R... would have been just old enough to be my mother. I knew her for many years. Her husband taught with the Senior Cat at a time when they were both assistant teachers in a big primary school. Their careers took different paths, very different paths. The Senior Cat went on up the teaching path and B... turned to the Church of England. He married R...

I often wondered whether R... had any inkling of what they would take on. I suppose she could be described as one of the genuinely "good" people in this world. She started out as a teacher too but her real role in life was that of "mother" - and not just mother to her own children. They had four children of their own and went off to Africa as missionaries. 

The youngest of their children gave the family eulogy yesterday. She recalled being sent three hundred miles to boarding school at the age of seven because her parents were doing missionary work in a remote area. She spoke of how her mother made the long journey each half term to see her four children at school. She spoke of all the other things her mother did, how they gave up a room in their own small home to another missionary nurse when the promised accommodation did not eventuate. Her mother fed people, taught people, cared and comforted for people.

Yes, I suppose I admired her for all that. R... came to a talk I once gave at a church. I started out by asking everyone in the room to stand up...and they did of course. I then explained what I was going to talk about. I told them I was going to try and make them understand why it is so important to understand at least some of the language being spoken around you.  As I finished saying that I added, "Tafadhali kuketi cini". I waited and only R... sat down. I knew she had understood. I had just said "Please sit down" in Swahili.  (No, I do not speak Swahili. I wish I did. I know a few words and my late friend C... had told me how to say that for the occasion.) I knew it was very unlikely that anyone apart from R... would understand and it made the point. 

And R... rose to the occasion in two ways. She stood up again and said, "Cat has just asked us to sit down - in Swahili. I think it was a was a wonderful way in which to make us all understand what she will be talking about."

R... spoke fluent Swahili. B...did too. He says his is a little "rusty" now. After the service I spoke to the youngest child, a woman about ten years younger than I am. All I had to say was one word, the Swahili word "thank you" - "asante". She gave me a warm hug and murmured the response, "Asante sana".  At some point we will sit and talk about how it was for her as a child. Neither of us will understand how it was for her mother to go as a missionary to a country that is not safe - and was even less safe then. 

I cannot understand that level of commitment at all. I cannot understand that level of faith or belief. It seems to me there are very few people who do. 

R...and B... spent more than twenty years in Africa over two terms.  When we talked about it I think they felt the aid workers I work with were not truly committed. They saw them more as people who go in and out for their own benefit as much as the benefit of the community they go to help. That would not be true but R... and B... did not face the same restrictions. They took their children and one of the first rules the micro-aid worker is, "You don't take the children with you...or even your partner unless they are essential to the role." Micro-aid workers go in and out as quickly as possible. They are not there to socialise or develop relationships. They are there to do a specific job - and they must then leave. In many ways it takes the same level of commitment. They often take unpaid leave or use their holidays to do something...and it often involves personal expenses that are not tax-deductible donations to charity. 

For all that I know R...and B... believed in what they were doing when they went. They supported many of the people I have worked with over the years. Their knowledge of Swahili has sometimes been useful.

And, just once in a while, teaching other people the real meaning of "please sit down...and listen" was invaluable. I won't be able to go in and have R... ask if I want a mug of tea again but any time I go past their old house I will say a quiet, "Asante".