Adventure in Three Movements: Third Movement

The Newfoundland

Having experienced the Wonderland, it is impossible for us to ever truly return "home." We have been changed by the Wonderland, and our families and friends in the Homeland are always imperceptibly changing too. In returning from the Wonderland, then, we encounter the Newfoundland--our home as experienced anew through the lens of what we have lived in the Wonderland. This Newfoundland is where the missionary journey truly begins.

Whatever we accomplish in the Wonderland, we do so as outsiders, foreigners, "birds of passage." Assuming that we have been affected by the novelty, challenge, and depth of the Wonderland, we return as new or renewed people. Meanwhile, the events occurring in the Homeland--the changes taking place there--have been incremental and gradually assimilated by the community. Expecting, quite literally, to return "home," it can be deeply disturbing to discover that the Homeland does not feel like the same place we left. Returning to the Newfoundland can produce as much disjunction, surprise, discontinuity, and even pain as the entrance into the Wonderland may have produced. Yet, experiencing "home" as a Newfoundland can also be a profound gift. We can return renewed, reinvigorated, and actually relevant to the communities we had left behind. We can offer fresh perspective, a new witness to the gospel, and a deeper sensitivity to those around us.

Adventure in Three Movements: Second Movement

The Wonderland

The Wonderland is a world different from our own--it is someone else's Homeland. The rules of our homeland may not fully apply because different worlds are built on different systems of meaning. But because of our common humanity, we can expect to encounter commonalities even as we encounter differences. The challenge is to know how to interpret both the commonalities and the differences.

Adventure in Three Movements: First Movement

The Homeland

The Homeland is the place that formed identity, the place into which we sank our cultural roots. The Homeland taught us how to understand and interpret the world from a particular perspective. From the Homeland and its people, we learned how to "make sense" of a complex world.

Returning from Service

by Andrea Roske-Metcalfe

*The Two Gretels
by Robin Morgan

The two Gretels were exploring the forest.
Hansel was home,
sending up flares.

Sometimes one Gretel got afraid.
She said to the other Gretel,
“I think I’m afraid.”
“Of course we are,” Gretel replied.

Sometimes the other Gretel whispered,
with a shiver,
“You think we should turn back?”
To which her sister Gretel answered,
“We can’t. We forgot the breadcrumbs.”

So, they went forward
because
they simply couldn’t imagine the way back.

I discovered the poem by Robin Morgan at a coffee shop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I live and serve as an ELCA missionary. I was sitting with a good friend, flipping through Cries of the Spirit, a book of poetry. When I came across the “The Two Gretels,” I almost fell out of my chair.
“This is it,” I said to my friend. “This is what it’s like to go home.”

There's no place like home?
The notion of returning home from international mission service is a paradox. Although missionaries may return to the same physical locations from which they left, they have been so changed by their experiences that they can’t help but see everything through new eyes. This phenomenon is compounded by friends and family who often operate like Hansel by “sending up flares,” expecting them to find their way back to the very same place from which they set out. Often times, neither the returning missionary nor their friends or family recognize that this place no longer exists. This disconnect between Hansel and Gretel, between missionaries and the communities that sent them, makes any attempt to return home precarious, at best.

Gretel moves to a castle
My name is Andrea, and in returning from Global Mission service I became one of the two Gretels. My first returning experience came at age 15 when I spent a week of service in Juarez, Mexico. I helped build a one-room house for a family of five. The day after I got back to Minnesota, my own family of five moved into a much larger house than the one where I grew up. For the first time, I had my own bedroom and it had more square footage than the house we had just finished building in Juarez. My new home felt like an extravagant castle. I cried myself to sleep out of frustration and guilt. I didn’t know how to talk to my parents about my feelings without seeming ungrateful.

Gretel meets Super Target
Several years later I returned again, this time from a summer with Youth Encounter, in Tanzania. Once home, I accompanied my mom on errands to a Super Target store, an expanded version of the typical store chain. When we were ready to pay, I noticed that only two of the 32 registers were open. I had been back for several months already, but my mind began reeling. I was trying to calculate how much one register must cost, and how many bags of rice that would purchase, when my field of vision started going dark. I handed my purchases to my mom, stumbled out of the store, and promptly threw up in the garbage can.

Returning from Global Mission service is to become one of the two Gretels—it is to find yourself without breadcrumbs, without a map, without a GPS system for finding your way back to the place you call home. It is to find yourself in the midst of a reverse culture shock, which hits without warning in the unlikeliest of times and places. It leads you to wonder if you ever really knew your dearest friends. It makes you feel lost in your own community.

Gretel returns to herself
But returning from Global Mission service is also to become the other one of the two Gretels—it is to return home by going forward, because you simply can’t imagine the way back. It is to understand your own culture in new ways, through different lenses. It is to discern more fully who you are as a child of God, and to discover new ways of living faithfully and authentically in the world. It is to re-discover kindred spirits who were there all along.

I’m relieved to say that every time I’m faced with the paradox of returning home from an intense, inter-cultural experience, it gets a little easier. I don’t expect home to be the same, and my friends and family have stopped sending up flares. I no longer expect to return unchanged, and my friends and family no longer expect to remain unchanged themselves.

And this, perhaps, is the key: just as reverse culture shock affects the returning missionary and everyone around them, so does Global Mission service itself. The Holy Spirit blows in and through these experiences and relationships, changing everyone involved, but only if we let her in; only if we expect to be changed.

As the community of God’s people, we can’t go looking for breadcrumbs, and we can’t keep sending up flares. All we can do is go forward, because we simply can’t imagine the way back.


* Copyright 1974 by Robin Morgan in her poetry collection Lady of the Beasts (Random House).

10 Suggestions for Helping your YAGM Return Home

10 Suggestions for Helping your Young Adult in Global Mission (YAGM) Return Home
by Andrea Roske-Metcalfe

1. Don’t ask the question, “So how was it?” Your YAGM cannot function in one-word answers right now, especially ones intended to sum up their entire year’s experience, and being asked to do so may cause them to start laughing or crying uncontrollably. Ask more specific questions, like “Who was your closest friend?” or “What did you do in your free time?” or “What was the food like?” or “Tell me about your typical day.”

2. If you wish to spend time with your YAGM, let them take the lead on where to go and what to do. Recognize that seemingly mundane rituals, like grocery shopping or going to the movies, may be extremely difficult for someone who has just spent a year living without a wide array of material goods. One former YAGM, for example, faced with the daunting task of choosing a tube of toothpaste from the 70-odd kinds available, simply threw up in the middle of the drugstore.

3. Expect some feelings of jealousy and resentment, especially if your YAGM lived with a host family. Relationships that form during periods of uncertainty and vulnerability (the first few months in a foreign country, for example) form quickly and deeply. The fact that your YAGM talks non-stop about their friends and family from their country of service doesn’t mean that they don’t love you, too. It simply means that they’re mourning the loss (at least in part) of the deep, meaningful, important relationships that helped them to survive and to thrive during this last year. In this regard, treat them as you would anyone else mourning a loss.

4. You may be horrified by the way your YAGM dresses; both because their clothes are old and raggedy and because they insist on wearing the same outfit three days in a row. Upon encountering their closet at home, returning YAGMs tend to experience two different emotions: (1) jubilation at the fact that they can stop rotating the same 2 pairs of jeans and 4 shirts, and (2) dismay at the amount of clothing they own, and yet clearly lived without for an entire year. Some YAGMs may deal with this by giving away entire car loads of clothing and other items to people in need. Do not “save them from themselves” by offering to drive the items to the donation center, only to hide them away in your garage. Let your YAGM do what they need to do. Once they realize, after the fact, that you do indeed need more than 2 pairs of jeans and 4 shirts to function in professional American society, offer to take them shopping. Start with the Goodwill and the Salvation Army; your YAGM may never be able to handle Macys again.

5. Asking to see photos of your YAGM’s year in service is highly recommended, providing you have an entire day off from work. Multiply the number of photos you take during a week’s vacation, multiply that by 52, and you understand the predicament. If you have an entire day, fine. If not, take a cue from number 1 above, and ask to see specific things, like photos of your YAGM’s host family, or photos from holiday celebrations. Better yet, set up a number of “photo dates,” and delve into a different section each time. Given the high percentage of people whose eyes glaze over after the first page of someone else’s photos, and the frustration that can cause for someone bursting with stories to tell, this would be an incredible gift.

6. At least half the things that come out of your YAGM’s mouth for the first few months will begin with, “In Mexico/Slovakia/South Africa/etc…” This will undoubtedly begin to annoy the crap out of you after the first few weeks. Actually saying so, however, will prove far less effective than listening and asking interested questions. Besides, you can bet that someone else will let slip exactly what you’re thinking, letting you off the hook.

7. That said, speak up when you need to! Returning YAGMs commonly assume that almost nothing has changed in your lives since they left. (This happens, in part, because you let them, figuring that their experiences are so much more exciting than yours, and therefore not sharing your own.) Be assertive enough to create the space to share what has happened in your life during the last year.

8. Recognize that living in a very simple environment with very few material belongings changes people. Don’t take it personally if your YAGM seems horrified by certain aspects of the way you live – that you shower every day, for example, or that you buy a new radio instead of duct-taping the broken one back together. Recognize that there probably are certain things you could or should change (you don’t really need to leave the water running while you brush your teeth, do you?), but also that adjusting to what may now feel incredibly extravagant will simply take awhile. Most YAGMs make permanent changes toward a simpler lifestyle. Recognize this as a good thing.

9. Perhaps you had hopes, dreams, and aspirations for your YAGM that were interrupted by their year of service. If so, you may as well throw them out the window. A large percentage of returning YAGMs make significant changes to their long-term goals and plans. Some of them have spent a year doing something they never thought they’d enjoy, only to find themselves drawn to it as a career. Others have spent a year doing exactly what they envisioned doing for the rest of their lives, only to find that they hate it. Regardless of the direction your YAGM takes when they return…rejoice! This year hasn’t changed who they are; it has simply made them better at discerning God’s call on their lives. (Note: Some YAGMs spend their year of service teaching English, some are involved in human rights advocacy, others work with the elderly or disabled, and at least one spent his year teaching British youth to shoot with bows and arrows. The results of this phenomenon, therefore, can vary widely.)

10. Go easy on yourself, and go easy on your YAGM. Understand that reverse culture shock is not an exact science, and manifests itself differently in each person. Expect good days and bad days. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if necessary. Pray. Laugh. Cry. This too shall pass, and in the end, you’ll both be the richer for it.