At Home as a Stranger
This summer we visited the Fris family in Ecuador. A wonderful family with a warm and open attitude. After a long journey, winding through the mountains from the capital Quito, we arrive in a warmer climate in the interior of Ecuador. Quevedo, a city with its own charm, where rich and poor live side by side (a confronting sight), where motorbikes and street vendors clearly set the rhythm of the city. Where conviviality, joy and hospitality adorn the city, but where sorrow, pain and dark struggles push the reality and hardship to the surface.
It is there, where no foreign tourist is to be found, that we meet the Fris family for the first time. As soon as we arrive, the schoolbooks and all other work are immediately pushed aside. The table is cleared, only to be filled again with treats and something to drink. A family that has found its place, that is at home, there, where they were not born. Home, because God is their safe haven.
While we quickly felt at home thanks to their hospitality, we also saw how the children and the whole family had become part of a culture in which they did not grow up. Where, despite the painful and difficult emotions and situations that mission work brings with it, they experience joy and peace in being exactly there, where God has called them.
Sometimes people think that missions have only succeeded once the many financially impoverished situations and homes change in appearance, and an entire city grows in well-being. I believe we are missing the point. Missions is not about wealth from the outside, but about riches in the deepest part of our being. Where, even in the darkest nights, we may experience peace and rest, where, in the greatest storms, we may know that our God is in control. As a line once written by Andrew Peterson goes: "Where we have learned to dance in the minefields…"
Missions is bringing the good news. God's truth and peace will prevail and may change situations from within. Not through wealth, not through beautiful houses, but because riches are found in Him to whom all honor belongs. Missions does not mean that we will solve everything; it does not mean that we impose our culture on others and must reject the culture of the country you have been called to. No, it means that you are allowed simply to be, and that there God receives all the honor. Simply to be. Not through what we do, but through who He is.
Missions is following God's calling, and this also means that we must be humble and realize that God sometimes puts us in the learner's seat and lets us know that we may learn just as much from the people around us as they do from us.
That is exactly the attitude we see in this family. They embrace the culture, travel along through the storms of life, and bring the good news of the Savior—who stands above them, but also beside them—right there, where it is so difficult. It is there that we now see Peter walking the streets with an Ecuadorian bearing, see Marije opening the door with a friendly smile and sharing her home, and see the children talking about things that are completely ordinary in the place where they now live.
They are home, and that is missions: sharing the gospel, even when you open the door, set the administrative work aside for a moment, and engage in the beautiful but also difficult conversations. There, where you get to share that there is salvation from our sin, that restoration can be discovered, that we shall be converted, and that with God all things are possible. So that in the end He will receive all the honor and every knee shall bow.
