Reflection from a Missionary: What is it Like to Return to my Passport Country?

This reflection was sent to us by a missionary friend on April 4, 2020 and is being shared with her permission. For her own safety and the safety of those she lives among, no details about her identity or location will be shared.

What is it like to return to my passport country?

Going out after 14 days of quarantine, it feels like a twilight zone experience. Little seems to have changed. So many people out shopping at grocery stores, Walmart, hardware and garden stores. There is plenty of food on the shelves and no problem going anywhere, except to the nursing home to see my mother. We have to talk and cry through a glass window.

Back in South Asia, there is little of everything especially food and cooking gas. If you go out, you may be detained, put in jail or your vehicle confiscated. Pastors are secretly doing their work. Many are getting thrown in jail because they speak the truth to those who are drawing close to the Lord. They won't let some deadly virus or raid stop them. People need to know our Lord.

I have so many mixed feelings. I feel a little guilty, leaving those I was serving and my expat friends too. Could I have helped? Can my whatsapp calls, text, and zoom calls still help? I am grateful to friends, who will talk with me, in part so I don't forget the language, but mostly because it is all about relationships. 

I feel a little guilty at enjoying being back. Guilt that I can have whatever temperature inside that I want and now I want heat. Wondering how come the same temperature now feels so cold. Maybe because I know I can just turn the heat on I don't put on an extra layer or drink more hot water or sit in the sun. Oh yeah sitting in the wind and cold here doesn't warm me up the same way as sitting in black on my concrete patio did.

A little guilty about being able to take a long hot shower anytime of the day instead of waiting till midday when the sun has warmed the tanks. 

A little guilty about the variety of food and having food in the stores. Plus don't forget the amazon deliveries to the door. They actually can find my house since I have a street address. Guilty that I can go to a grocery store for food without being detained, thrown in jail or my vehicle confiscated. Guilty I have the funds to buy food if I need it.  

A little guilty that we know how bad it is, but my friends don't because of the extreme lack of testing and ability to test. Guilt at the medical facilities here, while becoming overcrowded at least some will get ventilators and great care. The country I left had either no ventilators or only a few. Patients get turned away for care if they have the symptoms of “the corona” as they call it. Fear and myths are running crazy back there.

I sometimes feel torn between two worlds, while feeling that I am living in neither. Isolated alone in a beautiful place with plenty of food and supplies, I wonder whether being isolated in my home in South Asia would have been better for my long term relationships. The news here and around the world makes me cry. 

There is a sadness that feels like it has gone to my bones. Yet there is also a joy that is inescapable that wrestles with the sadness within. Both are honest and true feelings and thoughts. The joy springs forth when I see or hear of praising and glorifying the Lord in abundant prayer. In South Asia, people are fasting and praying for days. They may also be fasting so the children can eat. The persecution continues even during this time of great trails.

Perhaps the one way to describe it is restless with a sense of urgency - "for such a time as this."