Living Abroad vs Serving a Foreign Mission

[Third Hour]

Opinion I want to start off by saying that I did not serve a mission. I have, however, lived for an extended amount of time in a foreign country. As I’ve talked with people who have come back from foreign missions — especially people who have served in the same country I’ve lived in — the differences between serving a foreign mission and living abroad have become really apparent to me. Below are five reasons why I believe foreign-serving RMs shouldn’t claim to be “experts” on the country they served in. 1. You Weren’t Able to Immerse Yourself in the Culture On a mission, you have one goal — to preach the gospel. This means you will never be able to truly blend into the culture and the people of the country you’re serving in. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I think it helps missionaries focus on why they’re really there. But it does mean your cultural understanding might have some gaps. Take recreational activities,...

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[anatess2]

Ugh.  Another low quality 3H article. 

1. Cultural Immersion.  "Take recreational activities, for example. If you served in Latin America, you were missing out on a huge piece of the culture by not learning how to dance."

This is silly.  Missionaries experience Latin dances in Church activities and everywhere else on the streets.  You don't have to learn to dance to know the Latin dance culture.  And yes, there are people living in Latin America who can't dance.

A good missionary empathizes with the people he serves and the people he meets.  That is as culturally immersed as you can get.

2.   You Probably Didn’t Learn a Lot About Current Affairs or History

Also silly.  A missionary can know as much as the next guy about current affairs and history.  And I will guarantee you that just because you lived abroad doesn't mean you know current affairs or history either.  I even posit that just because you were born, grew up, and live in one place means you know current affairs or history.  You doubt me?  Go out to any American street and ask anybody that pass by to explain the Electoral College.

3.  I’m not saying you need to put yourself into dangerous situations or go to sketchy places to understand a country, but being limited to certain areas and getting home by 10 p.m. only allows you see so much of a culture.

False.  See #1.

4. You Didn’t Have to Worry About the Burdens of Day-to-day Life - So while you may have learned a lot about where you served, you didn’t get to experience what it’s like to live there.

You live in a place for 2 years, you'll know that the tank in your stove is not hooked up to a "utility grid" just as much as any other guy.  Of course, there are native-born people who have people who take care of their tanks so they end up not knowing anything about tanks. 

Learning to live on your own in a foreign country allows you to relate to others there in a way that you can’t simply by preaching the gospel to them.

It is apparent that the author knows nothing about preaching the gospel.

5.  On a mission, the language you use and hear, for the most part, is filtered. People are talking to you in a certain way and in certain situations, so they only use a set of words.

Also incorrect.  See #1.  Missionaries don't just talk about scriptures every day and nothing else.  Missionaries proselyte, serve, minister, etc. etc. all kinds of people, member or not.  Just because a missionary doesn't know how to say Climate Change in Spanish doesn't mean Missionaries are only exposed to "filtered" language.

6.  I’ve seen people try to present a foreign mission on a resume as some kind of ambassador experience, but that’s simply not the case.

You DEFINITELY can present a foreign mission on a resume as a valuable asset.  A foreign mission is specific, it has a set of qualities common to all foreign missions, and it displays a set of characteristics.  Living abroad, on the other hand, is vague and does not point to any specific employable characteristics unless you specify what you did while you were living abroad.

7.  And lastly, we need to stop assuming that because someone speaks a foreign language or says they lived in a foreign country, they must have served a foreign mission. People have made this assumption about me multiple times, and honestly, it’s getting old.

Way to use a 3H article for your personal shoulder chip moment.

 

Edited April 15, 2019 by anatess2

[Just_A_Guy]

Sydnee—

I was particularly taken aback by the sheer hypocrisy of suggesting that everyone should experience “living abroad” (however you choose to define that), but that serving a mission is purely a matter of personal preference with no objective, universal value.  

Some of your points about the limitations of a missionary experience are well-taken. Yes, for those of us who learn a new language, our vocabulary will tend to become the richest regarding topics that coincide with the work we are doing.  Yes, we will not experience the joys of boozing and sexing it up with the locals, as our peers in the Peace Corps and academic study-abroad programs do.  Yes, our exposure to the literature, music, history, and politics of the areas in which we serve is not at the or theoretical or analytical level; it is from a practical, impoverished, man-in-the street view that lends itself to better observation of the whats than the whys.  Yes, a wise RM will understand the limitations of her experience; and will approach discussions about the country in which she served with an appropriate degree of humility.

With that said, Sydnee:  what’s your alternative?  Academic study abroad?  Government service?

On my mission I was in literally hundreds of people’s living rooms, primarily from the lower classes.  I heard their stories and their frustrations—of chronic unemployment, of governmental extortion, of rape.  I ate what they ate.  I helped cook it.  I helped work their subsistence farms.  I carried 5-gallon bottles of water a mile from market to apartment so we could safely drink.  I spent days at a time traveling by boat, bus, and airplane.  I saw the way disease runs rampant in towns on the Amazon during the time of year when the river is rising and all the garbage that was left on the riverbank in the last four months, contaminates the water supply.  I saw impromptu garbage dumps in streets and parks, and the peculiar way vultures circle overhead when they spy fresh carrion.  I saw children being worked in ways that would violate American law.  I worked with women deserted by their husbands, women beaten by their husbands.  I saw recently-deceased people laid out for burial with cotton stuffed up their noses, and did my best to console their survivors.  I rode a bus stuffed with indigent travelers, sacks of manioc, and a couple of live goats, over a terrible dirt road through the Amazon rainforest.  I saw a man get shot in a bar fight.  I saw animals butchered in the street and left hanging upside down for the blood to run out in the gutter.  I saw the electioneering that goes on, with VW Bugs driving through the streets fitted with huge speaker boxes to blare out the campaign jingles of this candidate or that. I saw the absurdity of government workers going out to contact indigenous tribes to record  “votes” from people who had no idea what electricity was.  I saw dirt streets, shoddily tarred over with no prep work at election time just so that the mayor could claim he had Accomplished Something—only to have the pavement flake off at the next big storm and clog up the gutters, causing flooding.  I saw drunkenness, I saw dancing, I saw prostitution.  I saw the effects of a piranha bite.  I saw Dengue outbreaks.  I also held my share of parrots (one of which spoke Portuguese) and macaws and turtles and, once, a caiman.  I lit candles when the power went out (as it did weekly).  I let the dishes pile up and showered in the rain when the water ran out (as it did every other day).  I went two years without a hot shower, unless it was with water I’d heated myself on a propane stove.  I got treatment for an infected bug bite at a public health clinic.  I saw others denied public health care for no discernible reason.  And I saw cruise ships come in, with Europeans in Bermuda shorts buying ridiculously overpriced pottery and arrogantly snapping photographs of those mysterious Brazilians-in-the-mist.  I got charged by a child wielding a machete, who thought my companion and I were traffickers.  I saw dogs tortured in the street for fun.

I saw life, Sydnee.  Do you really think that a collegiate study-abroad program, or a stint in the Peace Corps, or just three weeks in the country with Daddy’s credit card, can give anything like that experience to a bunch of first-world teenaged dilettantes?  

This article really is something else.  Progressives spend decades complaining that foreign history, politics, culture, music, etc is too often evaluated without due consideration to the experience of the weak, poor, minorities, women, etc—so we as missionaries go out and interact with those precise subgroups for two years; and now you come kvetching about how our experiences are less “authentic” because they were not properly mediated through a bunch of affluent, primarily white-male academics, administrators, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, travel agents, and entertainment executives?

Really?

Edited April 15, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[Guest MormonGator]

Other than that, @Just_A_Guy loved the article and agreed totally. 

[Just_A_Guy]

2 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Other than that, @Just_A_Guy loved the article and agreed totally. 

But other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how was Dallas?

[Guest Mores]

Blind men and the elephant.