You know how, when you [finally] finalize big plans, your brain kind of starts planning the whole thing out? You start imagining all the details and playing through what each different facet could potentially be like, and then you start wanting it to be happening, right now? You know how you start to hate the waiting, and your brain never seems to be able to stay with you, where you are?
Two and a half years ago, I read a flyer about a Missions Training Boot Camp in the Costa Rican Jungle while sitting in the second most boring class in which I have ever been enrolled, and something clicked in my head. There was a very simple and very clear thought that just fell right into the top of my mind. From the moment that it took me to read the flyer until the moment I got on my plane, I knew that I was going to the Costa Rican Jungle to learn how to be a missionary. There was not a single doubt in my mind. My application was accepted without a hitch, my support letters went out early, funding flowed in so quickly that I didn't have time to worry about it, and my parents volunteered to pay for my plane ticket. Everything was easy-peasy. Little did I know that the training I had in mind and the training that would go on would be so entirely opposite... but that is another story for another day.
From the moment I was accepted to the missions training school, I was entirely confident about the raising of the funds, my [potential] ability to acclimate to a new culture, and my willingness to travel alone to a foreign country, meet complete strangers by myself, and then live with them for three months while learning and doing ministry. I think for maybe ten minutes I was terrified that the ex-marine from Texas [who would be the only other student] would look down on me for my body shape or lack of fitness, and that all of the people in the jungle would think that I was just another touristy American, fat and lazy, who came to gawk and take pictures. Those were my two worst fears. Neither turned out to be true, and both were lulled in the same day they arose. I'm harping, but I want to be sure you understand that the confidence I possessed may well have been the confidence of a lunatic [hahaha], and it was unbreakable.
Right before the end of Fall Semester, I saw another flyer. This one was for Paraguay, and the same thing happened in my head as happened for Costa Rica. I read it, and I began getting more and more and more excited, and then I said, "Oh. I know what it is. I'm going to go there." Not until 6 hours later did I realize that this was the same trip that my housemate and fellow tea-lover, Po, was using for her TESOL practicum. I got a little antsy that she wouldn't appreciate me impinging on her adventure, but as it turned out, she had been leery about going alone for such a long time, and had wished there would be someone she knew going with her. The more I prayed about the possibility, the more excited I got, until I couldn't take it anymore. I emailed the missionaries a long introduction, informing them of my interest and listing every thing that I had recently been in charge of or involved in, as well as several of my more commendable qualities. I think it almost sounded like a professional résumé. I don't know about them, but I was very impressed. (: Long story short, they really wanted me to come down, and they wanted to do anything they could to make it happen.
Just Saturday, I bought my plane ticket for Paraguay, and everything became very real in my head. At random moments of each day, my brain snaps back into focus and I remember how many days it is until I leave the country. I talk about it all the time. I've been dreaming in Spanish for four nights and counting. I've looked through albums on Facebook of all the pictures I took in Costa Rica. I keep smelling the air from the mountains between San Jose and Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. I keep hearing the waves crash on the beach in the middle of the night in Cahuita. I feel the kids in Jobo, Nicaragua, tackle me into Rio San Juan del Norte. My feet can no longer deal with shoes. I have stopped caring for American food. My mom sends me to the store and I get ill that it's in an air conditioned building and it's not called El Supermarcado! in big flashy letters. In short, I'm not here anymore. And I'm so, so glad that the Lord made me hold off buying my plane ticket until now, because if I had gotten mine at the same time as Po got hers (near the end of the semester), I would not have passed my finals. He must know how I work, or something. (:
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