This is a short story told from the perspective of a missionary kid, now grown up. He looks back with mixed feelings on his deceased parents who, filled with missionary zeal, heard the command to missions in Matthew 28 and went. The storyteller has identity issues and works at reconciling his own more nuanced sense of the gospel with the more confident gospel of his parents. After the minister had said ``dust to dust, ashes to ashes,'' and after placing my hand one last time on the cold, hard wood casket and whispering to myself ``good-bye, mom,'' we walked across the cemetery yard, silently studying the old gravestones. I got in my car and looked across the tired cemetery lawn at the casket, still poised above the earth, the broad Kansas sky in the background and all around. Three men with matching olive green shirts, wearing old gloves, methodically labored with the casket, preparing to lower mom's body to its final destination just above my dad, who died seven years ago. I turned off the radio, shutting out Diana Krall and her wondrous jazz, to drive alone in silence. Driving the five miles back to the church on the two lane road I looked out on the barren wheat fields, the old farmhouses, and trees bending with the prairie wind. This is where it all started, I thought to myself. Earlier, during the memorial service I studied the front of the church, recently remodeled, trying to imagine that hot July afternoon in 1938 when they got married. I imagined mom walking down the center aisle, smiling sweetly, and dad, demure and disciplined, waiting at the front of the church. And then, just two years later, after some Bible training in Omaha, they knelt at the front of this same church, receiving their commission to follow their call to Africa. Pastor Janzen spoke at their commissioning service, quoting the words of Jesus to ``go and make disciples of all nations.'' Then he prayed, a long and sonorous prayer, his voice echoing through the Mennonite church, reminding everyone of God's faithfulness in the past, and asking God to preserve my dad and my mom's faithful hearts. After the service they hugged everyone and then walked the two blocks to my grandparents house where everyone sat down to eat chicken, roast potatoes, and cooked carrots. A few days later they left, riding a ship across the Atlantic and then, reaching their destination and beginning their first five year term as missionaries. By the time I was born, thirteen years later, they were early in their third term. They spoke Lingala, my mom with a bubbling ease, my father with a determined, mechanical tone but always technically correct. They wanted to learn Kikongo too but there were always too many things to do: around the house workers to survey and children to monitor, and then the work, visiting churches, evangelization forays, preaching, counseling, and always, at all hours, sitting on the porch in the wicker chairs, talking to visitors. I was the fifth child, the last one; the one my mom said was a special gift, the boy to replace my brother John who died in 1941, just fourteen months after they arrived. John only lived six weeks and was buried in a little wood box near the church on the edge of the village, a small white cross above his head. I grew up barefoot, running with the African children up and down the dirt roads. We pushed bicycle rims and climbed mango trees. We caught lizards and hauled wood. I watched the women of the village pound manioc into flour and sat beside mom when she taught them how to sew. Sometimes I accompanied my dad on weekend trips to village churches. Our Land Rover lurched over the back roads, rocking and twisting to our thatched roof destinations. We crossed shallow streams, repaired punctured tires, and sometimes relied on people passing by and banana leaves to excavate ourselves when we got stuck. My dad, usually calm and quiet, came alive in the village churches. His studied Lingala, forged on a bedrock of agonizing memorization, lacked the fluidity and village ease that I acquired with the neighborhood children. But even while his accent fell in the wrong place, village people never tired of hearing the white man spin the stories of the Israelite people wandering in a desert following a great cloud, of ancient kings both good and bad, of slaughtered goats and rams, of stories of fishermen throwing their nets into the seas, of a little man climbing into a tree, and of Jesus, the one who suffered and bled and died for you and for me. My dad's eyes would grow strong and intense, and his hands would lift in the air. Then he would talk about the wonders of heaven above and the awful prospect of death below, reminding everyone of the important decision they needed to make, and then of the tough consequences that went along with that decision. Men would need to stay loyal to their wives. The local beer would have to be left untouched. Women had to be careful what they said while pounding manioc together and some would have to wear more clothes. Everyone knew that when the harvest was good they would have to share with those who were having a difficult year. On these village trips the local church women would prepare mounds of manioc which we would smother with a sauce thick with greens and chicken pieces. We would lie in the open courtyard at night outside our hut, looking up at the immense sky. My dad would put his hand on my head thanking God for the wonder of creation over our head, for our family, for the privilege of being a missionary in Africa, and for the salvation of these beautiful African people. In the morning he would rise with the sun to go to the morning prayer circle at the nearby church. Soon I would awake to the sound of a distant thunder, the murmur of prayer from the church courtyard. One morning the prayers seemed louder. You could feel that something was happening. That morning a woman in the village, who had not yet attended the meetings my dad was holding, felt her four year old boy kicking and flaying, as though fighting an unseen enemy. She looked at his eyes and began to scream. Then, hearing the prayers down at the church she picked up her boy and carried him to the church. She set him in the middle of the prayer circle, his body thrashing about, his eyes spinning. Immediately the prayer circle gathered around the boy, imploring God for deliverance. Men raised their hands to the heavens and implored the God of the ages, their foreheads dripping with sweat. Women wailed and prayed, and then sang, asking God for mercy. My father placed his hands on the boy's head, praying in English. The praying went on for two whole hours. Then, the boy stopped kicking. His eyes seemed to return into focus. His muscles relaxed. He called for his mother and asked for some water. Tears rolled down the faces of the prayer circle and a choir was formed, songs of praise hummed on the lips of all around, surrounding the mom and her four year old, now sleeping in her arms. I remember a few days later, after we got back to our home village, seeing my father walk over to the graveyard behind the church, looking down at the small white cross marking the spot where my brother John lay. He stood there for a long time just looking down, his right hand on his chin. By then I was already back to life as I knew it, running around with my friends, and it never struck me that anything about my life was strange or unusual. One time my friend told me about what his mother had seen the night before. That night she awoke in the night and something drew her out into the courtyard behind her home. The house was at the edge of town and a big tree stood outside the wall of her courtyard, maybe thirty yards away. She looked into the tree and saw three lights unlike anything she had ever seen before. My friend's mom thought maybe these were stars, shining through the tree branches. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. No, those weren't stars. And now they were slowly moving. Maybe this isn't real, she wondered, so she pinched herself. She felt the bite of her fingernails into her side. No, I am awake and the three lights are still there, she told herself. She kept staring at the lights, looking for moving bodies, holding lanterns. But nothing. Then finally, the lights faded, and then were gone. All that was left was the tree. I look back on those days and wonder if the person I see was really me. How could I have been so simple, so naïve, I ask myself now? Yet I find myself, even today, longing for the taste of a mango straight from the tree, picked with my own hands, and for another night in the courtyard near the village church, looking up into the night sky, my dad praying nearby. I look back with envy, wishing I could have stopped time, and never grown up. But of course my parents had to send me boarding school in the capital when I was twelve. My sisters had already done this so my parents didn't cry when we parted near the entrance to the school grounds. They went back to our home, back to the preaching missions in the small villages, back to the sewing classes. By the time I went to boarding school they had been doing these things for twenty-five years. At boarding school there were other missionary kids, but plenty of other kids too, with completely different stories. I made friends with the children of embassy workers, and business people too, mostly Americans, but also some Europeans and Africans too. I started to learn a whole new vocabulary as my Lingala grew weaker. I'd go to their homes and watch movies and listen to rock music. I learned to play basketball, developed a love for French fries, and would go with friends down to the river to see the crocodiles. Eventually those years were over and I went to college, to the same Mennonite college my sisters went to. I fit in but only part way. When other people talked about combines and grain elevators I didn't know what to say. Or when they talked about their father's real estate business, or piano lessons, or the St. Louis Cardinals, I only knew so much. And my own stories, I didn't know if anyone would believe me. More and more, I didn't know if I could believe them myself. And while it was fashionable to complain about their parents and to always have homework to do when the phone rang, they never seemed to complain when a surprise visit did end with a big box of cookies. Their parents did seem stiff and awkward but at least they were around. Their parents listened to our music and were sympathetic to our politics. They went to church most every Sunday but somehow they didn't let their Sunday piety get in the way of their living, of making enough money to be comfortable, learning to go to movies, and training themselves to appreciate a glass of wine. But my parents, they went half way around the world to preach the gospel. Whatever that means, I suppose. Sewing classes outside under the shade of a tree. Doing whatever it takes to keep a Land Rover running. Sitting down with the village chief. Preaching with the light of a kerosene lamp. Sending children off to boarding school. As I went through college and then got a job I slowly learned how to live in the United States. I wanted to be as American as everyone else but I knew that could never be completely true. When I felt that I was an African, for I was born there, all it took was one look in the mirror to tell me that was a big lie. Sometimes I thought that my uncertainty about who I really was had become the single most important factor in my life. By the time my parents retired, in 1985, after forty-five years on the mission field I had listened to many sermons about ``making disciples in all the nations'' and ``teaching them everything'' and ``baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'' By then we were reminded that the ``mission field has come to us'' and of course the Gospel message we teach has to be presented in culturally appropriate ways. My father and mother did some speaking for the mission board, talking about the small churches and the sewing classes before small, respectful audiences. Somehow my dad's message didn't have the power, not the convicting persuasiveness, which it did when we made those weekend trips. And my mom's sewing didn't seem like much to talk about when she came back to America. Somehow they seemed smaller too, as though the sun and the humidity had sucked an unfair amount of strength from their bodies. Maybe, actually, it was there spirit that was sagging. The big massive stores, the rows and rows of choices, and the televisions, the televisions everywhere, seemed to collectively take their toll Even the people in the church, my dad once said to me, seem to know a lot more about the television programs and the football players than they do about the Bible. My folks eventually settled into a one bedroom apartment in a Mennonite retirement community. They put four chairs on the little patio in front of their apartment door. But it wasn't like Africa, people just didn't stop by to sit and talk. In time they took walks and even bought a small television to watch the news. But mostly, they would sit at the small kitchen table and write letters to friends from the churches in Africa. When letters arrived from their friend's mom cut out the colorful stamps to give to children at church who she thought might be interested. I pulled in to the church parking lot, got out, and went downstairs for the light meal the ladies of the church were serving. Then I sat down to eat my rolls, jello salad, and chips. People were talking to my sisters and a few came over to see how I was doing. ``Your mom was a wonderful person, such a good heart, and so courageous,'' they all seemed to say in one way or another. ``And your dad too, of course,'' they would add.
``Yes,'' I would say, ``they were a one of a kind.'' When most everyone was gone, and after my sisters had talked to me about what they planned to do with mom's things, I went back upstairs to the church. I walked to the front of the church and sat in the front bench. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about the faces I had seen long ago, and I tried to remember what it felt like to run barefoot on the dirt paths. Then I got up and took a few steps forward. Slowly I put my hands on my knees and bent over, in order to kneel.
