A Reflection on the Word "Mission"

Gringos are suckers for organic produce. So it's not too surprising how concentrated the Gringo population of Esteli becomes on Friday morning around the Parque Central, where we help sell organic produce for the Friday market. We usually start out our conversations with these Gringos in tentative Spanish, and when their American accents become apparent, we lapse into English.

We met one Gringo couple at the ferria who told us about the Christian-affiliated project that they run here in Nicaragua to create and distribute machines that make chlorine to add to water so that people in the campo can have access to clean, healthy water. They asked us if we wanted to come see how it all works, so yesterday we took an expedition deep into the sticks of Nicaragua with them.

We trundled along a potholed gravel road in a monstrous Toyota pickup for two and a half hours, a distance that would have probably taken half an hour on a paved road. We passed through a dry landscape of trees with spreading branches and dangling stringy moss. We went through places where there were no houses or people for miles and miles, where the road turned into a river, where corn and beans grew on an 85-degree mountain slope. And then all of a sudden we came to the town of Yali, a thriving town of 6,000 people with restaurants and plumbing and a brightly-painted orange cathedral.

We stopped at the mayor's office, and drank a hurried cup of too-sweet coffee in a cramped room before beginning the meeting with the representatives from Yali. Greg, the Gringo man who we were with, demonstrated the process of creating chlorine using the equipment that he has developed. He poured a tablespoon or so of salt into a cup of water, connected two positive currents together and two negative currents together, turned on the car battery that they were connected to, and poured the salt water through the system five times to separate the chloride from the sodium.

In the campo of Nicaragua, one of the most common causes of death is dirty water. So Greg's idea is to provide access to chlorine by giving people the means to make it, which is far cheaper than buying it. He visits remote communities all over Nicaragua to present and distribute these chlorine-making mechanisms.

We were pretty impressed with Greg's clean water project, but it also sparked some reflection on our own “mission” in Nicaragua. When I hear the word “mission,” I most often envision a project like Greg's where Westerners come to a developing nation to improve some aspect of people's lives there. Greg's work has a clear, tangible impact on Nicaraguan people's lives. He has the keys to a better life for them, and once he has delivered those keys, he goes home.

Our “mission” is a little less clear-cut. Yes, we are teaching English here in San Nicolas, but sometimes I'm not totally sure if they really need us; after all, they already have one English teacher. And yes, we help clean vegetables at La Garnacha, but it's not like we are any better at cleaning vegetables than anyone else – in fact, we're probably worse at it.

When we came here to San Nicolas almost two months ago, we came with only one clear task before us: to accompany the people of this town. All of the other things that we do are only part of our overarching goal of accompaniment. We are not here to bring the people of San Nicolas a little parcel of something that we possess and they lack – something that will change their lives in a dramatic way. Our primary function here is to just live with the people of San Nicolas, to learn about their lives, to become friends with them over time. And hopefully in doing that, we will change their lives in a small way, just as they will change ours.

I think that each type of mission has its function – Greg's work is doing very visible good in the world, but however slowly and however subtly, I think ours is too. As the Volunteer Missionary Movement “Spirit and Lifestyle” manifesto proclaims, “It is not simply a matter of handing out money, food, or equipment. It calls for more than that. Our response is to share who we are as well as what we have.”