Missionary kid

     Some people call me a missionary kid because I lived in South Africa for two years.  I've stopped bothering to correct them, but it's not entirely true, in the commonly accepted sense of the word.  Living in a different country doesn't make you a missionary - your lifestyle and support do.  Having a businessman father (albeit for a humanitarian company like World Vision) who moved his family around the world doesn't make me a missionary kid.  I just got an opportunity to live somewhere else, an opportunity most people don't get.
     Most people would say a missionary is someone who leaves home, is supported by other people financially while they are serving, and is promoting a religion in some way or another.  Like our friends the Taylors, working in Swaziland right now, being supported by people in the states who donate money on a regular basis, doing the work God has called them to.  But while I left home and I am a Christian, Dad had a job which was paying for us to be in South Africa.  So I was not and am not a missionary kid.
     Yet.... am I?  This is the point in this post where I really run the risk of being cliche.  There's a man standing on the corner holding a sign saying "hungry."  There's a girl who responded to a newspaper ad requesting a nanny and who was subsequently trafficked into sex slavery.  There's a teenager crying because her sister, after helping a stranger get home, was killed in a car crash .  We have mission fields. 
     I think this message becomes cliche when we start referring to our comfort zones as our "mission fields."  Yes, you can certainly help those around you.  But there is unbearable suffering right here, right now, in your backyard.  You just have to intentionally stretch out and touch it.  God doesn't call all of us to the jungles of Brazil.  But neither does he call any of us to remain in our "mission field."  He wants us to find a mission field, where we love with God's love and hurt for those He hurts for.  What are you called to?