In which the Romines’ sisters reminisce about going on missions
trips to predominantly Catholic nations, triggered by Jessica's Mexican missions trip in Secrets.
Elise: Oh man. The
memories.
Angie: Are they memories or
hauntings?
Angie’s Story:
 |
| Cultural
sensitivity tip: don’t brand a
natural disaster |
In early 2001 an earthquake registering at 7.6 on the Richter
scale devastated the small Central American nation of El Salvador and killed
over 1,000 people. As a POS high schooler, I was devastated that we wouldn’t be
able to get to the beach on our Spring Break missions trip to the capital, San
Salvador, because the roads to the ocean had buckled. So, our week-long
missions trip transformed from pure evangelism to evangelism + water bottles,
Purel, and other necessities wealthy, suburban Christians thought the locals
might need in this, their darkest hour. We each had a bright yellow bag with
our names embroidered on them along with a logo of an earthquake. That bag
remains, to this day, the best part of that trip.
 |
| The "lost" city of San Salvador |
There are so many WTF moments from that particular missions
trip which I will keep in my back pocket for another time. (Teaser: My best
story involves a performance of the Friends
theme song). But for now, let’s focus on the intent of the missions trip, which
was to evangelize or “lead people to Christ,” as the saying goes. According to
the ever-accurate Wikipedia, El Salvador is 53% Roman Catholic and 31%
Protestant. That’s 84% of the population identifying as Christian as opposed to
73% of Americans. Just let that sink in. We went to tell them about Christ,
when the conquistadors made damn sure they knew about Jesus Cristo over 100
years before the United States declared independence.
.JPG) |
| Pool at our hotel. We did not "rough it." |
While we did add a few “Earthquake Relief” activities to the
our agenda, the majority of our time was spent going door-to-door in San
Salvador inviting people to a movie about Jesus with the help of a translator.
My translator had his work cut out for him because for some deep, psychologically-disturbing
reason, I could not stop speaking with a thick Southern accent. Maybe Yankee
Angie thought Rebel Angie seemed more like the type to proselytize to complete
strangers. When we would get back on the bus every night after our Jesus movie
viewing to drive back to our super-swank hotel, the youth leaders would tally
up how many Salvadoreños
we had led to Christ. My answer was always zero until one humiliating night.
 | | | | | | | | | | |
| Y'all ready to get saved? |
I was a very competitive person, and this zero souls bullshit
was starting to get to me (my heart was obviously in the right place). So I
found these two boys who looked like they were in high school like me. With an older
white missionary woman translating for me, I led them through the Sinner’s
Prayer with a little help from my tiny pamphlet that has the Romans’ Road on
it. (For those of you who didn’t grow up in Jesus-Pleasantville, every verse
you need to explain salvation to a lost soul can be found in the book of
Romans. Thus, you walk some chump through ten crucial verses in Romans, and
BAM, enjoy heaven, my brutha.) The whole time we were praying, I heard the boys
snickering. So, I peeked (we didn’t have nuns to whack us for doing this in
church services, so some of us were a bit bolder about opening our eyes during
prayer time). Well, those SOBs were totally staring at my boobs and laughing. I
suppose in their position, I’d laugh too, as I was still an up-top lightweight.
But at the time, I was pretty pissed. It was clear to everyone (except for the
middle-aged missionary) no saving was going down. And yet when we piled back
onto the bus later that night, you’d better believe I made sure my two souls
were counted. Tally ‘em! Angie’s on the boarrrrrrddddd!!!!
Now I guarantee you there were earnest, well-meaning people
on that trip, both from our church and San Salvador. All missions is not like this one trip. In fact, I've been on a different missions trip that was a really positive experience for me and for the people we were serving. But for me, the whole San Salvador experience with the heavy emphesis on evangelism was so incredibly uncomfortable and also seemed like
a really weird, borderline insane thing to do to people who were just minding
their own business, trying to rebuild after the earthquake, wearing crucifixes
around their necks. Thank God they all made it through with the help of my fake
Southern twang.
Elise’s Story:
So my missions trip to Mexico was through my evangelical college. (Angie and I went to similar
colleges, but hers was stricter than mine. My school let us watch any R movie
we wanted, and her school only allowed The
Passion of the Christ). I was a junior and already pretty uncomfortable
with the idea of “witnessing” mainly because I was very introverted and
pathologically polite. I thought it was intrusive to make eye contact, much
less to ask people what their personal religious beliefs were. But all my
friends were going on a Spring Break missions trip, so I decided to go too,
since distributing eyeglasses in rural Mexico sounded better than staying in
Indiana for a week. Once we got there, it was pretty clear that no one else in
Mexico realized we were there on missions trip. In fact, it seemed as though we
were there partially in support of a local politician's campaign. We were taken
on tours, photographers followed us around, we stood behind the guy during
speeches, and there was a ceremony in which I was given a certificate that my
four years of Spanish have yet to decipher. To this day I’m convinced that if I
ever become famous, a photograph of me shaking the hand of a rural Mexican
dictator will surface a la Jane Fonda.
 |
United in that one guy.
|
Anyway, at the
eyeglass distribution center, Mormon missionaries were our translators.
They were basically trying to do the same thing we were (providing a service for the purpose of witnessing). It was absolutely
absurd. They were trying to convert us, we were trying to convert them, and we
were both double teaming the Catholics. It was a three-car-pile up of
Jesus-centric religions.
While now it’s
hilarious, at the time this was a legit crisis of faith for me. The toughest part
was that everyone I met were genuinely lovely, thoughtful people. I loved
my mission trip buddies, the Mormon dudes, and the local people. I struggled
with the fact that these awesome people had put just as much thought into their
faith as I had, but had come to a different
conclusion. Afterwards, I journaled a lot. I listened to Sufjan Stevens. I
thought about how I had a very different understanding of God at the age of 11
than I had at the age of 21 and suspected that I would have different ideas at
31.
 |
Ugggghhhhhh. Never journal, kids.
|
At what point was I
believing the “right thing”? The answer for me was that the chances of anyone
being right are really slim. I decided that I was going to try to live my life
in the way that I felt embodied what I believed about God, which is that he
wanted me to be kind. I would trust that he would be cool about the rest.
Much later, I would learn that my psychotherapy hero, Carl Rogers, had
the same thoughts on a mission's trip to China, which was the catalyst of him
leaving seminary and becoming a psychologist.
But before I would
learn that, I had to stop writing crazy pants, navel-gazing things in my
journals and start living my life. I had a beer. I finally met a gay person. I
forgot about the ridiculousness of my missions trip until a few years later. I
was hanging out with a couple who are Eastern Catholic. They had been
sporadically going to a Christian* small group, and the husband told us how he
decided to go with the group for a medical service trip to Peru. Upon his
arrival he was given this to help with “witnessing”:
 |
| It’s a Jesus cube. If you solve it, the rapture
happens. |
At
that moment, holding a Jesus cube, he realized the purpose of the trip. He was
a secret Catholic in a tiny boat, on a river in Peru (a nations that is 77% Catholic), surrounded by dozens of evangelicals.
As he was telling us this story afterwards, all I could say was “I’m so sorry”
over and over again. The hysterical laughter made it hard to hear me though.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
