The Crooked Mouth

I grew up in a church affiliated with denomination that focuses a lot on foreign missionary endeavors. Every year, around Christmas, our church took up a special offering to honor Lottie Moon, a missionary to China in the late nineteenth century. She is the closest thing Southern Baptists have to a Saint. We assembled little cardboard boxes about the size and shape of those that contain animal crackers, with a slot on the top. During Advent my brothers and I scrimped and saved our pocket change and put it in these makeshift banks. On the appointed Sunday, our box returned to our church and joined dozens of others as we did our part to support the efforts of our foreign missionaries.

As I grew older I participated in our church’s annual Missions Conference. One week a year we called together all furloughed missionaries our church supported and had them set up information tables, share in Sunday School classes, and chat with people during the Wednesday evening spaghetti supper. I can still smell the garlic bread, taste the sweet, yet acidic canned red sauce on the overcooked noodles, and feel the plastic utensils against my Styrofoam plate. I listened in awe, regaled by tales of otherwise normal people uprooting their lives to take literally Christ’s commandment to go into all the world, preaching the Gospel.
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