Lost in Translation

Why should a missionary have a blog anyway? I've been thinking about that a bit and have changed the name of the blog to match a slight shift in purpose. From "The Boyds to Colombia Weblog" (very boring sounding) to something that expresses my experience in Latin America, "Lost in Translation."

Here are a couple of possible uses for a missionary weblog I can think of:

1) Inform people about their ministry
2) Journal about experiences in order to have written record of what has happened
3) Put ads on the site in the hopes of getting rich through Google's Adsense program
4) Write stories about life in order to entertain people
5) Explain things from the host country in the hopes of spurring on the readers to greater faithfulness to Jesus Christ where they're at

Obviously #3 is out! I want my blog to be a mixture of some of the other elements, but I'm most interested in how a person living in another culture gains a new perspective on his own culture and his own life.

We talked about this in my class on culture at the language school. A person who doesn't have any influence from people in the process of growing up (there was one case of a boy who grew up without any influence from people in France years ago) becomes severely limited in his ability to interact culturally. I postulate that a person who knows two cultures would have more understanding of his native culture than the person who has never experienced more than one.

What's this mean? I hope to share things from my experiences in Latina America from a missionary's perspective. How often we take the blessings we have for granted! How often we don't see the need around us! May God give us eyes to see the need of our neighbors, our coworkers, our country, and that of other countries and cultures in this world!