Erin Mackenzie

Maybe you’ve wanted to be a missionary since a real, live one spoke to your first-grade class. Maybe it’s been on your heart for a few years; you’re just waiting for the right moment (ideally indicated in flashing neon). Maybe you’d never considered the possibility of living more than ten minutes from a Walmart until you recently had the chance to sing from a kuna hymnal or hear the crispy crackle of a celebratory Luzon lechon. 

In August 2018, I moved abroad for my dream job as an international missionary. When asked how long I’d be there, I’d reply that I’d stay until I retired or God called me elsewhere. Eight years later, God did call me elsewhere: St. Louis, where my future husband would begin his final year of seminary studies. 

I remember the first time I heard the term “heart language”: June 2010. It was so impactful, I used it as a post title on my missionary blog. Perhaps even now more than then, I can identify. 

My house has a sizable patio, bordered by a row of Christmas palms. It’s truly lovely, but for years, I barely used it. I’d traipse across it to get to the built-in storage shed in the corner when my water pump needed maintenance. I’d do a quick pass to eradicate the grass poking through the cracks while pulling weeds. I’d collect fallen palm fronds and sweep up piles of inedible, nutlike fruits.

It was almost eerie. It’s attributable to none other than the Holy Spirit, but it was uncanny the way every experience I’d ever had and every person I’d ever met prepared me to a T for the career missionary role I was interviewing for in early 2017.

For some people, it’s Saturday afternoon college football marathons.  

For my parents, it’s Jeopardy’s half-hour slot.  

For me, it’s a Friday morning Zoom Bible study. My Friday mornings are sacred. I am busy. Do not call me. Do not email me. Do not WhatsApp me. 

If you asked me about my earliest memories in the Dominican Republic (DR), I’d list being sandwiched between two then-seminary students farthest afield (Chile and Spain) in an airless backseat, a steeply inclined road with a sheer drop-off on one side, neon-colored chicks, and a little boy nestled between his grandmother’s legs in prayer posture.  

These snippets can only add up to one thing: visits.  

Missionary Erin Mackenzie reflects on some of her most cherished roles and experiences with her Latin America and the Caribbean missionary connections—especially at the latest regional conference.

I’m sitting at Newark Liberty International Airport as I write this, en route to the U.S. for a biennial stretch of “home service.” About a week ago, I had the foresight to request a few books at the public library in the St. Louis suburb where my parents live. Real, print books. I can already hear the protective plastic coating crinkling as I crack the spine, feel the creamy paper beneath the pads of my fingers, and smell the comforting must engendered by the raw materials of bookbindery and heightened by years of metal shelving in climate-controlled air.

My seventh-grade teacher used to tell my class about the concept for a book he’d always wanted to write: the “what ifs” of history. What if … Columbus had actually made landfall in India? … the South had won the Civil War? … Archduke Ferdinand hadn’t been assassinated? Any number of present circumstances might differ: the side of the road on which we drive, the language in which you’re reading this, and so on.