Funny Missionary Stories

Don't know if this is funny or gross. My dear wife typed it out for me.

While at a mission’s conference on deputation we were assigned to stay in the home of a family (mother, father, and two sons) recently saved out of a biker lifestyle. They were a bit anxious as we were the first missionary family to stay with them and they worked very hard to make our stay as comfortable as possible. Their house was a “lick-and-a-promise” clean but we appreciated the effort they were making. As I helped set the table I noticed all the dishes had a tacky feel to them--like they hadn’t been washed and certainly not rinsed properly--which gave me an uneasy feeling.

When we sat down to eat only the mother and father joined us. One son was at work and the other was not feeling well so they prepared a plate for him and sent it to his room on a tray. Of course we were served spaghetti—NOT a favourite of my eldest (and biggest) son. He ate a lot of bread and the father exclaimed, “You’re a big boy, why aren’t you eating more!” We tried to tactfully explain that travelling a lot tends to affect children’s appetites.

As I helped the mother clean up after dinner I immediately understood the tacky feeling to the dishes. They were just swished in a sink of cold soapy water and put in the drain to drip dry. I was glad I had acted out the ordinary and drank Coke instead of my usual water. From then on I rinsed everything in hot water before I used it! We were putting the food away and when the mother came to the returned tray from her sick son’s room she scooped up the plate and proceeded to scrape the leftovers back into the pot of spaghetti sitting on the stove saying we’ll leave that in case anyone is hungry after church. I was horrified! I told my husband and my older children what happened on the way to church and warned them NOT to eat anymore spaghetti. I didn’t say anything to the two younger children because we all know how children talk when we least want them to!

Anyway, when we returned to their home that evening everyone went to change and relax. I went to the kitchen get a drink and what did I find but one of my younger children sitting there eating spaghetti that our host had so graciously gotten for him!?! I just prayed God would protect him from any illness with which he might come in contact (I didn’t actually think the son was sick but rather trying to avoid contact with us!). Even worse was when the mother took up my son’s partially finished plate after he left the table and scraped it back into the pot as well.

As horrible as that was to us afterwards (and no, he didn’t get sick), there is an epilogue to this story that we were made aware of a few months later. Our field director and his wife were at that mission conference with us and then again at another conference a few months later. All the missionaries were sitting around after a meal together and the pastor asked each of us to share our “worst missionary experience”. Of course I shared the one above and then noticed a peculiar look on the face of our field director. When we asked him what was wrong, he said, “I went to lunch at their house the next day, and we had spaghetti!”

 

I think I'll stay away from spaghetti for awhile, Roger. But it was funny!:laugh:

Spinach, how many times have your guests told the same story?? :smilewinkgrin:

When we first came to Japan in 1981, we went to visit a college friend of mine, a Japanese missionary-pastor we nicknamed "Nobby" at college since no one could say his real name, "Nobumasa." Nobby was eager and anxious to take me out for sushi, though I had sworn in my heart never to eat raw fish or raw eggs (that is a story for another day). You can't turn down your friend, though, right?

I find it significant that Nobby's American wife took my wife out to Wendy's instead of coming with us. At any rate, we showed up at a "kaitenzushi" restaurant, which is the sushi version of fast food. Everyone sits around a huge conveyer belt which brings around the sushi one per saucer. You grab a saucer, eat the sushi, and they count the saucers and multiply by 100 yen (more nowadays) when you are done.

Nobby was in fishy heaven, and had a big stack of saucers by the time I figured out that all I wanted was the shrimp. I finished all the shrimp sushi on the conveyer belt and then asked Nobby how to get more. He muttered "Say, 'Ebi wo kudasai,'" around a mouthful. So I said to the guy behind the counter, "Hebi wo kudasai."

No shrimp came forth. In fact, Mrs. Chubby next to Nobby almost fell off her stool. I had asked for snake sushi! Ladies and gentlemen, that is called culture shock--on both sides!

 

I am glad that God has placed us in country where we do not eat strange food. Argentines eat a lot of the internal meats of a cow, but many off them do not so I am in good company when I do not!

When I was first learning castellano, I continually confused two oft used verbs- tocar and tomar. Tomar is to take and one uses it to talk about drinking such as tomo cafe siempre para deseyunar. "I take cafe always for breakfast."

Or you use to to "take" the bus somewhere.
But tocar means to touch. The problem was that I kept saying this in place of "tomar".

The funny looks I got came because I was telling people I touched my coffee for breakfast or I touched the bus yesterday to go to such and such a place.

One only can imagine the image of a yanqui loco (crazy yankee) reaching out to touch the bus as it speeds past after dipping his fingers in his morning coffee.

 

You guys don't know what you are missing! Sushi is not just raw fish, though I love salmon and shrimp sushi. There is also beef sushi, sushi casserole (without raw fish), etc.

Speaking of food, though, I swore when I came to Japan that I would never eat raw egg. I figured I could handle the raw fish, octopus and similar delicacies, but forget the raw eggs! Then it happened.

Soon after we reached Japan I was asked to help move another missionary up to the northern Island of Hokkaido. It was a delightful trip up through the heart of the main island of Honshu, and then on a ferry ship across the strait.

On the way back down we stopped at a lovely onsen (hot springs) resort, and stayed in a traditional ryokan inn. The next morning we had a traditional Japanese breakfast, complete with fish, rice, cabbage salad and yes, there was an egg. My friend Al said with a sneer, “Now you’ll have to eat raw egg, John!”

I stared thoughtfully at the egg. Then I spun it. “Nope, Al, this egg’s not raw. They’ve boiled it, or it would not spin like that.” Sure enough, to Al’s great disappointment, they had boiled the raw egg for the foreigner’s lame palate! I still swore I would never eat raw egg. However, I underestimated Japanese cuisine.

One day coming home from language school during that first year I thought I'd get a bowl of soba (buckwheat) noodles in a little shop in the eki (train station). I saw the Chinese characters for "egg soba," which I had just learned, and I thought it sounded good. So I ordered it. The noodle cook poured the soup in the bowl, added the noodles, got a boiled egg (or so I thought), and cracked it right into the bowl. So I had my first taste of raw egg, and it wasn't too bad after I mixed it in well!

Sometime after that we learned to like sukiyaki, a delicious way to cook beef in a sauce right there on the table. Next, you dip your meat in a raw egg, which cooks the egg a little bit. Delicious! Alas, we eventually had to quit eating raw egg with our sukiyaki after my wife had food poisoning from it. Life is not all fun and games for the missionary to Japan.

 

My wife tells me that all the time. But to my understanding it is still rolled in seaweed no?. I don´t eat anything that comes from the sea unless I absolutely have to. We live on the ocean, and when other missionaries come to our city they want to eat seafood. However, I will not be the one to take them to a seafood restaurant!

My philosophy is thus: fish smells bad, food that is dangerous to eat smells bad too therefore fish is dangerous to eat! Not to mention lobsters and crabs look like creatures from Mars and I do not eat space creatures.:smilewinkgrin:

John you go ahead and eat all the sushi you want, I won´t be offended!

Now that being said. One thing that I love to eat here but can be a bit hazardous depending on where you get it is a choripan. This is a simple sandwich consisting of a garlic sausage called chorizo (not like the mexican chorizo) on a crusty roll (pan) and maybe a little chimichurri sauce (garlic, parsley, oregano, oil etc.) and nothing more. The juice of the chorizo soaks into the pan and it is absolutely incredible.

However, I have learned that choripanes from the train station are not the best idea to eat since one does not know the quality of the chorizo used. The choripanes at certain stands or even restaurants are not a good idea to eat because one does not know the sanitation standards of them.

When I was in language school in downtown B.A., there was a little hamburger/choripan joint on the corner of our street. I liked to stop in there now and then for a quick lunch. One day after ordering my choripan, a couple of police walked in and ordered hamburgers. The cook place the raw hamburgers on the grill with his bare hands, then wiped his hands off on a rag without washing them. He then grabbed a plate and cleaned it off with the same rag and placed my choripan on it. I prayed well over that one!

 

Nope, sushi is very rarely made with seaweed. Wrap rice in seaweed and you have an onigiri rice ball, with or without the raw fish. But hey, what's wrong with a good dose of seaweed? Kind of salty, kind of fishy, but there are worse things, maybe even choripan!

Let me see, I've eaten octopus (dead but raw), squid (can be good if cooked right), eel (delicious with the right sauce), many different kinds of raw fish, natto (fermented soy beans, sticky and terrible tasting to me), green tea rice crackers, all sorts of seaweed (dry around rice crackers or wet in soup), smoked horse and many other delicacies.

Patty once bought a package of fish filets on sale, brought it home and said to me, "John, what did I buy?" I read the label, gulped and said, "Squid, honey." Well, Patty is nothing if not frugal, so she had to see if she could cook it anyway. The thing is, you have to cook it right or it has the taste and texture of white rubber. That day we threw away some prime rubber!

But to me culture shock is the time I stopped at a convenience store early in our career and bought a chocolate chip ice cream bar. But when I bit into it the chocolate chips were beans!! Of course that still tasted better than the green tea ice cream I've had since!

Or, there was the time out on evangelism that I stopped my scooter by a drink machine and decided to try a new brand of soft drink. One swallow and I had to look at the ingredients, only to find that it was one per cent alcohol. So the first time in my life I ever tasted beverage alcohol was as a missionary--out on evangelism!

Oh, and then there were the chocolates given to us by my wife's English student, made by the Bourbon Chocolate Company. Popped one in my mouth, chewed and swallowed the real bourbon that was in it. WOW!!!

 

As I have been told, fish and porcupine are the two meats in the world that can safely be eaten raw......barring modern polution problems, of course.

Porcupine, in Ontario, is a protected specie for that reason. Someone lost in woods can capture and eat a porcupine for survival.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Well, actually, there is the danger of certain types of parasites with raw fish. That's why the Japanese eat wasabi, Japanese horseradish, with it--to make it safe. But wow, wasabi will really pucker your lips! And it's a nice shade of green besides.

I have a Japanese doctor friend who loved raw fish--until he started preparation to become a medical missionary and took a seminar on such things. Changed his eating habits right away!

 

Well I don´t like rice all that well either- I eat it if I have too but its not a favorite of mine. My cultural heritage is Italian on my moms side so I love pasta. I believe God prepared me for Argentina by giving me a love for pasta since they eat a lot of it here due to a very strong Italian influence.

On deputation people would ask me if we ate a lot of beans and rice since Argentina was in S.A. To which I replied, no we eat steak and pasta- maybe that wasn´t good for raising support, but it certainly destroyed misconceptions!

 

If we're talking "minute rice" I can certainly understand why you don't like it. But this Japanese "sticky rice," yum! Patty made "niku donburi" last week--an egg and meat mixture over rice. Very good!

God prepared me for Japan like He prepared you for Argentina. I love rice--even my middle name is rice--literally! John Rice Himes :tongue3:

We'll probably go to our favorite place for steak tomorrow evening, "Steak Victoria." They have these skinny little sirloins, but they're good.

In the meantime, as long as we're talking about food: the average Japanese is very shy about communicating, and is afraid of having to speak in English to a foreigner. Our former co-workers (now doing furlough replacement) used to live and evangelize in a fishing village on the coast. They were delighted when a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant opened up in their town. When they walked in the KFC for their first meal, the entire Japanese staff fled to the back of the store! Then they heard them whispering, "Who knows English?" So they called out, "It's okay, we speak Japanese!" Upon this the staff trickled back out and took their order sheepishly!

 

Most people here are rather embarrassed about speaking English as well. They feel intimidated. I wish I could explain that I feel intimidated every day but I speak to them nonetheless.

Then there are the few that wish to impress you with their "amazing" English skills. Its quite funny actually.

 

I got very busy last week with a very difficult email board meeting, but I still have a few stories left. Here's one.

I remember when my parents came to Japan years ago, we set it up for my Mom, a wonderful speaker to women's groups, to speak to a Japanese women's meeting put together by several churches. We pastors were banned from the women's meeting, so we met upstairs, where we fellowshipped and my pastor-father shared some wisdom with us.

Meantime, my mother's interpreter was Mrs. Kobayashi, a woman from my church who was very good in English. I gave Mom strict instructions: "Pause after every sentence, and do not use American idioms." Well, Mom gave a wonderful talk to the ladies, by all accounts. However, her first words were a whole paragraph! Poor Mrs. Kobayashi finally said, "Mrs. Himes, please stop so I can interpret." Mom got flustered and said (in a Texan idiom), "Well, bully for you!" Broke both my rules at one go!

 

That reminds me of a funny- Mexican Sign Language (LSM) and American Sign Language (ASL) are almost completely different. There are a few signs that are used in both languages, but that have totally different meanings- one biggie is the ASL sign for 'fellowship'. In LSM, it means 'adultery'. I would always warn visiting preachers from the USA NOT to use the ASL sign, but of course some did- such as "It is nice to fellowship (read as 'commit adultery') with you"- much to the consternation of their audience.

 

It is unfortunate that sign language is not universal.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Funny! But I can top it.

After 2 years of full time language school we moved to Yokohama to start our first church. One day I was talking to a lady in front of a bank, inviting her to church and hoping to witness. In order to build the relationship I tried to talk to her little boy, but he hid behind his mother's skirt. So I added an adjective ("seems like") to a noun ("doesn't like") and said it about her little boy. Her jaw dropped open, and without a word she grabbed the boy and stalked off. I hadn't a clue what I had said until I got back home and looked it up. There is another word with the same pronunciation as those two together which means "filthy, immoral"!! I had called her little boy a pervert!

 

That would be as impossible as a universal spoken language. When the good Lord did his job at the Tower of Babel, he got ALL of the languages, brother!

Most sign languages are based upon the underlying verbal language. Even in countries where missionaries went to the deaf and adapted ASL to that country's language there are substantial differences. Even British Signs and American Signs are quite different- especially the spelling! The British use two-handed alphabet where the ASL is one-handed.