A Change in Culture

“My parents are missionaries, they were sent by our church from central Kansas to northern China. I was born in Kansas and we lived there until I was five before moving to China. Mission work in the first city they moved to in China was not the kind of mission that my parents wanted to do.There wasn't very much room for spiritual growth— they didn't like that. There was a church and you could go there if you were a foreigner, but not if you were a Chinese citizen. They didn't like that the mission work was a lot more underground, so they moved us to another city in the southeast part of China. My dad became an English teacher, because you have to have a Visa to be in the country, you can't just move there and live there. While he was an English teacher, my dad was also learning Chinese, and then he and my mom transitioned into working with coffee because coffee is a way that you can get into the villages.

We came back to the United States during COVID. We left China before it locked down, and went to Thailand. Then before Thailand got locked down, we went back to China,
and then my parents were like ‘okay, we need to leave.’ So we packed up our house and then two days later we left the country. We moved back to central Kansas. It was really hard because two days isn't enough time to say goodbye to a place that you've lived for five years. We didn't really process it, and it took a long time to process after that.

For a while after the move, it was easier just not to think about it or to pretend like it wasn't a thing.I wouldn't tell people about it. It's pretty easy to hide part of your personality because everyone does it. 
I would just not bring that part of myself when I was around others. Me and my [three] sisters have always all been really close. We were homeschooled together for so long, it was basically like the only friends we had were each other. We saw each other so much, and we were with each other through the bad and the good. I think with the transition between cultures you're not going to totally fit in either place. [My sisters] are the people that understand that, and me, the most. My parents were [also] always there and I knew what they believed, but their beliefs were never forced on me. I could just see the way that they lived their lives and that was something that I wanted to be a part of. 
As I got older and I actually understood Christianity, I wanted to be a believer.

This summer I went to Malaysia and I was with people that work with Rohingya refugees— it was really good. I wanted to go because I think that in the future I want to work with refugees. I'd already kind of known that before I went, so I wanted to go see what they were doing.
There were parts of [the summer] that were really hard. There’s a lot of hurting in that place and problems that you know you can't fix. When you actually put a face behind the story, it makes it a lot more real.

If I could go give my past self advice, I'd tell myself ‘it's going be okay’. Life has changed a lot, but you're going find your people again. You just need to trust God.”