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Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share a snapshot of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region.

My neighborhood “big sister” said to me, “I am bored of sitting at home. The day is beautiful! Lets walk.”

I told her I need to see my seamstress as to whether or not my skirt is finished, and with my limited language ability it came out more like, “Seamstress I need. Done, you thinking?”

After passing her house keys to her son through the BB cage in the park, we take a shortcut to our seamstress. This is new. I realize I’ve been stuck in a routine and have missed some interesting shops in the neighborhood.

Side by side, with the sun on our faces and under 800 country words between us, we walk, we talk … we experience.

When we enter the seamstress, the three lady workers are drinking tea and eating small cookies. I join. The skirt isn’t finished. But as I listen to the talk around me I hear words and phrases like, “I pray every day”, “all women are sad”, “my marriage is bad”… etc. My big sister’s eyes are shining with encouragement, though I do not have the vocabulary yet to understand what she says.

We walk from the seamstress to the bakery. My big sister doesn’t just exchange her money for a loaf of bread, but begins telling the woman behind the counter of the important health benefits of some new thing. On the stack of paper used to wrap a customer’s bread, she writes details, amounts and recipes. The woman baker is quite pleased. Ten questions and answers later, we leave.

Next is the cheese store. Much more can be purchased than cheese here. Honey being one of them. But with a certain look in my big sister’s eyes, I suddenly keep my mouth shut and finish my purchases without a request for honey. Apparently this is NOT the place that SHE buys honey. I had no idea.

Companionship

We cross a street, busy with afterschool traffic, to the pharmacy. My big sister is greeted by name. Expected even. And when we leave, the young man in charge of the pharmacy comes from behind the counter to give his “big sister” a side hug. I have never seen that before out in public.

On the corner we enter the butcher’s small shop, my big sister’s butcher. The only butcher I’ve ever been to since coming to this country. They enjoy a conversation about honey and where not to buy it. He also wants to know where I’ve been (since my husband has been the designated meat-picker-upper in the family).

Our craving for cauliflower brings us to the green grocer. The grocer handpicks my neighbor’s cauliflower. I am pleased that he does the same for me. It’s the first time I have experienced this.

As we turn home my neighbor and I giggle, realizing we are carrying small bags of many different things … but no skirt.

These experiences are invaluable to me. When my big sister offered me her arm, she offered me an opportunity to be identified with her culture, friends, and network. Without this kind of companionship I would be independently, pridefully, even “hermitly” … alone. I would have wandered from shop to shop, buying honey where I shouldn’t, and being labeled as “the foreigner”.

But because the community is seeing my big sister and I, side by side, perhaps they will label me as “the foreigner who belongs”.

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