May 2003
Foreign. Alien. Must adapt. Can’t adapt.
The most impossible adjustment ever. Within a week, I’d gone from ultimate freedom to this.
I was a missionary. I sat in my apartment, unclipping and re-clipping my name-tag. A constant mold stench permeated the building. The brown laminate of the kitchen looked like a bad remodeling job from the 1960s. The air was hot, cooled by nothing but a circular fan that coughed when you plugged it in.
“Let’s go,” my missionary companion said. I’d never met the guy before yesterday. Blond hair. Short. From Utah.
A stranger. Yet this stranger would become my only companion for the next three months. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.
My only privacy was my trips to the bathroom. And even then, I could sometimes hear his breath through the paper-thin walls.
I hated it. This wasn’t home. Read more »