This is a letter I wrote to Joe, the 2nd grade son of my friends Steve and Janna. They live in Illinois and are preparing to move to England so Steve can go to Cambridge. Janna is homeschooling Joe and they just started learning about MKs so she asked if I might share a little. I thought you all might enjoy the letter as well.
*****
I hear you are in 2nd grade now and learning about MKs. Wow. That's really good. I didn't learn much about MKs until I was about 10 years older than you are now, but once I found out about them, I learned they were a really special group of people.
As you probably know by now, MKs are kids who live in a different country from their own because their parents are serving God by working with people who might not know Him. That's a really important job. MKs usually have really interesting lives. Some of them grow up learning several different languages. I knew one boy not much older than you who could speak FOUR languages-- English, French, and two tribal languages - Baoule and Jula. Even though he was American and spoke English like you and me, some of his very best friends only spoke a tribal language because they grew up in an African village.
A lot of what you see in books and pictures about Africa is true. People really do live in mud huts with grass roofs. Some of them don't have any furniture in their homes, no electricity, no television, internet, or telephones. They work very hard farming the land and growing food for themselves and their families. They enjoy spending time together in the evenings telling stories and singing songs.
Not everyone in Africa lives that way though. My wife and I live in an apartment building in a big city. We can look out our window and see a highway with traffic driving up and down it. We have electricity and internet and TV and just about everything you might have in America or England. We work at a school just for MKs. When we teach MKs, it makes it possible for those kids' parents to go spread the gospel to some of those people living in those huts out in the village.
In fact, sometimes I get to go WITH MKs out to those villages to help spread the gospel myself. It's really fun seeing all those MKs out there taking part in what their parents are here in Africa to do. I know it makes God very pleased as well.
Living in Africa is an adventure. There are a lot of things that happen here that you might think are really weird, but to someone in Africa, it's a regular, every day thing. One time I saw a cow sitting in the back of a van. It had horns that were so long, they had to poke out the side window (it was like one of those "Saebu" cows from Veggie Tales). Another time I saw about 10 sheep sitting on the roof of a bus. I guess that's how they get around over here. When I drive I have to watch out for entire herds of cattle that might be walking along the highway. Sheep and goats are everywhere, and a lot of people don't drive cars, they drive carts pulled by horses. Driving here is a REAL adventure. No one ever stays in their own lane. Sometimes we drive on the wrong side of the road or even on SIDEWALKS to get to where we are going. It can be exciting, but also a little dangerous.
We have all kinds of cool animals here. There are big, fat, blue-bodied, yellow-headed lizards that run all around our school. I once saw a monitor lizard that was about 6 feet long from head to tail (and this wasn't at a zoo, it was out in the wild! Actually it was walking past the swimming pool I was swimming in). There are some places near where I live that have monkeys, zebras, giraffes, and even a few rhinos. I know a lot of MKs who have had monkeys as PETS!
Sitting around listening to MKs tell about their experiences is one of my favorite things to do. Everyone seems to have an exciting story about traveling or animals or something else they've done or some place they've been. I'm excited for you because you get to have some of those experiences yourself. Not that you'll be seeing many rhinos in England, but it will be a different place filled with all kinds of new experiences.
I hope one day you'll be able to tell me all about it.
Have a great day in school and be extra nice to your teacher. (I think she knows where you sleep at night).
Love,
Uncle Mike
PS -- If you want to watch a short YouTube video of MKs from Africa, ask your mom to show you this video I made last year of our trip to a village, or this other video from two years ago which has one REALLY SCARY creature in it that my friend Josh found. If you want to see the kind of kids around your age that go to my MK school, ask your mom to show you this video of me and my third grade class.
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