#365. Mission Trip Souvenirs (or the sandals that prove you’ve been to Africa.)

I played a total of 78 seconds during the entire season for our Junior High basketball team.

The other team laughed out loud when I got up on the scale in my tighty whiteys to weigh in before a wrestling match because I was not as massively muscular as I am today.

On paper or blog as it were, it would appear I was a pretty big dork in junior high. And I was to a degree, but I also had my cool moments. I mean sure the bowtie looked like Urkel from the show “Family Matters” but I was dating Sue Flannery, that’s right Sue Flannery with the freckles, and even as a young lad knew I had to brush the dirt off my shoulder like my man Jay-Z. The basketball thing didn’t phase me because we won the championship that year and I became that kid everybody cheers for like crazy when he gets in a game because they just want him to score at least one basket the entire year. And I beat the kid I wrestled that day and he cried so I didn’t mind that dozens of people had laughed at me in my underwear.

But for some reason, I am convinced my dad was trying to make me less cool as a teen.

For starters, he suggested I go back to school before I got my stitches out of my face after my horrible skateboard accident. If you didn’t “peg” or roll your pants the right way, you’d get mocked, so that face I was rocking after the accident would have been disastrous. Then there was the time our church brought in those traveling singers from Texas that tried to basically trick/trap teenagers into hearing the gospel at what was initially billed as a “fun singing and free pizza thing.” As the pastor’s son that did not go over well for me, although I admit, my dad cringes at that one too. But perhaps my greatest evidence that he didn’t want me to be cool was the hat he brought me back from a mission trip to an Eastern European country.

It was this big, furry mass of black that stood about two feet off my head. It looked like one of those hats that Cossacks wore in Russia back in the day. Had I worn it to the eighth grade, it would have served as a perfect target for spitballs, pencils and insults. And my dad seemed pretty shocked that I didn’t want to wear it. But I can’t blame him because I think there is this strange sensation that overcomes Christians that go on mission trips when it comes to souvenirs.

Now clearly, the idea of buying a souvenir while in a foreign country is not something unique to Christians. Everyone that has the gift of travel does that. What’s unique is the belief that these items will serve as a symbol of our trip, a celebration of the culture we experienced, and a constant reminder of how God moved and the Holy Spirit was present and lives were changed in powerful, everlasting ways. Which is honestly, an awful lot to ask of a pair of sandals.

What usually happens is that about a week after you get home you put those things in a box under your bed. But I thought it would be interesting today to take a quick walk down mission trip memory lane, to get that box out and see what we’ve all put into it.

1. Art
Nothing says “I went on a mission trip” like a piece of tribal art hanging on the living room wall. It doesn’t matter that 98% of the house is decorated in rustic Americana antiques. There, in all its glory, is a dark wooden mask or giraffe proudly saying, “Yeah that’s right, I’m a giraffe. The rest of the house looks like Martha Stewart, but I don’t even care. I had to wrap this thing in dirty clothes and cradle it gently in my suitcase to even get it home without breaking it. You better believe this is hanging on my wall.” Eventually the husband or wife that did not go on the mission trip will move this art to a less popular room in your house, then to the guest bathroom and then to your garage. This is the migratory path most mission trip art takes.

2. The bowl or basket
I love these. Occasionally, you’ll go to a friend’s house for dinner and one of the items they serve will be in an oddly shaped bowl you’ve never seen before. “Oh this?” they’ll say casually, “We spent some time abroad on a mission trip.” And although it’s a lovely bowl or basket holding bread, you know all the other dishes in the cabinets hate it. “Look at the bowl. Handmade, brought from thousands of miles away. ‘I’m so fancy. Look at me and my earthen details. I have to be hand washed. Don’t drop me, I’m delicate.’ Punk bowl.” (Your cookware doesn’t talk? You don’t do this in your head? You should.)

3. Music
Before I realized how hip hop I am, I thought I might be reggae. I had heard “Mr. Loverman” by Shabba Ranks so I was clearly a connoisseur of the art. Therefore when our church went to Dominica which I think is one of the Lesser Antilles (that is such a fun thing to say, “Lesser Antilles”) I went into a music store. The clerk was probably laughing on the inside as I picked a bunch of reggae CDs and walked out thinking I was like Bob Marley but was in fact more like Snow of “the Informer” fame. But I envisioned me hanging out with friends and impressing them with the deep knowledge of authentic reggae I had gained while on a mission trip. I listened to the CDs twice. Everything was not “Irie.”

4. Hats
When I worked for Home Depot, toilet company Kohler gave us trucker hats that said “Bring it on” on the front. You can interpret that in your own way. I interpret it as gross. But that seems about par for the course when it comes to trucker hats which is fortunately not a trend that had infected the countries I went to on mission trips. Despite the lack of trucker hats though, you’ve got a lot of options when it comes to hats you can buy. If you’re a guy, it’s good to make a pact with a group of guys that you’ll always wear the woven wool hats you bought on that llama rescue mission you took to the Andes Mountains or the berets you picked up Paris or the fur “ushanka” you got in Russia.

5. Sandals
When we went to that island in the Lesser Antilles, such a delightful thing to say, we all got some rainbow colored, hard plastic sandals. I’m not sure that I have ever owned any other clothing items that are rainbow and hard plastic, but for those two weeks I refused to wear anything else on my feet. We all loved those sandals and were convinced that we would be wearing them the entire summer. But for some reason what works well on an island in the Caribbean doesn’t work as well in Central Massachusetts. They got put in a box pretty quickly but I swear if I still had them I would bust them out now, if only to frighten the much softer, much more comfortable Crocs sandals I see everywhere.

6. Weapons
As a sophomore in high school I didn’t have a whole lot of access to machetes. Until I went on mission trips that is. Suddenly, it was completely OK for me to buy a two foot long sword. What would have been confiscated by my parents if I brought it home from the hardware store down the street was suddenly cultural and even religious, because I bought it on a mission trip. Did I still cut myself with it and practice throwing it into the ground like some sort of adventurer with acne? Without a doubt. And if your question is “Is it true that when your wife goes out of town with the kids you carry around the Maasai warrior club your brother got you from Kenya for protection against the cat burglars you feel are lurking in your very safe, very quiet suburban neighborhood?” the answer is yes. But only because I’m a wuss with an active imagination.

I admit, there are two very obvious things missing from this list, mission trip t-shirts and bracelets. I felt like both of those items deserved their own posts and not just a shout out. But I stand by the rest of the list or rather I walk by the rest of the list when I park my car because most of my mission trip souvenirs have already been regulated to a box in the garage. I keep telling my wife that my machete needs to be easier to access, but she’s not having it.