Mail from Heaven

My roommates and I always rejoice when we reach a landmark or standard that finally makes us, as we joke, ‘real missionaries.’ The standard seems to be somehow elusive, though, as we’ve declared ourselves to truly be ‘real missionaries’ a few times now.
I think I was the first real missionary because I killed the snake with my bare hands (and, umm, a Nalgene water bottle).
But in a way, I suppose we were all already ‘real missionaries’ because we’d slugged across no man’s land in LandCruisers and a giant truck carrying all of our worldly possessions. And we’d used a longdrop toilet. We read by kerosene lamp and sleep under mosquito nets. We do cup baths and buy supplies three months at a time.
Then there was the time we never-minded the bugs in our oatmeal. ‘Real missionaries.’
But then biffing down a mountain and getting med-evaced out on a tiny airplane off of our grass airstrips—that was about as ‘real missionary’ as it gets.
And Pattie was crazy with malaria for three days, an unfortunate reality of being a ‘real missionary.’
And two days ago was the best because I really feel like this was the time, the real time—I became a ‘real missionary.’ Jon, our favorite AIM AIR pilot from Loki, ratioed Steve to say he was going to swing by and drop off a package. As in literally drop it off, out of the plane window. Steve and I ran out to the old football (aka: soccer) field to wait for him. It was so awesome because we live in a U-shaped mountain range—Amerikan sits in the bottom of the “U,” sort of—so Jon flew in with the plane, banked up against the mountains and swung back over the soccer field really low.
I’m not sure who dropped the package out of the window, but whoever it was has incredible aim, because they dropped the thing in one of the few bare spots on the field. And with the whole mountain range watching, no less. Talk about pressure.
Anyway, it was awesome to bound across the field, through the thorns and ridiculously high weeds to the shouts of the villagers, who were pointing and shouting excitedly about where it landed. It’s been the talk of the hills, that Ibedja’s mom loves her so much she sent her greetings in a package from the sky. And I thought getting mail in the States was cool.
So, yeah, getting mail dropped from planes seems a little surreal still. But I’m going to hang on to the remnants of the “romance” stage for as long as possible.