How to be a Missionary: A Step by Step Guide

     Arrive at your placement site armed with three weeks of training and a level of confidence that you will soon realize is almost entirely unjustified. Sure, you're ready to fight injustice and spread the love of God and be a generally amazing missionary, but first you have to figure out how to seemingly simple tasks like locking and unlocking doors and adjusting seats in unfamiliar vehicles. Those simple tasks will end up occupying a disturbingly large amount of your time, which really gets in the way of all of those love spreading moments you planned out.
    Spend hours creating detailed plans that will satisfy the powers-that-be and get you through the day in an organized, efficient manner. Plan Food Network worthy meals that will satisfy every imaginable nutritional requirement and crafts that should be featured on Pinterest. Take five to ten seconds to reflect on how well everything seems to be going. Great, now that you paused for those few seconds, you are now somehow approximately twenty-five hours behind schedule. You will probably remain that far behind for the next two years.
     Gather up all of those beautifully detailed plans, fold them neatly, and throw them directly into the garbage. You won't be needing them because the one variable you failed to predict has now changed. Turns out wheat flour doesn't work in the recipe you planned, so the children will have to eat dinner that was made with regular old white flour, which will most definitely be frowned upon by the mighty powers that decide what foods children absolutely must eat ever single day without fail in order to survive.
    Throw together a new plan with your coworkers while simultaneously yelling "Don't climb on that!" across the room for the five hundredth time. Realize that you have abandoned your Mary Poppins tone and worry that you are actually more like the Wicked Witch and none of the children really like you. Begin to have a small existential crisis, then quickly realize there is no time in your schedule for a crisis because there are too many other things you still need to do.
     One day at a completely unexpected moment, catch yourself in a feeling of immense happiness and realize that you actually really do enjoy this life. Sure, it's complete chaos the majority of the time, but it's the chaos that God let you to. Realize that even though you feel lost in a new place sometimes, you still believe you are exactly where you need to be.