PILGRIMAGE OF A THIRD CULTURE KID

A Journey in Finding Life Calling

Marti Anderson grew up as a missionary kid among the Dani tribe of Papua New Guinea (now Papua, Indonesia), and her career as a nurse, pastor’s wife, professor, and missionary has launched her into more than 25 nations. She graduated with a Masters in Theology from Fuller Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry from Oral Roberts University. She has taught at Kings Seminary, Pikes Peak Community College, and at Youth with a Mission training centers in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Her passion is to release students into their God-given callings. She and her husband have two sons and fourteen grandchildren, with whom they love to spend time! They reside in the Colorado Springs area.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I watched the young man with fascinated interest. We were picnicking on a fine summer day in High Bridge Park, Kentucky, and he was inching up the face of a steep cliff. A hand grasped higher…a foot lifted, resting on outcropping gray stone. I was mesmerized by the seeming impossibility of his ascent. Was it real? He was hanging onto a rough perpendicular wall, and my young mind did not know it was possible. It was 1949, my dad later told me, and I was less than two years old.

This vivid memory became a kind of metaphor for my life. My parents were always climbing as they pressed forward in their callings. For 38 years they served with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the jungles of Dutch New Guinea (now Papua, Indonesia). Mom and Dad learned three languages. Dad formed orthographies, dictionaries for Moni and Dani, and finally translated the New and Old Testament with others, into Western Dani. Both became conversant in Indonesian, the trade language. Mom taught the Danis to read, producing primers to teach vowels, consonants, short

words. When a Dani mastered all of the primers and could read sentences, they would receive the book of Mark…and later a whole New Testament. Churches were planted across the Ilaga Valley, and these pastors spread the gospel to other tribes.

Having parents like these inspired me to dream high, to trust God in impossible situations. Life stories—callings—are composed of the beads of days strung into years that pass imperceptibly into decades. Or to change the picture…the series of rocky cliffs climbed merge into mountain ranges of accomplishment. When one stands on the summit toward the end of life gazing over the terrain, they may be stupefied, bewildered at all God has accomplished. My journey has been different than my parents. Not a straight line with one mission and a delineated calling, but a series of jags from point to point—appearing sometimes confusing. Had I lost my calling? Where WAS my tribe, my life purpose?

Having been raised as a missionary kid (MK), I am also what sociologists call a third culture kid (TCK). The first culture is the American one I was born into. Second culture is the Moni, Dani, or boarding school culture lived during childhood, and the third an interstitial or “gap” culture that fits in between the other two. This third culture is the one shared by MKs or other global nomads where we relate to those who’ve grown up in a number of cultural settings.

TCKs will tend to have “superior diplomacy, flexibility, linguistic ability, patience, and sophistication. On the down side, there’s insecurity in relationships, unresolved grief stemming from constantly leaving friends throughout childhood, and rootlessness.” (Notes from a Travelling Childhood, p. 57) Other TKCs or global nomads may identify with this pilgrimage.

I begin in the middle of the story--in crisis--then go back to the beginning. Come read….enjoy the journey!