This is not a full book review of the book Re-Entry: Making the Transition from Missions to Life at Home, rather just some observations as I read through it.

This book was loaned to me by an older missionary couple yesterday. We were talking about furlough (the topic of a soon-to-be-released Missionary Talks episode). The book talks about some of the struggles that missionaries face as they go back to their home culture. While the book focuses on people returning permanently, it also covers missionaries who are only temporarily returning home, such as we will be over the next year.

Two things the book mentioned that I thought might be of interest to you have to do with relationships and misunderstandings.

Peter Jordan, the author, mentions that relationships will be different upon return home. Even though a relationship can thrive over distance, often the individuals are no longer as emotionally connected. Our emotional togetherness happens through shared experiences and just spending time with one another. The missionary and the friend back home have not only been living through different experiences, but through different cultures.

We have friends with whom we love to spend hours and hours talking. We would often spend 2 or 3 nights a week with one another talking into the wee hours of the morning when we were in town. We were very connected. While we still have a tight relationship with them, we have also not been a part of their lives for the last four years. When we got a chance to be with them earlier this year I noticed that other mutual friends were now filling in where we used to be. I became jealous of the fact that we no longer occupied the same space we used to. Of course it is silly to think that your friends are going to not change or build new relationships over a four year period.

But multiply this with every friend the missionary has, and you can start to see why re-entry can be stressful for the missionary. Things will never be the same as they were.

The other thing I wanted to point out is the matter of misunderstandings. The missionary returns home and comments about how things have changed for the worse, or how wonderful things are back home. Those who have lived through the changes won’t see it as starkly as the returning family will. They have had a chance to grow into the changes a little at a time.

Where we personally had greater frustrations were when we would mention some things that were so great in the US and then hear people complain about that very thing we found to be wonderful. We have to remember that others will never see things from the same light we do. Nor, will we be able to see things from their perspective.

One example of this is the variety of products you can find in the stores. When we go looking for something here in Mexico, a can of peas for example, we might find a can or two on the shelves. There will be no choice as to which brand you get. If they do carry them, they will only have one brand, and more often they won’t have any anyway.

Earlier this year when we were home for a few weeks we were amazed at how much people complained that Wal-Mart did not have the particular product the person wanted. Maybe they were looking for milk. Of course they want a particular brand in a particular size and fat content. When we arrived in Mexico just four years ago we could not get pasteurized, homoginized milk like we expect in the US. All the milk came in un-refrigerated liter boxes with expiration dates 6 months into the future. Now we have a choice of 2 brands of milk that resembles and tastes something like the milk back home.

I just have little sympathy for the person who has to settle for a different size (a gallon as opposed to a half gallon) or has to go to the store across the street to get the milk they want because the store they are in doesn’t have it. At least it is available relatively easily.

It would be easy for the missionary to become bitter at their friends and family for not understanding them, and the missionary is just as guilty for not understanding those back home.

I am half way through the book and find it very insightful. I am glad I have gotten a chance to read it and will probably write a review of the book in a couple of days when I am done.

Tags: Books,culture,missionaries
Categories: Books, Mexico
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Running
I ran only 50.1 miles during the month of June. I knew this would be a low month because of going to the swimming class for the whole month. I also started riding my bike to go to class instead of running there. I finished the month 21 miles behind my goal pace for the year. I am not at all discouraged about that. It has been good to step back just a little as I get ready for marathon training.

I ran 17 days and did not run 13 days. There were only two times that I took two days off in a row and once I did not run for three days in a row. Even though the mileage was down a bit, I was still consistently on the road, just with lower mileage. My longest run this month was just under six miles.

This week I finished with my swim class. It has been a great six weeks of swimming, but my schedule over the next two months before we leave to move back to the US will prohibit me from being able to regularly continue going to the pool. I will still swim when I get a chance. The most important thing is that I have learned how to swim properly now.

I started marathon training this week. Over the next few months I will be running between 20 and 35 miles a week. By the time I run the marathon I will have made up my lost miles and gotten a few miles ahead of the yearly goal once again.

Reading
I read 1097 pages in six books this month. Among the really interesting books were Flags of Our Fathers, Healing ADD and Freakonomics.

Flags of Our Fathers was great! It was well written and gives a history of the six men who are in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo. The author is the son of one of the three survivors of the six. The book helped me understand why my grandfather never talked about the war. My grandfather, like the central character in the book, was a Navy Corpsman stationed with the Marines at Gudalcanal, Bougainville and Guam. Like the men in the book, I suspect my grandfather believed that the heroes were the men who did not come home after the war. He went over there to do a job. He accomplished it and came home, but probably believed the real heroes were the men who sacrificed their lives so that he could come home.

My personal opinion is that anyone who serves in the military to protect my country is a hero.

With a better understanding of what he went through, I only wished my grandfather were alive today so that I could possibly get more information from him.

Freakonomics is a book that was wildly popular a couple of years ago. Steven Levitt applies an economist’s eye to societal trends that don’t necessarily fit in the realm of economics. He explains why school teachers sometimes cheat and how they do it, as well as how they get caught. Also he tells why drug dealers live with their mothers. Many other interesting topics too.

The book Healing ADD breaks down ADD into six categories instead of the traditional two. Besides medication, which the author believes is very helpful, he recommends other interventions that can help each of the different classifications of ADD. While there is a lot of controversy as to whether diet helps or hurts ADD behavior, Dr. Amen recommends dietary changes that can help certain types, but clearly stresses that diet alone is not a cure-all. He also recommends coaching and exercise as two other methods in a multi-faceted approach to controlling ADD.

Amazingly, I finished five of the six books I was reading. I will be picking up all new books this month to chew on. Or, I will be pulling books from the shelf that were previously partly read and need to be finished. There are 13 books on my “To Be Read” shelf. I have plenty to choose from.

Categories: Books, Running, Swimming
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Running
During the month of May I ran 88.8 miles. I finished the month about 15 miles ahead of my yearly goal. During the month I ran 23 days which means I took 8 days off. I did run more than 3 days in a row on 2 occasions. But both of these were with days of low mileage. I never took more than 1 day off in a stretch this month.

I started swimming 3 days a week this month. I am running to and from swimming class which is only .6 miles from my house. That is the reason I have so many days in a row that I have run. Sometimes I will put in a little extra distance at the track by the swimming pool on swim days. Otherwise, I am saving my longer distance days for non-swimming days.

Longest run this month was 8 miles. I ran 3 races during the month.

Reading
I did much better with my reading this month than I did with my previous couple of months. I read 925 pages in 8 books. I am still reading in 5 of those. It seems like they are all big books.

I also read a couple of magazines from cover to cover. I am never sure how to count those pages, so I just don’t. And, of course, I read at least a bizillion pages online. That is where I spend the majority of my reading time.

I also listened to a 400 page audio book this month. Also not sure how to count that, so I will just leave it out.

All in all, I feel like my reading was much improved this month.

Without giving a full list of titles, here is a summary of some of the subjects. Healthy eating, ADD, missiology, creationism, baseball history, a classic, Bible, and a fiction book.

Categories: Books, Running
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Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy is a book that I have wanted to read for almost 2 years. I could not get anyone to buy it for me, so I stole it off my Mom when I was there a couple of months ago. I finally got a chance to read it and could not put it down. I think I read it in 4 days. Just my kind of book.

However, it is not an easy reading book. It was also not quite what I expected. I was 175 pages into the book before I realized that he was never going to get to the material I was looking for. My expectation was that he would give a list of “eat this” and “don’t eat that.” Instead, he spent the entire book laying out guidelines of what to eat and why. But in general categories, and not specific items. Of course there are many specifics given, but more importantly, he wanted you to understand why you should make the food choices you make. And for that, I loved the material.

He explains how your body processes different types of fats. How your body responds to proteins and carbohydrates. He also talked at great length about different vitamins and what they do for you.

In a nutshell, he advocates a diet high in whole nuts and grains, lots of veggies and fruits along with good fats that our body needs. All of this is coupled with exercise and weight control. I got the feeling that if Dr. Willett could get you to do one thing, it would be to exercise. Though the book was all about food and how it affects your body, he strongly emphasized that the foundation was exercise.

If you have ever listened to Dr. Monte’s podcast, Fitness Rocks, you are familiar with the teachings of Dr. Willett

One third of the 350 page book is dedicated to recipes.

Surprisingly, he did not beat up every other diet program. He said what was basically good about most programs and how they could be altered to be better. There were a few, however, that he recommended the reader avoid. Mostly, though, he gave some suggestions on how to make the program you like, and seems to work for you, just a little bit better.

I found the book very informative. I also found it a bit too technical for most people. Not that most people could not understand it, but I think most people won’t care to try. He enjoys dissecting different medical studies and explaining what the mind numbing numbers mean. While I personally enjoy that type of material, I doubt the book has mass appeal. It would be nice for someone to write a follow up book telling people how to put into practice the principles of Willett’s book. He does have the recipes in back, but I think there needs to be an explanation along with the recipes that are more simplistic in what the purpose of the food combinations are. As the book is now, you have to have read the whole book and understood its concepts to understand why the recipes are designed the way they are.

Now I have to figure out a way to ship this book back to Mom without her noticing it is missing.

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Walter C. Willett, M.D., Free Press, New York, 2001, 348 pages.

Categories: Books
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Running 1000 miles
I ran 90.2 miles this month on 19 days. There were 11 days that I did not run. Out of those 11 days, I never took more than 2 days off at a time. I did run 4 days in a row twice this month, which is something I did not want to do. Those came on back to back weeks. I almost did it a third week in a row, but just had to tell my running partner that I could not make it because of getting too fatigued.

I am about 5 miles ahead of my goal for the year. This is my second longest running month–January was longer by 1 mile.

Reading 800 pages
I only read 644 pages this month in 5 different books. Nothing was really outstanding other than the Marathon book by Hal Higdon. Without having a goal I would not have read as much as I did. I am disappointed that I missed it again (missed in February too). But I am encouraged by the fact that I have used the goal to keep me pushing to be a more consistent reader.

Categories: Books, Running
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