Missionary kids adjust to AU
By Maryann Koopman
Outside an old house in downtown Anderson, Ind., a South African flag flies proudly, an indication of a particular senior music business student who lives there during the school year. Josh Collins was born in Michigan, but because of his parents and their work with Youth for Christ in Durban, South Africa, he calls Africa his home.
Although he and his family are missionaries, Collins says they don’t fit the typical ideal.
“We didn’t have to go to language school or live in a hut or anything like that,” he says. “It was more like being involved in ministry, just in a different country.”
Sophomore Nathan Edwards and his family were also missionaries in Africa, only he grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Robert Edwards BA ’67, MDiv ’72, is coordinator of global missions for the Church of God. Edwards attended Black Forest Academy in Germany once he reached high school age and subsequently got to travel through much of Europe.
Edwards says his favorite way of relating to people in other cultures is through soccer.
“I was exposed to the best soccer around,” he says. “It really is the world’s sport. My friends and I would constantly have a soccer ball wherever we went — there were pick-up games in the local streets, under the Eiffel Tower, in Rome, and on the beach.”
Stephanie Barton, a senior at AU in elementary education, grew up in Kobe, Japan.
“I love that I grew up bilingual and that my friends were from all over the world. I loved growing up in Japan,” Barton says.
Freshman Jonni Johnson has lived a number of different places, including South Korea, Egypt, and Lebanon, besides the United States. She says she is attached to all of them in unique ways, but actually gets homesick for Lebanon.
Johnson’s parents, John BA ’80 and Gwen (Plough) Johnson BA ’79, met as students at AU and are now the regional coordinators for Asia and the Pacific for Global Missions of the Church of God.
Misconceptions about what it is like to be a missionary are common, according to these students.
“A lot of people think that all missionaries live in huts in some far-off jungle,” Barton says. “Most people don’t realize that a lot of missionaries have lives that are very similar to their own.”
Among his wealth of experiences learned in South Africa, Collins says the political changes had some of the greatest impact on his life.
“My unique experience of growing up in South Africa during its miraculous recovery from the brutal system of Apartheid to a functioning democracy was very powerful,” he says. “The whole process of shedding this heavy, ugly past and moving forward was an amazing thing to live through.”
Collins says that coming back to the United States, he has realized how much less of a global perspective we have here.
“You can watch the local news here and have no idea that India and Pakistan are on the verge of war — but at least you know that the Indianapolis Zoo got a new flamingo,” he says. “In South Africa, probably 70 percent of the news was international.”
Both Collins and Johnson say that one big reason they chose to attend AU was the director of international students, Scott Martin. “I felt like he really cared about me and really wanted me to come,” Collins says.
Johnson says the worst part of being a missionary, for her, is that she does not have a real home.
“I’m not sure that I’ll ever really totally fit in one country,” she says, “but even though that’s the worst thing about it, I wouldn’t trade all my experiences for ‘fitting in.’”
Though none of the students have passionate ambitions to become missionaries themselves, each expressed desires to continue to travel and return often to their other homes across the globe.
In the meantime, Collins has been accepted into Vanderbilt Law School, Barton will be student teaching, and Johnson hopes to get a master’s degree in physical therapy after she completes her bachelor’s degree at AU. Edwards plans on backpacking through Europe his senior year.
