My (crazy) Aunt Olive

As I was growing up, I heard about my Aunt Olive [actually my father's aunt, so my great aunt].  She was never talked about much, but she was always considered a bit odd.  I didn't know much about what this oddness was, but heard rumours of how my grandfather had to support her because she never made enough money to support herself.  My aunt [father's brother's wife] went to visit her once and told us she eat 'weird' food - things like stewed strawberry tops. 
  As I got older, I started to get a better sense of what Aunt Olive was doing:  she was doing mission work among the latino workers in Southern Florida.  She ate the 'weird' food, because she lived frugally and made use of everything she bought, even the strawberry tops.  When our first child was stillborn, she sent us a lovely card, one of the few my wife saved.  It was, I think, a recycled Christmas card, to which she had added Scripture verses and heartfelt greetings for a great-nephew and wife whom she had never met at a time of great loss.  At a casual glance, the card was 'crazy,' but if you looked past the format, you saw a true expression of Christian love.
  Sometimes in talking to people about our planned trip to Guyana, some do think it is crazy to go without prior experience to the poorest country in South America, to a church we know nothing about, except that they are Lutheran.  But as Vivian and I look at the situation, we feel compelled to seek an experience of the Church outside our comfortable North American context.  We may not know these people, but they are people, Christians, Lutherans with whom we share ministry, regardless of whether we have ever met them or not.  Why Guyana?  Because Guyana was the place presented to us at a time when we were receptive.  The next two years may not be authorized by the ELCIC, we may be moving outside the box, but those things do not make the ministry less valid.
  The theme the ELCIC has been using for the last several years is 'In Mission for Others.'  Wherever we go, we are in mission for others.  We look forward to be in mission in Guyana.