MK

By Jack Krayenhoff, MD

What is an MK? A missionary kid, a child born to missionaries. These kids are a special group because they have always moved among Christians and the habits they have. For instance, if someone does not behave acceptably, the others will pray for them, rather than face him with the problem directly. Also in other ways, they take in what their parents believe, and do what they do. Their opinion is not influenced by TV. Now when these parents go on furlough to the US, as was customary among most missions, and take their children along, they would put the children in ordinary school. There they would meet kids their own age who did not automatically do what their parents did. Other kids and TV gave them different options. The MKs did not have TV or different options and were not used to a world where their own vision differed from their parents’. If they did not make some adjustments, they became a sociological problem.

In 1984 my wife and I went to Peru, to be the doctor of the missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, or S.I.L. These missionaries were linguists; they reduced the language of their tribe to writing, taught the people to read, then translated the New Testament into their language. Part of the time they lived on a base of operations where there were about three hundred people: the linguists, and in addition support personnel, such as teachers, plane pilots and many others. These people were my practice. Beside looking after them, I would fly with the linguists to their Indian tribes in the jungle to do health surveys and diagnose the common diseases they had, and teach the missionaries what to do about them.

Back to the MKs. On the base, during office hours, I was approached by an MK of 18. I asked what I could do for him.

“I want you to fix me up,” he said.

“I’m used to dealing with complaints,” I said. “What is the matter with you?”

“I guess I’d better explain,” he answered. “The Indians cut wood for the companies and sell it. But they can’t speak Spanish and also don’t know what their wages should be. So I stay there to help them. I live with them, eat with them, drink with them, and sleep with them. I want to be like an Indian. I speak their language too. None of that stupid MK stuff for me when I go to school in the US. But my time has come to be fixed up because I’m not well.”

He had a point. The ideal missionary identifies with his people, it gives him credibility. But could he? He had already overcome his objections to the food. For one thing they did not cook it to kill the germs. The drink was particularly difficult: it was a sort of beer, and the fermentation was started by the women chewing the roots and then spitting it out in a bowl; their saliva contained something to trigger the fermentation. But there was one difference: he could go to the doctor to get fixed up when the lifestyle got to him, but the Indians could not.