Editor's Column by Carolyn Stent I entered the world in a 50-bed mission hospital on the other side of the world.

Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous Editor's Columns | Send mail to The Voice Third-culture kid thinks about home "Good to meet you," we both mumble as we shake hands and smile. "Where are you from?" the girl across from me asks with polite interest. Oh, no. Not that question. Does she want the short answer or the long one? The girl's innocent question does not have an easy answer. Here is the short answer. Dallas, Ore. The small town travelers pass driving west on Highway 22. The town in which my parents share a house with two cats and a dog. And the long answer? I entered the world in a 50-bed mission hospital on the other side of the world. Twelve hours difference and about 10,000 miles separate Qalandarabad, Pakistan, from Portland, Ore. My father grew up near London. My mother spent her childhood near Pittsburgh, Pa. They met and married in Pakistan. At airport customs, I can show an American or a British passport, depending on which one puts me in the shorter line at customs. Eight months of the year I lived and studied in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. Summer and winter vacations I spent with my parents at the mission hospital and later in a large city locals jokingly referred to as Pakistan's largest village. For 18 years I lived between these homes, the pattern broken only by an occasional year in the United States or a few months in Great Britain. During these intervals we lived in houses fully furnished for missionaries or in houses my grandfather rented for us. We drove up and down the east coast of the United States in a series of large, wood-paneled station wagons, visiting friends and supporters. Sometimes we stayed with complete strangers. In Great Britain, we squeezed into small cars designed for hedge-lined country lanes. "Where is home for you, then?" the girl asks. Is home the dorm rooms and classrooms of the boarding school where I learned many of life's important lessons and where I developed my closest friendships? Is it the mission hospital where I swam with friends in a small cement baptismal pool and flew around corners on my red sports bike? Or is home the large mud-brick house the British built with high ceilings and walls painted with tinted white-wash? Great Britain, the home of my only surviving grandparents, might claim the title. Maybe my answer should be New Jersey, where we lived next to other missionary families and where I survived sixth grade in an American public school. "Actually, home for me is with my family," I reply. Not the most original statement, but true nevertheless. Or is it? "We are not home yet," Stephen Curtis Chapman sings. "Keep on looking ahead, let your heart not forget, we are not home yet." I often find comfort in this reminder and a challenge to adopt the same perspective. One day I'll join my larger family in the place we will all call home forever. Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous Editor's Columns | Top Of Page Send mail to The Voice| Journalism department website © 2001 The Voice. No part of this publication may be reproduced in written or electronic form without prior written consent from the journalism adviser of Multnomah Bible College. All rights reserved.