Yes, if only I could remember the joke about Swiss cheese. It has a lot of holes in it but I can't quite remember how it went.
And also, if only I could remember all those funny stories about junk that people dump on missionaries, like the poor missionary in South America who supposedly received a box or barrel full of used tea bags. I mean, how rude can those people up there be, to send such a useless thing expecting us to find some use for it, was sort of the way it was passed around. But these stories about "white elephant" gifts have been more recently suppressed, I remember someone suggesting. We had apparently forgotten our places on the social scale. We were not expressing the proper measure of gratitude for the trifling benefactions bestowed upon us by the snooty arrogant rich people who condescend to permit our existence on the planet. OK, perhaps I exaggerate slightly on this point but sadly these funny stories are no longer so easily extracted from the archives of joke history given the shifting context of missions. If we will not be allowed to put that stuff into its proper perspective, then we cannot really go there. It just wouldn't be worth it. Missions just are not what they used to be.
