‘A Whole World Away’

Greg Reed tries to tell a tribesman (played by Andrew Sims) about the God above, at the Jungle Jump Off program near Waxhaw in Union County, NC. The weeklong experience introduces young people to missionary work.

Waxhaw—The first three days were hard enough for the 10 teen-agers staying in the woods outside Waxhaw: sleepless nights on the floors of primitive huts in 90-degree heat, ice-cold showers, no electricity.

But that was nothing compared to Wednesday’s lunch.

“The meal you are about to share will probably be unlike others you have had before,” Dori Pfizenmaier told the teen-agers, members of a Roanoke, Va., youth group. “In order not to offend the local people, you will need to keep as closely as possible to local meal-time customs.”

She asked them to take off their shoes and explained that they would be eating on the ground, with no utensils. They could eat only with their right hands, because culturally, the left hand was reserved for “other bodily functions.”

And, as custom dictated, the girls would serve the boys.

Every week this summer, about 35 miles southeast of Charlotte, a different group of teen-agers leaves the modern world and enters a simulated Third World village through a program called Jungle Jump Off.

The seven-day experience, staged in a replica of an African village, is designed to introduce young people to missionary work while bringing them closer to God.

“We take them out of their comfort zone, but we don’t make it too difficult,” said Pfizenmaier, who manages the program with her husband, Rick. “Even if they never become a missionary, this program broadens their perspective and teaches them how to pray more effectively for missionaries.”

The program is sponsored by JAARS, a worldwide missionary support organization based in Waxhaw. The group provides pilots, technicians, computer experts, truck drivers and builders to Wycliffe Bible Translators, who are working around the world to translate God’s word into unwritten languages.

Jungle Jump Off has become so popular since its 1981 start that church youth groups have to wait more than three years to go. JAARS, which used to call itself Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, recently opened a second site to help accommodate the demand.

Each of the program’s sites includes four tribal huts on stilts, called champas; a covered gathering area with mud stoves; and a campfire area with a cooking pit. There is no electricity, telephone or warm water (unless participants decide to keep a fire going 24 hours a day).

During the week, the teen-agers hear the stories of former missionaries, learn tribal cooking methods, set up elaborate jungle hammocks and practice tribal customs. They also spend time doing work projects on the JAARS site.

“To me, this week is the best experience you can get in the whole sense of what it’s like to be a missionary,” said Betsy Richards, a chaperone with the Roanoke group, brushing a long-legged spider from her thigh. “You’re so close to civilization you can hear planes overhead, yet you’re a whole world away.”

Wednesday’s lunch was an African ground nut stew, cooked on a mud stove.

After Pfizenmaier’s instructions, the girls poured the boys water to drink and spooned rice and peanut-tasting sauce onto plates. The girls then began eating their own meals, trying to keep the orange sauce from dribbling down their hands and across their chins.

At one point, one of the boys peered into the glass of lukewarm water in front of him and exclaimed, “Has anyone looked in their glass? There’s stuff floating in it!” He abruptly hushed when Pfizenmaier gave him a stern look. The water was safe. Organizers merely mixed in ground-up tea leaves to give it the look of what real missionaries might see.

The encounters with tribal people—actually, former missionaries playing tribal people—began after lunch. A woman dressed in a long hand-woven garment cautiously approached the group. Being careful not to make eye contact, she knelt on a newspaper in front of them and indicated she wanted to communicate.

The young people were asked, through a JAARS translator, to explain to the woman what it meant to be Christian. It wasn’t easy.

When they told her about God, she asked, “Which one?” When they told her about Jesus, she asked, “Which one? There’s a man named Jesus in the next village. Is that who you mean?”

Later, the teen-agers talked about how difficult it had been to communicate and to follow the tribal customs.

“Just learning their culture was hard,” said Laura Orsinger, 14, of Roanoke. “But if you want a chance to tell them about Jesus, that’s what you have to do.”

The week culminated in a simulated mission experience called “The Journey,” which took the group through the entire process of becoming a missionary, from applying for a passport to going through customs.

The process was trying, but realistic.

The teens were barraged with questions about their backgrounds, their beliefs and the Bible by the Great Commission Mission, a fictitious organization that determined which ones were eligible to serve.

Those chosen received training in linguistics and culture, as well as the blessing of the local church that commissioned them.

They were berated by customs agents and cheated by the local bus driver. One boy’s visa application was rejected seven times. Another had his Bible confiscated.

All the hassles were intimidating, said Valerie Meloche, 17, who recently moved from Roanoke to Greensboro. “You’ve got to be a tough person to go over there,” she said.

When the teen-agers finally arrived at the foreign country, dubbed “The Land of Opportunity,” they were confronted with their greatest challenge: natives who knew no English.

Some of the teens worked at communicating with a former missionary dressed as a Peruvian mountain man, with a grass skirt and a tribal headdress. Others talked to a quiet woman in a red robe who spoke only Mandarin Chinese.

A third group of teens was led deep into the woods and told to sit quietly on some logs and wait. “They have never seen white skins, but they have asked for the white skins to come,” Rick Pfizenmaier told this group.

Ten minutes later, the leaves rustled and a man with long hair, bare feet and leaf coverings jumped out of the woods. He began dancing around them, hooting, whistling and making guttural sounds.

He tried on one boy’s flip-flops. He gave another boy a bracelet. Then he spent 20 minutes trying to communicate with them. Later, the teens learned that the man—a missionary who spent 18 years in Asia—was speaking a tribal language from Southeast Asia.

By the end of the week, the experience had stirred something spiritual in some of the young people.

“Even though it was hot and sticky and there were bugs everywhere, I got a sense of peace out of it that I haven’t had in a long time,” said Valerie. “God really filled everybody up.”

Todd Smith, 17, who has aspirations to be a pastor someday, said the week made him open to the idea of going overseas to spread God’s word: “I feel good about where God is leading me. If God wants me to go to Africa, I’ll go.”

But even for those teens who know the missionary life is not for them, the experience offered lessons on how to spread their faith back home.

“If missionaries can share Jesus with people who can’t even speak English, then I can at least witness to people here,” said Laura Orsinger. “I always thought it was hard to witness to people I’m not as close to. Now, I’ll have more courage to go up to people and tell them about Christ.”