by James H. Pence

Do you know what it feels like to be an exile?

It was the summer of 1975. I was nineteen years old and I had signed on to a program called Practical Missionary Training (PMT). Co-sponsored by CAM International and Wycliffe Bible Translators, PMT was an eight-week missionary life “sampler” for people who wanted to explore whether God was calling them to the mission field. Rather than being a simple “mission trip,” PMT was structured to give a broad sampling of different aspects of missionary life. Even though it was a “sampler,” each participant’s experience was individualized to a certain degree.