Young Woman Drawn to Life as a Missionary, Despite New Risks

Who can say where missionary zeal comes from? Heather Mayo remembers being in eighth grade and getting a chance to work in the church nursery. Something about working and playing with the children ignited a pilot light inside her. The passion from that long-ago flame still burns.

She’s 22 now and has set her sights on the world. Not the world of Costa Mesa where she grew up and still lives, but places like Africa--which suffers from its own world of hurt.

Mayo wants to be a missionary. It’s not a career that should bring the fear of death and kidnapping, but all you have to do is keep up with the news to see that it does.

Last week, Kansas missionary Martin Burnham was killed in the Philippines when army forces raided the hide-out of the rebels who had kidnapped him and his wife, Gracia, also a missionary, a year ago. In the shootout, another hostage--a Filipino nurse named Deborah Yap--also died.

Mayo knows about the Philippines saga, and it’s not as though she blithely dismisses the possibility that the life she wants might bring similar risks.

“When I first started thinking about [a missionary life], I actually had nightmares about kidnappings and other things,” she says. “I was in college, I’d be asleep and I’d wake up. One that kept repeating was that I’d be working in an orphanage, and we’d have to flee the area and bring the children with us because another faction

Mayo isn’t telling the story with any trace of gruesomeness or gloom. To the contrary, as we talk at the Harbor Trinity preschool in Costa Mesa where she works, she’s the picture of good humor and buoyancy.

I was curious whether the violent end to the standoff in the Philippines, where an extremist Islamic group known as Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped a number of people over the years, had any effect on her career plans.

The answer is no. She hasn’t decided if her missionary career, when it begins after another 18 months of college, will be U.S.-based or largely abroad. But she thinks she knows.

“My heart is Africa,” she says. “There are just so many kids being orphaned and being left because of AIDS and wars, and they’re going to be the culture’s leaders. Who’s leading them? The adults are dying. I want to go in and help them.”

She doesn’t see herself as daring, or someone in search of excitement. “I’m far from an adventurer,” she says. “Life is an adventure, I guess. You can’t avoid it. There are lots of problems out there, and I’d like to help. Sometimes, it takes a little extra work.”

Still, why not the safe life? Why not missionary work in America from behind a desk?

“I don’t know what it is,” she says, and it’s obvious she has grappled with the question before. “I could be happily married, have the picket fence, the tire swing in the yard and just have a fulfilled life. I don’t know that I’d be bored, but I know there’s a need out there that I have a passion for, and that passion or desire is greater than my desire for a safe, perfect home in Costa Mesa.”

Mayo has made short missionary-related excursions to Romania, Mexico and Canada.

The appeal, she says, “is the global community worshipping under God. To me, it’s God’s kingdom seen in every kind of earthly kingdom, if that makes sense.”

Her sense of danger is real enough that she’s walked herself through the what-if scenarios. “Say it does happen, that children I bring to Christ do get persecuted or tortured,” she says. “Is it worth it to them? Is it worth it to the kingdom?”

Those are not insignificant questions, but she quickly says that the fear isn’t paralyzing. “The possibility of danger is always there,” she says. “But if God is calling me out to the field, I’m not going to let that fear stop me.”

She laughs again about being miscast as an adventuress or fearless globe-trotter. Her parents, she says, would “love it if I’d stay home.” But they understand.

“My mom just wishes it weren’t Africa,” she says. “She’s spent a lot of time trying to convince me there’s a huge need for children’s workers in Ireland.”

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.