90 Day Fiancé and the New Missionary

We subscribe to Brazilian cable television, which features Brazilian shows and foreign shows that are dubbed in Portuguese. Among our favorite dubbed shows is 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way.

90 Day Fiancé is a produced, “reality” television series that follows the stories of several couples from different countries. But one half of each couple is always someone from the United States. These couples apply for marriage visas and often have 90 days to get married upon entering the country of the other person. The first versions of this show all featured people from other countries coming to the United States, but “90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way” only includes stories in which the American citizen goes to the other person’s country.

While the Americans on the show are of different ages and backgrounds, their shared experience of culture shock in another country is familiar to me as an American missionary. Of course, moving with a family to another country is different than trying to create a new family with someone from a different culture while moving to their culture. But nonetheless, here are some similarities I have found as a viewer between 90 Day Fiancé and being a new missionary.

Visiting and Moving Are Galaxies Apart:

Multiple Americans noted in the show how they had previously visited their fiancé’s countries in the past while on vacation for days or even weeks. But nothing, and I mean not one thing, can prepare you for buying a one-way plane ticket to another country.

Quickly, even in their first days in their new homes, a lot of Americans found unease at the hassle of daily life somewhere else: using the toilet is different, restaurants are different, and then there’s the biggest barrier of them all: language.

Not one person was fluent in their new host language, which did not bother them much on vacation. But all the sudden moving and living became that much harder. Their capacity to get things done all by themselves dwindled while their reliance on their fiancé skyrocketed.

One person even admitted that he thought that he could “skate by” using his English in a Spanish-speaking country. He figured out within days that would never be the case.

Be Our Guest:

It is a bit of irony, but as much as it FEELS different to move to a new country versus visiting one, moving doesn’t magically give you the rights of a citizen. So many Americans on this show did not bother using the Internet to figure out if they could legally work in another country. When the time came to look for work, they quickly found out they had no legal standing to get a job, and oftentimes, even if they could get one through marriage, few jobs could accommodate them when they only spoke English.

One young man was shocked when he heard he’d need something other than a tourist visa to work legally in Colombia. He said out loud that he figured as an American it would be easy for him to work there.

Being a citizen is something that’s easily taken for granted when you never move away from your homeland. But when you live overseas there is always a reminder that you are a guest in your new location. Things will be harder for you. There will be a process for everything. There will be limits. The sooner you can make peace with all of this, the better.

When Values Collide:

Our cultures ingrain in us what we feel is normal, natural, right and good. We are rarely taught these things. Rather, they are caught. That is, we grow up within our cultures, so it is the very air we breathe. And we rarely, if ever, stop to think about what we've been breathing in all these years.

This can become a problem when we move to another culture, especially hoping to marry someone else from there. We suddenly encounter or even collide against all the different values they hold. It is one thing when they visit the United States on “our turf” so to speak. But many Americans flailed as everything began to feel abnormal, unnatural, wrong, and bad.

These moments were the hardest to watch for me because cultures aren’t necessarily better or worse than others; they are simply different. One American woman had a baby in Ethiopia, and her fiancé was excited to bring her home to surprise her with a ceremony to honor her and their new son. The ceremony involved family members lighting candles and butchering an animal to eat and celebrate. The American mother was horrified, not feeling honored one bit. Her Ethiopian fiancé was shocked at this. It did not even register to him that he should have warned her before she arrived home to an instant animal sacrifice in her front yard. To him, it was not just normal, but good.

Even in my fourth year in Brazil I can encounter or collide with differing values, and I have to remind myself that what I am feeling in my annoyance is not right vs. wrong, but simply different vs. different. One time at a dinner I complained about “Brazilians doing the Brazil thing where they [insert cultural value/behavior that is just different, not necessarily bad]…” Afterwards, my wife remarked, “Why did you say that to a Brazilian?” I had no excuse. It was a mistake. What else are Brazilians supposed to do other than act like Brazilians?

Suppressing the Language of the Heart:

Some of the Americans on the show could speak a little bit of their new country’s language, but none of them were fluent speakers. And even with fluency there remains the challenge of communicating emotions and feelings in a second language. The challenge is that it does not work very well, and that goes both ways.  The fiancé on the other side of things also wants to share their heart in their own native language, not English.

It is no surprise that when conflict occurs on the show that the person who knows English as a second language often switches naturally to their native tongue. It’s just easier that way because to speak another language fluently is to suppress our native language constantly, and it is hard to suppress anything in the heat of the moment.

Here, I lament the couples on the show and even my own life as well. As I continue to progress in acculturation and Portuguese, I want to share my deepest heart’s cry with Brazilians, but it just isn’t the same in Portuguese. I don’t speak it well enough to express such things elegantly or passionately. Perhaps one day that will change, but that day is not coming any time soon.

And this is where I marvel at the beauty of the Incarnation in which God was willing to send his Son to take on our human nature, to dwell among us, and to speak our language…even to the point of suffering and death. And his communication is universal to all of us: every tribe, tongue and nation. And so I share Jesus with Brazilians who shares with us all. 

No One Wants to Hear about Your Sacrifices:  

There is at least one moment for each American on the show when they express how upset they are that their significant other is not sufficiently appreciating all the sacrifices they have made to move away from America to be together as a couple. And without fail the other person doesn’t care.

That sounds mean; I am sure at some level they feel sorry for the discomfort of their fiancé. But in general the response goes like this: “Well, YOU decided to move here; this is what life’s like here. It's my home. And besides, it’s not exactly a cakewalk for me either, trying to marry someone who doesn’t even speak my language or share my cultural values.”

My wife grew up in Kenya as a missionary kid, and she has a different response to this than me. She says it’s an American thing to talk so much about sacrifices. Maybe she’s right. Perhaps that’s part of the American cultural values we all breathe. But, American or not, as a missionary I need to realize that the people I minister to do not want to hear me bellyache about all the sacrifices I made to live among them.

Once again, thinking of Jesus, he may have complained about others’ unbelief, lamented in the face of a loved one’s death, and cried out in his own pain and suffering, but the Gospels don’t include him listing all the sacrifices he made to take on our flesh and dwell among us. Rather, Hebrews tells us that it was for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the cross, setting aside its shame.

And that is the key. We have to think of the joys set before us when we move cross culturally. Yes, there are sacrifices, but there are not only sacrifices, which leads me to my last point:

Consider the Cost:

Considering all the challenges, especially if someone cannot work and is running out of money in their new country, many couples on this show don’t last longer than their 90-day or six-month visas.

And to that I can relate because every cross-cultural journey is arduous. But where there is a team to work with, a support group to send, and a calling to answer, then there is also God’s grace, flowing deeply to all those difficult nooks and crannies that even fatuous love, and especially reality television, shudder to enter.

And to that I give thanks to God!