What is a Missionary?

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent the following email:

Now that you’ve been on the field for 1 or 2 months, I was hoping you could help me with a small quandary: What is a missionary? How do you recognize one? What are the distinguishing marks? Can you be one on Tuesday and then not be one on Wednesday?

Curious,
T

In all honesty, at first I had no idea what to say. But it stuck with me. I thought about it for quite a while, trying to figure out just how to answer... still not sure I'm quite sure, but I think I've come up with 3 separate, yet equally true, descriptions of an m.

Sunday School answer: We are all missionaries. The job of each and every believer is to make Jesus known, wherever we are. So even if you never leave your home town, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you are a missionary. (My eyes are rolling uncontrollably as I write this.)

PR answer: A missionary is someone who puts their own hopes, dreams, and plans on the back burner "so that the world may know." They are not perfect, but have a heart to share the Truth. They sacrifice their own desires and relationships for the sake of this higher call, often abandoning family and future. They are de facto nomads, sometimes wandering the entire globe for the purpose of ministry.

Smart-Aleck answer (This is where I'm living right now!): A missionary is an expatriate who enters their country of residence often under false pretenses. They leave behind their home country, with a life of moderate comfort, and choose instead a life of unreliable electricity, cold showers, spotty internet, gas-powered refrigerators, really weird food, and lots and lots of livestock. A missionary, in general, has no "day job;" rather, their primary task each day is to engage and build relationships with nationals, making them, in effect, socialites. Women who are missionaries usually have really bad hair and really bad clothes, but really great jewelry. A missionary may often wonder what rip in the time-space continuum or temporary loss of sanity placed them where they currently are. But, regardless of the "results" they see or how they feel, a missionary has chosen to put aside what is comfortable and familiar, choosing instead what is difficult and usually more rewarding. As long as they continue to be faithful in this uncomfortable-ness, (whether they are using a paperback book as toilet paper, chasing down damp laundry in the middle of a dust storm, being attacked by flying termites in their own home, hosting an intestinal circus for the third time in a month, driving 20 minutes to a ministry school only to be turned away for the sake of a soccer match, or scanning the horizon for lions from the roof of a car) they will continue to be a missionary.