If you want to feel like a rockstar, carry a guitar case through a foreign airport. And when you need to be humbled, return to that same country as a clown.
It’s a rare blessing to go on a mission trip. It’s an even greater blessing to be asked to come back. So, when a missionary couple called our church in early 2009 asking for my friend Chester and me to return to the Czech Republic, we jumped on it.
The first time, we’d gone as part of a much larger group. We led worship, taught at the national youth convention, and traveled in nice vans while staying in comfortable hotels. Our second trip would be different.
See, a couple of guys had canceled, and the missionaries needed a replacement. Our church agreed to take up an offering to send us, so we did what any 19- or 20-year-old would do. We said yes before asking any questions.
Had we asked questions, we would have learned ahead of time that we were trading guitar cases for makeup brushes.
We were to be clowns. Our first day was spent learning makeup and rehearsing skits with the two women we’d be performing alongside.
Our team traveled from town to town, taking turns as clowns and show runners to put on school assemblies warning students about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Every performance ended with an invitation to a larger event hosted by the local church.
I don’t recall every school—but there’s one I still trip over from time to time.
It was one of my clown days. As part of my skit, I drunkenly tried to hang a sign with a hammer and a nail. The only prop we requested from each school was a chair. This particular school gave us a wooden one that may have predated the War.
Throughout the routine, I’d keep asking the students what I needed. I’d climb onto the chair without the hammer. Then I’d climb up again without the nail. Then I’d climb up again without the poster. On the fourth attempt, I’d have all three, only to fall down while hanging the poster.
On my first climb up, the wooden chair creaked. The second time, it warned. By the third, my memory says it begged—but the show must go on. I climbed up that fourth time, hammer in hand, ready to “nail” the poster into the curtain.
The chair did not so much make a noise as explode. Thankfully, I was due for a fall. I just wanted it to be on my terms. The kids erupted with laughter as I found myself in a pile of broken wood.
Ten minutes later, as the students filed out, I found the nearest school official and begged the interpreter to apologize for me. I stood as they spoke, hoping my face showed my genuine regret.
And then the principal laughed. A bit of Czech dialogue later, so did the interpreter.
“They knew it would break!” he said. “That’s why they gave it to you!”
Embarrassed for a moment, I reminded myself I was a clown after all. Owning the bit, I grabbed a broken piece of the chair and insisted everyone sign it—including the principal.
Our shows went on, now with Chester being a little more ready to catch me. Nearly twenty years later, one broken piece of that Czech school chair still sits on a bookshelf in my house.
They knew it would break. They just didn’t know I’d be taking a piece with me.
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