Missionary teacher makes the transition to being back home

Andy Passwater may only be in his 20s, but he has had more adventures in the past two years than most have in a lifetime. Passwater recently returned from Malawi, Africa, where he served as a school teacher at the African Bible Academy in Lilongwe.

Passwater's experiences in Africa included cave diving with great white sharks off the coast of Cape Town, going on safari in Zambia and reaching the summit of the highest peak in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro. It was the lessons learned from day-to-day life in Africa, however, that seem to have stuck with him the most.

"It's an amazing experience to see people who have nothing, yet they have happiness," he said. "It made me realize what was important in life and what wasn't. It made me realize how small I am in the grand scheme of things."

Passwater said he made the decision to teach in Africa less than three months before he boarded the plane.

"It was April 2007, and I was about to graduate (from the University of Alabama), so I was looking into publishing, newspaper work, graduate school. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, just looking into different opportunities," he said. " It was then that the opportunity to teach in Malawi showed itself. I didn't fully commit to going until June 1, and I left Aug. 16."

After a few months of preparation and a 16-hour flight, Passwater arrived in Malawi, a country he said is "so small, maps can't even fit the name 'Malawi' on the country. They have to draw an arrow out to the side for the label."

Since it was August and seasons are opposite those in the Northern Hemisphere, the temperature there was cool and it was the dry season.

"It looked like a savanna. All the grass was dead, the trees were withered, and there was not a cloud in the sky," he said. " I was kind of wondering what I had gotten myself into."

While in Africa, Passwater lived in a duplex on the school's campus and worked as an English teacher five days a week, working with seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students. He also coached the third- and fourth-grade soccer teams, and worked with the prison ministry group from the African Bible College, which shares a campus with the African Bible Academy.

He said he taught students from almost every continent, the children of ambassadors, businessmen, farmers and missionaries. Many of the children, from places such as Brazil, Egypt and Taiwan, were bilingual, and he said most picked up the English language very quickly.

"I definitely learned that it's a big world out there," he said, "and it doesn't revolve around me."

Passwater said teaching in Africa was not his first mission experience.

"I went on my first week-long mission trip when I was 14, in the summer of 1999," he said. " It was always a possibility that I would want to go into the mission field full time. I loved missions from a young age."

Passwater, who graduated from Gulf Shores High School in 2003, attended Faulkner State Community College for two years, then graduated from the University of Alabama in May 2007 with a major in English and a minor in creative writing. He said that although it's good to be back in the States, it is difficult to make the transition back to his family home in Gulf Shores from the home he came to know in Malawi.

"I came back, and everyone else seemed to have stayed the same, but I'm not the same," he said. "I became a different person. I don't think about things in the same way as I did before."

Passwater arrived home from Africa less than a month ago, so he's still considering his options for the future. He said he has thought about continuing to teach, and, long-term, would like to go back to school to earn a master's degree, most likely in English and literature.