What is a missionary?

Luke and I are chatting about whether or not we get burnt out on work sometimes and would like to do something else. So I told Luke that I do get tired of ministry and I'm planning on moving to Turkey to do missionary work.

"There's one problem I have with missionaries" he tells me. "Why do you have to go over there when we already have lots of problems here in America to fix?" I get this all the time. I always want to say, "It's because of people like YOU, who would never think of leaving your comfortable life here to go help someone who seems different from you!" I said something like that, but nicer.

"So what do missionaries do anyway? Build houses for poor people?" It seemed like an ironic question to me because at the moment I was sitting in a bar trying to tell people about Jesus which is pretty much the same thing I'd be doing as a missionary. So I used the window to lay it out for this guy. "I'd go to a bar in Turkey and get to know people and use the relationship to convince them that they have offended God with the mistakes they've made in life but that he has made an offer to forgive them through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ". He looks at me for a moment and says, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I get it"...I don't think he got it.