This is the mothoth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns and today we're

hearing about confrontations. It's a theme that runs through a lot of stories, which makes sense.

We tend to tell stories about things we're willing to fight for.

Many of us are hardwired to avoid conflict.

Turn the other cheek, keep the peace, mind our own business. But for almost everyone there comes a

time when enough is enough. A quick note because of the nature of our theme the stories

in this hour are a bit intense, like this first story, which is about choosing when

and how to engage with someone who does not share your views. It covers sexual identity and how that

can sometimes lead to conflict.

Here's Padre Gautuma live at the moth.

I didn't get into the university course that I wanted when I finished secondary school,

secondary school, high school, and I didn't know what to do. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with my life and I looked at my

options and I decided that I would join a missionary organization because I thought why not there's the possibility of travel and

maybe even the possibility of learning a new language and so I got the application to

join this missionary organization and it was the kind of application you'd expect

from a Christian missions agency. Is religion important to you? What does your

priest or your minister say? tell us a little bit about your faith, etc.

Are you used to intercultural experiences?

All of those things were really fine for me to fill out in the application form. And then it had this

question that said, have you ever been involved with the following? And there were four tick boxes.

One said alcoholism, one said the occult,

one said drug addiction, and the last one said,

...