We have been pleasantly surprised by reports that we’ve stumbled upon of some local outreach efforts that are focused on the people that we moved here to pursue. We knew that some things were happening, and even now it is still far less than what they need, but it is nice to know that we were wrong and that there are some local believers who see the need and are acting on it. Even as recently as the last few months we know of several hundred who have heard a clear presentation of the Good News, some of whom have put their faith in Christ.
We are thrilled that there are local Christians who are also reaching out to our focus people. One of our prayers is that that would happen more and more so that our role here would be unnecessary. At the same time, we also pray for a few things to change as these groups continue to reach out to them.
· Many local people seem convinced that there is no need to reach out to our focus people in their own language. We are praying for a work that presents the Gospel in a contextualized way and results in a truly indigenous church.
· One of the challenges to the Body of Christ in this place is the temptation to be possessive and protective. Of course people need to be careful, because some of the church networks are not sanctioned by the government and it is a risk to partner with anyone. This can be taken to extremes, though, that are not always helpful. It also can create a temptation to be very possessive and speak of people as being “mine” or “our believers” as opposed to someone else’s. This has sparked a lot of reflection in my own life, and a desire to be very careful with the terms I use that would ever indicate that some movement or some group of believers belongs to me. Any results belong to Jesus. Period. Any believers belong to Jesus. Period.
Anyway, back to the positive note on which this post started…
There is more to the story than we were aware of and for that we are thankful. May that continue to be the case as we become more established here. May we find that He has been at work in many hidden corners without our knowledge.
During our final week in our previous country there were several incidents that felt like they were gifts from God, blessings that he had reserved for our final week. Mostly they were ministry opportunities that he opened up for us–random meetings in unexpected places with people who were hungry for the Good News or opportunities to provide food and shelter to orphans or outcasts. None of them were things that we attempted to orchestrate ourselves, and it was clear to us that he had put these things together. We had experiences that would typically be a great source of frustration to us but didn’t affect us in this same way this time around, which felt like one of the signals to us to that we were in fact ready for the big challenge that was just around the corner for us. For months and months one of the questions on our hearts was whether or not we would be ready when the time came, and how we would know the answer to that question. It seemed like throughout our final week in country God was communicating in various ways that he had made us ready in his perfect timing. This feeling of “readiness” isn’t actually one of us being strong enough or anything like that, but a feeling of allowing him to be in control and to work through us instead of striving to accomplish things our own way. It’s freeing, too, because we need him to continue putting things like this together if we are going to remain here, engage this people group and see the vision fulfilled.
The overarching title for this season of our life could be “the move.” But we’re now in the final stages of this (long) season of moving. We’ve finally left the country where we’ve lived for the past few years, and in which we’d been stuck for the past few months. Our last few days were relatively low on the stress-monitor, which was very nice. It was a result of a few things. We moved out of the house we were house-sitting and spent three nights in a hotel. It added one more name to the long list of places we’ve stayed in the last year of transition, but it was nice because it forced us to get all of our things packed and ready to go without doing it at the last minute. We kept our to-do-list to a minimum and could enjoy the time without going crazy running around trying to accomplish a million things. There was even time for some swimming, a final massage and some unhurried goodbyes. The night before our departure we had just about everything but our toothbrushes packed by 9:00 p.m. and could enjoy a full night’s sleep before an early morning departure and a long day of travel. Now we’re staying in another temporary place while we find somewhere that we can finally unpack – but we’re hoping this will be our last “temporary home” for a while.
There are lots of exciting things that come with learning another new language. I’m sure we’ll post more of these as we make more progress with it. We’re very close to our move-in date now. One of the challenges that I know we’ll all face is our tendency to speak the langauge of the country we’re in now with the people of the new country…which won’t get us very far in terms of communicating! It will be a very difficult habit to break free of, though. Being back in our home country last year this wasn’t a problem, of course, because we were back in the setting of our first language. Going from one Asian country to another will be a different story.
I’ve started learning some of the language already and in some of the (very short) conversations I have had in this langauge I’ve found myself doing this. I’m expecting both of us to do it, as well as our son. I’ve thought a lot about this for him recently, as he’s made so much progress in the language here recently. There are some people we see every day and he loves to greet them in their language, ask them how they’re doing and tell them that he’s doing fine. There are a number of other things he can say in the language and he’s very curious about it. If he hears us say something a few times he’ll often repeat it and ask what it means. On one hand, it makes me sad that we’re leaving this environment and he’ll have to start from scratch with the new language. On the other hand, he’s at a great age for it and he does a great job of remembering and using the words and phrases that he learns. Hopefully he’ll take off and learn a lot, from day one. Maybe he’ll be tutoring us before long instead of the other way around!
Over the past few months we’ve been slowly sending our things to the nearby country where we’re moving. All of it has gone in loads of 50 pounds or less. We’ve taken some, other friends have taken some, short-term teams have carried some things in for us. At this point we think about 2/3 of our stuff is already there. We joked for a little while that at the rate things were progressing, we would soon have everything there but ourselves. Well, we finally have tickets booked and a date fixed. One of the challenges we had for a while was the uncertainty, knowing that we planned to move but the date kept changing and we could never nail it down. We don’t have a house yet, but we’re sure that the Lord has a place for us. We will probably end up staying with friends for a week or two while we look for a place to rent. It’s exciting to know that the date just around the corner and that most of our stuff is already there waiting for us. Thankfully, we were asked to housesit for some friends who are out of the country for June & July, so we have a fully furnished house to stay in right now. It helps us to not feel so unsettled since we’ve already sent most of our stuff ahead. So, with each day we’re getting closer and closer to our departure, and are trying to make the most of our remaining time here so we are fully prepared when we go.
A moving & challenging video series from thelastletter.org.
Last Letter Documentary from Last Letter on Vimeo.
Filed under: the life
It’s a terrible thing to be out of the country and feel helpless when your family needs you. Recently I was out of the country leading a training workshop and someone came to find me during lunch. They said someone here had been in touch with them to let me know that my child was in the hospital and I needed to get in touch with my wife. I ran to the computer to call her and get the update. This was on Friday, the workshop was finished and we had a day of meetings afterwards. The next morning I would head back. Friday night I called to get the latest news and it sounded like things were under control.
Saturday I left for the airport too early to call and check in on them, so I would contact them during my layover in the capital. The moment I stepped off the plane and turned my phone on it started ringing. It was a friend on the other end and when I asked what he was doing he said he was on his way to the airport to get me. I laughed and joked about whether he realized I was in the capital and had about seven hours to wait before my next flight. He had heard from another friend that my plane landed at noon, but apparently had missed the part about where it was landing. When he asked if I could get on an earlier flight I told him it was doubtful. I was flying on a budget airline, and was planning to utilize every minute of the layover to prepare for a retreat I was leading on Monday (less than 48 hours later). I did, though, go to the counter and see if there were any flights I could try to make it onto. One had just left 15 minutes earlier and the other had been canceled, which I knew as that was the ticket I had originally purchased. A few minutes later my friend called back. I gave him the report and before I knew it he was talking about forgetting my current ticket and buying a new one on a different airline. To be honest it seemed a bit extreme to me. We’d had a bit of a scare the day before with our child going into the hospital with what at first appeared to be pneumonia, then was downgraded to bronchitis and at this point was probably just croup. After spending over a day in the hospital already and using the nebulizer every four hours we’d already seen lots of improvement. During the course of the conversation something slipped out of his mouth so nonchalantly, about when my wife was also admitted.
“Wait a minute. What?”
No wonder he wanted me to switch my flight. I didn’t know she was hospitalized. He didn’t know that I didn’t know, and therefore couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t working harder to get back sooner. Our child being in the hospital was already a big deal, but we were through the worst of it and me getting back a few hours sooner wasn’t going to change anything. Now it was my wife that we were talking about, and we weren’t through the worst of it. I ended up buying a new ticket that would leave the airport in an hour and a half. I rushed around to get something to eat and then get online to send an update to prayer partners. We weren’t sure what was happening to her body but she’d been in excruciating pain since about 3:30 in the morning. At 4:30 she couldn’t take it any more and called a friend to come stay with our child as she was wheeled down to the emergency room. Now it was mid-afternoon and it hadn’t gone away. Pain medicine was barely doing anything. She couldn’t even talk on the phone anymore, but I could get some updates from other friends who were at the hospital with them, to provide care and support or to help entertain our child.
I felt relieved when the plane took off, but the relief wouldn’t last. We were only about 15 minutes into our flight when the captain said something about turning around and returning to the airport. I was barely listening but that part grabbed me. I perked up and listened closely for the English translation that was sure to follow. We had a mechanical problem that had to be fixed. The mechanics came to us on the tarmac so we never even got off the plane. Of all the flights, it had to happen to this one. I got another update while waiting to take off again, and then eventually we were back up in the air.
Another friend met me at the airport in our city and took me straight to the hospital, where she’d just finished a procedure to relieve the pressure. The pain had lessened significantly and I never saw the worst of it. We all spent the night in the hospital and could leave by noon the next day. Friends who were with her were astonished that she was up and moving and that we were able to leave the day after they had seen her like that.
Even more amazingly, she went on to host a barbecue for almost 30 people on Monday night (the day after being released). We thought about canceling it, then arranged to move it to another friend’s house and just help out, but in the end we stayed with the original plan and went ahead with it. I had a little while on that Sunday afternoon to finish preparing for the next day’s retreat, and had to be up before the sun for the finishing touches.
Now it’s almost been two weeks and they’re both feeling much better. Her episode was just one portion of a larger saga that’s been ongoing. In the last two days she’s said repeatedly that her body feels like it’s back to normal for the first time in well over a month, and for that, we’re thankful. The hospital bills were pretty hefty but we’ve had a few people in our home country offer to contribute something to help and it’s just over 50% paid off already. We’re also thankful for such great friends here who stepped up to help out in so many ways.
Earlier this week I posted somewhere: “We are being sifted.” I had comments and several messages asking what I meant by it. Whether for wheat or rice, the sifting process is one of beating the content against something and/or tossing it up into the air so that the whatever is inconsequential and of no value will be separated and blown away. While we feel like we’ve experienced a bit of being beaten or tossed around, our trust is that God is sovereign and is working through it to get rid of our own chaff and to bring out that which is valuable or of substance.
If that is the case, then we shouldn’t be afraid to go through times like this, no matter how difficult they can be. If he is sovereign, then he can be trusted. He knows what he is doing and how much we can handle. He still uses these thorns for our own good and he still says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So, like Paul, we too want to say just as confidently, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
So, as you think of us, pray that through the difficulties we are experiencing God would be gracious to us and that he would accomplish his purposes. Pray that we would have the grace to ‘consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds. Pray that as we remember that Jesus himself learned obedience through what he suffered, we would not shy away from it and that we too would learn obedience and become a source of blessing to others.
Sometimes the constant moving around and the feeling that we are living in an unending state of transition wears on us. We look forward to being able to unpack our things and stay put for a while. A few months in one location sounds like a long time right now. Sometimes people hear of the different places we get to visit and things we get to do and think of how exciting it must be. It’s true that the visits to so many places can be exciting, but too much of it can be really draining. It’s difficult to constantly be on the go.
I’m often reminded of the times I’ve heard our pastor say that when we’re asked to do something difficult, “there’s grace for it.” He’s right. And, like he points out, the grace usually isn’t there until you take the first step. If the priests who carried the ark hadn’t been willing to step into the water, the Jordan might not have stopped flowing. Or, thinking of Peter’s walk on the water (and Ortberg’s book), “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.” When God gives us a difficult task, he also provides the grace to carry us through it. But we have to be willing to obey and to take the first step.
Right now this is part of the difficulty of our task–being unsettled. It’s also a way that you can pray for us, that we would experience God’s grace to sustain us and help us through this time, and that he would continue to equip us in a special way that enables us to live this crazy semi-nomadic life. While we recognize that we are called and gifted to be somewhat nomadic, we also want to be able to make a home and fully engage with our context wherever we are and however long we are there. There’s a tension there, a balance that we have to find. In writing this post I was reminded of Hebrews 11 and the list of “By faith’s.” All of them “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (Heb 11:13-16)
