Missionary Confidential

Family Away From Family

One of the really cool things about the Christian family of God is that we can find what I call “family away from family” in our mission field. I recently was asked to address a church group bridge event on Christian unity, and one of my points was that, even though we are so very far away from our blood relatives, God has thankfully surrounded us with what can best be termed “surrogates”.

We weren’t looking for it, or even expecting it, but the groups we’re around have provided us with similar support we’d have from uncles, aunts, siblings and even parents, could they be here in body. All of our grandparents have passed on, but we’ve had such devoted attention from the older set in our church that it’s as if they’ve picked up the care where our grandparents had to leave off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not viewing these relationships as replacements for our actual relatives, but it is nice to have people here check on us as if we were their genetic family.

We even experienced this similar situation on one of our exploratory trips to Western Europe. We found ourselves in a Bible study that represented people from Brazil, France, Australia, England, Africa, Northern Ireland—and we represented America. Though our English was accented very differently, the only other thing that we had in common was our faith and following of Jesus. We understood certain Christian concepts, and we could all acknowledge the difficulty in being the outsider, both as immigrants and as Evangelicals in very secular societies.

Praise God for His care and faithfulness through His children!

Back From Hiatus

We’re glad to be back from our unexpected hiatus on the blog.  After all the house moves I’ve done over my life, why do I forget every time how much it throws our schedule?  And that several weeks into any new place, we still can’t find stuff?  Of course, the most striking revelation on this move is that, despite moving to our mission field with just clothes and laptops, we have accumulated so very much—and we don’t even own furniture.

To anyone moving to Europe and considering a “fully furnished” rental: the concept of fully furnished is extremely relative and up to broad interpretation.  My favourite example is, when viewing potential rentals, a four-bedroomed furnished semi had exactly this: a dining table and four chairs, a kettle, two single beds (in different rooms), and a dresser (should I include the 2 cm layer of dog/cat hair on the carpet?).  And the letting agent stood there acting as if all that were more than plenty for move-in living.  If any of our prior furnished places had really been furnished for actual living and cooking, we would own maybe a box of extra stuff, not 30 boxes worth!

But, hey, we’re blessed to be closer to the church that we work with, and this newest place is much better outfitted than most.  Most importantly, it’s a quieter location, so more writing is around the corner.  Look out for new material next week, and thanks for keeping up with us.