What in the world are we thinking?!!!
What in the word are we thinking?!!! As I watch my highly energetic 23 month-old scramble around the living room at a mile a minute, I can’t help but ask myself this question. After all, we are planning to take this child and her equally energetic pre-teen sister on a 30+ hour trans-continental trip next Fall. . . just to turn around a month later and do it all over again. And we’re taking school on the road (and in the air!) with us. And we have to raise $17,000 to do it. What ARE we thinking?
Honestly, it’s tempting to tremble and quake when we think about the logistics of everything that needs to be done in the next year to prepare for our trip to Papua New Guinea: planning, fundraising, visas, a passport for our youngest, finding people to fill in for us at JAARS while we’re gone. And then there’s actually stepping onto the plane (well, a series of planes, really) and flying to the other side of the world with a preschooler and a pre-adolescent! (Did I mention they both have an abundance of energy?)
In what universe does it make sense to raise $17,000 to hear “Are we there yet?” at least 17,000 times, and then get to experience complete day/night reversal jet-lag? Twice, in just over a month?
It makes sense in our universe, where caring for missionary kids and their families isn’t just our job – it’s our calling. It’s our passion. And we have the chance to spend a month caring very directly for over 100 teenage MKs on the frontlines of Bible translation.
We’ll be speaking at Encounter, the high school retreat, reminding them that they are God’s and that he loves them deeply, wildly, without condition. I’ll be leading a women’s/girl’s evening retreat, sharing my testimony of God’s faithfulness in teaching me about true beauty. And we’ll be doing life, day-to-day, with the missionaries there, building relationships, hearing their hearts and encouraging them in any way we can.
And that makes every penny, every frustration, every bit of paperwork, every travel-induced tantrum worth it.
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