Saying goodbye to our friend Piscinta in Ayuma
Saying goodbye to our friend Rosita and her sons Aquiles and Federico in Santa Cruz
Me with my parents in Santa Cruz in November 2011
Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
I arrived in the States a couple of weeks ago and, despite loads of crazy last-minute things like having to make new travel reservations just a few days before the flight and getting multiple documents for Riley sandwiched around a national holiday, my dog and I arrived safely home with no problems at all. Only God could have overcome some of the obstacles we faced. He is so faithful to provide for us!
Prayer Necessities:
1. Please continue to lift up the churches in Ayuma, Taramarca, and Salvatierra. Pray that they would obey Him no matter the command or the cost and that they would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Please pray for Leah and me as we adjust back to our home culture. After 3-1/2 years overseas, we are so grateful to have the time to rest, but it definitely requires re-adaptation to the hustle and bustle of life in the States. Ask that we would continue to put Him first and would rest in Him even in stressful times.
3. Please ask for the Lord's wisdom for me as I research options for future service. I know that He has called me into a ministry reaching out to prostitutes, but I am still unsure of the location. Ask that He would reveal that in His perfect timing... and that I would learn patience as I wait for the revelation.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
I arrived in my home country two weeks ago today, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here. I've spent time with my parents and other family members, watched my 4-year-old cousin's T-ball game, had lunch with my grandmother a few times, attended the services of two churches, gone to a family reunion, changed to an Alabama driver's license, had multiple doctor's appointments, and gotten registered for seminary classes. I guess you could say I've jumped right back into U.S. life with both feet.
But the fact is that I've changed. Life in the United States has gone on while I've been in Bolivia, and it's passed me by. I once heard the difficulty missionaries face in returning to their home culture described in this way: Let's say your home culture (in my case, the U.S.) is blue, and your host culture (in my case, Bolivia) is yellow. Both leave their impact on you, leaving you varying shades of green depending on how long you spend in either culture. But the problem is that green makes you different from both your home culture and your host culture, leaving you to feel alienated in both.
If you've never spent significant amounts of time in another country, you won't fully get this. But I wanted to try to explain the emotional hardships I have already and will continue to face for the remainder of my time here in the hopes that, if you catch me on a difficult culture day, you'll be patient with me. :) So here goes:
1. I miss Bolivia. I'm so grateful to be here and to get to rest and to spend time with my family, but I wasn't on a short-term mission trip there. Bolivia became my home. I genuinely miss the amazing people I knew there. And I miss the importance of relationships there. Life was not too busy to spend time with people because relationships were more important than a list of things to get done. So, yes, I'm glad to be "home," but I also miss "home," if you understand what I'm saying.
2. I feel homeless here. I'm staying with my parents, and I absolutely adore them. I couldn't imagine God giving me better parents than He has blessed me with, and it is a joy to be with them every day. But the fact remains that I live in their house, not my own. I can't leave my room or bathroom a mess here, and I don't have first dibs on the TV remote. It's not bad; it's just an adjustment.
3. I forget words in English. That's one of the more frustrating by-products of learning a second language, and I often feel like an idiot when I can't remember something simple like the word "aware" or when I use the rarely used English word "tranquil" to describe our backyard because the Spanish word for "quiet and calm" is "tranquilo." So, if I speak Spanglish to you, just smile and nod. I need to practice my Spanish anyway. :)
4. I don't want to compete with your phone. When I left the US, the iPhone had just come on the market and was prohibitively expensive. Now, everybody and their dog has some form of a SmartPhone, and I constantly see groups of people sitting at a table with every last one of them absorbed in whatever happens to be on their phones rather than with each other. That makes me sad because people are always more interesting than anything you can find on the Internet. Why do we waste so many opportunities to spend time together?
5. I'm easily distracted by all the English conversations going on around me. It's been so long since I could understand every word of a conversation without concentrating that it's hard to retrain my brain to tune them out. I feel like I'm eavesdropping on everyone and not paying attention to the people who are with me.
6. Wal-Mart can be an overwhelming experience. There are just so many choices here! I went to buy dog food and had 14 different varieties to choose from, where I'm used to having a choice of three different kinds. (I chose the cheapest, and Riley seems to love it. :)) I can't even go in a convenience store to buy a snack because it is absolutely impossible to decide what I want, and I don't have the money to try them all. Just remember that if you need to make a Wal-mart run while I'm with you. :)
7. Going to a church meeting here is the biggest culture shock of all. Sometimes it is so surreal to think that I was living in a mosquito-infested town with no electricity singing Guarayo hymns with four new believers one minute and the next, I'm sitting in a giant auditorium belonging to a megachurch and listening to a praise team that's larger than the church I just left. But, if Jesus is present, He is really all that matters. All I want is to see Him no matter where I am.
8. American culture is NOT better than other cultures; it's just different. Recently, an acquaintance commented on how happy I must be to be home because Bolivia is full of crime and drug lords. And I just wanted to scream, "Excuse me? You don't know ANYTHING about Bolivia! I always felt MUCH safer there than I ever do here!" Our natural tendency, of course, is to think that our own culture is the best there is. But, unless our culture aligns perfectly with Scripture, it is not really any better than others. And, in some cases, believe it or not, that other culture just might be better.
9. My time in Bolivia was special, and I don't want to tell you about it unless you're really interested in hearing it. I love talking about what God did in Bolivia, what He taught me, how He grew me, and how He was ever faithful when I constantly fell. But this was something that lasted for 3-1/2 years of my life, and it takes time to explain. I can't sum it all up in a couple of minutes. So, if you're really interested in hearing about it, please ask me. But, if you don't want to invest the time to hear about it, please don't ask. I promise that I won't be offended if you don't want to hear about it in the first place, but it will hurt to start telling you and then watch your eyes glaze over as I talk about an experience that has changed me forever.
Thank you so much for your faithful prayers during my time in South America. I'll continue to post on the blog during my stateside time, and I hope you'll continue to read. And stay tuned for where the Lord takes me next!
