The bad missionary

I did a very bad thing tonight while Brant was gone packing chicken and getting ready for next week's flight. I got onto our friends' blog... and read it.

Our friends are missionaries in Papua New Guinea - just on the other side of the island from us. They recently moved into their tribal work up in the mountains and chronicle their adventures in language learning and developing relationships with their tribal people on their blog....

Problem is, about 8 months ago, these same friends asked us to join their work.... move across the island, change countries, learn a whole new language, adjust to a different culture and then begin working with them as they moved into their tribe. We spent a couple agonizing months praying, crunching numbers, talking with leadership and discussing team dynamics via Skype with our friends in PNG. When all was said and done, Brant and I felt before the Lord that He was giving us the choice - "Do you want to go join this team or stay in Indonesia?"

Obviously, we decided to stay. Lots of tears, but we made our decision and with it, decided we would not look back. We since have become the supply buyers and given up our chance to go into a tribal work for the foreseeable future. Most days we're okay with that and content with where the Lord has us... until I do something stupid like read our friends' blog on what our life could be like...

And then the doubts come again and my mind begins reeling with "What ifs" and "If onlys"

I have been doing this amazing, life changing, perspective altering Bible study (that I HIGHLY recommend, can you tell?) Calm My Anxious Heart, by Linda Dillow. The basic premise states that contentment comes from an acceptance of God's sovereignty and acknowledging that His ways are better than mine and that He is in control of EVERYTHING. Where I struggle is in accepting God's sovereignty over my decisions - like the choice not to move to PNG. He gave us that choice.... so I have a had time seeing His hand in that. Much easier to trust Him with things I have no control over - like our robbery our first year here - obviously that is God working, because I'm not... does that make sense?

Tonight I was listening to a Steven Curtis Chapman song... almost all of the spiritual struggles in my life have been captured by one or another of his songs... and the song he wrote after his daughter died hits home tonight...

This is not how it should be,

This is not how it could be,

But this is how it is,

And our God is in control.

This is not how it will be,

When we finally will see,

We'll see with our own eyes,

He was always in control.

This is not where we planned to be,

When we started this journey,

But this is where we are,

And our God is in control.

Though this first taste is bitter,

There will be sweetness forever,

When we finally taste and see,

That our God is in control.

Basically I need to come to the place where I trust that God was working - even in circumstances that seem like I had some part in shaping... ultimately I have trust that God made that decision and that this is where He wants us to be....

my trust is so weak...

is that a bad thing for a missionary to say?

House dreams

A long while back I shared how I had always dreamed of owning a house... not sure if it's because we move so much and are so "rootless" in this job or if it's just cause I'm an American through and through or because I'm a girl and like to "nest" or because I've always wanted to be a financial planner and owning a home is a great financial move (or so they say....)

Regardless, have always wanted a house.... but you don't become a missionary for the paycheck. :)

BUT the Lord has given us a house! We own it (well, technically the bank does still) but we get to make mortgage payments on it for the next 30 years. :) Several years ago Brant's grandmother, who he was very close to, passed away and left us a chunk of money - which we didn't get until this spring. It didn't take us real long to figure out what to do with the money - with the stock market crazy and with interest rates on home loans so low and home prices low, it seemed like the best option to buy a house... so we did!

I can't say it was the easiest process buying from overseas, and I don't necessarily recommend it; it definitely helps to have a brother who's a mortgage broker and a father who's a home inspector and a sister who has practiced real estate law... got all the bases covered. :) We closed two weeks ago on a little house in Bastrop, Texas... you can google it for all you non-Texans. :) Small town outside of Austin - about an hour from my parents - which is a good distance :) and we have a great supporting church there that we really like, so figure it would be a good place to call "home" when we're on furloughs. Might kill me to wait two years to actually get to see our house in person though.... :)

In other housing news, we have moved to a new house here in town. I LOVE it. Our other house was horrible - plastic windows, wooden floors (not nice hardwood floors - thin planks that gave you splinters and you could see the ground between the cracks in the wood) and thin wooden walls that gave you no privacy or any type of insulation for the heat.... should I go on about how much I hated that house? :) The main horrible thing about the house, especially for us as missionaries, was that it was very isolated - we lived on a missions base, surrounded by other mission bases, with no national neighbors - I could go a week or more without talking to an Indonesian other than at the grocery store.... not exactly what we had planned for our life as missionaries. :)

So our new house is stone with tile floors - which is definitely scarier in earthquakes (Haiti would be mild compared to here if we ever had a big one hit) but it's so much cooler - all our windows have screens and glass, so we can open them and actually get a breeze. It's light and clean looking and a great set-up for our family.

The best part about the house is that it's right smack dab in the middle of a "kampung" ...not sure how to translate that word - it's basically a village, but in a town, so it's not technically a village - but definitely too rustic for the term "neighborhood." There are a bunch of houses around a dirt square, dogs and chickens and naked kids running everywhere.... the river runs right by our house, and none of the houses in our kampung (except ours!) have running water - people just get their water from the river..... very much a village feel going on here. :) So we get to have a village ministry right along with our supply buying ministry.... huge blessing from the Lord. The boys and I go to a neighborhood "Bible" class every week led by one of the ladies in the kampung. Not exactly all there doctrinally but it's a good starting point and today the lady invited me over after the class to talk and hang out. The boys are playing with the myriads of little kids running around and Ezra loves going outside to see all the animals everywhere and I have all my pictures hung and kitchen set up, so feeling very much at home.

Our new house doesn't have AC, so I'm sitting here all hot and sweaty and going to sign off so I can go get a cold shower (to compensate for no AC, we also don't have hot water - but who wants to take a hot shower on a hot day!) Very thankful for the Lord plopping us here for the year and very thankful that I can dream of my own house in Texas - that does have both AC and hot water! :)

Jeremiah 17:5-8

My life is very much defined by two roles I play - that of missionary living in a 3rd world country and that of mommy to 3 very small boys. Lots of constraints with both of those -constant power outages, fear of horrible diseases, more spiders than I ever care to see; teething, runny noses that prevent play dates, and schedules revolving around nap time and 7 pm bedtime...

But lately I've been thinking a lot about who I am - not just the roles I play - and more importantly, who I want to become... and expert spider killer is not it. :) I came across Jeremiah 17:5-8 the other day - not sure what pointed me to that passage - maybe it was referenced in a book? Anyways, I won't write it out here, as people who write long passages of Scripture out in blogs drive me crazy. :) Look it up.

The picture Jeremiah paints is of two trees - one - stunted, shriveled in a desert - the man who trusts in human strength and turns away from the Lord. The other, a tree tall, strong, with deep roots - the man whose trust is in the Lord - not worrying about long months of drought, still bearing fruit. I want to become that second tree - a beautiful, strong woman who has deep roots of trust in the Lord and doesn't get worried about the crazy circumstances of life (and you have your share of craziness when you're both a missionary and a mommy to little boys!)

But my faith is stunted when I look at the crazy circumstances around me and try to work out solutions on my own - failing to trust in the Lord but trusting my own failed, drunken logic.

- We found out Wednesday that the car we have been borrowing for the last 5 months is being sold - this weekend! If we can come up $5000 we can keep it... IF being the operative word. Have spent a lot of time worrying about this one. We have a good 10 supply orders plus a cross-town move this month - definitely will be needing a car.

- I'm worrying about putting Elijah in kindergarten this fall... because he already is reading. They learn the ABC's in kindergarten... will he bored? Will it be a waste of money? Will he turn out to be a more creative, inquisitive, stronger charactered kid if I home school him or will he just be a weird home schooled kid? Will people think ill of me - I teach at the school but won't put my own kid in it? Will I have more ministry options with him at school - one less kid to take care of for a few hours each morning?

- I'm worried about our house payments - what if we don't get a renter and can't pay the mortgage? What if we use all our savings and then a huge disaster comes and we don't have any savings left? ...We don't even own a house yet and I'm still worried about this!!! (But, we are under contract for a great little house in Texas... another story for another time.)

- Caleb has gotten a nasty cold this week... not a huge deal, except that with it he's started showing symptoms of the amoeba he was dealing with a month ago... meaning that it was not totally taken care of with the medicine and has come back with his immune system down. Do we give him more powerful medicine that has really bad side effects?

I could go on and on... thoughts that fill my mind, keep me up at night, stunting my faith and turning my more into a shrub than a beautiful oak tree (passage doesn't say oak tree, but that's what I picture in my mind.) :)

I found this other verse the other day - Psalm 119:55 "I reflect at night on who you are, O Lord; therefore I obey your instructions." ...so to obey the Lord - to turn my worries over to him and trust Him, I shouldn't try harder or make a list of my worries or alleviate my fears with little "What's the worst thing that could happen?" exercises... I need to meditate on Christ. In studying His life, character, words, my mind will become more like His - my fears will rest on Him and my faith - and roots - will be deepened.

Spinning...

We have been in Papua one year (and 3 days, to be exact). I divide the past year in my mind - first 4 months - adjusting and having our prior plans to go interior totally smashed to pieces and lots of "What know???" second 4 months - SICKNESS where I could barely walk. :( and this last 4 months - finally being settled and into our grove and good ministry...

So now that we're settled, it's time for things to fall apart again.... which they did yesterday afternoon. Really things have been in the works for a couple months... we love our job as supply buyers, but we have started to feel that we are starving ministry-wise... we live on a base our mission has for an orientation center - next to another mission's base and a whole bunch of other missionaries. We have NO Indonesian neighbors at all; I teach at the international school; we go to the international church (translated - American church for missionaries) - a habit we started while I was sick and one we haven't broken yet. Anyways... now that life has settled down some and we're in the routine with supply buying we're realizing we have no ministry to Indonesian people!

So our main ministry focus right now is assisting the tribal missionaries, and we're glad to do it, but we have been praying the past few weeks that we would have a ministry with the Indonesian people here in town. Last week our pastor from San Diego came to visit us and we spent a great deal of the week talking about our ministry and our need to get involved in peoples' lives here. We found an Indonesian church that we have started trying to get involved in and we've started to realize it might be good for us to move off our little white compound. :) Over the weekend we talked with a senior missionary here and were discussing our thoughts about the whole thing and he said "You should find a house in the Swan's neighborhood (another missionary family) They have a great location for really getting involved with the people." My thought on the matter - that's nice for them... I don't want to move into a neighborhood with another missionary family already living there and I really don't want the stress of moving...

So yesterday at our weekly town team meeting, someone let the cat out of the bag that another family is going to be moving into OUR house... next month. They were going to tell us officially today and it just kinda slipped at the meeting. Talk about a shock... the thought of finding a new house, having to buy furniture, packing everything after we are finally settled.... I don't want to even go into all my emotions...

EXCEPT that yesterday we got a post on the missionary community website from the Swan family (who lived in a great neighborhood) "We are moving to Java for a year... does anyone want to rent our house, fully furnished, starting next month?" Our heads still spinning from the news we would have to move, we called the Swans, thinking of course this is God's great plan for our life... only to find out that two other families had already called wanting to rent their house. We spent the evening a bit bewildered and wondering what to do... we are still planning on moving interior and do not want to buy a bunch of furniture (our house here is furnished by the mission as part of the orientation center) and pay a bunch of money for a house contract (similar to a lease). If we were going to just go out and find a house, we'd have to buy not just furniture but a refrigerator, washing machine, and probably pay to "Westernize" the bathroom (put in a toliet!) With our support a lot lower now than it was a year ago, we don't have that kind of money (not that we would have had it a year ago either!) :)

So lots of praying and trying to rest in God's sovereignty last night and fight the urge to call the Swans and beg them to let us have their house. :)

And this morning, the Swans called... would we like the house? The other families backed out.

I almost cried.

We immediately drove over to their house and I almost cried again... it was perfect. They have a beautiful, but moderate-sized, very Indonesian styled home - all things we were wanting, but it has a really nice modern kitchen and TWO bathrooms with toliets and even a couple rooms with AC. :) It is smack dab in the middle of a small Indonesian neighborhood right outside of town - we share a yard with an Indonesian family and all their dogs and chickens and a huge beautiful exotic bird that look like it should be in a San Diego Zoo exhibit. It's not on a main road, very quiet, with lots of people out in their yards, kids running around everywhere.

The house is much nicer than our house now - it's stone with tile floors (we're living in a wood plank house now) and they have two small little boys so the rooms are very little boy friendly. And everything is in the house - we wouldn't need to buy a thing!

And... the Indonesian church we had started going to a couple weeks ago is right across the street - how good is God to even work out that detail? (We can now walk to the church; before it was very obvious that we were the only family in the church who came to church in a car.) Several people in the neighborhood go to the same church and one of the Indonesian ladies from the church has a kids' Bible club in our neighborhood every week!

So this afternoon as the boys are napping and Brant and I have the chance to sit and process everything that has happened in the past few hours and that will be happening in the next month, we are so, so thankful for God's grace and provision. So thankful for a God Who knows our needs and is giving us this opportunity.

We are a bit nervous... we will go from living on a nice, comfortable white people's compound to living in the middle of an Indonesian community... that will be stretching for us and our boys and it will be hard to move all our stuff and more adjustments. But we are in awe of God's plan for our life and excited to see where He is leading.

Being refined

This picture has nothing to do with my ramblings; I just like it and thought I'd add it to lighten the mood. :) This is Ezra last month eating black beans for the first time - he loved them. Beans are a huge treat here - a regular can of black beans costs about $3.50 when they happen to have them in the store, so it's not one of those cheap meals like in the States.

One of the hard things about being here is that on hard days when all 3 of your kids are throwing up all over the place and you are exhausted because they had been throwing up all night long is that you cannot just call and order a pizza and have it delivered... well, actually you can (yeah!) but, as there are no standards at all in food safety here it's always a bit of a risk - will the take-out you order make you violently ill??? Usually it's worth the risk, but when your kids are throwing up already...

So you can be praying for us. :) I am thankful I had a "meal in a box" that a very sweet, thoughtful mom sent from the States for nights such as this one!

One of the great things about life here is that it is hard... I have learned SO much about trusting the Lord and walking with Him since coming here. I know, I know, missionaries are supposed to be super spiritual people to begin with; but in reality, I was just a normal person before becoming a missionary and have really gotten my worldview and my understanding of Who God is and how He works rocked since moving over here.

Our first year here we experienced some really, really hard things - being diagnosed with a heart condition, miscarrying, having our home broken into and losing thousands of dollars and all our important paperwork... but I really saw God's grace and gentleness in ways I had never seen before and at the end of that year I could honestly say I was thankful for everything we had experienced, despite the pain, because it was worth all I had learned about God's character and grace to get me through hard things.

So this past year I have had hard times in totally different ways... we have had major conflicts with other missionaries and with leadership and been hurt by some really ugly things said by fellow "oh so spiritual" missionaries. I am not into personnel conflict and hate having people not like me, and it's been a humbling, hurtful time. But these past few weeks I've been doing a great Bible study on contentment, and one of the sections is on relationships with other believers and trusting the Lord with those relationships... including the hurt that is often caused. Do I trust that the Lord has orchestrated this pain and this hurt for my benefit and for His glory? Do I trust that this pain and humility He has planned for my life is in His master plan? It's hard to think of God planning something like that... and unlike the previous hard times, it's hard for me to be thankful for this time.

But as I have been praying about it and reading my Bible I'm realizing that as I learn to forgive them - and as I learn to draw on God's grace for the strength to forgive - I am learning how much I have been forgiven. Referring to the passage in Matthew 18 where the king forgave a debtor millions of dollars only to have that man go out and demand payment from another man who owed him $2000... I am the one who has been forgiven a huge, unrepayable debt... those who have offended me owe the $2000. I have made lists of every hurtful, painful thing said and done to me this past year... and as I read the list the Lord brings to mind my own list of sins... "You did that once... you said... your attitude was arrogant, prideful, hurtful, etc, etc, etc" I am humbled as I remember my own sin and how much God has forgiven me and how patient He is to put up with all my trash again and again and again.

I am definitely not there yet... but in learning what it means to really forgive and really love others I am learning how much I have been forgiven and how much I am loved unconditionally. And those lessons will be far more valuable than any pain I have experienced...

I just wish there was an easier way to learn some of these lessons! :)

A day in the life of a supply buyer

Brant is out the door by seven o'clock to get a head start on the day's shopping. We have 7 things left on the list for this order - 15 pipe joints, a stainless steel pipe for a satellite internet system, 4 loaves of bread, 4 kg of chicken, 12 green bell peppers, 5 kg of yellow onions and 25 kg of potatoes. The flight is tomorrow, but it all has to be done by this afternoon so we can weigh it in at the hanger for the flight. Brant visits the hardware store first on his motorcycle. He is able to get the pipe joints. The stainless steel pipe comes from another hardware store on the other side of town. He heads over there, but they don't have any - it will have to be ordered from another store out of town and is promised to be delivered early the next morning. He runs by the bakery, but they only have 2 loaves of bread - come back in the evening and they will have made more, they say. He calls a co-worker in town to ask for help getting the chicken - it has to be purchased at a grocery store 45 minutes away - none that is available in town is safe to eat. The grocery store here in town just got a shipment of bell peppers but the green ones look like they've had worms the size of small children nibbling on them. He gets 6 red and 6 yellow instead and decides that's close enough. While he is out, Emily calls - an email has come in from the family in the tribe saying they also need 4 meters of PVC pipe - could we possibly buy it in time for the flight as well? So Brant heads back to the hardware store. By eleven in the morning he is back at home, takes over watching the boys so Emily can head to the open air market to get the rest of the produce. Buying the produce involves actually finding the item - but then it has to be fresh, at a decent price, and from a seller who is honest and will not try to take advantage of me because I am white skinned! Most of the stalls are small and just have a few items - it takes several visits to different vendors to find yellow onions - most here are purple and small. One vendor has 3 kg of onions; another has lots, but they are all soft and mushy. The same goes for the potatoes. I have to carry everything by hand - the paths are muddy and uneven and there are no carts. Because I can't carry that much produce, I make several trips to the car. It is hot, smelly and roaches cover most of the produce. By one o'clock I have the potatoes and onions and rush home so that Brant can get the things packed into boxes and to the airport before two. I clean up, check email again, take another order for next week and then begin work on dinner. Brant makes it home by 3 or 4 o'clock and enters receipts and does book-keeping on the day's purchases. He runs and picks up the remaining loaves of bread after dinner, then receives a call that the airplane taking the supplies into the tribe has had a "surprise" inspection by the government and will not be allowed to fly... can he come get the items from the hanger so they don't go bad in the heat and humidity? It's a good thing the flight is delayed a few days. The stainless steel pipe never showed up as promised and it took several more trips to the hardware store to locate it. :)

Buying garlic and eating crow

Several years ago I read a fascinating book about a woman in Florida with a PhD who decided to do a social experiment and give up her high paying PhD job (whatever it was) and get a minimum wage job for a year and see what life was like for so many Americans. I remember her account of her first day on the job as a waitress at a diner... she had thought people would say "Wow, you're obviously over-skilled and way too smart for this job" but instead was humbled to learn that even low-paying jobs require a lot of skills, which she did not possess.

So, I haven't given up any high-paying, highly skilled occupation, but Brant and I have taken on a new job - being supply buyers. Today our first order was due at the airport to go into a tribal location early tomorrow morning. AH! We have spent the last few days running crazy trying to get all the items on the list, packed them all up and dropped them off at the airport right after lunch. Then we spent all afternoon running all over town trying to correct mistakes we had made and caught this afternoon.

My responsibility in the whole endeavor is to do "Pasar shopping." The Pasar is the open marketplace here - think a Farmer's Market then add in mazes of unfamiliar fruits and veggies, drunk guys hanging around, produce lined up on tarps on the ground, and spit and trash and stagnant water covering any un-tarped spot. Not my favorite place to go, despite the great bargains and exotic fresh spices and fruits. The first time I ever went to the Pasar here in Papua, a kid threw up on my feet.

On my list today was buying 15 pounds of onions, 10 pounds of garlic and 12 pounds of potatoes. You don't have to be good at math to know that I cannot physically carry all that. It took multiple trips to the car to haul all the veggies once I had found them. Finding them was also a challenge - not only did I have to locate the veggie on the list - I had to find a seller who was honest, had good quality produce and had sufficient stock of whatever I needed. It took hours and I was covered in dirt and grime by the time I was done.

So I was sitting relaxing this afternoon, congratulating myself on a job well done, when I noticed that instead of 5 pounds of oranges, I had accidentally written "garlic" on my list and walked out with 5 extra pounds of garlic - no oranges. So Brant, gracious husband that he is, went back to the Pasar and bought the forgotten oranges, took them down to the airport hanger and switched them out.

And this evening as we are exhausted and still not quite sure we did get the order right, we are humbly learning that something as simple as "supply buying" is not as simple as it sounds and it's going to take a lot of learning to get this job right.