Culture shock
Noah, Tim and I just returned from a whirlwind two-week trip home to the good ol' U.S.A. to be a part of my sister's wedding - my family paid for the boys' tickets and they were awesome travelling partners. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed every minute with family and friends (mostly family...our time together was so short that I guarded it pretty jealously.)
It has been nearly 2 full years since we left for Papua New Guinea, and I wondered what the boys would remember. Noah told Tim, "You'll like this milk, it doesn't come out of a box and it's sweet!" He also helped him to differentiate between cherries and grapes (apparently the similar size and shape was confusing?!). They were fascinated by car seats, corn-on-the-cob handles, McDonald's, and freedom to ride their bikes next to the roads.
Another question that delighted me? "Mommy, what's a mall?" (!!!)
I personally enjoyed having clean feet at the end of the day (i.e. no muddy toes!), the wonders of low humidity, orange juice, deli sandwiches and flavored ice cream, among other things.
Confession time: I was a little nervous about going home for such a short time. In the back of my mind, I had twinges of fear that I would enjoy my time so much that I wouldn't be ready to come home. (Anybody else out there have more than one "home"? Confusing, isn't it?) And - the time with my family WAS too short. Were we not preparing to move into a tribal village and build a house, we would have greatly preferred to take an early time of home assignment and return "home" (there's that word again!) to be with our families for a longer time. We long for our children to be able to put down some roots in the U.S. and goodbyes are always, always painful.
But...would I trade the work we have the privilege of being part of for the pleasures of clean feet, sweet orange juice and deli sandwiches? You know the answer already. Absolutely not. What greater joy is there than to see people transferred from the kingdom on darkness to the kingdom of light? Will you pray for us that God's priorities will be our priorities in this work?
Nate is going into a killer week...by Friday he needs to start weighing up all the basic bones of our house in order to prepare for the building trip next week. He will be gone for nearly three weeks this time. Please pray for us:
-good health for us all - Nate is already on antibiotics for a nasty cut from some corrugated roofing material (that will be the third round of antibiotics in a little more than a month).
-sweet family time as we were apart for 2 1/2 weeks and will be apart for 3 more very soon.
-that we'll walk with the Lord, day by day and moment by moment, in the many questions and decisions we face.
Thank you for serving the Lord as you intercede for us! We wouldn't be here without you.
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