The Story Continues

While trying to set up this blog, I came across our previous blog from our last 3 year stint in East Africa (our "East Africa Tour" as we now call it). I was convinced I had deleted the previous blog, but God must have allowed it to slip my mind to do so. I was so encouraged to read our last post and remember how far the Lord has brought us. 

In the last post, in October of 2017, I had re-capped our previous time in East Africa and explained how things didn't turn out the way we expected them to, but we could sense that a time of "spring" was coming. A time of thawing and of new life. At the end of the post I wrote:

Thawing started. And slowly, slowly, it felt like new growth was coming. New growth isn't always easy and comes with its own set of pain and difficulty, but it brings along with it hope. Hope of new things, hope of beauty and of thriving.

And this is where we are now. We are hopeful. We don't know how all of the pieces of our past three years fit together yet. We still feel great sadness at times, often, for what could have been. But we're hopeful. We're expectant of seeing evidence of the new life and growth that is still to come. We're hopeful that the pieces will fit together eventually, but in the meantime, the journey is still beautiful. We're hopeful that our Good Father is still at work, as He always has been. Making all things beautiful. Bringing life up from the dry ground. Remaining consistent even as seasons change. Remaining faithful as we sort through disappointments and hopes and losses and joys.

I almost wept when I read those words last week. Because God is doing just what we knew He eventually would do. He is making sense of what seemed senseless. In bringing "evidence of new life and growth" he is using that to further the story. To show that there is still more to what He was doing with us in East Africa. It served a good purpose and the story continues. 

During our "East Africa Tour" in 2014-2017 we ended up living in 5 ministry sites in 3 different East African countries after having set out to settle fully in South Sudan for 5 years. Our hearts were set on settling and living life amongst the people in Mundri, South Sudan, but due to circumstances beyond our control (war), we ended up bouncing from place to place for 3 years (while having our first baby in Kenya in the midst of the transience). These years were filled with hardship, loss and suffering (our own and the weight of watching people we loved suffer). It felt harsh and confusing and we didn't know how to make sense of it all. In hindsight, however, it was our training ground, our resume builder, our equipping platform. 

The role we are going to fill for our ministry is to be the team leaders of the Regional Member Care Team for East Africa. We will be helping to support (along with licensed mental health counselors) missionaries on the field who will be enduring hardship, loss and suffering (theirs and others). Our experience is what is equipping us to return. Nothing is wasted in the Kingdom of Heaven. Nothing. 

Even as I write these words, I still know there are so many ways that I'm unequipped for our future work. So many ways that I'm not yet ready for the work ahead of us. However, I have such confidence in the God who calls us, that knowing there is still more to learn, doesn't intimidate me anymore. We serve a God who cares about the big picture. A God who knows that what we are dealing with at the moment, that feels difficult and stretching, is serving a role in preparing us for what is to come. What a kind and loving God He is. 

We will continue to post on this blog how God got us to this place of returning to Africa yet again and how He continues to move along the way.