Finally, I've Got Something To Say!

Answers to some frequently asked questions

Okay, what’s home assignment?

Home assignment: A time to refresh and connect, share what God is doing, restock. A four month window before we go back to Ethiopia. The term is confusing and we haven’t explained it well and I realize this when people ask about it, thinking that we are moving back to the US in a permanent capacity. 

Where are you living?

Amy’s Grandma has graciously allowed us to “base camp” at her house. It’s been amazing, and while we haven’t been here much, feels so comfortable to us as we lived with her for the 1.5 years previous to our departure.

What are you doing with your time? Is this like one big vacation?

Umm. Yes…No…

We do have time carved out to vacation with each of our families for vacation as well as Jon and I hope to do a one week get-a-way. We are traveling and on the road a lot of the time. This is an amazing time to connect with friends and family and the many people who hold us up as well as the Awi people as we journey in Ethiopia. While it’s so much of a good thing, it is exhausting. 

When we have internet connection, we are researching many things that we haven’t been able to while in ET. Our “down days” usually involve appointments to dentist, eye doctor, pediatrician and counselors.

Wait? You are seeing a counselor, why?

Okay, deep breath here. While our last two years have been amazing and rewarding and we have been so blessed to see God move in big ways, it’s also taken a toll. We expressed to our sending office, SIM USA, a desire for counseling and then they recommended a more serious path to make time for processing. We appreciated their confirmation in this. Getting really serious about counseling also felt unnecessary; however, the more mental space and processing time we have in the USA, removed from our normal lives, we realize more deeply how we have been changed in negative and positive ways. Everywhere in this fallen, broken world, there is pain and difficulty. There is also beauty and hope. Over the last two years, we’ve had a period when we’ve been less insulated from life’s suffering, sin and sorrow and in some ways, we’ve been crushed by it.  

We view counseling as an amazing tool God has provided to work through things. Using a figurative example of planes, we aren’t falling out of the sky, getting ready to crash into a mountain, but there are blinking, warning lights in our cockpit.

Feel free to ask more questions, those are the big ones I can think of tonight. 

 

And I can get only this picture to post. Enjoy our first game of “Red Rover”.