Leaving Houses ... and Beds

One afternoon early last week during our cross cultural training we took the time to discuss transitioning from home to the mission field.  The seminar leader had a useful diagram to help us envision this emotionally charged period: a bridge from the known to the unknown.  The water below the bridge was labeled “CHAOS”! 

Spot on!
 

The kids’ programming sometimes mirrors the adults’ and so we weren’t surprised last Thursday night when, an hour after the kids had been put to bed, Melissa and I found Samuel … happy-go-lucky, monkey-boy Sammy … quietly crying on the couch upon our return from a quiet walk around the OMS campus. 

He was unable to sleep because he was thinking about his bed … the one in our old house.  The house where we haven’t lived for two years now.  That bed was special to him because I built it.

(Caleb slept on the upper platform
and Samuel slept on the lower.)

 And watching those tears roll down his cheeks, it was all I could do to not join him in crying.

So the three of us talked about how that bed and hundreds of other good memories were a blessing from God. That God had been so very gracious to us in the past and would undoubtedly continue to be into the future.  We noted that the good part of leaving friends behind is that you get to keep those friends AND add new ones that you would have never met if you had stayed put.

 

Melissa recently reminded us of Christ's words and a sweet and precious promise:

"Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life."            (Mark 10:29-30)

That's a promise we're going to stand on!