Returning Home

The time travelling home always seems long. After about 24 hours of travel time and an 8 hours backwards time change we arrived at the Minnapolis airport. It was at that time, for me as this was my first out of country trip, "reverse culture shock" set in. This is when you get that same surreal feeling you experience when entering a new country but it happens when re-entering your home culture. It was clean here, unlike Tanzania where there was garbage everywhere. The ground was green here while over there everything was a dusty brown. Here the people are white and speak English. The roads are tarred and flat. The diferences went on and on. I had a dream like feeling as we rode to Ginny's home near Litchfield where I was to meet up with my family. By the way, the entire trip to Tanzania, all of the travel within Tanzania and the trip home, I never once experienced the motion sickness I am known for. I had many people praying against this for me and God answered.

When we arrived at Ginny's home I remember that our youngest son was up in an apple tree climbing and picking apples in his typical busy and active fashion. Our oldest daughter was so happy to see me she cried and Shannon's arms felt wonderful around me. Over the next few weeks as people saw me they commented on how I seemed to be glowing. They said they could see that the Holy Spirit had touched me in Tanzania and that I had left a large part of my heart there. Also, interestingly, over these past few months as we have begun to share our plans with people who know us, most of them are not surprised as they have seen how our hearts belong to children and ministry and that we are not afraid to try new things. In our bible class last night, we learned about how we cannot let the opinions of others influence us against what we feel is God's will for us. That we cannot worry about pleasing people but rather about obeying God. BUT, it is very nice when others are supportive and it serves to confirm for us what we feel God is wanting us to do.

I once read a book called The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson. It told about how God gives us many of our dreams in an effort to allow us to be a part of His purposes. We both believe that God has been putting the dream for serving the orphans and widows of Africa in each of us, little by little, over a long period of time. We both spoke of one day doing foster care before we even married, then ministry, then Africa, and finally adoption. It amazes me that Shannon would be so willing but also have such a huge longing to move to somewhere he has never seen and is so far away. This can only come from The Dream Giver. We will not allow any dream stealers to influence us. Take some time to reflect on the dreams that The Giver is putting in you.