[With apologies to James Thurber and Walter Mitty.]
“I’ll take the kids outside for a while so you can have some uninterrupted time,” says Walter’s wife as she softly closes the door to his office. It’s time to work on their monthly newsletter, and he turns to the keyboard.
Tap, tap, tap, ta-tap tap . . .
“Walter?” she yells back from the living room. “Don’t forget to update the email list before you send it out.”
Dear Friends:
As I start typing this newsletter, the words are already spilling out of my heart to let you know what’s gone on this month, but I’m going to change directions and do something a little different this time.
Because the number of our supporters has recently tripled, we realize that many of you don’t know us very well. Therefore we’d like to take this opportunity to summarize our ministry in this newsletter. (We’ll soon need to decide what to do with all the extra funds, but we’ll leave that topic for a later time.) For those of you who’ve been with us from the beginning, we hope you don’t mind. Here goes. . . .
We’re so glad to be able to serve God overseas. I can tell you that even when Hannah and I were co-CEOs of our own non-profit, recognized by Time magazine on it’s annual “100 to Watch” list, and leading worship at our church on the weekends, there was something missing in our lives. Little did we know at the time that it was mission work. But on that Easter morning, when Hannah and I woke up from the same dream—seeing Jesus beckoning us onto a 737—we both knew what we must do. God’s calling was confirmed when we announced our decision to our church later that day, and the entire congregation blessed us with a raucous standing ovation. Then, after the service, friends and people we’d never met before came up to us and put enough funds in our hands to cover our startup expenses twice over.
Still, we were concerned about sharing the news with our parents, as we knew they would miss being close by to us and their three grandchildren. But our fears were allayed when all four of them, through tears of joy, told us that they had been praying for this since we were in the womb. In fact, they wondered what had taken us so long.
That was four years ago, and we can report that we are absolutely flourishing in our new home. . . .
Finish reading at A Life Overseas.
[photo: “Equipment Trial #3,“” by davidd, used under a Creative Commons license]
Clearing Customs 