Help Needed
Spring 2017
I lay in the dark, conscious of the lack of weight next to me. Questions I didn't want to ask, let alone answer, tore at my mind - questions about God's goodness and willingness help. The sounds of nighttime revelers drifted up from the street below. Laughter and friendship felt like fresh stabs at the raw wound of loneliness.
We'd been in the field six months, and our three young sons were with me in a city where we didn't belong, whilst Sarah was stuck overseas processing her visa paperwork.
The roadblocks and uncertainty we faced was comparatively small, but in the context of our lives it was a bleak season. I needed help.
March 2018 - March 2019
Our fourth child is a wondrous gift to us. Her pregnancy was brutal. Sarah was sick most days, exhausted and depleted with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Our boys were more settled and we now had some ministry underway, but to say we were surviving not thriving is a generous assessment. A few months after the arrival of our daughter, Sarah fell down the stairs and broke her foot. Crutches aren't the ideal reality caring for a newborn.
We needed help.
It's a simple fact that in the midst of struggle, which can be sudden or come on slowly, it is hard to know how to get help. We need safe people to whom we can reach out when trouble comes. And on the mission field, it's a given that trouble will come.
So, what can we do to better support missionaries before the dark nights set in and we're scrambling for signal flares? We can intentionally build networks of relationship. And it can be simple.
During orientation week, we studied alongside four other workers heading to various parts of the world. The training days were full, but with a decent lunchbreak slot we realized there was a prime opportunity. On day one, we offered to take people to get coffee in our van. All the candidates piled in and off we drove to the local On-the-Grind hut.
By the end of the week we'd spent over an hour of van-life together, sharing some of our stories, processing what we'd been learning in class, opening up about our concerns, or trading favorite concerts. It was fun, it connected us, and our new friends shared it was a highlight of our time together.
We are here to offer the comfort of the Lord to those who are willing to go all-in for his fame amongst the nations. There will be dark nights - some of them far more gruelling than those I endured - but they do not have to be faced alone. Over these next months, Sarah and I will be building relationship with the team of people providing care to workers in the field, as well as directly caring for overseas workers ourselves. Please be praying for us that we would become safe people for each of these amazing families, and that the work God is doing through them would flourish to the ends of the earth.