I’ve spent the last week or so working away steadily at reducing our family’s posessions.

As we make the transition from real people into missionaries; what stays, what goes and what will be kept for a later date become constant questions.

Like most Americans we have a largish home, and a good deal of stuff. We specialize in books, toys, and creative accoutrements (musical instruments, crafting materials, recycled goods waiting for a new destiny, etc.)

I see ’stuff” as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to have fun and to connect us with others. I like providing my kids with new opportunities through fun things.

Now, possessions take on a totally new light as each thing is evaluated first in terms of WEIGHT, then in terms of how it will stand up to the Ugandan environment, how willing we are to see it destroyed there (possibly), and of course how much we really need/want it. We are bringing eight trunks with us, the max allowed by our airline. They will be FULL. Of course the weight is regulated also. These days everything I pick up I judge by whether it is worth being in one of the eight trunks, is is THAT good, THAT necessary.

The trunks will be the subject of much further debate, discussion and pain as we get closer to deployment and realize how much more will have to be left behind to make room for the necessaries. For now the real pain is involved in shedding many, many possessions.

As the home keeper, I feel the weight of these decisions, and it’s a burden I need to release to God daily. Though David and I are both excited about embracing a simpler life, it’s hard on the kids. And in and among all the easy-to-let-go possessions are the truly important things both large and small that represent our family’s heritage, our memories, our links to each other, to our past, and to those around us. I find myself in the position of memory keeper, memory preserver. I need to hold together for our family what is most precious, most eternal and winnow out the rest.

Among our books I save the ones that have such dear memories associated with them, especially the childrens books. Dog eared and spit up stained board books that have been read so many times the words are stuck in my head. Childhood classics that I have delighted in introducing to my kids, along with the memories of my own early life. And of course the very special ones that are their own dear memories, the books that have spoken to their lives and that one day they will share with the next generation. Many of these books will stay in safe storage here, but many other books will come with us, including the ones that are still making memories today and those that have yet to make memories. Books can be mailed via M bags for $1 a pound - well worth the cost to have our own personal library. But pounds and pounds, boxes and boxes of books have already left us for new homes - books that were fun but not THAT special to us.

Children’s items are another complicated area, fraught with memories, tangled up in desires. I save our toddler table and chairs, imagining my own grandchildren some day sitting in them. All the dearest baby toys are kept, to serve in my moms “gramma room” for now, but later to be returned for making new memories with small friends in our home in the States some day. We keep the classic timeless toys that have a place in our hearts from much play; blocks, lincoln logs, felt kids, our wagon and others. The children are each packing their own trunk with all the clothes and special, special toys it can hold. The Babwisi have almost nothing, we only saw one toy in our weeks stay with them. But our children are not Babwisi, they have privileges that we will not take from them. They will have so much less than the children here and so much more than the children there. It is one of the many paradoxes our children will live with.

Almost all of our furniture is keeping it’s home here with the family who is buying our house, but a few special things will stay ours in storage, a chair, a rug, a bench. The prints on the walls have been pared down to those that hold our family’s story, those too will be stored here. A few precious and indispensable photos will travel with us to make our home in Bundibugyo, OURS.

Then there are the memory items. For each of my children, a large rubbermaid holding baby clothes, shoes, and beautiful handmade items from their first years. Boxes of papers that I have yet to go through and preserve safely, my childhood journals, David’s school records, and endless masterpieces from two small artists, Naomi and Quinn. Special household knickknacks and accessories that are far more to us than they appear.

We are reminded daily through this process that stuff is just stuff, and thatour relationships are inestimably precious. Those items that will help us make new memories, new connections, are the only ones worth keeping. When our lives most precious possessions are relational, many of the other things become easy to let go. God has given us a heart for a people with so little, and yet He has given us so much. We cling to the best of our abundance while embracing their simplicity and find our joy in knowing that God’s provision for our needs is enough. We will never lack as we live by faith. We have seen this in the lives of others, now we are privileged to step out onto this faith road ourselves.

from a former missionary,

“Going to the mission field is like spraying Miracle Grow on your sins”

Praise God for His good news for all of us who make more mistakes each day than we wish to think about . . .

Cheer up, even though we’re worse than we thought, His grace is infinitely greater than we can understand. Our big God can handle our big sins and the horrific number of little ones as well.

There is now, no condemnation to those who know Jesus.

We went to see the new movie, End of the Spear, that chronicles the Ecuadorian Waodani tribe from just before their first contact with Nate Saint, Jim Elliot and three other young missionary men, to the present day. It tells the story of the salvation of a people group; their salvation from extinction and the rebirth of many of them into the Jesus’ kingdom. I sobbed through the whole movie, mostly because it focuses so much on Steve Saint, Nate’s son, who is only eight when Nate is killed at the end of a spear. Throughout the first half of the film my spirit cried out against the very high price paid by the children of the martyred missionaries, then, as I watched the second half and conclusion I could not but weep at the amazing gain of those same children. Again, it’s the paradox.

I must share this truly amazing story written by the very same Steve Saint . . . . which shows just how much those five short missionaries lives have accomplished. And the beautiful way in which the children continue to gain.

As before the article below is from Eternal Perspectives Ministry’s winter 2006 newsletter. Eternal Perspectives is a ministry begun by Randy Alcorn, an amazing author who has provoked eternal change in my life and the lives of many others. Check out any of his books, fiction or nonfiction. They’re great. I especially recommend The Treasure Princple (nonfiction about giving) and Safely Home (fiction about the persecuted church in China.)

Note from Randy Alcorn:
January 20 is the release date of the motion picture “The End of the Spear,” the story of the five missionaries murdered in Ecuador in 1956 and the primitive tribespeople who killed them. January is also the fiftieth anniversary of this event, which God used to send out literally thousands of missionaries around the world. In light of this, I asked Steve Saint if we could publish the following article.

For years I’d thought Timbuktu was just a made-up name for “the ends of the earth.” When I found out it was a real place in Africa, I developed an inexplicable fascination for it. It was in 1986 on a fact-finding trip to West Africa for Mission Aviation Fellowship that this fascination became an irresistible urge. Timbuktu wasn’t on my itinerary, but I knew I had to go there.

Once I arrived, however, I discovered I was in trouble. I’d hitched a ride from Bamako, Mali, 500 miles away, on the only seat left on a Navajo six-seater airplane chartered by UNICEF. Two of their doctors were in Timbuktu and might fly back on the return flight, which meant I’d be bumped, but I decided to take the chance. Now here I was, standing by the plane on the windswept outskirts of the famous Berber outpost.

There was not a spot of true green anywhere in the desolate brown Saharan landscape. Dust blew across the sky, blotting out the sun as I squinted in the 110-degree heat, trying to make out the mud-walled buildings of the village of 20,000. The pilot approached me as I started for town. He reported that the doctors were on their way and I’d have to find another ride to Bamako. “Try the marketplace. Someone there might have a truck. But be careful,” he said. “Westerners don’t last long in the desert if the truck breaks down, which often happens.”

I didn’t relish the thought of being stranded, but perhaps it was fitting that I should wind up like this, surrounded by the Sahara. Since I arrived in Africa, the strain of the harsh environment and severe suffering of starving people had left me feeling lost in a spiritual and emotional desert. The open-air marketplace in the center of town was crowded. Men and women wore flowing robes and turbans as protection against the sun. Most of the Berbers’ robes were dark blue, with 30 feet of material in their turbans alone. The men were well-armed with scimitars and knives.

I felt that eyes were watching me suspiciously. Suspicion was understandable in Timbuktu. Nothing could be trusted here. These people had once been prosperous and self-sufficient. Now even their land had turned against them. Drought had turned rich grasslands to desert. Unrelenting sun and windstorms had nearly annihilated all animal life. People were dying by the thousands.

I went from person to person trying to find someone who spoke English, until I finally came across a local gendarme who understood my broken French.

“I need a truck,” I said. “I need to go to Bamako.” Eyes widened in his shaded face.

“No truck,” he shrugged.

Then he added, “No road. Only sand.”

By now, my presence was causing a sensation in the marketplace. I was surrounded by at least a dozen small children, jumping and dancing, begging for coins and souvenirs. The situation was extreme, I knew. I tried to think calmly. What am I to do?

Suddenly I had a powerful desire to talk to my father. Certainly he had known what it was like to be a foreigner in a strange land. But my father, Nate Saint, was dead. He was one of five missionary men killed by Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956. I was a month shy of my fifth birthday at the time, and my memories of him were almost like movie clips: a lankly, intense man with a serious goal and a quick wit. He was a dedicated jungle pilot, flying missionaries and medical personnel in his Piper Family Cruiser.

Even after his death he was a presence in my life. I’d felt the need to talk with my father before, especially since I’d married and become a father myself. But in recent weeks this need had become urgent. For one thing, I was new to relief work. But it was more than that. I needed Dad to help answer my new questions of faith. In Mali, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who didn’t share my faith, who were, in fact, hostile to the Christian faith— locals and Western relief workers alike. In a way it was a parallel to the situation Dad had faced in Ecuador. How often I’d said the same thing Dad would have said among the Indians who killed him: “My God is real. He’s a personal God who lives inside me, with whom I have a very special, one-on-one relationship.” And yet the questions lingered in my mind: Did my father have to die? All my life, people had spoken of Dad with respect; he was a man willing to die for his faith. But at the time I couldn’t help but think the murders were capricious, an accident of bad timing. Dad and his colleagues landed just as a small band of Auca men were in a bad mood for reasons that had nothing to do with faith or Americans. If Dad’s plane had landed one day later, the massacre might not have happened. Couldn’t there have been another way? It made little impact on the Aucas that I could see. To them it was just one more killing in a history of killings. Thirty years later it still had an impact on me. And now, for the first time, I felt threatened because of who I was and what I believed.

“God,” I found myself praying as I looked around the marketplace, “I’m in trouble here. Please keep me safe and show me a way to get back. Please reveal Yourself and Your love to me the way you did to my father.”

No bolt of lightning came from the blue. But a new thought did come to mind. Surely there was a telecommunications office here somewhere; I could wire Bamako to send another plane. It would be costly, but I could see no other way of getting out.

“Where’s the telecommunications office?” I asked another gendarme.

He gave me instructions, then said, “Telegraph transmits only. If station in Bamako has machine on, message goes through. If not…” he shrugged. “No answer ever comes. You only hope message received.”

Now what? The sun was crossing toward the horizon. If I didn’t have arrangements made by nightfall, what would happen to me? This was truly the last outpost of the world. More than a few Westerners had disappeared in the desert without a trace. Then I remembered that just before I’d started for Timbuktu, a fellow worker had said, “There’s a famous mosque in Timbuktu. It was built from mud in the 1500s. Many Islamic pilgrims visit it every year. But there’s also a tiny Christian church, which virtually no one visits. Look it up if you get the chance.

I asked the children, “Where is l’église Évangelique Chrétienne?” The youngsters were willing to help, though they were obviously confused about what I was looking for. Several times elderly men and women scolded them harshly as we passed, but they persisted. Finally we arrived, not at the church, but at the open doorway of a tiny mud-brick house. No one was home, but on the wall opposite the door was a poster showing a cross covered by wounded hands. The French subscript said, “and by His stripes we are healed.”

Within minutes, my army of waifs pointed out a young man approaching us in the dirt alleyway. Then the children melted back into the labyrinth of the walled alleys and compounds of Timbuktu. The young man was handsome, with dark skin and flowing robes. But there was something inexplicably different about him. His name was Nouh Ag Infa Yatara; that much I understood. Nouh signaled he knew someone who could translate for us. He led me to a compound on the edge of town where an American missionary lived. I was glad to meet the missionary, but from the moment I’d seen Nouh I’d had the feeling that we shared something in common.

“How did you come to have faith?” I asked him.

The missionary translated as Nouh answered.

“This compound has always had a beautiful garden. One day when I was a small boy, a friend and I decided to steal some carrots. It was a dangerous task: We’d been told that Toubabs [white men] eat nomadic children. Despite our agility and considerable experience, I was caught by the former missionary here. Mr. Marshall didn’t eat me; instead he gave me the carrots and some cards that had God’s promises from the Bible written on them. He said if I learned them, he’d give me an ink pen!” “You learned them?” I asked. “Oh, yes! Only government men and the headmaster of the school had a Bic pen! But when I showed off my pen at school, the teacher knew I must have spoken with the Toubab, which is strictly forbidden. He severely beat me.”

When Nouh’s parents found out he had portions of such a despised book defiling their house, they threw him out and forbade anyone to take him in; nor was he allowed in school. But something had happened: Nouh had come to believe what the Bible said was true. Nouh’s mother became desperate. Her own standing, as well as her family’s, was in jeopardy. Finally she decided to kill her son. She obtained poison from a sorcerer and poisoned Nouh’s food at a family feast. Nouh ate the food and wasn’t affected. His brother, who unwittingly stole a morsel of meat from the deadly dish, became violently ill and remains partially paralyzed. Seeing God’s intervention, the family and townspeople were afraid to make further attempts on his life, but condemned him as an outcast.

After sitting a moment, I asked Nouh the question that only hours earlier I’d wanted to ask my father: “Why is your faith so important to you that you’re willing to give your life?”

“I know God loves me and I’ll live with Him forever. I know it! Now I have peace where I used to be full of fear and uncertainty. Who wouldn’t give up everything for this peace and security?”

“It can’t have been easy for you as a teenager to take a stand that made you despised by the whole community,” I said. “Where did your courage come from?”

“Mr. Marshall couldn’t take me in without putting my life in jeopardy. So he gave me some books about other Christians who had suffered for their faith. My favorite was about five young men who willingly risked their lives to take God’s good news to stone age Indians in the jungles of South America.”

His eyes widened, “I’ve lived all my life in the desert. How frightening the jungle must be! The book said these men let themselves be speared to death, even though they had guns and could have killed their attackers!”

The missionary said, “I remember the story. As a matter of fact, one of those men had your last name.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “the pilot was my father.”

“Your father?” Nouh cried. “The story is true!”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s true.”

The missionary and Nouh and I talked through the afternoon. When they accompanied me back to the airfield that night, we found that the doctors weren’t able to leave Timbuktu after all, and there was room for me on the UNICEF plane. As Nouh and I hugged each other, it seemed incredible that God loved us so much that He’d arranged for us to meet “at the ends of the earth.” Nouh and I had gifts for each other that no one else could give. I gave him the assurance that the story that had given him courage was true. He gave me the assurance that God had used Dad’s death for good. Dad, by dying, had helped give Nouh a faith worth dying for. And Nouh, in return had helped give Dad’s faith back to me. (The article originally appeared in Guideposts, January 1991)