Interns have arrived; in a splash-landing on Monday into our rain-soaked airstrip. In the land of endless sun and rain patterns, it’s harder to find American-style seasonal markers. Interns are the first sign of summer for us – young, enthusiastic, ready and willing for almost anything, eager for adventure. Interns are the people who will ride home from the airstrip in the back of a pickup in the pouring rain despite how soaked they are, simply to EXPERIENCE MORE. And this surely a place to experience more – more beauty, more wildness, more sadness, more dancing and laughter – than many of us have seen before.

So these three young people; Katie, Jesse and Nick, have joined us for a summer of MORE. More adventures and experiences for them and more fullness in our lives. They usher in new cycles of life for us seasoned team members as they enter rounds at the hospital, sports at CSB and science experiments at RMS (our little mission school for our kids.) Summer is a time of heightened busyness and heightened enjoyment. We usually end it exhausted, but for now, we are in the beginning of the rush, enjoying getting to know these new people, watching them enter the highs and lows of life here, seeing this world through their fresh eyes, and letting them bless us through their unique selves.

Interns also offer simple practical helps – such as child care for team kids during adult meeting time, once a week. Our kids arrived for pizza, post-team meeting full of jumps, screams and laughter – new young people mean new listening ears, new stories, new skills to learn and new math problems to solve. For our children, interns are a pure gift and one that we, their parents thank God for each day.

Equally important is the impact they will have on the community. Our interns will complete surveys and do research which will enlighten both them and us and perhaps lead to new opportunities for long term ministries. They will solve problems we didn’t know we had as they enter food distributions and classrooms. They will see the poorest of the poor and the way we, the rich here, have learned to live in a foreign land. They will watch children growing ( or not) with the severest of malnutrition and see our children thrive on milk, bread, and meat that us mission moms struggle daily to feed them in the abundance that their bodies truly need. They will make judgments and feel anger. They will weep and feel deep compassion. Then they will rejudge, re-weep and reconsider. They will end their summers more unsure of everything than when they began.
Through it all they will see Jesus and through them Jesus will be seen. Sometimes in ways that we anticipate and plan for and many more times in the oddest of times and the most surprising of places. And perhaps through these experiences the whole trajectory of their lives will be changed, so that they will go on to live lives which change tens and hundreds and thousands of other lives, for eternity. Pray for them.