This is the end of the “called to uganda” story; at least for now.

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Day 164 in suitcases.

I realize that when this is all over it will be half a year of vagabonding . . . .

and I find reason to be glad.

He fills up this, our world, with so many everyday joys and abundances.  How can we not dance?  How can we not lift lip corners with gladness, and smile into laughter and skip a little through the day?

my curly-blond boy, grinning from the back of our borrowed convertible.  What a ride it’s been and what a ride it will be!

more doctors but only one single shot . . . . a reprieve

school applications, apartment searches, car purchase . . . . the future looms good.

friends, friends, more friends.  We rediscover people we love.

“This is the great mystery of the soul.  Whenever something is being accomplished, it’s also in some way being undone.”                           Thomas Moore

So we do the things we love: agree on a last minute picnic with old friends and slurp it up on the shores of the bay, paddle our bodies far into the luscious coolness, and watch the minnows dance on the water’s surface.  We eat cinnamon rolls still warm from the oven with our sandy fingers, we ride home damp and happy.

We head out in the evenings to walk our sweet little town. How we love Annapolis.  We play on old-remembered playgrounds, eat the best gelato in the world, and climb the neck of the Alex Haley statue.  We dream of  calm seas as we caress old wooden sail boats with our eyes,  we pet each dog we pass.

When Sundays come, we drive to Gramma and Grampa’s where the kids love to hang out.  Uncle James chases them with swords and guns, Aunt Ali brings out her newest bunnies for holding, petting and general admiration.  Hope cooks great food for us to share.  Friends next door beckon.  Food is always on the grill, salad always fresh from the garden, our collection of children’s books sits on mom’s “gramma shelves” ready for reading.  The cousins run and laugh and chase and color together.  We remember family; the sweetness of coming-from somewhere, and of belonging there again.

We notice days slipping away as our departure for our year in California nears.  Is this a goodbye? Or just another extended trip?  In some ways it is hard to imagine we’ve really said hello to this east-coast world, and yet we’ve grown comfortable again here too.  We struggle with this final transition, with how to give up on seeing everyone and reconnecting everywhere and just BE for a little while before we’ll BE somewhere else.  We wonder whether to say goodbye or just see-you-soon.

We plan our trip out west, by car; we browse the Ikea catalog looking for that one special bed that will speak “home” to Naomi’s new life, we do the tiresome work of researching health care and car registration and neighborhoods and schools in Redding.  We try to fit in more reading and writing and rithmetic practice for our currently unschooled children who will soon hit academia again.

A new bit of life is about to begin.  Perhaps a catapult season.  I have been resting in the gap between lives for months now, yet there is still much rest my soul needs.  I trust I will find it in the coming months.  Unknown, they sparkle, full of promise.

And we wander forward.

Heidi, nurse and friend who lives and works in bundi, shares a GREAT overview of the need for prayer in four most recent posts.

http://hlutjens.blogspot.com/

Read.  Pray.

Then we’re swimming in deep waters.

We MUST live by the Spirit or we have no chance at getting it anywhere CLOSE to “right”.

When we get scared, when we’re nervous about decisions we’ve made, the tendency as humans is to clamp down on the thing intellectually. It’s to reason it through, ask opinions of the wise around us, and take the course that seems right to a man.

Problem is that God’s ways are not our ways, his thoughts not our thoughts.  I don’t pretend to have an inner line to God’s ways or thoughts.  I’ve just finally received the revelation that I’m not going to get close to understanding Him without a constant, unbalanced*, inflow of His Spirit’s counsel.

I’m DESPERATE for Spirit in my life.  Because life is not easy.

1 Timothy 6:6-8 says,

” A God-following life does bring wealth,

but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God.

Since we entered the world penniless and we will leave it

penniless,; if we have bread on the table and shoes on our feet,

that’s enough.”

In Uganda, the shoes part is optional.

Psalm 112 was a promise to us in January:

“Unfazed by rumor and gossip

Heart ready, trusting in God,

Spirit firm, unperturbed,

Ever blessed, relaxed among enemies,

They lavish gifts on the poor

A generosity that goes on and on and on

An honored life! A beautiful life!”

We dare to hope that God will and is working that out in our lives.  That He is making us new creations.  That Romans 8:6 is happening in us!

“Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them – living and breathing GOD!”

Yes, we’re taking some risks these days.  And no, we won’t always find that things are as we expected or as we hoped.  Sometimes God let’s us fall flat on our faces after a big risk.  It’s all part of the plan.  But there is a plan! His big plan.

That’s why OUR plan (not always what we do but what we long and hope to do) is:

1) Ask God what He’s up to in our vicinity, our community, our lives

2) Listen with our whole hearts

3) Jump in in whatever way He directs

4) Let Him deal with the consequences

We’re trying to follow Romans 8 as found in The Message:

“So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.  There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all.  The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.  God’s Spirit beckons.  There are things to do and places to go!

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life.  It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?“

My wish; for you, for me, for us all, is for our days to be filled with:

“What’s next, Papa?”

There is so much I could say about David as a father.  Mushie, mushie stuff that would bore you all and either incite you to jealousy or to tears . . . .  I always tell the kids that I picked David out not just for ME but for THEM and it’s so true.  I said “yes” happily because I knew I could trust him to love, honor and build up our children in all the best ways.

I don’t want to make you cry or bore you with more mush, so I’ll just include a Quinn-Quote from a month ago, when we were talking about a good man and what makes one and how not everyone in the world is good, even some who are popular . . . . .

Quinn pretty much summed it up (as usual) when he said:

“Well, MY daddy is the BEST kind of man:  He’s good looking AND well behaved!”

‘Nuff said.

And only we drive back roads by beautiful water in a top-down convertible with Francis Chan’s Forgotten God blasting on the stereo instead of some kind of crazy music!   It was US, it was sacred, it was a precious moment strung on the strand of our lives.

Together we spent an hour in Philly meeting with World Harvest Mission for final closure of our term with them.  World Harvest has offered us much good: teaching, training and equipping us for our first term of missionary service.  Giving us experiences beyond what we would have imagined with a great team.  I don’t know if any of us knew that they would launch us into dreams of something so much longer and bigger than our time at Christ School Bundibugyo.

For while we are no longer official missionaries with World Harvest Mission as of today, we’ve entered the ranks of the pilgrims and strangers who wander this earth for love of Savior and His lost sheep.  Somehow that feels even more real as we follow that Saviors calling, His hand, pulling us away from this mission and towards something else.

Change is never easy.  But by now this change is.  By now we are completely convinced of the choices we made.  Of the hard decision to leave behind an amazing spot in the East African jungle that changed us for over.  The choice to walk away from something good because we know He has something better (for us) planned.

If I’ve learned anything these last four years, it’s that I only want to be exactly where He’s telling me to be.  Nowhere else.  And ALL THERE.

If I can not listen to the whisper of the Spirit, and obey, I will be lost.  If I can not lead with an integrity, vision and passion born from His voice, His dreams; I will gain worlds only to lose my soul. Nothing is more important than following hard and close after Him.

After our meetings at the Sending Center,  we had a precious time of fellowship with our friends from Uganda, the Chedesters.  Their long drive to see us, their open and vulnerable conversation, their warm hugs and the mutual sharing about our futures as we both head in new directions with new mission agencies, these gave us even greater courage.

These are the gifts of our 1st term as missionaries: people.  American, Uganda, and others; so many beautiful people who have taught us so much, shared their precious hearts with us, and turned us into new beings, a little more like Him.

Thanks, God, for these last four years.  Good times, hard times, desperate times.  Laughter, panic, tears, hope.  Feasting, prayer, fasting, dance.  We grew.  YOU grew us.

Here is our altar of remembrance.

We will remember.  And we will thank You.

The Clarks hosted us for an amazing day at one of their favorite places: Hanging Rock State Park.   Loren and John are warm, kind, generous, adventurous and fascinating people with a big love for the outdoors.  We learn new stuff every time we explore wilderness with them.  They are a gift of our time in Uganda, friends we made on the team, and we thankful to find that they are still friends here.  That we connect even without a shared mission or shared team.

Loren was gloriously nine months pregnant and hiked the trails as well as I did!  Their three year old Brian reconnected with us all.  We climbed, we splashed, we ate, we were approached by a snake, we saw and got cold and savored wild blueberries.  It was a GOOD day.