Planning a return journey

Our time in the UK has seemed to fly by. We kept ourselves busy with visiting friends and supporters for 2 months, and then we took it easier for a few weeks and allowed ourselves to just live in the UK. Now we find ourselves in a planning phase once again for an upcoming journey.

Being settled is nice. It’s nice to have a familiar routine and to build a life around yourself. Feeling settled isn’t a feeling you can fast-track though. Every move requires time for us to find our feet. Each member of our family needs to figure out again where they fit in and where they belong in this new place. How and where am I valued in this place? What will I focus on? What do I like about this place? What are the challenges? All of this takes time to work through, to arrive at the feeling of being settled. I find the feeling nice, but for Gerdine it’s something she deeply treasures.

I feel quite bemused looking at myself and seeing that after finally achieving the feeling of being settled, I am straight away planning to leave again. For Gerdine, it’s more stressful. For the children, we’re not sure. Regardless of how I feel though,  our thoughts are turning to:

• Returning our borrowed car
• Figuring out how to get to the airport
• Storing or disposing of our furniture
• Storing or disposing of possessions – toys, books, sports stuff and cold-weather clothes not needed in PNG
• Buying new stuff that we will need in the coming years, such as new Salomon speedcross shoes – the best shoe we’ve found for mud
• Thinking about how much our suitcases can take for the return journey
• Preparing homeschool for the next school year and purchasing books for it (while teaching the current school year!)
• Arranging entry permit extensions for PNG
• Arranging medical evacuation insurance
• Buying our children’s birthday presents for when we’re in Kovol
• Cancelling the swimming lessons our kids have been doing
• Updating our immunisations
• Renewing passports

We face the same question we did last time. What do we throw away, and what do we try and keep? Do we throw away the new saucepan we got 4 months ago, or do we store it? What about the 4 mattresses we have? Those are really bulky. What about my mountain bike? I’ve had it since I was a teenager and I’ve kept it all this time, but I haven’t even pulled it out of storage this time. Is it time to let go of the mountain bike and my tools for maintaining it?
One of the blessings of a settled life we see with our friends and family is that this isn’t an issue. You just leave it in the shed.

There are certainly challenges to moving internationally frequently! We’re also at the stage now, on our 4th return to Papua New Guinea, that this isn’t an exciting adventure anymore. The novelty has long worn off. It’s back to life and back to work.
Yet, thinking on it, there’s a blessing there. We get to return to our Kovol friends. We can return and show them that we’re still there for them, we didn’t forget them and stay home as they feared. And then we’ll be able to move into starting a literacy class, and we’ll be working with them to continue to translate God’s word into their heart language. I can imagine the faces, voices (and smells :p) of people that we’ll get to teach God’s word to.

After 6 months of living in Europe I’m still amazed at how good we have it here compared to Kovol. Plentiful food, good health care, comfort, luxury, playgrounds and kids’ activities and access to God’s word (and a limitless amount of commentaries and resources). It doesn’t feel like we’re doing much, but the little we can do to bless and help the Kovol people makes us glad.

Our children are also glad. They don’t dislike life in the UK on the whole, but they do miss PNG. They miss having neighbours their own age. They miss playing outside with the neighbouring children and they are filled with excitement at returning to their play, while at the same time also mourning that they will leave friends they have made here.

The Lord has been very good to us. We’ve had and continue to have all we need. As I have met with supporters and churches here, I have heard a few times people saying, “I could never do what you do!” What I am amazed by is that while we see the challenges ourselves, it’s something we want to do. That’s God’s work in our lives and his goodness to us. We’re simply doing the thing he put on our hearts to do. It’s not a normal thing to do when you look at it from people’s point of view, but it’s actually the most normal thing in the world when you look at it from God’s point of view. After all:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

2 Cor 8:9

Our tickets are booked. We leave the UK on Jan 18th for the Netherlands. Then on Jan 29th, we’re off to PNG again. We’ve got the Christmas time to enjoy before then; better fatten up before the jungle.