Early Home Assignment

Well the big decision we referred to in a previous post... We will be going on an early home assignment in August for 6 months. We’ve had some health issues in our family which began soon after we arrived in Thailand. We’ve been trying to deal with it as best we can in Thailand for the last two years and although there has been some improvement the problem has not gone away. We have been thinking and praying through the issues for the last couple of months but it was really at the recent OMF Conference that we were led to the conclusion that we needed to go for an early home assignment. We hadn’t seriously thought about an early home assignment before conference but God seemed to bring the right people to conference this year to help us come to this decision.

This has not been an easy decision. I was a bit emotional at conference at the thought of leaving Thailand earlier than we had expected. We were really starting to enjoy living in Lampang and the children were about to start at a new school. Although it is not a convenient time to return home for home assignment I guess there is never really a good time to be on home assignment. However, as a few people have suggested, going back now and getting these health issues sorted out may enable us to stay longer in the long term. If, as we hope and pray, we will be serving in Thailand for 10, 20 years, 6 months is much.

The next month will be pretty hectic. I have to finish one more language module and do my Level 2 language exam before I leave. I will go to our landlord soon and ask if he will lower the rent for the next 6 months while we are away so that we won’t have to pack everything up before we go. Not having to pack up everything will save us so much hassle.

After nearly two and half years in Thailand it is a bit surreal thinking that we will be back in Australia late next month.