Returned Just in Time!

5 days before Rich & our second son's flight was due to depart they received the dreaded call that they had been bumped off their flight.  Fortunately, we were offered another flight.  We did not realise just how fortunate we were until a week later, while in quarantine, when Sydney went into lockdown and international arrival numbers were halved.  We are very thankful to God for his provision as the next available economy flights to Sydney from Thailand are from January 2022!  

It has been great for most of our family to be united again after such an extended period, although we miss our oldest son and he misses us.  Despite the disappointment of Sydney’s lockdowns, our second son has settled well into the rhythm of his new school online. He just wishes he could have a chance to make a start on the guitar he is planning on making in his Industrial Tech Timber class! 

We have begun our final home assignment, which will be completed at the end of this year.  We would love to connect with you, or your small group online, or just via a phone call, until the lockdown in Sydney ends. Please let us know if you’re interested, and send us your number. 

Transitions - Running out ofHhotwater

Since we've been married, we've moved almost 20 times and each time there is a transition process which requires time and effort to get settled again. For example, with our latest house, we have been running out of hotwater. There is a 315L hotwater heater but it doesn't seem enough for 5 of us to have a shower and washing the dishes. We've had a plumber in a few times already now. It seems that we are on an off-peak plan which only heats the water during the night. So if we use all the hotwater during the day we won't have anymore until the next day! I asked the plumber whether we could install the electric hotwater heaters that we've used in Thailand (see photo) in all the houses we've been in. He laughed at me. Doesn't seem like it's an option in Australia. I have seen gas ones through Rinnai but not electric ones as we don't have gas. Now a call to the electricity company to see if we can change our plan so that we can have water heated when needed during the day.

Our moves:-

1. Strathfield

2. SMBC

3. Strathfield

4. Croydon Park(Aidan born - 10 months

5. Enfield

6. Cluney Rd, OMF IHQ -  6 weeks

7. Lopburi - 1 year

8. Lampang - Suksawat

9. Wahroonga - HA 1 (9 months)

10. Lampang - Suksawat

11. Lampang - The Lighthouse

12. Thornleigh - HA 2 (1 year)

13. Lampang - The Lighthouse

14. JOFC - 2 years

15. Chiang Mai - Koolpuntville 7 (8 months)

16. Orchard St: HA 3 (8 months)

17. Chiang Mai - Koolpuntville 7

18. Chiang Mai - Thanawan

19. Eastwood

Becoming Global Conference at SMBC

Today I attended the "Becoming Global Conference" at my old Bible College, SMBC. It is an annual conference which helps the local church with missions. The 3 seminars I attended were excellent with each presenter having vast amounts of experience on their topics.

First I went to Bruce Dipple's (my missions lecturer from college) seminar, "Developing a missions programme that will intentionally strengthen your church". He talked about the false dichotomy of "here" and "over there" and how the missions enthusiasts can talk about the rest of the world but not be occupied with what's happening here, and how churches can be too occupied with local church growth and the rest of the world is forgotten. I was struck when he minded me that our partnership in mission is the Gospel (Philippians 1:5) not the missionary. It is wrong to have the missionary or their family at the centre of missions. No. We should have the Gospel at the centre of mission.

Some quotes: "Mission conforms to the purpose of God. It is God's mission not our mission. Missions finds Biblical basis in not what the church wants to do but in the misison of God. God's purpose is that the whole nations will come to worship him. It is not just in the great commission, but mission's basis is the nature of God."

I left the seminar full of ideas and a longing that churches would just do some of the things suggested by Bruce in this seminar. It would so impact local churches.

Brian Stark spoke on how to make short-term mission trips worth while. He argued that the goal of the short-term missions trip is to help those who go become more Christlike. It is life change of the people going, people sending, and those they go to serve. Short-term missions can have a significant impact on the individuals, the church and the community. That is, if it is done well. For it to be done well requires 2 years. 1 year for preparation and 1 year afterward to cast the vision after you come back. This seminar was really helpful in thinking about how to organise short-term missions. There was so much good stuff in this seminar.

Lastly, I went to Helen Macnaughton's seminar on how to help missionaries re-enter their home culture. There was one slide which struck me about the factors which affects re-entry stress.

The reason for return
Physical/emotional/spiritual health at the time of return
The stage of individual and family life cycles
The degree of preparation for return
The amount of accumulated stress from on-field experiences
The number of other stresses concurrent with re-entry
The opportunity of have good closure before leaving the field.

Gosh. Many of the above factors were not ideal for us and our re-entry.

I learned so much today at the Becoming Global Conference. So much more than I expected. Local churches would benefit so much from this conference. It is such a pity that so few go and miss out on this blessing.

Reentry photos

Hmm, which cheese to chose...

Unbelievable choice
(tip given by a person at this weekend's church camp - always look at the bottom row. It usually has the cheapest items)

Lisa braves the self-checkout at Woolworths
(Tip from Rich: Don't remove the bag until the green light comes on! Otherwise you give a message on the screen saying "Alert, incorrect weight", please wait for assistance)

What I'm reading - The Reentry Team

I picked up this book at OMF conference about helping missionaries when they return from the mission field. It is a very sobering book but extremely helpful. Some of the re-entry stories are so sad, but the positive stories so uplifting. If you have missionaries returning for home assignment and you want to understand a little of what they might be going through this is a great book to read.

There is the common story of short-termers who come back after 6 months on the mission field to have his friends comment that they had thought that he had back-slidden because he hadn't been at church or they ask if he had a great vacation. Unbelievable yet it happens all to often.

There was another story where a missionary family comes back and because prices have gone up so much they cannot afford even to buy groceries. However God provides when there is a grocery store which provides them with free fruit and vegetables which are slightly bruised or imperfect which they would have thrown out but still perfectly edible. They shared with friends about God's great provision. This is what happened next. "We had been home all of six weeks when we received a call that the pastor and associate pastor of our sending church wanted to see us. Because we hadn't met with the missions committee yet, we thought this was going to be their interview with us to see how our work in Africa had been. To our utter amazement and shock, this was not the case at all. It seems that several members of the church had heard my testimonies of God's faithfulness in providing for our needs. Somehow, though, the story had gotten changed around and these leaders were very much on the defensive, wondering why we were spreading rumours that 'they as a church' had not been providing for us and that the missionaries were eating out of garbage piles! Not even in this situation did these godly men ask us if we needed anything, nor how our work in Africa had been, nor even if the stories the members had told them were true. They were just upset that their care for us had been challenged" (The Reentry Team - Caring for your returning missionaries, Neal Pirolo, p.95-96).

Many churches do reentry for their missionaries very poorly. However, in many cases this probably due to ignorance rather than intentional neglect. This book could go a long in educating churches. Missionaries need to be making their churches aware of this resource, and people in their churches need to be reading it. I've read that the attrition rate of first term missionaries is almost 50% (either returning early or at the end of their first term not return to the field). We've praying that we don't add this statistic and God willing we can return in March next year.

Don't leave your shoes at the door

This past weekend we were at the OMF National Conference at Chatswood. Our two sons were in childcare and our middle son (3 years old) insisted on taking his shoes off before going into the playroom even though the childcarers told him that he didn't have to. Taking his shoes off is pretty ingrained now in his little mind.

The conference speaker, Marlyn was relating a similar experience with her daughters when they went back to Canada. Her father took his granddaughters to Sunday school and when he brought them back after it had finished his comment was "they are a bit disobedient aren't they". Apparently the girls refused to sit down in the Sunday school during story time when asked to by the teacher. Maryln explained that on the contrary that they were being very obedient. In the Philippines where they worked they had to train their children to never sit on the floor at church because it was very dirty with chicken poo and other nasty things (they worked in a tribal setting). Imagine the confusion and the conflict in their little minds when things like this happen on their re-entry.