Sent to Roxboro

So my wife has been quite the little blogger for our family over the past 6 months or so, blogging 10 11 12 times since my last post (it's taken me a week to even finish this one).  So here's to a comeback, exempt from fireworks & colorful streamers.

Today was a down day, in part because we've been so slow at the new workplace.  But that just serves to remind me: I'm at a new workplace.

In one of the previous 10, I believe the diligent Cristina mentioned that we were moving (and have moved) to the booming metropolis of Roxboro, where we say words like "swoney" and "Imagone", as in "Imagone do that today", which is contrary to our Raleigh-speak:  "I am going to do that today."  Cristina still hasn't figured out what "swoney" means, though somehow it's reentered my everyday vernacular.  Since we've proclaimed that we're here as missionaries, I pass it off as contextualization.

To be a missionary in Roxboro has been a strange thing.  I mean, for one, who says that? Yes, Roxboro is my hometown.  And yes, this is the same word we used of ourselves when we moved to East Asia, and the same word my new friend Aaron is using as he prepares to proclaim Jesus with his life in Senegal.

See, this has been part of an ongoing lesson God's been teaching me (and us) since we ended our missionary service in Asia 2 years ago, though I feel like the lessons have been accelerated over the past few months.

Though I felt in East Asia that serving there wasn't a longterm fit for me, I loved the way my team did life.  We planned, strategized, prayed, worshipped, sat under the Word of God, ate meals, played, travelled, shared housing (same gender of course), laughed, wept, and celebrated together.  When I returned to America, I continued many of these same activities, but no longer together with my team. We had lived life as a team on mission, and reverting to any other way of living has honestly been a letdown over the past couple years.

*****

I was looking at pictures from our time in East Asia today as they cycled by on Cristina's screen saver, and I was reminded of some of the great time in fellowship I had with my teammates in Asia.  However, as the pictures scrolled through in chronological order, I felt sudden pain as the photos began to show life captured not in Asia, but now America.  Coming back to America from Asia in July 09 was certainly one of the toughest periods in my life.  No, no one died, and no real tragedy struck, but something did die and I vividly remember the grief.  Much can be said of the pitfalls of American culture, and I think for a long time I've blamed the pain on our cultural sins.  But as we looked at those photos today, I remarked to Cristina how I feel our transition from Asia back to America would not have been so hard had I experienced this transition with my team.  While in Asia, we had traveled to many other places together, throughout Asia, and even to Singapore, Malaysia, & the Philippines. Coming back to Roxboro, it just felt like my team should have been with me there too.  The change of geography was not what I grieved, but it was the breaking of those relationships and that manner of living life together with that rent my soul.

We're now here in Roxboro to be the church, on mission with God and His people here as a team.  God is a God on mission to reconcile the world to a restored relationship with Himself and the church (those reconciled) is His plan for changing the world.  Why should we live any differently here than in East Asia? Why should I keep everyone at arm's length and never really get to know anyone (or let them know me)?  "All authority on heaven and earth has been given to Me (Jesus)" includes Roxboro too.  "As you are going, make followers of Me from all nations".  Jesus let your people in Roxboro truly be your Body, your hands & feet & mouthpiece in demonstrating how high & wide & long & broad your love is to the world!  Let us know each other, so we can really love each other.  Thanks God, for remembering Roxboro, too.

We know it's not gonna be an easy mission, and we've been reminded that getting to know people takes time.  And we even realize that many who have also gone by the name of "church" have given the impression that God is distant or discrimminating.  And yet we're pumped to see what God has in store.