Revive Us Again

Nancy and I have been home in Colorado for about 10 days now and we are over our jetlag. Tabouli, our cat, is delighted to have us back and to be back home, himself. He stayed most of the time in another home with another family plus a cat and two dogs. We have made it through a drastic temperature and humidity change… much drier and much, much cooler here. Would you believe that it dropped to 13.7 degrees Fahrenheit at our house just five days after our return? Denver broke the record low for that date by 8 degrees! Welcome home!

But those are just the surface adjustments. Anyone who has moved back and forth between two worlds that are separated not only by thousands of miles but also by language and culture differences, any such person can tell you that it’s hard to shift gears from one to the other. Part of it is that you tend to develop two different lives that are peopled with different friends and colleagues and shaped by two different roles that are appropriate to those two different worlds.

When none of our friends are in both worlds, it becomes all the harder to integrate those two worlds. It is easier to compartmentalize our friends, our roles, our experiences and keep them separate. But we want to fight against that. It is our goal to integrate as much as possible our two worlds to the benefit of both sides and to the building up of God’s kingdom. We want to share our China stories with folks in the west and we want to share our Western stories with our friends in China. Where possible, we want to introduce those worlds to each other.

So we are trying to shift those gears. Our role in China and Taiwan was mostly to build up believers who are serving far from home. Now that we are home, we must, necessarily, go back to enlarging our team of prayer and financial supporters, without which we can’t make our next trip.

One way to integrate those worlds is to show you pictures of where we have been and tell you some of the stories of God at work over there. If you are already a supporter, it will encourage you to keep on praying for us and for the dear people we, together, are serving. And if you are not yet a supporter, it might motivate you to get on board. And for us? For us it will help integrate our two worlds of service by bringing them into fellowship with each other.

Let us hear from you if you are willing to spend about 90 minutes connecting with us face to face. Or if you are willing to host a gathering of a few like-minded folks so that we can introduce them to this ministry, give us a shout. It will revive us to hear your stories and see God at work on this side of the ocean, as well.