Today is our one-year anniversary. We have been in PNG for 365 days. God has brought us so far and helped us through so much, not the least of which has been homesickness. Our kids are too young to really miss the US, and my husband is much less sentimental than I am (or maybe more emotionally detached??). Anyway, it seems that I am the only one in our family to have dealt with missing home much, which makes it all the more lonely.
But it’s getting better. So much better! Our first Christmas in PNG was really hard, but it was way back when we first got here so that was understandable and we just pushed through it. Missing my loved ones’ birthdays and special days was hard, but phone calls and emails made it bearable. Finding out after we moved 15,000 miles away that two of our best friends and my brother are atheists almost broke my heart, but God is still faithful.
All in all, I thought I was doing pretty well. It had been almost a year and I wasn’t feeling teary or nostalgic or even very lonely on a daily basis, but then we came out of the tribe for a break. That first day, I think I spent an hour and a half on Facebook looking at people’s pictures, reading about what everyone had been doing, answering a few messages. and at the end of that hour I felt very sorry for myself. I was reminded of how much I was missing. And all of a sudden being here seemed like a huge sacrifice again.
But it’s not. You think my life sounds hard? Try leaving heaven for a life of scorn and impending death. Try turning your back on your only Son, who shares in the very essence of who you are, in order to save a bunch of ingrates from the punishment they deserve.
For the next two weeks we are attending a Bible translation workshop, and we brought three Pal guys out to town with us so they can be trained to help us translate the Bible into Pal. They are not believers, and they have never been to town before. Everything is unfamiliar and scary-from the food to the living arrangements to the people to the electric lights (Chris even had to give them a short tutorial on how to use the toilet). But they came because we asked them to. And I don’t even have to ask as I watch them walk around with big eyes and uncertain treads; I know they are homesick.
So we have that in common. And we’re praying that by this time two years from now we will have something else in common-a guaranteed spot around the throne of God. Will you pray for these three guys as they spend the next two weeks away from home? And for us as we start our second year in PNG?