Draining in a different way

Having grown up on a farm and owned a business I understand being tired. Melissa and I both have been through long tiring seasons. In our business, our marriage, our family, our personal lives we have seen stressed and tired states. What I am finding is that life as missionaries is pretty easy compared to the grind of chasing dollars. We don’t have a normal, uninteresting routine to wake up too. Our weeks and days all look different. Much of our “job” is about building relationships. A friend and supporter joked with me before we left that I was becoming a professional socializer. It was funny and meant in fun but also largely true. Our job is to meet people and get involved in their lives.

At the same time as this makes our lives more interesting, more pleasurable if you will we have begun to see signs of the toll being a missionary can take. It isn’t that we are doing bad or that we are completely wore out. It is the little things, being more edgy with each other, quicker to frustration things like that. For the most part it is small things.

For me personally it is a little deeper. I happened t learn Portuguese a bit quicker and being the husband it has been my job to take care of the paper work with immigrating to Brazil, locating housing, negotiating, going out to pay bills. These things are normal but in a new culture where you don’t understand how to do things, often struggle with the language it is tiring.

During Christmas we went on a mini vacation with my parents who happen to be in Brazil. The had helped us move in November then went on to their duties with Calvary Chapel. They flew to Campo Grande and we picked them up, drove the 5 hours back home only to arrive home to a brownout and insufficient power to turn on our lights or to get our fans moving. Eventually I tightened all the breakers in the box and got sufficient power to run the fans. A couple hours later a storm blew in and it got cold (70) and we all regretted having the fans on.

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The next day we opened presents then went to a resort on the other side of the border in Bolivia. It was a real nice time there, followed up by a nice trip to a little town called Bonito. Bonito has a lot of little rivers with real clear water. You can snorkel and see a lot of big fish. We finished it off in Campo Grande where they have movie theatres, shopping malls and American fast food. We ate McDonalds, Burger King and Pizza Hutt. It was a great week.

The thing is I came home more tired and less refreshed. The other side of the vacation is asking questions in Portuguese, trying to find hotels, looking for places. It is little normal things but I find I am struggling to get refreshed. I love being here and am planning to work with Roberto to start kind of a boy scout program. We want to build a canoe with some boys, camp, build fires, and that kind of thing.

Melissa is wanting to start volunteering in Bolivia at the hospital and we plan to spend some time on the river alone as a family. God is certainly continuing to open doors and lead us.

What I am seeing is the need to visit the US. To spend time in our home church. To visit with supporters. To regroup, refresh and come back re-energized for another couple years.

Pray for us as we get a footing in ministry here in Corumba. We have gotten a start in Port Esperanca and our neighborhood. We want to see a couple more things get established. A better daily routine, Melissa going to Bolivia a couple times a week, and perhaps a boys club. Pray that we hear from God on Kids schooling and the timing for us to go to the US. The kids schooling has gotten more complicated then we thought it would be. There is a lot of bureaucracy here and we need to get a lot of paperwork to have them in school here. For homeschooling with English Material we would be behind because we had chose to put them in public school in Foz. Somehow that didn’t result in them having  the right paper work to re-enter school here and we are not convinced that is the right thing. This is an example of how life here can be draining. Lots of un-educated decisions to be made.