11/06/2015
Life continues on, even when you are lost.
We had beautiful weather for the ice cream social last weekend. It was so nice to be able to thank our supporters face-to-face.
Another huge thank you to everyone for your love, prayers, encouragement and financial support while we served God in Guatemala.
Our family has been back in Pennsylvania now for just under a month. We found a home for rent in Blue Ball, we each have a car and Andrew starts his job on Monday. We are so thankful for these needs being met.
Now that we are getting settled in we are beginning to experience the stages of grief, which is very normal for missionaries as they reenter their home country. But I do not think we realized how hard it would truly hit us.
Over and over again we have been asked if we are loving being back home. Our normal response is, "yes, it is great to see our friends, family and to be back at Summit View." But often we leave out the hard parts because it hurts.
For the past six years or so we had been preparing to become missionaries. We knew it was in His plans but we did not know how, when or where. We faithfully followed Him, moving in with parents, selling all of our belongings, preparing financially, quitting great jobs, and saying, 'bye' to all of our loved ones. We gave up so much to be missionaries. And if i could go and redo the past i would 100% do it all over again. That is not the point though. We willingly gave up everything and now, it is all over. It is all over.
It feels like we have lost our identity. Who are we now? Where do we start? What does God want us to do?
We are praying for discernment and patience. Life would be so much easier if we were to just jump back into our old lives. But that is not in His plans. We need time to deal with our grief and time to heal from our hurts and pains.
As things settle down our hearts are hurting because we miss the friends and relationships in Guatemala they we had worked so hard on.
We see pictures of children from orphanages who begged to come to our house after church week after week.
We see videos of the beauty of Guatemala and it just seems so unbelievable that we lived there. So many memories crammed into that one year.
Aubri and Drew are also big bundles of messed up emotions. Sad to leave their 'neighborhood bff's', happy to run and be crazy with all of the cousins, sad because of the reminders that grandma died, happy to be getting settled in, you get my point. Please pray for them as well. Our family is working on building stability and somewhat of a routine. We often get asked if we plan to go back to Guatemala. We say, "to visit and do trips, yes. But to live, no." We plan to stay in Pennsylvania to live.
As time goes on, there are many opportunities appearing for us to help missionaries that are serving in Guatemala. We do see that in the future and have hope that we will return to Guatemala to see some of those smiling little faces that we grew to love.
At this time I want to let you know that we will be keeping this page to post updates on any future trips that we may go on or different ministry opportunities to help serve Guatemala. The need there is so great and we feel God put us there for our brief time to build connections with many different ministries and missionaries, and we plan to put that to good use.
Also i would like to say that we will not be offended if you decide to not follow us on this page any longer.
Thank you all again for helping us be the hands of Jesus in Guatemala!
