Category Archives: Family

Missionary Construction

Anthropology, Commentary, Computing, Family, Linguistics, , ,

I’m not sure if missionary construction is more or less well known than missionary linguistics, but they are likely both a bit of a mashup for most people. I took this picture on my way home last week (stuck in holiday traffic, plenty of time to get the shot…) as one of a series of vehicular graveyards I’ve seen across the decades almost everywhere I go in Africa. Typically, it makes me think of how things fall apart here, and how little people probably expected this outcome to whatever they started out doing.

But today I’m reading one of my favorite missionary biographies, “To the Golden Shore”, by Courtney Anderson, on Adoniram Judson. I identify with him in a number of ways. The call to pioneer. Depression. Fruit and very painful circumstances almost constantly mixed. Bible translation.

It was this last that struck me today. This was the passage, presumably from one of his letters:

I sometimes feel alarmed [he reported] like a person who sees a mighty engine beginning to move, over which he knows he has no control. Our house is frequently crowded with company; but I am obliged to leave them to Moung En, one of the best of assistants, in order to get time for the translation. Is this right? Happy is the missionary who goes to a country where the Bible is translated to his hand. (pp398-9)

Perhaps the most important sentence in this section is “Is this right?” How can a missionary set aside talking to potential converts, to work on a book maybe no one will ever read? This must strike the conscience, and it must be dealt with.

The correct answer, I think, has to do with the relationships between longer term and shorter term strategic priorities. What can I do today that will make tomorrow better in some way? To just push off people is unconscionable, but so is continuing to labor day to day with no effort to get the scriptures to those who are (or even may be) converted.  So Adoniram made the tough (and I think open to criticism) choice of delegating daily evangelism for the sake of the future growth and health of the church.

For me, there are two problems with this. First of all, I’m working another step removed. I’m not working so that a single people group will have the scriptures some day. I’m working on systems, and training and raising up workers, so that all of central Africa will have scriptures that speak with power. So it’s an even longer term investment than daily translation for a single people group.

But the other problem is the message of the vehicular graveyards. Who ever built (or bought, shipped, maintained, etc) a car so it would decorate some corner of the forest as it decomposed? I even saw a rusting carcass of a printing press once. Certainly that was bought and shipped there with the idea that it would help the missionary enterprise, not that it would just take oxygen out of the air.

So what will become of my work? I know nothing lasts in this world, but as I consider longer term strategic priorities, I must consider the possibility that I shoot so far out, that nothing comes of it before it starts decomposing. My time in DRCongo felt a bit like this; I planned for ten years, and prepared and built tools with that horizon in mind, but they weren’t used very much when we left only four years later.

So I try to constantly mix planning horizons. I feel the pull Adoniram described, to work for future missionaries, so I must set aside time for that. Added to this is the repeated realization that I know no one with the vision or capability to do what I’m doing now (not bragging, just reality; this is a niche work).

But Kim and I also sing in the church choir most weeks, and I lead several of the men of the church in Bible study most Saturdays. These are each a different horizon (making worship happen this week and growing up future leaders), but they both address the question of the people right here in front of me.

Then there’s the team that’s actively translating the scriptures, without understanding the tone writing system developed for them some fifty years ago. Has the language’s tone system changed? Probably. Has tone and writing system theory changed in that time? Definitely. Can I help them get back on track? I hope so.

Then there are A→Z+T users, present and future. I’ve been doing a lot of prep work for a tone workshop in the spring, which involves getting people up to speed with A→Z+T and evaluating their trained for the workshop. During this time, I’ve gotten to interact (face to face, by email, and through zoom) with people at different levels of competence and preparation, so I’ve gotten a broader vision for what A→Z+T’s user base will most likely look like.

Sometimes the user question is addressing specific issues, other times it’s fixing things in a more principled way, to avoid future issues. But I’m also working on a workshop presentation and book chapter to help potential users get a vision for what is now possible.

So it feels like running a sprint, a 5k, and a marathon, all at the same time (not that I’ve ever run a marathon, but I imagine…)

But it gives me courage that I’m not the first one to confront these questions, even if some of the details are new. Adoniram didn’t have Python, Autosegmental theory, or object oriented programming (though he did have snakes, elephants and tigers), but he did know the difficult task of prioritizing the needs in front of him today, and what most be done (today) to prepare for tomorrow.

And when I think of Adoniram’s first ten years of missionary service, including a death prison, the loss of his first wife and several children, along with any hope that his translation work would be preserved through the Anglo-Burman war, I’m encouraged to know that God did preserve that translation work, though a series of improbable coincidences. And he ultimately built his church in Myanmar on it, with generations of Christians using that translation to great effect.

So apparently (he comes to realize, again) God does know what he’s doing, even if His planning horizons are even longer and more complex than we can imagine. So please join me in prayer, that the One worshipped by the magi would lend me some of His wisdom in these days, as I sort through what to do when, and prioritize appropriately long term strategies that will produce fruit that will last.

Merry Christmas!

Family,

Our choir, Sunday morning after Christmas. This group has been a blessing to us in the ups and downs of the last couple years.

Totally coincidence that our robes match the children’s Christmas program poster (which Kim made…😅) Smiles are courtesy of Anna, whose drama made us laugh. 🙃

Merry Christmas everyone!

A→Z+T

Family

I’ve talked through with many of you the project that is framing almost all of my work now, but the other day we realized I hadn’t fully introduced it here. It is a public and openly licensed project, at github.com/kent-rasmussen/azt, where there is a ton of documentation, and all you need to install and run it —in case you’re interested. 😉

In case it isn’t clear, this is a new methodology to accomplish a lot of the same work we’ve been doing for decades, bringing together methods and philosophy that I’ve long been told are incompatible. Anyway, well see about that…

#FluentReadingMakesPowerfulBibles

My June 6 Ebenezer

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I will always remember where I was that warm Wednesday afternoon, standing in our tiny second-floor apartment in the living room of the married student housing for the University of Oregon. I had just walked in from teaching my sweet Grade 3 & 4 class at Lifegate Christian School. I was rocking the baggy denim teacher dress of the 90’s. Kent told me right away to check the answering machine (remember those?)

Returning from Kenya in 2000. We were babies!

See, we had been applying for membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators. We had met in Wycliffe training school, served overseas together for a year teaching Wycliffe kids/doing linguistics and felt very clearly called to pursue work somewhere in the world getting Bibles in the hands of those without. Kent had applied years before on his own in the middle of a dark season and been rejected. We were told we should finish his MA in Linguistics and reapply. He was entering his final year, so in January we had a friend ask a friend at Wycliffe Headquarters if we should reapply now. The news we received was crushing. They did not want us to reapply at all.

We got that call one dark, cold January night and immediately got on our faces. How had we followed Jesus down this path for so many years and now it was blocked? All doors closed. Not just closed, but bolted shut. Had we heard wrong? Did He really want us to do something different? We surrendered it to his hands, fell asleep and waited. A few days later, a call was scheduled with the Director of Recruitment. He had some questions. Because of my work schedule and the time difference, we were meeting over the phone at 6:00am. I am not sure exactly what happened in that 45-minute phone call, but it began with a list of all the reasons they never wanted to hear from us again, and ended with him begging us to reapply and that he would like to handle our application personally! (He even drove several hours out of his way the next month to meet with us personally on a business trip – and bought us fried chicken! Grad students cannot be picky.)

We were elated to see God miraculously open this door that seemed firmly closed. We began all the paperwork. There were forms to fill out, essays to write, Bible knowledge tests, interviews and finally medical exams. We were working around our full-time student and teacher roles, so it took a few months to get it all done. The Director had told us that they met to review applications once per month and the last meeting before summer holiday would be June 6. All of our papers were in except for my medical form from my doctor, which had been mailed from Oregon to Florida several weeks earlier.

We began to wonder if it were lost in the mail, or lost in their office, or just where it went! This too, felt like another obstacle that we did not understand, and that we were powerless to move. The Director was praying that it would arrive. We were praying that it would arrive. And day after day it was not there. The Director called us the day before the vote to let us know that it had not arrived, so our application was incomplete and we would need to wait another several weeks for the next meeting to vote. It was such a disappointment after we can come so far in so many months. We tried to trust in God’s timing.

As I hit “Play” on the message machine that June afternoon, the Director had called again. He described how he took the elevator down to the mail room on his way to the 9:00am meeting just in case my medical form had arrived extra early – and there it was! Who gets mail before 9:00am on a Wednesday morning? Right on the top of all the mail for the day was the very missing letter we had been praying for for weeks! And it arrived the hour before the meeting to vote. He was able to add it to our application, deemed it complete and present it to the board. They all unanimously voted us in as members of Wycliffe Bible Translators! What a message!

Revelation 3:7-8 say, “What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open. I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close.”

We had seen God open doors that were firmly bolted and locked, and these closed doors had taught us to keep our eyes on Him, not on our circumstances. There would be several times over the next few years that I looked back on this process in 2001, and because of how it all happened, I KNEW without a shadow of a doubt that we were on the path that Jesus chose for us to walk. It was a confirmation that kept us going through 9/11 (and flying to Wycliffe’s Training Camp right afterward), assignment to Eastern Congo when their president had just been assassinated, raising support, and so much more that followed that year.

June 6 is more to me than an ‘Ebenezer’ (rock of remembrance) about membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators – 20 years, it is an Ebenezer to God’s ways being higher than mine.

A New Thing

Family

Something very new and exciting is happening at our house! We have a new arrival.

It’s a bird!

It’s a plane!

No, it’s an app!

While Kent and I were cloistered with our kids during months of lockdown last spring, we saw trips and plans blow away like sand. He typically travels to villages where they want to work on their writing system, but we would never want to be part of bringing a remote group Coronavirus. There was no end in sight to the lockdowns, and no guarantees that the pre-COVID world we freely traveled would ever return. We could see that Kent’s alphabet work needed to shift to a certain extent in order to continue. We urgently want to see languages written/recorded before they die out and disappear. We urgently want to see communities have access to important written materials, Scriptures, health manuals, etc.

One afternoon as we were pondering all this, we dreamed up a new thing. What if there was a cell phone app that would allow the rural, local communities to work on their languages without a lot of help and training, and we could consult at least in part, at a distance? We could get a computer program to do much of the work that we would usually do in a workshop setting in a village. We would need something low-bandwidth for Central Africa (where most of the remaining unwritten languages are in this region). We would need something that was easy to use for folks who don’t have computer experience. It would need to handle databases that can archive online. There were several criteria.

We spent a few weeks corresponding with various IT colleagues in our offices around the world, hoping to find that others had already developed something close. There was one program which did part of what we needed, but we soon learned that it would not be supported in the future. There was another more complex program which required extensive training, but sadly it required constant internet access, which does not work in Central Africa. So finally, Kent decided he would just need to learn programming languages and write the program himself.

We named it A to Z and T, as it helps identify the vowels (like A), the consonants (like Z) and the tone system (T) in languages. AZT is a Dictionary Checker, and Orthography Checker and can record and play back audio of each word in the context of phrases (in various tone frames). It has the potential to be able to build alphabet charts or alphabet books. This all used to be done on paper cards sorted into piles. Now the computer does the sorting, but we kept the cards in the logo.

It was amazing to see Kent’s decades of linguistics, phonology and tone research merge with his love of computers, and to see that God wastes nothing. It is ALL useful! Beginning in July, he began to construct the bare bones of the program. Along the way, I consulted on the interface and making it easy to use and easy on the eyes. We have often wished for a way to work together better, but never imagined it would be like this. We spent September and October adding various functions. It is not yet ready for cell phones, but it is working on computers.

And this week Kent is running it with language data for the first time. It could be the birth of a new era in language development. There is a lot of potential yet to come. We are praying that God would use AZT far and wide to accelerate writing systems for unwritten languages throughout Central Africa.

ARC-EN-CIEL

Family

The ‘Arch in the Sky’ is the way the French say ‘rainbow’.

The little prop planes we took over the rainforest in Congo didn’t have instrumentation to fly through clouds and storms without visibility. So often we would get up in the air and then need to fly around isolated thunderstorms. Once we got to see lightning strike the earth from the top down! It was amazing. Another time we flew right up into a huge rainbow. I watched out the little round window to my right as the rainbow suddenly surrounded the entire plane!

I have been pondering circles, see SHALOM post here, and the rainbow is light and water surrounding us in a perfect circle. I used to always think about Noah and God’s promise in Genesis never to destroy the planet with a flood ever again. It made me smile to think of God’s promise every time I spotted the beautiful arches in the sky.

In the book of Revelation, God takes it to the next level. We get a glimpse of what the throne of God looks like and guess what is there?!

“And around the throne was a rainbow…” Rev 4:3

God is Light, in Him there is no darkness at all. And the full spectrum of light includes every color. God is surrounded by a rainbow. I have been thinking a lot about how this sign of promise is not only for us to look at, but it is also a sign for God to look at.

I have always loved color and blending/mixing colors. My childhood bedroom had rainbow plaid wallpaper, rainbow heart bedspread and a rainbow suncatcher (hey – it was cool in the 80s). But now I know the throne room of Almighty God is surrounded by a rainbow, the complete arc-en-ciel. Last month, I had been feeling compelled to paint this full-circle rainbow and kept putting it off. I had other things to do. Other tasks were more urgent. I delayed and delayed. I spent time in prayer one weekend and felt that I should paint it even more urgently. And still I put it off. You’re on thin ice when God asks you to do something and you drag your feet.

I kid you not, 24 hours after the prayer weekend ended (and I still hadn’t painted that rainbow circle), I went to take in laundry off the line and found two of the brightest rainbows in the sky I have EVER seen in my life. All the neighbors came out. Everyone stopped making dinner. We all just marveled and took pictures for at least an hour.

It felt like a clear nudge to me. I painted those circles the next day! They say a wedding ring is a symbol of covenant love because it does not have an ending or beginning. It surrounds. So is the rainbow like that? Like a heaven-sized wedding ring promising relationship? It feels like a hug from God for me to even think about it. Sneak Peek at my painting:

The Light is brightest on the inside. The darkness is on the outside. I will have to write more on this later. So many things in this Light… in these colors.

There are seasons of trial where we could all use a big hug from God, where we could all use a few minutes remembering his promises to his people. This ‘light and water vapor’ – it surrounds us all the time. We just can’t see it with human eyes all the time. It surrounds us. And it surrounds him too. Many many hard days this year, I have stopped to marvel at the spectrum of light that surrounds his throne.

We will be there.

It will be glorious.

And all will have real and complete justice and healing.

I have great hope in the mucky moments here and now because I can look to what is coming.

Hope you can too.

SHALOM

Family

Have you ever studied the Hebrew word ‘shalom’? It is a fascinating study! It means SO much more than the English word ‘peace’. It involves a wholeness, a wellness that surrounds all of the soul. My journey back to painting and the arts began in therapy in 2013. I was finding it difficult to describe my feelings and impressions after life in Congo. My therapist asked, “Could you paint them?” and immediately I rejected the idea. “No, I don’t think so,” I replied.

Oh me of little faith.

Suddenly, 2-3 images in bright color flashed across my mind. I reluctantly agreed to carry the basket of children’s finger paints back to my apartment and see what would come of it. (It has taken a few years to embrace this idea of being called to art. I’m a work in process.) One of those first paintings was of shalom.

We had lived and worked several years in the UN Peacekeeper’s zone in post-war Congo. We were accustomed to a measured level of civil unrest; we knew the sounds of different guns in the distance. But three weeks before we were due to move away, riots over international politics broke out one Tuesday afternoon. Gunfire and RPGs (and fires) raged on for a couple days in town and Anna and I had hunkered down across town with friends. Our friends decided to evacuate, and several of us were hidden under blankets in the back of armed police trucks to reach the airport on the edge of town.

Something in the situation didn’t move me to leave. I wanted to stay. I still had three weeks of packing to do and goodbyes to say. Kent and the boys were still at our house. Anna and I were transferred to the airport to be ‘safe’ behind the barbed wire next to the Bangladeshi UN Peacekeeper camp.

I asked to be brought back into the city – back to our house. Initially, the police refused, saying it wasn’t safe enough. But after a few hours of flights loading up to evacuate, things were calming down in the city and they agreed to take us. We waved goodbye to the dearest of friends and returned to the back of the police truck and under the heavy blankets. I have never doubted that I would be ready to die should He ask it of me. But I had always worried about what would happen to my young children. Anna was only 5.

And under that scratchy, woolen blanket bumping along dirt roads at top speeds, I was surrounded by a peace beyond words. I knew I was going Home. Earthly home, or heavenly home. Home either way. We were both safe under the shadow of his wings either way. [Spoiler alert: We made it back to our earthly home just fine. And just in time for a very memorable family Thanksgiving the next day!]

The image in my mind was of wholeness, of wellness… of shalom. It’s a circle, whole and complete, never-ending. It is soft and gentle like bulletproof memory foam. I think this is what the Psalmist was talking about in Psalm 17:8-9 “Hide me in the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who do me violence…” Ruth was hidden under the shelter of wings. Many have described God’s peace as this soft, safe shelter. Complete shalom.

Years later, that feeling of complete safety is a clear memory. I have been pondering circles and circle images ever since. I would post you a picture of my shalom painting, but it is currently in storage in the US. Here is a quick digital sketch.

As a person who has been prone to fear and worry since childhood, it still doesn’t really make ‘sense’ that I had so much peace in that moment. I am not naturally a peaceful person. I could never have drummed up enough myself!

Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

That shalom feeling could not come from me.
It surpassed understanding.

Jesus gave it to me.

He has more than enough for you too.

Today was the Wycliffe World Day of Prayer and our theme was… you guessed it! Shalom. We prayed for shalom over so many conflicts and difficulties around the world.

Do you have a situation where you need shalom?
At school? At the office? In your family? In your country?

Our world seems to need a lot of it in 2020.


Praying shalom for you.

Hope for Current Events

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Every time I get a chance to read about how my passport country is doing, it is difficult to digest. Division seems to rule the day. One friend genuinely fears for her safety as a young single mother of two, afraid to walk her city. Another friend is marching across the landscape with her children, trying to be heard – trying to ensure their future safety. Online, people post cheap shots in both directions and true listening is elusive. Last night on a main-stream news from Wisconsin, two men from opposing sides faced off on the street. In the clip, one man shouts, “I just want a real dialogue!” When his ‘enemy’ responds, he shouts over him. They both shout over each other. Neither hears the other. Neither is listening to the other.

My Scripture reading of the day included Zephaniah 3:


“What sorrow awaits rebellious, polluted Jerusalem, the city of violence and crime!
No one can tell it anything; it refuses all correction.
It does not trust in the LORD or draw near to it’s God.
Its leaders are like roaring lions hunting for their victims.
Its judges are like ravenous wolves at evening time, who by dawn have left no trace of their prey. Its prophets are arrogant liars seeking their own gain.
Its priests defile the Temple by disobeying God’s instructions.

But the LORD is still there in the city, and he does no wrong.

The remnant of Israel will do no wrong;
they will not tell lies or deceive one another.
They will eat and sleep in safety,
and no one will make them afraid.”

Whatever the current state of your city, whatever the current chaos in the media, whatever your level of fear, perceived or real… there is hope. The LORD is still there in the city. He is where you are. And He promises a time when we can eat and sleep in safety when no one will make us afraid. It may not happen right here, right now. We may have to wait for eternity for that much peace, but there is HOPE now because we have the LORD with us in the city.

In the meantime, I pray Zephaniah’s ancient words of Truth for the Church: that we would not tell each other lies, that we would not deceive one another, that we would obey God, humbly accepting correction.

Listening to one another.

1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”


In this song When It Was Over, Sara Groves sings this verse after a fight between husband and wife, but I think it can easily apply to any division in human relationships.

There is a Hope.

There is a Love.

Even in current events.

P.S. Some of you may remember how roses remind me of HOPE from a post in 2009.
Well, this week we planted our first roses in Cameroon!

How to Leave Your Kid on the Other Side of the World

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This is all new to me. I’ve never sent a kid to college. And certainly never sent one to the other side of the world during a pandemic! There were so many skills I felt he needed. So many supplies, life lessons. So many adult things he knew nothing about. We held a little James-specific TCK Boot Camp: Banking, buses, bike safety, phone plans, health insurance, modern food systems, choosing a church and job applications. Just in case it helps another Mom going through it… I’ll detail a bit about the process.

PREPARATIONS: MOM-IN-A-BOX & HOMESICKNESS PREVENTION

Last year a good friend of mine put together what she called ‘Mom in a Box’ for her daughter heading off to college. Mom-in-a-Box included a first aid kit, some essential snacks, vitamins and a document that included subjects like: Sickness, Finances, Job, Church – things that you might definitely want to ask Mom about that first year away from home. Sickness includes which vitamins to take, which hospitals are in-network for us, etc. For James, I expanded this to include a Contacts list and a Food Source list. Contacts includes full names, address and phone numbers for local family/friends who have offered to be there for him when we cannot. Under each name I included tags: Emergency – for those who would do anything for him 24/7, Guest Room Offered/Ready – for those who offered him a place or had one ready now, and then other tags like Files or Storage – in case he needed to find things we left behind in a garage. Under Food Sources, I listed his closest grocery stores and where to find some of his favorite allergy-free foods.

I both Emailed him this document and printed it hardcopy. I filled the box with every medicine, vitamin, cream he could need, three jars of organic chicken soup, tea (for when he’s sick), a sewing kit, and an envelope. In the envelope, I wrote out 12 little post-it encouragements with prayers for his year. I only told him about them the day I left and encouraged him to pull one out and read it each month or on a hard day. I won’t be local to send him little things or visit, so I tried to front-load the Mom encouragement inside Mom-in-a-Box.

I know there is absolutely no way to avoid all homesickness, but as a TCK who has grown up in 5 countries on 3 continents, sometimes you need a piece of a place that feels like home. I wanted to provide James with that, and I’m a quilter. I quilted him a graduation stole with a fabric for each place he celebrated a birthday. I quilted him a Fibonacci Sequence quilt out of African cotton wax print (kitenge) for his bed. For graduation, he also asked for two African-style shirts and I made him matching masks. These fabrics can surround him with his TCK heritage when he needs it. This could also be done with family photos, a flag from your country other traditional wall hangings to remember your last feeling of ‘home’ on the other side of the world.

TCK BOOT CAMP

[These activities will need to be determined by where your kid will be and what they need specifically.] James had his driver’s license already, which was helpful for many other things like getting his student ID card. He wasn’t going to own a car, so instead purchased a bike, was given a helmet and awesome locks. He has complicated food allergies, planned to live on campus and get around by bike and bus, so our boot camp focused on that. We complicated things a bit further because he won’t be 18 until October, so he can’t have his own credit card yet and I had to co-sign anything to do with finances in person. We traveled to his college town 10 days before he moved in and stayed nearby so we could get to know the area well, and I’m so glad we did. We could take our time purchasing items for his dorm room ahead of the crowds, check out different churches, tour the nearby grocery stores, try out a couple allergy-friendly restaurants, etc. Here are the topics we covered and practiced in Boot Camp:
– Cell Phones: plans, payment, apps, cases, cords, etc
– Groceries: sourcing clean foods, reading ingredients, budgeting, dorm cooking
– Transportation: reading bus routes/schedules, biking rules & safety
– Banking: deposits, ATMs, cash-back, app management
– College: campus tour (with specifics in mind), ID card, first semester books

James is a kid who is usually up for an adventure if someone else plans it, but who doesn’t naturally go explore new things. This Boot Camp had some days where I required weird jobs and forced him to do them. I had a long list of tasks to master or practice and most often he could choose between, for example, planning a bus trip across town to Trader Joe’s, or walking the college campus to find his dorm room window and get his ID card and books. Our bank account appointment was thankfully on our first full day in town and they gave him his debit card on the spot, so over the next 10 days I had him do much of the purchasing on his own and then we could log into the banking app and check his account as we went. Once, the register asked him if he wanted cash back. He just froze. He’d never heard of it. These are the little things that make coming from overseas a challenge. And I’m thankful we took our time working through them day by day together.

James planned a bus route for us across town to Trader Joe’s

On top of life skills, I was teaching COVID safety as we went: Not to open doors with hands when possible, washing hands whenever possible and always before eating, etc. He would be managing it all on his own this year. He registered himself for an Amazon Student account and we ordered something to a nearby drop box. He picked it up on his own. In the grocery stores, we scouted out his favorite allergy-friendly options and noted which places have higher/lower prices. A few times I would challenge him to find three sources of broccoli (his favorite veg) and compare prices: frozen v. fresh v. steam bags. We blocked up the ice cream aisle reading ingredients and ranking which brands were better for his allergies. The one practice we didn’t fit in was a solo trip to the barber, though I did talk him through what is expected (a tip at the end) and we located a good one within walking distance.

There were two other things we did, which prepared him more on an emotional level. First, we booked an afternoon having lunch with the MK Care Coordinator of our organization. This man has kids like James on his heart, and got to debrief him about his life overseas and transition to the US, which opens the door for future connections there. Second, we participated in a campus ministry camp (all virtual this year), which placed James in an online small group of other Christian incoming freshman in his department (math/science). These were the first students he met, and his small group has gathered already a couple times at a park in these first 2 weeks. They text each other often, and it made James feel a bit of connection before beginning all virtual classes on a campus of 70,000 students.

Our final goodbyes

THE DROP-OFF

We moved him in on a Tuesday morning and spent most of the day unpacking and settling his room. We planned to stock his fridge and go out to lunch Wednesday before I left town (and flew out Friday). Having a plan is important!! We found the outlets in the dorm were all far from his desk, so in the evening I ordered a curbside pickup of cords at Lowe’s. I checked out of our AirBnB. He texted me his food wishlist and it was easy for me to find because we had toured every store in the area. We went out to lunch and got to debrief his first 24 hours of dorm life. I told him I would not park and come in, but just drop him and go. We planned out when to call and check-in. And that was it! I drove away. I didn’t want to. I had to. I did pause to bawl a moment in a parking spot. I am human. The waves have been coming for a year, and will continue another year I’m sure. It wasn’t easy, but all the planning and preparations gave me a lot of peace of mind that we were ready for whatever this first year on the other side of the world may hold!

Looking back over all the years of James’ childhood, it is obvious without a doubt that God has plans for him. It was not easy to do it solo, but better than not doing it at all. I felt the prayers for God’s Peace and Strength with me every hour. It is painful to leave the country and not take your kid with you, but I have no doubt God will continue to be faithful to James. And the Family Weekends and Holiday Breaks we will miss this year we can all surrender to Jesus. He is worthy. How to leave your kid on the other side of the world? It can only be done in obedience and worship! I also recommend having people pray! This song came on the radio on multiple stations in multiple towns across Texas as I drove away from my son: You Get the Glory.