This blog is current, but we'll be post-dating our China blogs starting in the next couple of days. Stay posted to see what God's doing in Tibet!
The race is over! It’s hard to believe so much could be shoved into eleven months, and that such a time could move by as quickly as it did. We are thankful for the opportunity to see God at work in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and to see His glory shine in places we could never have imagined.
While we’re thankful to be back in the States (currently camping in the Northwest), we’re still processing what it means to be “home” and what that looks like for us. We’re still learning what it means to be alone together, to no longer be surrounded by at least four other people, and how we work at actually making decisions again. I’m happy to say it’s been going amazingly well, and we’re happy to continue soaking up uninterrupted (we still don’t have cell phones!) time as a couple.
Some of the more humorous things we’re still learning are below:
- We no longer need to throw away our toilet paper, but can actually flush it. This hasn’t been the case for the past four months so there are still moments of hesitation in the bathroom.
- The prices we see are actually the prices. There’s no conversion rate to consider so we know the money actually being spent. It’s a little disappointing to realize that this water which cost 2 yuan in China (about 30 cents) actually costs $2 here. But, oh wait! We don’t need to buy water any more because:
- We can drink the tap water!
- The outlets work! And the current won’t add to the destruction of our electronics!
- We drive on the right hand side of the road here. We also walk on sidewalks/in stores on the right. I tend to still gravitate toward the left and then screw up those around me – dang left-hand siders!
- No language barriers! People here speak English, and for most of them it’s a first language. It’s a bit harder to talk in code now, but a whole lot easier to communicate in general.
- What you buy/order is actually what you get. On the race we would often find that what we thought was being purchased was actually something else entirely. Ooh! A packet of instant coffee/hot chocolate? No. That’s actually butter flavoring for your popcorn. A regular Caesar salad? Nope. This one’s got dried fish in it. Eat up!
- It’s rude to eat your food before those around you get theirs. Ooops! While abroad, we found it was common for one person to get his/her food 30-45 minutes before someone else. We then got into the habit of eating as soon as a plate was brought out, and no one was offended. That’s just how it worked. We’re slowly relearning that such behavior is not exactly kosher in the States!
We’re trying to take these days of transition to reinforce life lessons learned on the race to… well, life. It was easy to keep these things in mind while we were still on the race and surrounded by the people who saw us walk through the mess of learning, but it’s a bit trickier to keep in step independently. World Race has been called a pressure cooker of Christianity and it’s true. We learned a whole bunch in a short time period, and we don’t want this knowledge to fall out of place just because it’s not convenient.
So as we come home, as we determine God’s next steps for us, we ask for your patience and grace. The race did give us an opportunity to learn and to grow, and we took that chance. But we’re still people who struggle with a lot of things and who often grow impatient, frustrated, and unloving. We’re still learning to fight for our relationship with God and to fight complacency. It’s a good and worthwhile battle—it’s worth it—though not easy.
So in advance we thank you for your patience. We thank you for your continued love. We thank you for understanding that we’re tired but that exhaustion can’t be an excuse forever – eventually we need to get over that. We thank you for calling us out. And of course, we thank you for your continued prayer!
