An update for Ada

I don't really know what to say about this, except that Hannah is really enjoying being in America for a while. :)

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:3-4

It's been a while, and a certain someone (Ada Wiisanen) has been after me to update this, so I decided while the house was quiet this morning, I would do just that. There's a lot to tell you, but there's not a lot to tell you at the same time. Life is pretty much what you would expect--I go to work, Marc works at home, the kids go to school, we talk to Sarah Beth frequently, and then we do all of that all over again. We get to see people we haven't seen in a while, we get to do things that are American, we get to eat food we haven't eaten for a while...that's not very interesting stuff to write about, is it? It's fun, and we're enjoying all of that (although American food makes my feet swell...how much salt is there in prepackaged stuff?!), but I'm pretty sure a monologue about eating at a particular restaurant isn't why you log on and read this blog. (If it is, get help. Seriously...something is not quite right with that!)

One of the things we are really enjoying about being home is the many opportunities we have had and will have (especially in the next two months) to talk to churches and associations about the work going on in Europe. I love to speak to different groups about the amazing view of God we've been given during our time on the mission field. It is definitely a unique experience, and we are always thrilled to talk about it. I love the questions we get--everything from food we eat overseas to whether or not we're afraid to live in Russia. People are curious about the language, the kind of people Russians and Czechs are, the places we lived, what we've seen, how our children like being MKs...generally anything about our lives overseas. But what they get really excited about is when we talk about how all of those ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) things have given God opportunities again and again to show Himself faithful, not just to our little family, but to people all over the world. It is an exciting story, and we are honored to tell it. We also love the chance to thank Southern Baptists all over the U.S. for giving to Lottie Moon and the Cooperative Program, the mechanisms our denomination uses to fund our ministry overseas. We will be doing a lot of that in the next two months, and we're so excited to be able to do that. We are headed out this morning to St. Johns county, where we'll be speaking at a missions conference for the next two days spread out all over the St. Johns Baptist Association. While I know I will be tired by the time we arrive home Sunday night, I am very excited about the chance to tell His story to more people.

Work is fine. I'm so grateful for the job and the steady income it's providing. And I, of course, love to teach. But it's clear to me that my career as a teacher does not have the hold on me it used to have. I'm enjoying myself, I'm loving kids, I'm loving the chance to talk about great books and writing and grammar, but it isn't an enticement for me to stay on this side of the pond like we thought it would be. I prayed and prayed about taking the job, because I was worried (along with Marc and our closest friends) that Marc would never get me back to the mission field. But it has not been that way at all. I'm enjoying it, I'm grateful for it, but I definitely have a sense that I don't fit in that world very well anymore. People are very nice and gracious to me, but I'm definitely an outsider in a way that I wasn't before. And, of course, in three years the school has changed a great deal. I don't know all that many people. So I go, I teach my classes, I do my best to love kids, and then I go home and live my "real" life.

Other than that, life just goes on. We are filling out paperwork to return to the field, working on getting medical clearance for us and the kids, and trying to take every opportunity to do fun stuff together. We are not quite sure where we are heading back to, and that's a long story that I won't get into, but we like the different options we've been given. We are praying through them, listening to the different voices around us, and waiting for God to reveal His perfect plan. One thing I have definitely learned in the last three years is that I would rather follow His plan in every situation. His best is always better than whatever plan I concoct on my own. And He is so faithful to reveal Himself and His plan if we just listen. So we're living our life, going to our speaking engagements, and having a lot of fun...but always with an ear to the ground to see what God may be telling us about what is next.

So that's it. The whole story of our life in America. Okay, probably not the whole story, but the amount of the story I have time to write about this morning. We are glad to be here, but we miss being there. We desperately miss our friends overseas, American, Czech and Russian. We are thrilled to give witness to how God has been at work, but we are also looking forward to the way God will continue to be at work in our lives and in the nations. And we are honored that God chose our little pot-of-clay family to be witnesses to what He is doing around the world. So there you go, Ada. There's your update. Wherever you are in the world, I pray that no matter how ordinary your life may seem, you are constantly aware of the way God is at work, and that you are looking forward to a couple of days of doing nothing but talking about God's work in your life, too. Blessings to you and yours!

His,
Kellye