To be honest I have no catchy or funny title for today’s post so we are all stuck with something quite generic! 

Sometimes we miss home. I’m not sure what this means anymore, to miss a place that is no longer home yet feels like home inside but we miss it. Most of the time this is certainly missing friends but sometimes it’s just missing Chili’s Chips and Salsa or a milkshake that is so thick your head might explode (and you might be perfectly fine with that).

Many times it’s missing to be able to clearly communicate because no matter how well you know a language there is still how you USE the language that matters. It’s something as a native American we’ll probably never get to and that’s ok. 

There’s also the thought that this is home. We, more or less, miss the snapshot of home from when we left. It’s a difficult but consistently communicated theory- what we miss is the image of home when we left it because home, as it were, doesn’t really exist anymore. We’ve all moved on, changed, grown, added or subtracted from our life. Nothing will be the same (again totally fine). It actually makes me quite happy to know the next time we visit any supporting church in America that we won’t recognize most of the people there. It adds to the challenge but also is exciting to know that God’s kingdom is moving and expanding all the time. 

All this to say that we admit what every missionary or traveler faces from time to time: it’s hard to be away and with time it grows a little more difficult because you aren’t sure where home is anyway. To be quite clear France (mainly Descartes) is home for us. We see this town as my home for many years to come and am quite happy to be living that. We also see our work, helping people at the very least see the Jesus of the Bible and know that God loves them, as what we should be doing at this season of our lives. 

For example, people ask us all the time if “Ophelia misses home” or if she “Enjoys school here in France.” These are difficult questions because: Ophelia has now spent almost 50% of her life away from the states and most of this time was her sleeping or drinking out of a bottle. She also has no idea of what school was like in America as every minute of her school life has been spent here. 

We’ve always been told that missionaries aren’t superheroes, just people living life where they’ve been called.  Now that we see superheroes in a more human light (a subject for another day) we also can see ourselves in with a fuller perspective!
It’s OK to have days where you say, ‘sheesh, what in the world am I doing?’ or ‘is this really what I should be doing?’ or ‘it would be nice just to be able to have something ‘normal’ happen.’ All while understanding that the new normal, even after two years, still seems abnormal. 

We’ve really enjoyed the communication we’ve had with several of you in the last month or two. It’s tremendously encouraging to know that we truly are one big family of God or at the very least have some of the same interests at heart. We’ve been asking ourselves a lot lately, ‘how can we communicate better with our friends and supporters who live across the ocean’ and ‘how can we communicate our needs when sometimes they include praying for people or situations that are very delicate’. It seems the best way to do this is to create a private Facebook group that will allow us to share memories and prayer requests for you in a way that honors the dignity of what we do and values many of our friends far from God here in Descartes and Loches. When we launch this group, do make sure to join it! (We’ll be sending either requests via facebook or letting you know via mail or messager). 

Also, Greg has been wondering if a Youtube Q and A where you are open to ask your questions to us live might be helpful. To do this of course we would need to figure out the best time for many people and the best way to manage this chat. If this sort of live Q and A environment seems like a good idea to many of you (you would be typing the questions and we would be answering) let us know! If there are enough missions teams, individuals or supporters who have any type of questions and would be willing to watch this would be a wonderful way to answer questions all at once! 

Thanks for reading and your continued support and prayer of everything that is going on here in the Sud Touraine.