Its been awhile since our last post.  Part of that was intentional.  The other part?  Well if we’re being honest, it was insecurity.

The Intentional.

It’s been a month since our family arrived in Scotland, a truly unique season for us as we’ve been immersed in our new surroundings.  Not wanting to live life through our screens and wishing to take it all in without rushing to convey our “expert analysis” that inevitably comes from spending all of 15 days in a culture that has existed for a few millennia, we chose the path of being quiet.  It has served us well.  The first few days were filled with sleeping at odd hours, dealing with illness, and seeking to find some sense of normalcy.  We took driving lessons with our supervisor and learned how to interact in culturally appropriate ways with neighbors, shop keepers, and the Postman. We explored our city, got to know team members, met with Scottish church leaders, and received helpful field training.

We love living in Scotland.  Erin and I will often look over at one another at the end of a long day and say “Can you believe we are here doing this?!”  “Would you have ever guessed God would see fit to let us live out a season of our lives in this way and in this place?!” We are savoring the newness and seeking to embrace the uniqueness of this season of being fresh on the field by trying new things, taking risks in sharing our faith, making new friends, and enjoying the richness and the history of the culture around us.

The Insecurity

“Do you even work?  All you did today was mail a letter, meet a new friend for coffee, and not die while driving.”

That’s a real conversation I’ve had in my head, multiple times and yes I know, it’s extremely misguided.

Here is another one that rattles around in there from time to time:

“Real missionaries go to the jungle.  Real missionaries don’t get the comforts of familiar language.  Real missionaries go to places where people worship statues and farm animals. Real missionaries can’t go to the local supermarket and pick up Ben & Jerry’s. You’re not a real missionary.”

There are a lot of comforts here, but that doesn’t make the task before us any easier.

From personal experience I can say there are missional components that are more favorable in a place like Asia where you stick out like a smile on Bill Belichick’s face and everyone and their roommate wants to talk to you about your hope in Jesus.  That doesn’t negate the immense sacrifice those who serve in that region make, it’s just to say, there are different scales of difficulty and sacrifice.

Unique challenges present themselves when you walk the streets with people who look like you, have the same basic constructs of a shared culture, and who have a long standing perception of what it means to be a Christian.

It’s the familiarity that can be the hardest. In leaning into the familiar you underestimate the toll that the key differences in culture will take on you (we will have another blog post soon about some of the major differences in culture we have experienced since arriving here) and your left constantly comparing the productivity and expertise you had in your previous life with the uncertainty and vulnerability your presently experiencing.

The question we have to answer each day is this, “Were we faithful?”  If we can say yes then we can have confidence that God will take the seemingly random, often mundane moments of small risks and make of them something that will break through into eternity. Taken one day at a time, these early days don’t make much sense, but the Lord challenges that notion when we reflect back on this first month.

In the time that we have been here we have learned to drive ourselves around with a completely new set of dynamics, we have set up bank accounts, enrolled Mckinley in pre-school and registered with the National Health Service.  We have started to become familiar faces in a neighborhood we had previously never laid eyes on, have loved on not yet believers by opening first our mouths and then our home, sharing our faith, and studying the Bible.  We have made new friendships with Scottish brothers and sisters all while dreaming of ways we can join together to expand the Kingdom with the good news of the King.

The point isn’t to pat ourselves on the back and say well done.  It’s just to remind ourselves that something special happens when you begin to string together a few seemingly isolated and uneventful days.  It’s called the long game, and were just getting started.