Transitions

This is my dilemna, I have had so many things I'm thinking about lately, but I can't really understand what I'm thinking about or tell other people about it so well until I have slowly and painstakingly written about it. Not painstakingly, just taking the time out of a busy schedule to actually do these things. So the other day I have literally spent a couple of hours typing up about topics that are on the forefront of my mind, or that have been stewing in the background. I find that there is just so much information that I am not sure where to stop.

The reality is, I feel inspired to express these things, but I often feel that people are disinterested in engaging in real conversation about these kinds of things. But I think I have had many interesting experiences, I just don't know how to relate them to other people very well.

It's hard because everyone has seen the missionary photos, everyone has heard the assortment of missionary stories. I even forget that with my brother having lived in Tanzania for nearly a year, he was practically camping for that whole time until he came to visit me in Calarasi, Romania, which was like a gradual reverse culture shock for him. Since that part of Romania is not as extreme a situation as Tanzania is, but it is a more extreme situation than Waukesha or Weyerhauser Wisconsin, it was for him a type of gradual transition back to first-world civilization. I know he learned a lot from and grew loads from that time in Tanzania, but sometimes I don't even know how to understand it better.

I think I've been in such an interesting time of life, too, because I have had so much back and forth, so many moves, so many changes throughout all my adult life - so far. When I was 20 I went to Romania for a month, I came home and worked at my jobs discontented and longing to travel again. When I was 21 I went back to Romania for a month and a half, this time with some knowledge of the language (although limited in understanding oral speech). Again I returned home to my jobs discontented and with the desire to go again. I studied my Romanian, kept in touch with friends abroad, etc. and aimed to go to Romania long term. The thing that stopped me from going long term, aside from not being fully funded, was that my sister was getting married in the Summer. In my mind I would "go home for a visit" but God extended my visit into about one and a half years. The next time I went to Romania "long term" I was in the beginning stages of my relationship with Rex. That year I moved 8 or 9 times just between different housing situations in the ministry, not to mention my regular overnight stays in one of the villages. Often when going to Romania for a month or two I would do so at the same time as terminating my current employment situation and then return home mostly broke and having to restart again from scratch. So I changed jobs a number of times over these years because I was a wanderer who wanted to find my home abroad.

I suppose that is now what is happening, in a mid-term sense of the word and with a change of direction. I am now about to go to Taiwan for a year, start a new job from scratch, learn the language, get to know my new family more closely, and hopefully be a light of God's truth to them. It's home, a home I've only experienced for three weeks, but home nonetheless. I'm going to another home with my husband. It's just a much more adventurous home (for me and my limited Chinese abilities) than being at my home here in Wisconsin.

I hope to teach English. I've never done that before, but I am glad that God has put me in some teaching/leading positions with children to begin experiencing what it takes to lead a large group well. I remember how hard it was to do just that using a second language in Romania, but my Romanian is far more advanced than my Chinese. So I really don't know what will be involved on a practical level there.