To the friends and family who hosted us for dinner, took us in overnight, or met us at random places in the middle of the day during our homeservice,

Homeservice. n.  The period of time given to a missionary or missionary family to return back to their native country and connect with supporters, continue to raise funds for their mission, spend time with family, eat at all their favorite restaurants, cram in doctors’ appointments, spend an incredible amount of time in the car, expect unrealistically good behavior from young children while keeping them up late and getting them up early, experience all the emotional feels when connecting with dear friends only to say goodbye again, to be completely and utterly exhausted and feel regenerated at the same time by the hugs and prayers.

We want to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  You opened up your home, you rearranged your schedule, you took us in, and you loved us as though no time had passed at all.  So as we get ready to head back to the mission field, we need to stop and take a moment to thank you–our family, friends, acquaintances, and yesterday’s strangers.

•      Thank you for the dinners you prepared for our family with food restrictions.  Thank you for calling ahead and asking what foods we missed.  Thank you for not judging or caring when our children did not finish their plates or turned up their noses at normal “American” food.  It is amazing how quickly beans and rice became their new normal.
•      Thank you for opening up your home and moving your children onto the floor to give us beds.  We are sorry that we are not easier guests to house.  We usually arrived late and exhausted and sometimes left in the early hours of the morning to get to our next presentation.  We are sorry we could not help more with the clean-up of dishes, laundry, and toys. Your kindness is remembered.
•      Thank you for the Starbucks. 
•      Thank you for sitting with us in church, for surrounding us with love and not making us feel like strangers.  Thank you for worshipping alongside us and for handing us tissues when the sound of hymns in English had tears running down our faces.
•      Thank you for letting us do laundry while we stayed with you for a few days and for letting us repack our suitcases for the umpteenth time with clean clothes instead of dirty ones.  Living out of a suitcase is exhausting, and you made it easier.
•     Thank you for the books that your children are done reading.  Thank you for giving them to our girls.  Thank you for letting us take them back to the DR so they can share them with the other missionary kids when they are done reading them.
•     Thank you for meeting us at random times to grab a drink and catch up when it was most convenient for us.  Thank you for listening to our stories and asking questions about our life.  

•      Thank you for taking me to Sprouts, letting me walk slowly down each aisle, and not laughing at me when I longingly gazed upon the rows of fresh organic produce.  Colorful fruit and veggies never looked so beautiful.  Thank you also for buying my favorite trail mix after watching me squeal in the store when I saw it on the shelf.
•      Thank you for the can of static cling spray when I was having a wardrobe malfunction during our presentation.  Seriously.  Thank you.
•      Thank you for letting our children play.  Playing with new toys, in yards, trees, and grass, and on bikes are all pastimes they miss. They had so much fun playing at your houses.  Thank you for letting them run, jump, make noise, and be kids.
•      Thank you for passing up the opportunity to cook for us and taking us out to dinner at our favorite restaurant or even going to get take-out and letting us eat in your home.  After two years, In-and-Out, Rubios, Wahoos, Panera, Robertos, CPK, and so many other yummy places were such amazing treats for us.
•      Thank you for the thoughtful gifts–gifts of encouragement that remind us of home or you.  We will treasure them and think of you often when we use them in the DR.
•      Thank you for all the forgiveness on Sunday mornings.  Getting children ready for church can usually be a stressful (and sometimes not a God-pleasing) task.  But when you get children ready in someone else’s house for all the services, all the while constantly reminding them they will need to stand up in front of the congregation somewhat well-behaved without doing such things as picking noses or lifting up dresses, that morning rarely goes without yelling and tears.  So thank you for allowing us the space and room we needed to deal with all the messiness of life that comes with Sunday mornings on homeservice.
•     Thank you also for understanding that, after talking to as many people as humanly possible before and after church, we are just plain talked out at that point.  Thank you for letting us sit on your couch and watch mindless TV while we rested after the morning’s business.  
•      Thank you for watching our children or finding us a sitter so Blake and I could have a date night or a grown-up night out.
•      Thank you for not turning your air conditioning on when we got too chilly.  We didn’t realize how we must have adjusted to the humidity and warm weather.  Thank you for letting us borrow sweatshirts and sweatpants when we visited because we just couldn’t warm up.
•      Thank you for putting your sermons and church services online.  We love staying connected with your church by listening each week along with you.  It is also great for us to hear God’s Word and hymns in our native language.
•      Thank you for mailing us all the things we forgot.  Why we couldn’t leave a house with all of our belongings is beyond me, but everywhere we stayed we seemed to leave something important.  So thank you for gathering and sending our stuff to our next location.  Even when you included things in the box that I did not want like a rubber snake that my girls think is hilarious to hide under my pillow and listen for my screams of surprise. Thank you. I am grateful.
•      Thank you for reading our newsletter and blog posts.  Thank you for asking about stories we shared.  Knowing we have supporters, friends, and families who regularly read what we write means so much to us.  Thank you for your encouraging words and follow-up questions about what we have written.  Thank you also for the grace when we miss a month or two.  Thank you for understanding that sometimes life is hard and we can’t find the words to fill a newsletter.  Thank you for noticing when those months go by and writing us to check in.  
•      Thank you for all the coffee.  Thank you for the extra cups as we tried to wake up and put on our game face for the next presentation.  Thank you for fixing coffee when you don’t even drink coffee yourself.  There are some Latin America habits we have picked up these past two years.  Coffee is one of them.  
•      Thank you for being the kind of friend who had my favorite wine in the fridge and let me wash my pants (while I wore yours) so they would be clean for our next trip.  Friends like you are few and far between.
•      Thank you for understanding when my children threw the toilet paper in your trash cans.  Habits are hard to break.  While this is one of my favorite parts of being back in the US, my girls just don’t always remember they can put the toilet paper in the toilet.  I know it is gross and smells, and I get how annoying it is to clean up.  Thank you for putting up with that while we visited you.
•     Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to take our family photo.  Having updated beautiful photos of our girls and our family means more to us than we can say, and we are so grateful.
•      Thank you for the road snacks and for sending us on our way to our next stop with cold water and full bellies.
•      Thank you for listening to our stories, for including us in yours, for letting us feel like no time has passed at all. It is comforting to know our friendship can withstand this distance of miles and culture and time.  There are no words to express how meaningful it is for us to know that we are still just as close with you now as we were before we left.
•      Thank you for supporting us with your dollars and your prayers.  It means the world to us when we see our friends’ and families’ names on our donor list.  We know there are lots of ways you can spend the money God has given you, and we are humbled and grateful that you choose to support our family while we serve God in the Dominican Republic.

So dear friends and family, as we prepare to return to the Dominican Republic for another two years, we thank you.  These past weeks would not have been as enjoyable or even possible without the love you have shown us.

We needed to find rest in your hospitality, friendship, and love.  We needed to tell you about the good works God is doing in the Latin America region.  We needed to see your excitement when we showed up for our presentations.  We needed to see our prayer card on your fridge.  We needed to know that we are being prayed for by families, classrooms, and congregations.  We needed this because it is hard. It is so hard.

We feel so far from you when we are away.  Even though this work is rewarding, it is also very challenging in ways we may never be able to articulate.   So thank you so so much for all the ways you support us.  Thank you for renewing our spirits and building us up to return to the mission field, ready to serve another twenty-two months before we can return to your hospitality once more.

We love you, friends, and we will miss you greatly.

The Warrens

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There are so many rewards that come from serving God in the mission field.  However, we are not always privileged to know the fruit of our labor while living our lives here on earth.  This is especially true for missionary wives.  When we serve God from our homes, we are often confronted by life’s little challenges much more frequently than its successes.

“Strength and dignity are her clothing,

and she laughs at the time to come.

She opens her mouth with wisdom,

and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.  

She looks well to the ways of her household

and does not eat the bread of idleness.”

Proverbs 31:25-27

Proverbs gives us the description of an “excellent wife.”  We so often fall short.  It is easy to let Satan take a foothold within our minds, and we find ourselves complaining far too often.  We face challenges we never expected – some are frustrating, some are annoying, and some are even just plain amusing.

We are reminded throughout Hebrews 12 that while we may be weary, we have a job to do here.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”  Hebrews 12:1-2

We may often feel as if we are constantly beaten down by life’s mundane and difficult tasks.  We may feel unappreciated.  We may feel unimportant.  We may feel weary.

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.  Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”  Hebrews 12:12-13

Therefore, in the spirit of lifting our weary, drooping hands, we would like to invite you to “laugh with us at the time to come.” Proverbs 31:25  When the hardships of life throw us off balance and we come to a point when we want to cry or laugh, let us choose to laugh together.  We put our trust in God and smile as we work hard each in our own vocation. So with the help of my dear missionary-mom friends scattered across the region, I bring you:

You know you are a missionary mom who lives in Latin America (or at least the DR) when…

•      you go to a friend’s house and compliment them on their water pressure
•      your kids use ice chests as mini pools on hot days
•      you have survived explosions, floods, and fires… all in your own house
•      you are constantly nagging your kids to eat their breakfast when they are too busy looking for Belize and other tiny countries on the map because they have friends scattered around the world
•      you can make chicken a hundred different ways for dinner
•      your kids think popsicles are frozen grapes
•      you don’t need snow for winter fun… sand angels, sand men, and cardboard sleds are just as fun
•      your kids have “taxi shoes” or shoes that will not easily fall off into the gutter while getting into a taxi
•      you have had some pretty humbling moments while learning a new language… like that one time you were getting a physical and you were pretty sure they told you to take your clothes off… but then again… what if that’s not what they said at all.
•      your kids yell to each other in excitement “you can put toilet paper in the potty!!!!” once they arrive in a US airport (honestly, that is exciting)
•      you take your load of laundry to the one friend you know has a DRYER to dry your clothes and consider it the BEST birthday treat…EVER
•      your dream vacation includes a visit to Target to slowly browse every aisle (and if you can be drinking a Starbucks while browsing, you can’t think of anything better)
•      you kill bugs like a BOSS (maybe…)
•      you leave Christmas cards up all year because, hey, they didn’t arrive until April and real mail comes so infrequently that those cards and pictures mean so much more  to you now than they used to when you were in the states.
•      you spend more time trying to figure out how to watch your favorite TV shows than actually watching them
•      your husband brings home a machete… because he needed to cut down the weeds
•      your children don’t understand why they don’t hug EVERYONE in the States during passing of the peace
•      you have a love/hate relationship with skype.  You love seeing your family’s faces but hate the frequent bad connection
•      you compliment your friends when their power works every day
•      there are so many times you are thankful that no one around you can understand your kids’ embarrassing comments–you know, the ones where they make a big deal about the unfamiliar smells and tastes in a new culture
•      you start playing Christmas music in October because everyone else around you is doing it
•      you have to climb the neighbor’s wall to retrieve your sheets that took sail in the wind when it was drying on your line and you have the scrapes and bruises to prove it
•      your kids’ thankful list includes their basic needs like water, food, and power
•      you get really excited when you go a whole month without having to fix something major in your house
•      your happy dance is on point when you find your favorite US product brands in the grocery store (like Cherry coke, Coffeemate vanilla creamer, Prego spaghetti sauce, or Wheat Thins)
•      you have to buy your baking soda in a suspicious unmarked bag from the pharmacy
•      your three-year old loudly sings “God Bless America” on your first flight back to the states and you think to yourself “yes, sing it girl!” (but seriously – when did she even learn that song?)

So as I run the race down our street… in the pouring rain… while barefoot… to chase down the trash truck so the kind gentleman will reverse back to our home and  come collect our trash, I will remember that this is the race set before me.   Just as the woman in Proverbs 31 does not know her future and can laugh because she has trust in Jesus, I will find the humor and the joy within the “ways of my household.”

While we each battle our own setbacks, discouragements, homesickness, frustrations, loneliness, and so much more, we also fervently pray that we are able to continue to “run this race set before us.”   We pray that the root of bitterness does not spring up, that we do not grow weary or fainthearted.   We pray that we can day after day lift our drooping hands, strengthen our weak knees, and “laugh at the time to come.”

How do you serve as a missionary wife?  I get this question a lot or similar questions.   Questions like:  What does a missionary wife do all day anyway?  Why don’t you lead a Bible study?  How are you helping?  I try to just smile at these questions, knowing that most people don’t really understand what being a wife (and a mom) really entails on the mission field.

I also asked myself these very same questions when we were in the missionary application process.  I had lofty dreams for my service as a missionary wife.  I was going to help moms, work with the schools, make such a big difference.  It was obviously a blow to my ego when I was gently persuaded not to take an official role in the mission field and to focus on being a wife and mom instead.  Oh, how I cried at the thought of just serving as a wife and mom. “They don’t want me… I have nothing to offer.”  It took me awhile living down here to understand that wasn’t true.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t wanted or couldn’t serve others.  They just understood something I didn’t.  Missionary life isn’t easy.  Normal tasks take more time and more work than they do in the states.  I understand now that the home is where I am called to serve in the mission field, and it is where I am needed.

Missionary wives absolutely serve in the mission field.  Yes, they serve their husbands (and children), but they also serve in the mission work behind the scenes.  This is often a thankless and unrecognized job.  Missionary wives take care of different logistics, they host visitors, they event-plan, they take care of children (their own and often others), they contact supporters, they run the household, they serve at the church, they organize, they plan, they help, they do what is needed.

I have learned a few things being a missionary wife.  I have learned to live without certain modern conveniences. Tasks that make the household run take longer here than they do in the states and that is when everything is working properly.  Many times ovens, pumps, refrigerators, showers, and windows don’t work properly.  We lose power, appliances break, rooms flood, clothes lines fall.  I have learned to be comfortable with a different level of dirt, and I have learned that life here is different – not wrong or bad – but different.  But most importantly, I have learned that those who serve behind the scenes are extremely important.  I say this not because I think I have brought a lot to the table (this past year especially), but because I have gotten to know an incredible group of women who help run different mission fields in our region.  

In homeschool right now we are reading through the story of Abraham.  We have learned that Abraham made a lot of mistakes in his life, but he also made some very good decisions, too.  He is the father of many nations.  God established his covenant with Abraham.  Abraham gets a lot of glory.  As we read through Abraham, I noticed Sarah.  Sarah doesn’t get a lot of glory.  Sarah is often only remembered for laughing when she was told she would have a baby at 90 years of age.  Do you know what happened right before this?  Abraham saw the visitors walking toward him.  He ran to Sarah and told her to make a lot bread for just three men.  Do you know what we don’t hear?  We don’t hear her complain, suggest an alternative, or gently argue that they could get by serving their visitors less.  We don’t hear what her response is at all.  We are left to simply assume that Sarah did as Abraham asked, and she stayed in the tent.  She served her God from behind the scenes.    

God doesn’t NEED any of us in the mission field.  He is extremely capable of accomplishing everything without any of us, but He chooses to use us.  He chooses to use each missionary wife to serve behind the scenes.  These women all serve in a variety of capacities.  They are rarely recognized, seldom receive breaks, and are not thanked nearly often enough for all that they do.  In fact, I am not sure that anyone truly knows how much most of these amazing women do in the mission field.  I am humbled to be their friend, to be amongst them, and to learn from them.

So the life of a missionary wife is not easy, is seldom boring, and is really not glamorous, but it is rewarding — rewarding even for those of us serving our families in our homes and behind the scenes.