The spinning may never stop.  The nausea may never abate.  Living life on the teacups may cause me to walk through this life failing at the simplest tasks merely because I can’t get my bearings.  I may feel ill-equipped, I may feel lost and forsaken, I may want to constantly return to steady ground.  I may cry out in anguish repeatedly.  Living in spite of the spinning has been the hardest thing I have ever done, and I question daily whether or not I can continue.  My struggles are countless, my body is tired, and I long for a reprieve. 

Yet once in a while, the teacups slow down, and the blur subsides.  Those times are when I get a small glimpse of the world around me.  Often it is for merely a brief moment, YET what I see is the beautiful hand of God.

“Sing to Him, sing praises to Him;

   tell of all His wondrous works!”

Psalm 105:2

 

I have watched an entire family come to the baptismal font to receive a new birth, been present at the confirmation of a new church member, greeted parents attending service for the first time with their children, watched a church being built from the ground up, and witnessed the ordination of a pastor.   All of these sights are beautiful in every culture, at any time, but when the church in a country is in its infancy, when it is only the third church building to be built, the second pastor to be ordained, the first confirmation of a congregation, the beauty of these moments takes my breath away.  

The spinning is constant, YET these are our “why” moments: WHY we sold all our belongings, why we said goodbyes to our family, why we gave up our normal life, and why we chose to step on the teacups in the first place. We have been given the gift of salvation.  By the grace of God we have been redeemed, and we have an eternal hope in Christ Jesus.  This is what we want to share with others, what the Lord has done for us and for them.  This good news of salvation is not ours to hoard to ourselves.  It is to be shouted from the rooftops, to be shared with our neighbors, and proclaimed to all nations.  

“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”  

Colossians 1:27-29

I grew up in a church that was well-established with hundreds of members.  The comings and goings of God’s people were all I really knew.  Yes, in Sunday School I heard of missionaries and countries that still needed to be told of God’s love.  I knew it was needed and important, but it wasn’t relevant in my life – until now.  Now I SEE beyond the bubble I used to live in.  I am outside in this great big world that needs to hear of God’s perfect love. I have had the opportunity to see the kingdom of God grow. When the church is only a handful of members and not hundreds, watching one member added is more impactful than anything I have witnessed before. 

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

In the middle of the swirling ride of the teacups, these moments have left me awestruck.  Me.  God chose me.  Me, who after five years is still nauseous on this spinning ride.  Me, who still can’t tell my right from my left when trying to walk this journey.  Me, who feels absolutely ill-equipped for every single part of this life I am living.  God chose me to witness these spectacular moments of grace upon grace being bestowed upon His children.  

We often draw a number of parallels from sowing seeds when we live out our days in the mission field.  We toil at a ground that is not ripe for planting.  The soil is hard and unforgiving.  The sun is hot. The days are long.  The labor is intense, and our bodies are weary. Sowing seeds is a business for the future.  The field does not produce crops overnight.  The hard work put into the field is an investment, and in the mission field, it is often an investment into a future most missionaries will never see. 

In mission work, it is rare to see the fruits of the labor.  The seeds planted are often harvested long after missionaries have come and gone.  The fruits I witness in my time are due to the labor of many different missionaries and servants over the years.  Many fields take a lifetime or longer to see a harvest.  So I do not take the times I have seen them for granted.  I understand the magnitude of glory they hold.  Standing in His presence as He redeems His children is an experience that words cannot describe.  Watching the kingdom of God grow by baptism, new church plants, and local pastors being raised up is witnessing His marvelous fruit bloom.  

A missionary does not enter the field expecting to see the fruits of his labor, but there are times when God giftwraps a fruit for His beloved.  Maybe it is a thank you from Him, maybe it is a small taste of heaven, or maybe this once-in-a-million moment is a reminder that He is faithful.

“And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Philippians 1:6

We had dear friends visiting us in May of 2019.  These are not ordinary friends.  These are those extra special-type of friends that will last a lifetime.  These friends have a lot to do with why our family entered this mission field journey.  These friends served as missionaries in Venezuela for over twenty years.  These friends are loved by and love our children dearly. These are the friends we look up to and want to be like.  And they are also the friends we want to hang out with on a Friday night.  

They came to support us in a very dark time.  We were in a season of deep struggle–in our family, our marriage, our work, and our purpose.  Our home congregation had sent them to us to simply be with us, not to check up on our work, or to do work themselves.  They came to be a friend, a pastor, and a hug from home.  They came to sit and listen to the good and the hard of our daily lives.  They cleaned our home, they read to our children, they took us to the beach to give us a few days away.  They came solely to be there for us.  It was the most impactful way our home church could have given us support.  

They came during a very busy time for the mission.  We were in the middle of many exciting events.  One of those events was our Venezuela Foro (Foro is Spanish for Forum, and the term our mission team uses for times of planning and focusing on the needs and future of a country’s church body).  The country of Venezuela has had its struggles over the past few years.  We have team members and dear friends from Venezuela so I’ve heard of the heartbreak firsthand, and I long to wrap my arms around the people of Venezuela. Because it isn’t feasible for our team to travel to Venezuela, the mission brought the Venezuelan pastors up to the Dominican Republic. This gave them a chance to sit down face to face and discuss the status of the Venezuelan church and develop plans for the upcoming year. 

The Venezuelan pastors have always been a joy to be around, and I am always thankful for time spent with them, but I was extra excited this year knowing our dear friends have an unbreakable bond with the people of Venezuela and would know some of the pastors attending the Foro.  

We met them at the mall one evening where the pastors were doing some shopping and having dinner at a food court.  They happened to be in a Payless shoe store when we met up with them.  It had been twenty years since our friends had seen many of these humble servants that they call close friends.  The reunion was filled with hugs, tears, joy, and laughter.  They swapped stories, shared pictures of children, and praised God for this time together.  

That reunion was filled with joy that I was anticipating, the beauty of laughter between friends meeting after many years in circumstances only God could arrange.  The embrace between a pastor and his mentor who taught him about Jesus, laborers who toiled a ground together so long ago, hugs, jokes, memories–can you see it? Can you feel the merriness and jubilee shared amidst the boxes of shoes?  The night was remarkable and filled with gladness. That evening was followed by a few more days of study and lunch breaks of catching up, all of it special and good. 

All of that would have been more than enough to treasure and hold close when the ride of the teacups would become overwhelming in the months to come.  But God took a beautifully orchestrated reunion and heaped on the goodness. Right in the middle of all the hugs and tears, one of the younger pastors came up to my friend and introduced himself.  I watched as I saw her mentally flipping back through the years trying to place the name he gave her.  He continued to reference people and places and memories until finally she placed her hand on his arm and exclaimed, “Oh!”  I could see through her instantaneous tears and smile, she had remembered as she wrapped her arms around him.  He thanked her and asked to take a picture with both her and her husband.  

It was a special evening, but it wasn’t until later that weekend when the four of us were sitting around the fire after a day of rest and fun that I truly understood the significance of that moment in the shoe store.  

We were in the middle of soaking up the wisdom and grace that our good friends were dishing out, when we asked them their favorite moment of their trip.  She told us the story of Omar.  When they had left Venezuela, he was still young.  He would sometimes accompany his mother and sister to church but never seemed to pay attention and wanted to be anywhere but in that pew.  I could picture the scene she was describing.  I knew that boy. 

I knew him from the years teaching preschool in the States.  I knew him in the different church plants in the Dominican.  He was the boy with the dirty hands.  The one with the lollipop in his mouth as he ran around the playground.   He was the boy who would give his poor mother a run for her money.  The boy who would sneak out of the back and goof off in the bathroom.  The boy I was sure just didn’t want to be there. The boy I tried so hard to share the love with Jesus with, but it felt like day after day the story of God’s grace fell on deaf ears. 

I think most of us, who have ever sat in a back pew and watched a mother bring her uninterested son to church, know THAT boy.

My friend had left Venezuela when Omar was still that boy.  He was possibly the last face she thought she would ever see in a Dominican Payless shoe store twenty years later.  The story she told us around the fire explained the immense mix of shock and joy on her face when she had finally realized who was standing right in front of her.  That boy.  The one who constantly tested his mother’s patience, the one she figured would stop attending church as soon as he was old enough to stay home alone, the one she was sure never paid attention. He was standing in front of her in a shoe store, a grown man of God, a pastor, a shepherd to the people of a land she loved dearly.  He was excited to see her again.  He wanted to thank her for everything she had done for him so many years ago in a land that was not her own.  He wanted her to know what God had done in his life since she had left Venezuela.  

And in the middle of a Dominican Payless shoe store, my dear friend got to see the fruit—the fruit from the seed that was planted while she lived in a land so far from her home.  God is faithful.  He completes a good work, and even a year later, this memory still brings tears to my eyes.  

We won’t all get to see the fruits of our labor.  We won’t all get to see what the Holy Spirit does with the seeds sown during our time in the mission field.  But some of us will, and some of us get to witness others seeing the fruit.  Because even if it wasn’t the fruit of our labor, seeing the fruit or even hearing of it is still so overwhelmingly magnificent because that is our “why”. On the darkest of days, these moments give us hope, hope that God continues to work this unforgiving soil even when we can’t see any hope for the harvest.  It is a reminder that we did not move across the world for nothing.  The fruit produced by the Holy Spirit, a soul saved by grace, is why we are here.  This is why missionaries share stories with each other and with those back home.  We want to share the beauty of hope we see firsthand.  These moments lift us up. They sustain us, and they refresh our weary souls. 

These gifts remind us that we are in God’s mission field.  The work does not belong to us and neither do the fruits.  The work and the glory are His.  We are merely a chosen few, chosen to witness the marvelous moments of His love, His mercy, His goodness, and His grace.  

In those times, the glory of God encompasses every part of me, and I stand in awe at His Majesty.  There is nothing else, no spinning of teacups, no nausea, no whirring of the world around me.  I am simply in that extraordinary moment, witnessing the Almighty Maker.  

“And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’”

Luke 5:26

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When I look back over the last five years, there have been many times of frustration and anguish and only a few times that the teacups have slowed for me to see the glory of God in the world around me. When the days of frustration pile on, I have wanted to cry out just as David does in Psalm twenty-two.

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?     

Why are You so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer,

and by night, but I find no rest.

YET You are holy,”

Psalm 22:1-3

But just like there is a YET in verse three for David’s cries, there is a YET for my cries as well.   Because what is true for David is true for me:  the YET is more important than anything before it.