Episode 39 - Home for Christmas

This Christmas certainly hasn't been quite what I expected! There's plenty that I could write, but to be honest, I don't have the energy. I expected to be spending my first Christmas away from my family - 10,000 miles away to be precise - and yet somehow, quite amazingly, I spent Christmas with my family. Equally surprisingly, I spent it in a hospital ward (don't worry, it doesn't seem to be anything too serious).

Ever since moving to PNG life seems to become more and more unpredictable, and the more I accept this, the more unpredictable life seems to become! It's certainly not boring, but God has taught me to enjoy the highs and not to worry about the lows This time of year seems to be a good time to remember why my hope rests secure: because of He who was fully God, yet became fully man, who was born to die so that I might truly live, and live this life to the full.

Episode 38 - Half Way Around the World

Nomes here. Joey set me the task of writing this blog from a different perspective: What’s it like having a missionary brother half way around the world?

Now, I could tell you that life is more fun with Joey around and that games nights aren’t the same without him, but you probably already know that.  I could tell you that I miss him like crazy, but the truth is that now I have a smart phone I’m actually in more frequent contact with him in PNG than when he was at All Nations College this time last year.

Weirdly, the one thing that’s really different is this very blog. Joey’s not a writer, so it’s odd reading whole paragraphs by him at all. It’s even odder getting my information about him at the same time as any other person with access to the internet. But if I’m totally honest, the weirdest thing is that sibling rivalry wells up in me.

You see, since Joey left my life has been pretty awful. Less than a week after waving him off at the airport I fell off a cliff and was airlifted to hospital with a fractured skull and dislocated collarbone. Seven months later and I still don’t know if I’ll need an operation. Three months after the accident I was too physically and emotionally weak to return to helping disabled children or those with learning difficulties in mainstream schools, but I was also stone broke, so I got a minimum wage job in a shop.

Now before we go on, I’m not looking for sympathy here. There have also been some truly amazing things in my life. I have a medically trained fiancé who saved my life when I fell, and my job has been excellent physio for my shoulder. But reading blogs about how wonderful it is for Joey to be exactly where God wants him and doing such remarkable things to make the world a better place has often made me selfishly feel like a loser. God called Joey, not me. It seems like God doesn’t really mind what I do. Maybe doesn’t care.

I asked a vicar friend about this and he rather unhelpfully explained that God does call some people, like Joey to be a missionary, and him to be a vicar; and other people like me don’t have such a direct calling. They are to use the wisdom God gives them to make their own choices and so long as they don't sin, he doesn’t mind what they do. He and I aren’t really friends any more.

So I asked my much wiser best friend about it and she sat me down and opened her Bible at the concordance at the back and we trawled for about an hour until we decided that God does not show favouritism and that if he calls some people he must call us all, just to different things. Maybe he will give us a choice and allow us to use our wisdom like my vicar friend said, but that doesn’t mean he is indifferent.

One day, unrelated to the above, Mum mentioned that we’re all part of Joey’s ministry because we support him. Maybe, I thought, that’s my calling. So I looked up Philippians 2 and a dude called Epaphroditus. The Philippian church sent him to Paul to look after him and Paul said of him, “He risked his life to make up for the help you could not give me.” In a way I sent Joey to PNG to make up for the help I can’t give them. Supporting missionaries is a calling in itself.

Then one day my fiancé said to me, “I’m so proud of you for getting up at 5am to do a job that doesn’t fulfil you instead of just giving up.” And it all fell into place.

Paul didn’t say to the Philippians, “Well done, you sent Epaphroditus! Your work is done now and God doesn’t really mind if you work in a shop or with disabled children.” He said, “Look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others… Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose… Shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.”

In Athens he put it very poetically. “From one man God made every nation to inhabit the whole earth, and he decided the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not very far from each one of us.”

So if like me sometimes you read Joey’s blog and feel lacking, please be encouraged. Yes, God is doing amazing work through Joey. But Joey’s work isn’t more precious to God than yours, whether that’s working in a shop on minimum wage, caring for disabled children, knitting jumpers for Romanian orphans, looking after the grandkids, or like I was for a month or two after my accident, sat at home unable to hold a conversation but just about able to pray with emotions rather than words.

So what is it like having a missionary brother half way around the world? Challenging, but not in the way I expected. But God has used it not only to help the people of PNG know how much he loves them, but also to tell little old me that same thing. God wants me to obey him no matter how menial the calling seems to me.

This Christmas may we all shine like stars as we hold out the word of life in whichever place God chose us to be in.

Episode 37 - Love

As I've been thinking about the love that God has shown to me in so many ways, I thought that this week I would share a poem with you that I wrote sometime ago. Sorry if you've heard it before or if poetry isn't really your thing...

Love

The friendship of a friend shared with his brother

The years of service to a child from her mother

With each different meaning, the Greeks give a new name

Yet the most verbose English always use the same

But what in reality does this word really mean

Are all of these things really all that they seem

We’ve all heard it said that it’s the air that we breathe

And the Beatles said that it’s all that we need

But then they also said that there were eight days in a week

So can we really believe anything they speak?

We seem to be filled with a great romantic notion

With songs and poetry all spun into motion

With warm fuzzy feelings and laughter and cheer

Sadness and sorrow don’t have a place here

But this in fact is only part of the tale

Without a strong wind our ship will not sail

We’re eating the icing without the rest of the cake

And making ourselves sick we say for loves sake

We have become gluttons who eat just to get fat

But true love is much more than just all of that

For love is more than just falling in love

More than just feeling like a hand in a glove

It’s about standing a lasting and building others up

It’s about pouring out your riches to fill anothers cup

It’s a choice made in the knowledge that all won’t be good

But still being willing to fight together against the flood

About helping someone through when life becomes tough

And caring first about them and not all that other stuff

And love on this earth has one shining example

A small taste of which I wish you to sample

The God of the heavens that made all that we know

Wanted on us His love to bestow

Such was His desire for us to know him

He sent his true son to pay for our sin

This son was made man to live on the earth

To give up all that His heavenly riches were worth

To die on a cross for the love of us all

That we might not pay the price of our fall

That we might know what true love is

That He is ours and we are His

Episode 36 - My Year In Photos

So we're coming towards the end of the year and it's that time when we all start looking back on what has happened in the last year. Having just written a piece on my last six months here in PNG, I thought I'd do this one a little different; through pictures! After all a picture does say a thousand words! (and takes seemingly infinitely more bandwidth to upload - it seemed like a good idea at the time...). When I very selectively went through my photos of the last year I very carefully only selected the bare minimum - and still ended up with over 50! So here are the very heavily edited highlights!

Celebrated good times with great friends - and formed queues...

Said Goodbyes and Made Plans for the Future

Finally got My VISA from This place

Found some Amazing Colleagues who Became Amazing Friends

Went on Some Incredible Flights

Met So Many Amazing People

Went into the heart of the Jungle

Learnt to Shop Here

Ate Some Amazing Food

Landed on Some Scary Airstrips (Took Off From Them Again Too...)

Did Some Incredible Work With Some Incredible People

A year Doesn't sound like that long but it's credible just how much God has done in this time, this is just eleven photo's, but a thousand stories, let alone a thousand words could never do justice to all God has done for, and that just in this one year alone. As I continually look forward into the unknown may I never forget to look back to all that I now know you have done with what was once the unknown too.