Thursday, 10 July 2008 06:15
Tim left early this morning for Ukraine. A missionary friend went for a business trip and had to take along his secretary/interpreter. He didn't want to be alone with this woman for 2 days, so he asked if Tim felt like riding along. I've mentioned before that in June, our Moscow team leaders changed ministry tracks and moved back to the States. That left us without a Russian field leader. Since then, Eric Y., a WorldVenture missionary to Ukraine, has been assigned to be the fearless leader of both the Ukranian and Russian fields. Tim's plan is to meet Eric and spend the night at his home in Donetsk. They'll talk team stuff and guy stuff, I suppose, and Tim will head home tomorrow. I expect him around midnight or 1:00 Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, I am doing a lot of nothing. I'm eyeing the laundry pile out of the corner of my eye (and it's eyeing me back) but that's as far as I've gotten. To tell you the truth, this time since I've been back from Moscow is the first prolonged "down time" I've had since I've been here. You know how sometimes you don't realize how difficult a situation is while you're going through it? How it's often only on hindsight that you can see how harrowing it was? I think these first 6 months of culture shock have been like that for me. Now that I've slowed down, I'm appalled to recognize all the stress we've been under. I'm grateful that God kept me from comprehending most of it while we were going through it.
While we were at language school in South Carolina, I observed that God's prescribed times of work and rest in our lives often don't correspond to the times we feel we should be working or resting. We might work and work, then when we grow tired, think OK Lord, I could really use some down time now. God's perogative, of course, is to ignore that hint, and many times He does. When He does prescribe a period of rest for us, it's easy to let guilt to take over: should I really be doing nothing right now? There's so much I could be accomplishing! I'm getting better at accepting work and rest from God's hand, when He says it's the right time for each. Persevering at the one and enjoying the other without guilt.
So, we've been playing lots of family games: Pictionary, Speed, and one particularly bloody Monopoly tournament in which Tim shamelessly left his wife and 3 children bankrupt and begging bread somewhere between Virginia Avenue and St. James Place. We've been reading a lot, and watching old Waltons episodes till we know them by heart. I do have some correspondence to catch up on, and I really should study too. For now though, I'm just enjoying my season of rest. I'll get to the rest of that (and the laundry pile) tomorrow.
