From the Wisdom of Pooh Bear

God is good!   And He keeps us busy!   This past weekend our fourth short-term mission trip came to an end.   We knew hosting trips would be grace-filled as we completed work projects, visited the home bound and shared God's love and preached the Gospel.   What we didn't anticipate was the depth of friendship that we would forge with the short-term missionaries!

As we reflect back over the our journey during these past two months, so many of your faces come before my mind.   Thank you for coming and stayed with us, playing with our kids, and working side-by-side with us building homes, repairing chapels, and beginning the construction of a gym.   Thank you for going on home-visits and meeting our friends and neighbors.  Thank you for your joy in helping with chores and for smiling when you heard, "I don't know, but it will be great!"   Thank you for diving all in, for being vulnerable, for an openness to be stretched, for praying with us, for serving with us, and for saying "yes."

This past year there have been a lot of tough goodbyes and see-you-laters as we left family and friends in Western NY and Southern Ohio and as we were sent out with our fellow new missionaries, literally around the world.   And this summer we learned of a new opportunity to say goodbye.   Even when our lives overlap for only a week, God can touch us in a way that stretches into eternity.  While you may have come to touch the lives of the people of General Cepeda, you also touched the lives of these American missionaries.  Winnie the Pooh probably said it best, "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

Without trying to sound too much like a Hallmark card or some sentimental meme, it is said that people come into our lives for a season, for a reason, and a lifetime.   People come and go into our lives for different lengths of time.   It may only be for a couple minutes in the checkout line, or four years of high school or college.   Maybe forty plus years of marriage or only a week on a missions trip.   Our lives touch each others for a season.

Our lives touch for a reason.   Whether we mean to or not, whether we know it or not, we are learning from each other, teaching each other lessons.   God uses (or even plans) these opportunities to form and shape and teach us.   He reveals Himself in these relationships through these seasons.

And we take each other with us, in our minds and hearts for a lifetime.   The seeds that we plant, the impacts we make affect others for a lifetime.

Thank you for all of you that gave a week of your life this summer to journey with us!

 

Thank you Mallory for putting together the following video which captures not only your experience, but also similar experiences of so many others.