Adaptability, Adaptability, Adaptability!

This post originally published in August of 2023.

It’s raining, one of those rains that blocks the internet signal and then the power goes out, most likely from some tree or branch on a power line. The kids didn’t even seem to notice the flicker of the light and the ensuing darkness, there was no shriek from the shower or holler from the room of a little boy playing legos. It’s normal, part of life here in the Amazon. Part of the life we love. An old missionary friend of mine once told me, “There are three rules to being a missionary. First, adaptability, second adaptability, and if you forget that remember the third, it’s adaptability.”

I’ve been doing a lot of adapting the last few months, not only to the life here in the Amazon, struggling to learn Spanish, adapting to the food, the heat, the culture -all things I’ve learned to love. But there has been need for adaptability on the home front as well, the loss of my sister, and several other friends this last summer and watching family and friends alike reeling from the losses of loved ones. A new openness by some to God’s working in their lives. Through it all I think I’ve gained a deeper understanding of how our Father in heaven must feel watching us suffer. I’ve gained a deeper desire to be a missionary for the rest of my life, to hopefully bring a little joy and show a little of God’s love to everyone.

I’m also learning that often God’s plans and ideas for our lives are not our plans. That we have to continue to be willing to adapt to the calling that God places on our hearts, to be willing to go wherever God calls us and to serve wherever he asks us to.

So perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a surprise to us when God began closing doors here in the Amazon, a place that we love and that has so much need. As much as we have tried to fight what seemed to be more and more obvious, when Shiayla and I surrendered our plans to God He affirmed that we are needed back in the States right now.

That does not mean that God is done using us, no, God needs each of us at this time in earth’s history to bring love and hope to those who are hurting wherever we go. So as we begin to pack out bags again, we pray for continued wisdom and guidance, we pray for a spirit of adaptability and of service wherever God places us.

The rain that is falling seems appropriate for the sorrow we feel to be leaving, but we also pray for the Amazon, and for all the other places of need around the world. That God would bring an army of workers to complete the work and so that we can go home, home to a land where there is no more sickness, suffering or death. Home where there will be peace and joy for all of eternity.