(Note: if you are reading Part 2, but haven't yet read Part 1, you need to go back and read the previous post so that this one will make sense in context...)
PART 2
So, there we were...returning to Bundibugyo after miscarriage, feeling once again a new depth of exhaustion, weariness, and vulnerability for spiritual attack. The one silver lining was that we had been through so much physically, emotionally, and spiritually in our first year that we knew God would meet us in the hard places as we had seen Him do so many times before.
One of the ways that the Lord went before us when we returned to Bundibugyo at the end of October was by allowing our Member Care Director to be visiting the week after our arrival back in district. (If you don't know what a Member Care Director is, he is the guy that is in charge of the emotional/spiritual health of missionaries on the field. Thankfully, we have a really good one who actually travels all over the place to visit and encourage missionary families. The importance of this role can not be understated in the missions world, and we are so thankful for him!) So, he and his wife were visiting, and of course provided immensely valuable empathy and counsel. One of the things that came out of that time, was the suggestion that we return to the US over Christmas to be surrounded by loved ones, to grieve in a familiar setting, to take a break from the cultural stress of living in rural Africa, and to go through a debrief/renewal retreat. Wasn't that great advice? We look back on it as a time that we really needed an outside person to speak into our situation and just tell our spinning minds what to do. And God provided just that during that time...
So, as many of you might remember, we made a surprise visit home last Christmas. It wasn't highly publicized because we weren't in the emotional place to do a lot of speaking engagements/meeting with people, and we really just needed a period of quietness and space to clear our heads and reconnect as a family. Christmas is chaotic no matter where you are or how you do it (especially with a 2 and 4 year old), so I'm glad we set intentional boundaries to protect ourselves from the madness as much as possible.
The thing that the Lord used most during our time home, though, was the counseling retreat we attended in Colorado a few weeks before returning to Uganda. It was good to tell our story to fresh ears, to receive unbiased advice, and to just have extended time by ourselves (ie: sans kids) to ask some challenging questions about the future. One of the conclusions that we came to was that if we could "re-do" our first season in Uganda (knowing what we know now), we would do things differently (of course, there was no way to know what we know now when we first started out). We would have pursued further clinical training before leaving the field, and would have pursued some type of training internship to help Derek feel more equipped to function as a mid-level practitioner in an African healthcare setting. (Of course, as if often the case when living overseas, you often don't know the hand you are going to be dealt, you often feel in over your head regardless of your circumstance, and anything can change at any time- and often does on a daily basis!)
"So, what is preventing you from hitting the PAUSE button and doing those things now?"
was a question we were asked by our counselors.
Hmmmm. Well, that's not exactly something we had considered as an option before. We now have a physician that is slated to arrive in Bundibugyo in September, so we were hoping that our situation would change after his arrival. But, the more we looked back and realized how much time it had taken for our family to settle in and adjust and make in-roads in the community, and just learn how to live, we realized that this new family would need a good amount of time to do that as well.
We started tossing around this idea of getting further training- presenting it to our leadership team and mentors within Serge. Everyone seemed to be in agreement that it would be a good idea as something to pursue. Amidst these discussions, we also discovered that we were pregnant again. While the news of this pregnancy came a bit earlier than expected, we were excited, and it also was providential in narrowing down plans. There were few Tropical Medicine courses that were being offered before our new baby's arrival, and if we were also considering an internship somewhere in East Africa, we would need to hurry up and take a course so that we could have the baby and return to that side of the world in a timely fashion. After talking with several missionary doctors and doing a lot of research, we settled on the course offered at the University of West Virginia, which actually caters to and offers discounts for missionaries. We were even able to recruit a friend who just completed a term serving in South Sudan to join us, which granted us even more of a discount. It seemed like God was really opening up new doors and paving the way before us.
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