Changing Places

We were grateful, this past week, to attend a church service as normal people. We entered late, obscurely sat in the balcony, and didn’t even venture downstairs to partake in an all-church cake reception. However, despite our attempts to lay low, I found that I couldn’t quite hide from the sermon’s opening question challenging my thinking in an unexpected way. It wasn’t an unusually good question or necessarily thought-provoking, but it’s more that it hit me in a strange way. The question was: “If you could have changed places with any person in the world for this past week, who would it have been?” The pastor suggested sports heroes, famous people at the Emmys, and a great wildlife photographer. None of those struck a chord with me, so how would I answer?

Now I ask questions like this to Andrea all the time when we are out in the bush, “If you could eat at any restaurant tonight, what would it be?” “If you could spend tomorrow with any one person, who would it be?” “If you could order one thing delivered on dry ice from Dairy Queen…” So, these types of questions rattle around our minds all the time, which made it even more surprising this time when my mind drew a complete blank. Who would I trade places with? How about my college friend Jason? I haven’t kept up with him at all, but I know that he is a pastor in Vermont and Vermont is one of the two states that I have never set foot in. Besides Vermont in the Fall sounds extra nice when I haven’t seen the changing colors of fall leaves since ’08. A tempting response, but I thought there must be a better answer than that.

What if I switched places with our Canadian friend at Gesas (our home among the Gmz)? It would be nice to be there for a week, checking up on all the aspects of work, seeing that our water tanks are full, worshipping with the Gmz church, etc. Besides, I thought, my Canadian friend could get a break back here in…then I realized something. Switching places means actually switching. How fun would it be to switch places with one of the Gmz translators? Say Habtamu. Taking him from his remote village up on Gesas mountain and plopping him into American culture would be an amazing cross-cultural experiment! Sure, I would be royally bummed if I couldn’t be here to “show him around,” but at least I could have Andrea explain it in great detail when I returned. Oh and how I would love to record his conversations with people in his village after he returned. How would they describe an indoor bounce house business? Or Walmart at the peak of Halloween marketing?

As I thought about it more, I saw something new within myself. People have asked us a number of times, “So do you miss being over there?” to which both Andrea and I immediately respond with a simple, “no.” But now, having been here just about three months, I see myself starting to look forward to our return. Don’t misunderstand, it isn’t the feeling that “we want to go home” as some overseas workers say. Ethiopia is not our home, but then again neither is any one place here in America. Home is wherever  Andrea, Micah, and I are together and so we don’t feel that we have left “home” behind. Rather, we have left behind one of our communities. We have strong community of family and friends in Wisconsin, and then again in Michigan, and of course down in Texas, but we also have our community in Gesas. And just this morning, we received word that our Gesas community is grieving the death of one of its patriarchs, our friend, WoTaak. We know our Gesas community is beating the drums and singing clan songs in honor of WoTaak, yet our ears are too far away to hear and our feet too far away to get us there. It is saddening, even for Micah. Unsure of what Micah knows about death, we told him that WoTaak died today. He repeated it over and over again at lunch, “WoTaak died…WoTaak died.” He has seen dead animals in the road and dead chickens, so we wondered if he could apply that same concept to a person. Without prompting from us, he asked, “WoTaak died. WoTaak all gone. WoTaak sick?” followed by a cold stare out the window. Another string pulling our hearts toward our Gesas community.

So are we beginning to miss being over there? Yes, but we know that soon after we go again, we will be missing things back here. No doubt, wherever we are, we are missing somewhere else. But that’s ok. It is simply a reflection that we love and are loved by many people in many different places. Our travels these past three months confirmed that over and over again and we thank each one of you who are a part of it.