With Mixed Emotion in Thailand

I'm filled with mixed emotions, sitting in my air-conditioned 12^th floor hotel room in Thailand, on the cusp of 10-days of our international conference. This time last week, I was happily zoomed down, focused in and soiled by the trenches of translation, pushing forward in a first draft of Romans 5-6, this week I'm “cleaned up smartly” (as my English roommate might say) and asked to radically zoom out my “Google Earth” picture to see instead the whole world in one screen shot. I’m excited to engage with some of the issues facing our organization at the global level, but at the same time respectfully terrified of their magnitude and significance, especially at this important transitional stage in the history of Bible translation. I'm humbled and privileged to be a delegate seated among top leaders from all around the world, yet very aware of my inexperience and near ignorance of the foreign language of “business” and “management” in which meeting will be conducted. Eager to learn from the wealth of experience in the room, I can't help but notice and feel my youth, as I'm having trouble identifying anyone younger than myself. With transition of leadership, with challenges in funding, with imperfect channels of communication between grassroots and global, in all that we do, we pray that grace of God would prevail, manifested in the unity we have in Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, as I and the other 200+ delegates represent our respective constituency and at the same time, catch a vision of where we might be headed and how that might be implemented alongside our partners in Ethiopia. That is my prayer, would you pray with me?