Things I never thought I'd say #4

I thought I was done with this series, but I've been thinking about another statement recently as I've been writing about it for another project. This one is not something I actually originated, but I found myself repeating it often because it was kind of out there and mysterious.

My parents moved to Africa a little over 7 years ago to become missionaries. While I am extremelly proud of what they are doing and totally supportive of their work, its really not easy to have parents who live so far away and who I don't get to talk with very much. I just tried a new phone communication option with them yesterday, and almost ended in tears of frustration because the connection was so horrible.

While I was in college, I dreamed of living overseas doing some type of missions work. This wasn't a foreign concept that I picked up while away at school, although the passion was fanned there, but my parents had instilled this excitement of God's work around the world in our family from the time I first went to Brazil when I was 6 and my sister was 3.

My dad worked at State Farm for over 25 years - a very stable life and kind of the nerdy comfort zone that I find my little family in now. I imagined mom and dad would be doing missions trips for the rest of their lives, and would probably do longer stints once they retired, but never thought they would move away before retirement while I was still unmarried, my sister was still in college, and my brother was just entering junior high. But that's what happened.

Their first step in doing full-time missions work was joining Wycliffe Bible Translators. After completing a training course here in the U.S., they headed to Tanzania to do a field training where they lived in huts and eventually sent back pictures of my brother with spears and machetes attached to his body as if he was daily fighting off lions and large snakes.

Since the field training was meant to be very remote and physically challenging, we did not hear from them often at first. Until one day about a month after they left, I went to my mailbox and finally found a postcard from Tanzania! It was from my mom and one of her first sentences was,

"My monkey scratches are healing nicely."

What?? This was the first report I had from them on their well-being in the wilds of Africa. Was this supposed to be comforting? It was one of those things I never imagined I would be hearing from my mother.

Since they don't get mentioned often in this blog, I'm attaching a picture of my parents. Here they are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Looks beautiful, doesn't it? Anyone else want to sign up for the adventurous life that may include monkey scratches that need healing?