It Is Time: April and May 2021 Updates

Photo by Marcos Ferreira


 Hello All,

The months since we got back from the US and especially the last couple of months have been a whirlwind. The pace of life has felt overwhelming at times, and this month was no exception.

Since we have been back in Honduras, Raúl has had a lot of construction going on at his business which has made for very long working hours and very late dinners for us. In addition to that added stress, he has also been studying for the citizenship test, usually getting up very early in the morning to do so. His demanding schedule often throws my schedule off, and it's been a trying time in regard to maintaining some boundaries for family time. 

Meanwhile, I have continued with teaching English classes and with some one-on-one pastoral counseling/discipleship in addition to some educational sponsorships and tending to some physical needs in our community as they arise. As always, ministry continues to be very relational, and I have been grateful for the times when I have already been able to put things I am learning in grad school into practice.

Last month, I finished up a class that was really time-demanding--diagnostics and treatment planning. I had daily hours of reading about various mental disorders and many treatment plans to complete over the course of the class. This month, I am beginning a new class related to furthering my counseling skills. The workload is significantly less, which is a welcome respite, but we have role plays, which are simply a different kind of challenge. 

This month, we also received word that Raúl's citizenship interview/test has been scheduled for the end of July. Thus, we will be heading to the US again next month to ensure that Raúl has enough time without distractions to study hard, to have enough time to do mandatory quarantine before his appointment, and to hopefully get vaccinated. The logistics of everything related to this interview, to our travel, to our stay (and my continued classes) in the US, and to leaving our household and ministry set-up appropriately is very overwhelming. I am doing my best to take things one assignment at a time, one household chore at a time, and one document at a time. We are pursuing citizenship precisely because we do intend to continue to be missionaries in Honduras. The provision under which we applied is made for people in our position, living overseas. Without the permanence of citizenship, Raúl's residency is at the mercy of legal limbo and whoever fields his passport whenever we enter the country because he spends more time in Honduras than in the US, which is frowned upon as a US resident. The desire is to be able to have the legal immigration foundation to be together wherever the Lord leads us and has us as a family both now and in the future.  

In my personal reflections with the Lord, I can't escape that this is a transition time. My birthday is coming up just next week, and this age feels more pivotal than any other age of the last decade. It feels like the closing of one chapter in order to open a new one. I think that also coincides with this being my tenth year of living in Honduras. This counseling program has simultaneously left me more excited than ever to minister in Honduras because I feel I am being equipped to meet a desperate need in new ways and also more aware of the toll missions has also taken on me over the years. The phrase I hear over and over from God is, "It is time." I'm not sure what all it is time for, and I'm sure that there are numerous things He is orchestrating that I cannot see. But, on my end, I am feeling the conviction that it is time to take better care of my temple--my physical body that often gets put on the backburner, my emotional being that hasn't really processed the last 10 years well, and my spirit that needs to get back in touch with the truth that relationship with Father God is always and has to be the most fulfilling aspect of life, much more so than even ministry. The title of "missionary" can be such a loaded word that carries cultural expectations both in the US and in Honduras that can feel heavy--sometimes too heavy. As I enter into a new decade of life (well, two years in already) and a new season of ministry, I want to learn well from the last season and remember God's faithfulness. But, I also feel like it's time to leave behind many pressures that I put on myself to be enough, to do enough, and to give enough. I was recently encouraged by something one of my professors said. I had been sharing how the reading for the class was causing me to realize that I am in a place where I can cognitively imagine how someone else feels, but I often struggle with actually feeling what someone else feels. In many ways, I think that's because of the intensity of emotions that occurred early on in my life as a missionary because I used to readily feel what others were feeling. As a counselor, ethical expectations and boundaries related to treatment are much clearer than they are for a missionary. You live where you work. You love the people you minister to, and in many ways, the desire is for relationships to reach an egalitarian place rather than causing an "us and them" dependency. You don't stop having emotional needs just because you live on foreign soil. However, we've also had to field many a sad story that was concocted specifically to manipulate. Emotions in many ways have felt weaponized at times to extort, and we've had to learn to be moved by the Holy Spirit more so than by our emotions. The desperation behind the manipulation is real. The needs--both conscious and unconscious--are real. The hurts and life experiences that have led to manipulation are worth caring about and caring for. But, broken people tend to break relationships just as healed people tend to heal relationships. We want to keep ourselves in a humble and healed place, but sometimes that ongoing path feels filled with landmines. All that to return to what my professor said. Basically, she encouraged me to give myself and the Holy Spirit time to do restorative work. It's not that I am not learning counseling skills. It's not that I'm not growing in empathy. I've simply been through a lot in the last 10 years and am simply on the Lord's time table. In many ways, I have felt like the Lord has had me on the bench in ways that have been very uncomfortable. I can tend to want to hide behind the doing rather than facing the real state of my emotional energy levels. But I am dedicated to His leading, and I am finding His kindness in being my great Counselor. He knows what I need better than I know. He knows what I need to bear fruit again. 

As we move forward into May and June, we would really appreciate your prayers especially for this citizenship process. We pray that God would keep us healthy before having to travel, that He would help us prepare all the necessary avenues before traveling, that He would cause the logistics to fall into place for each detail, that He would grant us traveling mercies, that He would aid Raúl in studying efficiently, that He would calm Raúl's nerves before and during the interview, that we would find grace with each person connected to the process, and that this time in the US would be restorative especially for Raúl who has been running himself ragged. 

We so appreciate your ongoing care, support, and friendship.

Sarah