3 Months In

Yesterday marked the 3-month mark in our new land. On any given day, 3 months is just a few days, or a quarter of a year. While it has always felt incredibly, blessedly, normal to be here, occasionally it hits home that now we live here. After all the years of praying, dreaming, planning, praying, being delayed, praying, and saying goodbye to Ireland, here we are, and here we have been for 3 months. And we are grateful for all of you who have prayed for us in all that time.

So, what does 3 months on the mission field looks like? Here are a few things to give you a peek into life here.

Schedule

At the moment, our schedule is often very straightforward.

At 06:20 we get the kids up, ready, and out to the school bus.

07:30 we walk through the winding streets of our area, full of bazars, with colourful sellers of all kinds of food and other items. We dodge rickshaws, passing by sleepy dogs, and come to our language school for a 3-hour lesson at 07:45.

After our three hours of practicing writing, and dealing with verb conjugations, Dee heads home while I go to collect our son from the bus. I often head to the bazar at this time, buying the day’s groceries. This involves picking out your live chicken or fish and having them kill and cut it for you, enjoying a cup of tea with the vegetable seller, and regularly buying different kinds of rice.

After a lunch meal of rice, often with lentils, and some meat, Dee and I have separate lessons with local tutors with whom we do speaking practice and chat about cultural things. Twice a week I teach English in the afternoon.

Evening meal consists of flatbread, with some veggies and again, lentils. The kids go to bed after some prayer and song time. We then often bake some bread, (as the bread that we get in the shop is loaded with sugar), read and pray as a couple, do some final language work, and go to bed.

As you can see, life is nothing astounding. Life in these first days is simple, and necessarily so as we can speak so little. We are often remembering that Jesus spent 30 years living faithful to his Father, incarnated amongst the people to whom he would one day minister and for whom he would die. Then after those 30 years, he ministered for three in the flesh. We have much incarnational living to do, learning language and culture before we can be useful.

That’s not to say we don’t talk about Christ. One joy is constant interaction with our house-helper who observes our way of life that is different to how foreigners/Christians are portrayed here (pork-eating, promiscuous, drunkards, etc.). Another is using the Bible as a textbook for our local tutor sessions. To them it makes sense, as we know this in English, so it will be easier to pick up the local language if we use it i the lessons. (Along with other books like Peter Pan!). At the moment we are reading through Mark with our Muslim tutor. What a privilege!

So that’s what life looks like here.

Challenges

There are many similar graphs out there to the above. They may vary slightly, or have more nuanced ups and downs, but all have a similar trajectory. Most people say that the first severe dip comes at about 3 months, and again at 2 years, with minor ones before/in between those.

At the moment we are at 3 months. So firstly, make a note to really pray for us in another 3! But also, we are already coming to the end of the honeymoon phase. The joys and delights of a new culture almost feel like a working holiday in those beginning days. Just these past couple of weeks, the reality of life here now is sinking in. This is what it looks like. The underlying culture stress, the difficulty of still being so limited in conversation after a quarter of a year, the difficulties of navigating the cultural nuances of do’s and dont’s in relationships, the challenges to our health, the ever-present smog at this time of year, the distance from our loved ones, and the greenery of Ireland. These all are adding up quite significantly, and we have felt that more keenly, as the honeymoon feelings slowly slip away.

Now, there are many joys and advances. We are progressing fast at language, and we are getting on with life well. But even then, when we have advanced spiritually or physically in language or relationships, we have felt spiritual attack on top of our already-present stress. A few weeks ago, all of us slept terribly (which is very unusual for some of us), as well as some other problems. We had to give a lot of prayer to the situation before it resolved without any further consequence.

Where the line between physical stress and spiritual attack lies may only be discernible by a feeling as we are attentive to the Spirit, I’m not sure there is an exact science, and probably lots of overlap, but either way, we have need of prayer for both.

Quirks of life here

We have so many funny little stories to tell. Everyday holds a different unexpected tale. From delivering scabies cream to various shopkeepers in the bazar, to being called Chinese on a regular basis, there are many stories to tell. It is a fun way to live, not knowing what amusing thing will happen.

One that still astounds me is what happened to my teammate and I after a couple of weeks in country. News of these two Irish families arrival spread like wildfire in our little area. (Where once people asked white people, “Are you American, or from the UK?”, now they ask “are you Irish?”… not that they know where Ireland is…). Within a couple of days of our first introductions to shopkeepers, the whole bazar knew about the Irish, especially given that not many foreigners live in our area at all.

Amazon does not exist here, but there is a national equivalent. Needing to get our new apartments set up, we of course had to order quite a few things. One day, after only a couple of weeks, my teammate and I were walking along through the streets near where we live. One of these delivery vans came driving by, slammed on the brakes, and a hand shot out the window with a package. “Delivery for you!”… and indeed… it was! So well had news about us spread, that even though we were several streets from our apartment, the delivery man could assume the package was for us.

This made us laugh, but also highlighted to us something our long-term teammates have said about having house-helpers, and relationships in the bazar area etc. That is, we will be gossiped about, so at least make sure it is good gossip. Or as one teammate said, “You will always be a purple cat (i.e. an oddity), but as long as you are their purple cat, it’s good”. If we can live openly for Christ, and live in and for the community around us, yes, we will continue to be an oddity, but we will belong to them. And as they gossip about us, inasmuch as we imitate Christ, they will gossip about him. We pray for good gossip!

Finally

We have a bed!

Well, we had a bed from day one. We were blessed with amazing teammates who got the basics into our apartment before we arrived. But… we also got a spare bed for a very cheap price. This is more than just a token bed to fill a space.

We have an invitation for any who want to come. Not just visitors (we do want them too!), but also those who want to see what life is like here. We want to give people a taste of mission, of talking with people who have done it for a long time and a short time, of engaging with a local community in our land. The bed is there to be used by those who want this kind of discipling, in a specific way.

We want to give what was given to us, opportunity to see the joys and hardships of God’s mission across the world, that may just open some eyes, challenge how people are living at home or abroad, or confirm a calling that is already there. We have a bed.

Thank you again for your prayers. We are dependent upon the God who answers them. He has been faithful in bringing us here, sustaining us, and giving grace in the trials so far… and we’re only 3 months in! To him be the glory, as his salvation is proclaimed in this land.