So our relationship is going to end because I see myself on this route, and I see yourself on a different route.

There’s the “we should have done more.” And there’s the, “O, we did too much.”

I had always wrestled with, “Is God calling me to this life, this work or not?” I kept waiting for some writing on the wall.

I remember sitting with different cross-cultural workers and asking them, How did you know this is what you’re supposed to do? I got these ambiguous answers, like “you just know.” I was thinking, OK, that’s not good enough for me.

I started looking at the numbers of everything. If we go to this country, there’s X number of million people that haven’t heard, that have no churches, or whatever. Or if we go to this country, there’s only this many people. I started playing the Numbers game. I realize God doesn’t work in logistics and numbers.

If God closes the door, he closes the door. But let’s go.

Here I was, looking at one country over another, thinking I’m gonna have this impact. I’m gonna do something. I’ll be responsible for 100 churches planted. I obviously didn’t believe that, but part of me was like, yeah, I’ll have more opportunities if I’m there. But then I realized I might be in a situation where I spend my life in this place, and I never see the fruit myself. I never see what God was doing behind the scenes

There’s so much we have to learn just to be a useful part of society, let alone be effective.

Things are not as cut and dry as I’m gonna share the gospel with this person and train them and disciple them, and then they’re going to share the gospel and see two more people… exponential growth.

I think it’s prudent to have some structure so it’s not just like oh, I had a rough day at language today. I’m gonna go kickback a nap the rest of the day and not worry about life.

There’s the “We should’ve done more,” and there’s the “Oh, we did too much.”

In our host country, family is a highly prized thing. So, the fact that we’re here and we have the blessing of having children is not only respected in this community but also opens doors to conversations and making friends.

This culture loves kids.

Everyone we talked to said this is normal, but we felt that something wasn’t right.

My wife always says, “I don’t know if this is normal.” And I always tell her, if it seems weird, it’s probably normal.

Our friend said, maybe look into getting some testing done and see if there might be something there.

The term autism was thrown around.

Finally, we could put a name to what’s going on and have resources to know how to help him.

It’s sustainability. Is the quality of care present for our son that we can get him what he needs and still continue on this trajectory?

We had so many thoughts like, “OK, we need to train ourselves on becoming the occupational therapist, the speech therapist. The general idea of; can we do this ourselves?

I had this mindset that we’re here in this context and if we go back, that’s turning away from the plow. But it finally hit me one day that no, just because there’s a big change in our life doesn’t mean that God’s not going to use it for his glory.

God doesn’t waste things. God doesn’t say, “oops sorry.”

Hold true to your calling to the gospel. God has changed the place where we are physically located all throughout our life, but are calling to him are calling to the gospel hasn’t changed, only the context in which we do it has changed.