Ok. So its not really the last update. I still owe all of you a few more stories from our time in Tomohon this summer, and I will get them out to you as soon as I can (I know I keep saying that).
It’s The Last Update of Discovery 2007. We finished this past Tuesday in Bali. We all piled into vans to head to the airport (though some of us had to pile back out again because of a bad tire) for the flights home and elsewhere. Home for the participants and for the couple who leads the trip and not yet home for me. I headed back to Jakarta for a while to volunteer at the office there until my flight home.
It was tough to se the team head off. It amazes me how close you grow in just a few short weeks. You spend so much time in classes, meetings, in planes , on buses, in cars, walking around, in services, sleeping, eating, and praying together that, in many ways, by the time the trip ends you feel like family.
And, when the family goes different directions you feel a since of loss, that the trip can’t last longer, that things can’t go on like they have.
And there is also relief. There is another world to go home to. There are family and friends that have been missed and supporters to report to. And, if they never went home, how could they share with others the things God has taught them. Email and phone calls only go so far.
So the team goes home, hopefully changed from when they arrived. Hopefully they have a better understanding of God and how they relate to Him, how they can serve Him and how they can bring others to serve Him as well.
And hopefully they don’t forget. To forget what they have been through, whether times of struggle or times of rejoicing, would be tragic.
It is my prayer, and I hope it is yours, that they don’t forget this last summer. The friendships made, the experiences together, the people they have met and what their coming meant to them.
Most of all I pray they don’t forget the people of Indonesia. And that they don’t forget the tremendous needs here. And that Indonesia doesn’t become to them just another blurb on CNN or another headline in the Times.
The people are real. The needs are real. And the ones going home can only share what they don’t forget.
