It is an odd thing to watch parents and grandparents grow older. To realize that none of us will live forever. That life is a vapor. To graduate on to the next phase in life and suddenly awaken to the fact that "I am no longer the child but the parent and soon, I will be the grandparent and my child will be the parent." It wasn't but about seven months ago now that one of my closest Dao friends said to me on his deathbed "God knows the day of my death. Will I die young or old? When I have only one child or multiple children? Only God knows! But one thing I know is that whatever day I die, it is the day that the Creator has chosen for me and I am happy to go and be with him!" I have never forgotten Wikipai's words to me. He said them with the sweetest look on his face and the most gentle look in his eyes.
Today once again I reflect on the words of my good friend Wikipai, who is now with the Lord, as we just got off the phone with our team mates Derek and Sarah Grant. "I got word a few hours ago that my mom may have as little as only a couple weeks to live. We have known something was wrong for a while but it is just now that we found out she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer." Derek (Far left of the above photo) said to me as we were talking on Skype through the computer. He looked like he hadn't slept too well the night before and I could see the sadness on his face through my computer screen and hear the disappointment in his voice as he spoke. Derek continued on, "I have been praying about it since we found out and I feel that we should go back to Canada and spend some time with my mom, I feel that this is what God would have us do right now."
These are hard decisions to make. To feel like you are humanly responsible for an entire people group and their well-being but at the same time to receive news from the other side of the globe that someone dear to you is very possibly facing the last days of their life. It is a time in which your heart feels torn right in two. Torn in between a land where the average life expectancy is nearly eighty years old (America and Canada) and a land where the average life expectancy is only thirty-five and where nearly one out of every three children dies in their first year on this earth (The jungles of Papua, Indonesia).
There is a solid rock that we can always hold onto however when the rivers and rapids of sadness come. The same solid rock that we have taught the Dao believers to cling to and to which Wikipai gladly embraced as he passed on - the promises of God's Word. That promise that God knew and decided our very day of death before we were ever born. (Job 14:5) That He intricately planned that very day for His own glory (Ephesians 1:11) and that He will use even our trials to usher us into our ultimate joy - the joy of being united with Him. A joy infinitely greater than even the greatest pleasure we ever could have experienced through the fellowship any of our loved ones here on this earth. Isn't it interesting that God designed it so that this greatest joy and our eternal life would be ushered in to us through the greatest sorrows of this earth and finally our physical death. May God give us the grace to gladly cling to our only hope in those billowing rapids of sadness - the promises of a sovereign God.
Please pray for our team mates Derek and Sarah Grant as they head back to Canada for the time being to spend some precious time with Derek's mom. Pray for the Dao people as they in our absence, press on teaching from the new scripture portions and Bible lessons that were brought in for them via helicopter two weeks ago. Pray for specifically Daapooi and Paatoma and their wives as that lead the weekly gatherings in our area and continue to teach through Ephesians. Pray also for Debatoma, Yoni and Kogipiyaa as they take some of the other new lesson books and literacy books and do a cross-dialect outreach up valley to the area called Mokotaka. Pray also for Uubeo as he teaches his relatives over in Kupe Kuyee how to read and write and tries to lay the groundwork for a new outreach in that area. Finally, praise God together with us for all the cool things He is doing and has done in Dao and also praise Him because we got the news recently that Jennies "Previa" condition that we were concerned about in her pregnancy has completely cleared! It won't be long before we get to welcome our little baby in the world and finally see him/her face to face! Pray with us for the continued healthy development of our little one!
P.S. We will be sharing at First Baptist Church of New Kensington, PA this Sunday afternoon at the commissioning service of Jennie’s brother and sister-in-law Jeremy and Briana Stokes as they are leaving this month for Indonesia. If you are within driving distance or are just in the area come on out and join us at this service! Be a support to some of the new missionaries being sent out and also hear firsthand about some of the cool things God has been doing in Dao recently!
The commissioning service starts around 12:00 this Sunday, June 13th and there will be
refreshments and snacks served. The address of the church is :
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH 3740 7TH STREET RD. NEW KENSINGTON, PENNSYLVANIA
We hope to see you there!