Author: Amy Medina Page 14 of 230

In my job as a global missions coach, I get to meet all kinds of fascinating people. But David and Karla’s story stands out as one of the most extraordinary I’ve come across.

When I was interviewing Karla for this piece, she told me, “I love how God crashed our stories.” Indeed. This story links together several of our friends from college (Kathy Keller, Joshua and Naomi Smith, and Gil and I). It’s a story of death and redemption, supernatural connections, and the beauty of surrendered lives.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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“Today, the Majority World Church sends out as many cross-cultural missionaries as does the Western Church. Mission activity is no longer predominantly a West-to-East activity. We must now see mission not as one place to the rest of the world, but as everywhere to everywhere.” (Jason Mandryk, Missions Analyst)

David and Karla Sarmiento become emotional when they talk about the deaths of their baby girls. In 2014, Sarah died at three months old in a tragic accident. A year later, Jemimah died from a heart defect the week after she was born.

Yet with tears in their eyes, David and Karla are quick to say, “From our pain to His glory.” Though excruciating, they recognize that their pain brought them deeper into Christ, made them fall in love with His Church and is now taking them from their home in Mexico City to build God’s kingdom in Paris.

The Sarmientos married in 2013 in their native Mexico, ideal complements for each other: David is gentle, soft-spoken and contemplative; Karla is vivacious, outgoing and artistic. In their early years together, David worked as an architect and Karla as a jazz musician. A year after they married, Karla was pregnant with Sarah. They opened a tea house in the Roma neighborhood – an area of Mexico City known for its European architecture, used bookstores and young professionals.

ReachGlobal missionary Sam Loesch discovered the Sarmiento’s tea shop, Casa Tassel, not long after it opened. Delighted, she wrote on her blog, “I found the place; my place. A cozy tea house just a couple blocks away. They have a shimmery, gold menu with 54 types of tea, tall shelves filled with mismatched teapots and cups, treats displayed across the counter, and a few inviting seats resting atop worn wood floors.”[T]hey realized that their tea shop wasn’t just a business – it was ministry.

Right around this time, baby Sarah languished in a coma. In a hospital waiting room, David stumbled upon Sam’s blog post and reached out to Sam. She introduced them to her ReachGlobal co-workers, Joshua and Naomi Smith, just a few weeks after Sarah’s death, when the bottom had fallen out of David and Karla’s world.

Go here to read the rest at the EFCA blog.

Two Stones In My Pocket

By Amy Medina

On May 6, 2022

In Fear, Parenting

It’s practically a miracle that I got married.

As a young person, I was colder than Elsa to guys my age. I avoided talking to them at all costs, and when I was forced to, I used sarcasm. In high school, one guy told me that I made him cry and another rebuked me for being mean. These interactions have been embedded in my memory for 30 years because I remember how stunned I was to hear them. In my head, I was a nice person. I never set out to be a jerk.

My harshness was not for lack of attraction; I had as many crushes as the boy-crazy flirt. I was simply terrified of people. I was not timid; I loved being on stage and performing when I had a script telling me exactly what to say at exactly the right moment. Real life gave me no such script.

I gained confidence in college, though even Gil remembers that my first interaction with him was intentionally distant. So it is pretty miraculous that I figured out how to be friendly enough for him to fall in love with me.

I now recognize that my reticence was very much connected to insecurity. Around people my age, I was easily intimidated, and I felt young and insignificant. I was too proud to be nervous and groveling, so it was easier to be cold and sarcastic.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “It is always the secure who are humble.” My insecurity made me unkind, anxious, unfriendly. As I’ve aged, I see in myself the link between growing more secure and how well I love others.

It’s the Week Before You Move Overseas. What Are You Feeling?

By Amy Medina

On April 14, 2022

In A Life Overseas

This was written for A Life Overseas.

It’s the week before you move overseas. What are you feeling?

Everything. You are feeling everything.

Excitement: This is finally happening!

Fear: What was I thinking? I can’t do this!

Guilt: Every time my mom looks at me, she starts crying. How can I do this to her?

Focused: If I put more books in my carry-on, I can squeeze in an extra five pounds of chocolate chips. Let’s do this.

Worried: What if I oversleep and am late to the airport? What if I lose my passport? What if my bags are too heavy at the airport and they make me rearrange everything? What if I throw up? I really might throw up.

Stressed: Fourteen friends stopped by today to say goodbye, but all I can think about is that I need to buy my daughter one more pair of sandals in the next size. Oh, and this suitcase is hovering at 52 pounds. Something’s got to come out, and it might send me over the edge.

Peaceful: I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I’m fulfilling my calling!

Sad: Every time I look at my mom, I start crying. How can I say goodbye for two years?

Grumpy: My children keep asking for lunch. Don’t they know I have to find room for these chocolate chips?

Exhausted: I woke up at 5 this morning with a racing heart. After I fell asleep at midnight with a racing heart.

Overwhelmed: That’s an understatement.

When that country was but a dream in your head, when you went through the application process, raised support, even applied for a visa – it all was hypothetical. But when it gets down to those final weeks and days, this is when it really gets real.

You sell your house and move in with your parents. You put your life’s memories out on the lawn, and you watch strangers carry away your furniture and your wedding presents. You hand over your house key, your work key, your car key, until all you have left is an empty, lonely key ring. You read the church bulletin and realize that you won’t be participating in that upcoming women’s retreat, that prayer meeting, that picnic. Life will go on without you, and suddenly, you feel as empty and lonely as your key ring.

Two Years In

By Amy Medina

On March 29, 2022

In Re-Entry to America, Third Culture Kids

I’ve been thinking that I would welcome a lock-down about now. It sounds lovely to imagine no soccer practice, no activities taking my teens in all different directions, and plenty of time for meandering family walks around the neighborhood. I wonder how different things would have been for us if the pandemic had hit in 2022 instead of 2020.

Of course, when I daydream, I only imagine the good parts. And I often fail to remember how the real-life bad parts have contributed to the real-life good parts I have today.

The pandemic, as awful as it was for us, is what brought us to Redlands. If we hadn’t left Tanzania early, Gil wouldn’t have been available to take the substitute job that led to his current job. I’m happy in 2022, but we wouldn’t have gotten here without 2020, even though I wish I could erase it.

Two years in, I can genuinely say that I love where God has planted me.

Walk beyond my neighborhood, and I find acres of orange groves. In the winter the brilliant oranges stand out against lush green leaves like California Christmas ornaments. Now that it’s spring, I open my windows, and in wafts the heady scent of orange blossoms.

Two Years Back

By Amy Medina

On March 16, 2022

In Leaving Tanzania

I had never seen so many pets at the airport.

On March 25, 2020, no one was panicking at the Dar es Salaam airport. But all those pets, restless in their hard plastic crates, added to the air of foreboding. People traveling for business or tourism don’t take their pets on international flights. But they do when running away.

Ironically, it was also the first time I had been at that airport. For two decades, we had flown out of the tiny Dar airport – only six gates, despite the thousands who passed through it every week. The new, large, modern airport had opened in late 2019, complete with towering, echoing ceilings, a Pizza Hut, and a polite British voice that announced every five minutes, Attention travelers: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania.

We stood in line in that shiny new airport in the quiet, tense air and wondered if our plane was even there and if the airport in Qatar was even open and if they were even going to let Johnny on that flight. And when they let us through, I was relieved but also devastated because part of my heart hoped that they would turn us away and we would be forced to stay in Tanzania, even though we had already sold our beds.

The memories are vivid: the pets at the airport. How Johnny almost couldn’t board until the woman from the embassy just happened to be in line next to us and advocated on our behalf. How our kids were excited to get soft-serve ice cream at Pizza Hut, but I was nauseous and everything tasted like dust in my mouth. How it felt like we were running away from home.

Five days after we arrived in California, I wrote my account of that experience. I don’t need to read it to remember the details forever lodged in my brain. But two years later, different things stand out. Mostly, I think of the people who loved us that week.

Author: Amy Medina Page 14 of 230

Everywhere to Everywhere: One story of how God is reshaping the global mission field

Two Stones In My Pocket

It’s the Week Before You Move Overseas. What Are You Feeling?

Two Years In

Two Years Back