Author: Amy Medina Page 25 of 230

A favorite memory was the night I heard Victoria tell me her story of growing up in Soviet Ukraine.

Victoria was a wonderful co-worker at Haven of Peace Academy. So when she sat across from me at a staff dinner at an outdoor restaurant, in the dimming evening light, I asked her to tell me about her childhood under Communism.

What was it like growing up in the Soviet Union? I asked. And I sat spellbound as she talked about a carefree childhood where the children could roam freely, because there was very little crime. However, she said, there were also times when neighbors would disappear in the night, never to be seen or heard from again.

She talked about her Christian grandmother, who secretly told her about God and gave her a cross pendant to wear under her school uniform. One day a teacher found it, and forced the seven-year-old Victoria to stand in front of the entire school and stomp on that cross.

Leaving Early Has Complicated All the Complicated Emotions of Re-Entry

By Amy Medina

On October 10, 2020

In Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America

My youngest has been fascinated with finding places on Google Earth. He recently brought me the iPad and said, “Mommy, help me find HOPAC.”

My son is in third grade, and Haven of Peace Academy is where he went to school for kindergarten through second grade. But even before that, HOPAC was always a part of his life. It’s where my husband and I ministered for sixteen years. The last three years, it was where I was the elementary school principal.

I showed him how to type in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “Here’s downtown, right?” I pointed out. I traced the main road that led to the north of the city. “This is Shoppers Plaza; that’s where we would buy chicken on Saturday nights; this is the White Sands roundabout. Then you turn right here, and see? There’s HOPAC!”

Together we then traced the road down a little further until we could pick out the house where we had lived for ten years. We zoomed in on it, and a hundred memories rushed out. My eyes grew misty. My finger stopped, hovering there, suspended above our home. Ten thousand miles away, yet so close I could almost touch it.

“I like my new school,” Johnny tells me. “But I like Tanzania better.” Me too, Buddy.

***

I knew there would be grief in leaving. We had planned our departure a year in advance; we knew it was coming. We knew it would be hard. Tanzania had been our home for sixteen years.

But what I can’t figure out is what part of my grief is because we left, and what part of my grief is because we left the way we did.

***

The Quiet Summer

By Amy Medina

On October 6, 2020

In Re-Entry to America

These past three months, my life has felt very small, and very quiet. It has been good, but strange. In many ways, it’s been an about-face of the life we left behind.

My recent years in Tanzania were extremely busy and crowded and turbulent. I was working over 50 hours a week in a job where I interacted with hundreds of people every day. I had lived in Dar so long that it was unusual to go anywhere without seeing someone I knew. The city of Dar es Salaam is chaotic and noisy and full of buses and animals and honking and heat.

Then came the spring of 2020 when we were evacuated, and we lived for months in a haze of stress and sadness and uncertainty. We moved to a different house every few weeks, each time living in someone else’s space, blessed by the generosity of our families but with an undergirding of restlessness, rootlessness, and tension.

So moving into our Southern California apartment in late June brought with it a huge sigh of relief. And after all of the bustle of filling up our home with the things we needed, we were able to take a deep breath. Because we were new and didn’t know anyone in our city other than the Snyders, and because almost everything in the city was closed, our summer became very, very small.

After the bigness and busyness of Dar es Salaam, it is strange, suddenly finding ourselves in a place where we know no one and no one knows us, and the things we needed to do could be done on a computer. Everyone was supposed to keep their distance from one other and no one had quite yet worked out the rules of what kind of interaction we’re allowed to have. Our lives have felt very quiet and inconspicuous.

Mostly, this has been a good thing. Our souls needed restoring. We needed time as just the six of us. We walked to the grocery store on Wednesday nights all summer long and argued in front of the ice cream freezer over what kind to buy. We watched Hamilton and The Mandalorian. We read The Hate U Give (heavily edited), and struggled through hard conversations on race and rioting and America and the war zone we have just brought our children into. The kids checked daily to see if our complex’s pools were open, but they never were. They fought over who would get to check the mail, because what else was there to do? There was way too much Fortnite, but for Josiah, that was his only connection to friends. We helped Gil get his classroom ready. And we waited, and waited, as the start of school kept getting pushed back. Some days we went stir crazy. There was yelling.

There were a few moments of excitement. Grace decided to break up the monotony by getting appendicitis in August and spending 24 hours in the emergency room. Another child (who shall remain nameless) left the water running in a bathroom sink, which flooded the bathroom and the floor, which then rained onto the car in the garage below it. There might have been some yelling then too.

We really needed school to open. Finally it did, though with the dates and protocols changing daily, it was the most anti-climactic start of school ever. But hey, these days we take what we can get, right? I have two kids doing in person learning and two kids doing distance learning (but on campus–yes, it’s weird) and a husband who is teaching remotely from an empty classroom. But some sports have started, and we go to church on a lawn, and I have some new Facebook friends. I am telling myself to be grateful for what we do have, and patient for what we don’t.

For three months, I’ve written very little. That hasn’t happened for twelve years.

But it has been good to be quiet for a while. My soul has needed settling. My thoughts have needed to untangle themselves. And somehow it was easier for me to give a commentary on American life when I was standing outside of it. Now that I’m living it, I have been feeling a bit shy. Like I needed to stand back a while, and just listen in. I wondered for a while if it was time to stop writing completely. Publicly, at least.

But since you are reading this, you know that I decided that I still need to keep writing–mostly for myself. But as I apply my 22 years of life as a missionary into my life on American soil, I pray that together our perspectives may be transformed.

We all worked hard to create Gil’s awesome classroom. Unfortunately not many students have been able to see it yet.

Another set of braces have entered our family.

Grace decided getting your appendix out isn’t so bad when grandparents send you goodies.

Not Home Yet

By Amy Medina

On October 5, 2020

In Living Like a Missionary

There were several years of my life when I daydreamed about being evacuated.

Those first few years in Tanzania, a lot of the time, I wasn’t content. Everything felt different and strange and hard. Driving was terrifying. I had to re-learn how to cook, how to shop, how to speak. We went through several years of electricity rationing. I dreadfully missed the people I loved. I enviously watched friends’ pictures on Facebook of crisp autumns and pumpkin patches and chilly Christmases. I followed birthday pictures of my nieces and nephews, watching them grow up without me there. I acutely felt the ache of what I had left behind, especially since I often felt incompetent or out of place or like a failure.

Yet I knew I was supposed to be in Tanzania. Our ministry was a perfect fit and we were filling a need, and it was incredibly fulfilling. I didn’t have a good reason to leave. Throwing in the towel would have made me feel like a quitter, even more of a failure than I already was. So I daydreamed about being evacuated. It would be perfect: Some sort of civil unrest or world emergency (not a personal emergency, of course, that wouldn’t be good) would force us to leave against our will. It sounded like a rather noble and heroic way to get to go home.

Yes, I realize how stupid and selfish that sounds. And ironic, of course, since in the end, a mandated evacuation was how we left Tanzania. It felt shameful, not at all noble or heroic. But that’s also because around year six or seven, Tanzania became home. It became a place I never wanted to leave. Tanzania was where I was comfortable and known and where I belonged; America was not.

But obviously, the concept of home remained complicated for me. I spent my first few years in Tanzania longing for home, and the last few years dreading when I would have to return home. So leaving early was traumatic, not a relief.

In June, I laughed in bitter irony when the door slammed shut for us buying a house. I had lived a nomadic life for so long, living in a place that was not my own. Foreigners can’t buy property in Tanzania, so that had never been an option for us. I wanted to put down roots, to belong somewhere. So a year ago, when we knew we would be leaving Tanzania, buying a house was my new daydream. Finally, we would have a place to call home. That restlessness that had been a part of most of my life would be put to rest. Buying a house meant more to me than just a nice place to live; it represented stability and permanence and a place to call Home.

As soon as we knew it wasn’t going to happen this year, I immediately understood the lesson God had for me in the rejection. I knew exactly what he wanted me to learn; I just didn’t want to learn it. After all, he had been teaching it to me over the course of my entire life of living as a foreigner. I am not supposed to feel at home here, on this earth, in any country. That longing for home that I’ve never been able to shake is because I was not meant for this world.

And though we are still hoping to buy a house in the next year or so, I’m really thankful that God gave me this reminder (again!). Owning a house will be nice, and financially wise, but may I be sure to never attach my heart to it as Home.

During the past several months, as I debated whether to continue blogging in this new season of my life, I realized that this outworking of “Home” while living in the country of my birth was something that I needed to continue to write about. The lessons I learned overseas as a foreign missionary can and should be applied to my life in America. And perhaps, there are others who can benefit from my wrestling.

So I hope you will join me. I plan to continue to write about missions, adoption, and memories from Tanzania, but most importantly, how the first half of my life as a foreigner is now influencing the second half of my life as an American.

The best way to follow along is to either sign up to receive posts by email, or to use Feedly or another type of content organizer. I love followers on social media, but it’s not always a consistent way to see what I’ve written.

You always have permission to share links to my posts, so don’t feel like you need to ask. And I welcome your thoughts, either by email or comments. Thank you so much to those of you who faithfully followed Everyone Needs a Little Grace in Their Lives. Welcome to Part 2!

Why I’m Becoming a Third Class Missionary

By Amy Medina

On July 10, 2020

In Living Like a Missionary, Re-Entry to America, Thoughts on Missions

This time last year, Gil and I made the decision that we would be relocating to the States in 2020. As we started thinking about where we would go and what we would do in America, there were a lot of possibilities on the table.

There was one thing, however, that I was adamant about. Whatever we decided to do next, I did not want to be in a support-raising position. One of my most popular-ever posts is In Defense of Second Class Missionaries. If being missionary teachers made us second-class missionaries, then living stateside on support would put us in third-class missionary status. No sirree; I was not going to do that. It was hard enough raising support to live overseas, but stateside missionaries don’t excite anyone. We would get regular jobs that paid regular salaries and we would be regular Americans. So no matter how cool an opportunity sounded to me, if it required raising support, I was out.

But I have this wonderful friend, Alyssa, who has this habit of drilling into my soul. So when I told her my intention of finding a regular, non-support-raising job, she was not satisfied. “Why not?” she asked me. “What if God shows you the perfect job that is a perfect fit for you, but you have to raise support for it? Would you still say no?”

Of course, since I wanted to sound like a good Christian, I sighed and promised that I would do my best to keep an open mind to whatever God wanted me to do. But inwardly, my mind was still made up. No way. I’ve lived on support for 18 years. And I know what the American church thinks about third-class missionaries. It’s time to move on.

Throughout the fall, Gil and I had numerous conversations with various ministry leaders, some from Reach Global (our mission agency) and some with other organizations, all desiring to recruit us. They were support-raising positions, and some sounded pretty enticing. However, it was during this time that we came to the conclusion that we wanted to live in California, and that we wanted our kids in Christian schools. That meant either Gil or I would need to work for a Christian school in order to afford it. So it wasn’t difficult to say no to those opportunities.

Then came a call in late December from the leader of the Engage Division of Reach Global. He was encouraging me to consider joining their team as a Pre-Deployed Missionary Coach. The leader described the position: Interviewing potential missionary candidates, coaching and training accepted candidates, and helping them discover where in the world God was leading them.

Despite my best efforts to not be interested, I was instantly energized during this conversation. This would be a job I would love. This would be a job I would be good at. And I could do it from anywhere in the United States.

But I was still very determined that I did not want to accept a support-raising position. So it was off the table….right? Besides, either Gil or I needed to teach at a Christian school. That was the first priority. So I couldn’t say yes….right?

Yet, I couldn’t shake the idea that I was uniquely qualified for this job. Not only had I served in missions for 16 years, I also had been a missionary kid. During our years in Tanzania, I reveled in helping new missionaries adjust to life overseas. Being part of a missionary school, I worked with missionaries from a multitude of countries, ages, and seasons of life. I’ve experienced the ugly, the crazy, and the beautiful in missionary communities. I’ve been writing for A Life Overseas, a blog dedicated to missionaries, for five years. Promoting missions, and enabling missionaries to do their jobs well, is a passion of mine. Plus, I now have three years of experience in administration. Interviewing, hiring, coaching, and training have all been a part of my job as principal.

Yet I did not want to raise support. Period. I battled with God on this. I had done my time, right? This was my chance to be a regular person with a regular job. Meanwhile, Gil and I were busily applying to Christian school jobs all over California. Some teaching possibilities opened for me, but they were not in great locations for our family. So I kept those on hold.

Then in late May Gil got the perfect job at the perfect Christian school in the perfect location. And suddenly, I had no more excuses.

I talked to Alyssa again. “I really want to do the Engage job,” I told her. “But I just don’t want to raise support.” And Alyssa, in her kind but soul-drilling way, said to me, “Amy, you don’t whine very often. So when you do, I know you must be trying to avoid something that you know you are supposed to do.”

She got me. I knew she was right. So I forced myself to take a good hard look at why I was so opposed to taking a job that required me to raise support. And the picture that came to my mind was my friend Lois.

Lois was a widow. Lois supported us at $200 a month for several years as a widow. She developed cancer, and a few years I ago when we were in the States, I visited her in her nursing home. I talked with her about how grateful we were that she supported us so generously for so long. “It’s my pleasure,” she told me. “You know, I discussed this with my kids. They agreed that they didn’t need a big inheritance. They were okay with me giving away my money to missionaries.”

And I just sat there dumbfounded. I still am dumbfounded. Why would anyone do that? Why would someone make that kind of sacrifice? For me?

Lois died about six weeks after that meeting. Recounting that conversation still brings tears to my eyes. I have dozens of stories like this. There are so many who blow me away by their consistent, faithful, sacrificial generosity.

And I am humbled. That’s it. That’s the clincher. I realized that’s why I have been so opposed to staying on support. I think of Lois, and so many other scores of faces, and I am ground to the dust in gratitude. Basically that’s why I was kicking and screaming all this time: I was too proud to admit how much I didn’t want to be humbled. And knowing that I would be demoted to third-class missionary status didn’t help. Though I knew I would love doing this job, I wouldn’t have any cool Africa stories any more. I wouldn’t be on the “front lines.” I would be behind the scenes, which definitely isn’t very glamorous. I knew it would be a lot harder, and a lot more humbling, to raise the support I needed.

Which, when I finally admitted it to myself, was not a reason at all. As a child of God, if this is the job I am called to do, then I should welcome the big gulp of humility I must take by remaining dependent on God and His church to provide for my needs.

So about a month ago, I accepted the job. I will officially start in September, and I’ve made an initial commitment of two years. I am very excited, but nervously trusting that God is going to make this work.

And, for the first time ever on this blog, I’m asking you, my readers, if there are any out there who would be interested in joining my financial support team. If that could be you, then please read the information at the bottom of this post, or click on to the next post for answers to frequently asked questions.

Some of you may have been wondering what is going to happen to this blog now that I’m no longer in Africa, and I’ve been thinking a lot about that too. I know I need a re-design, and I’m working on that. One of the exciting parts of my new job is that it will allow me to continue to keep reading, thinking deeply, and writing about missions. I hope you’ll come along as I start Part 2 of my life as an enthusiastic, third-class missionary.

***

If you would like to partner with me in this role, pray for me, or support me financially, please read on…

If you would like to be on my mailing list (if you are not already), please email me at everyoneneedsalittlegrace(at)gmail.com and I would be happy to add you! No more cool Africa stories, but I will be sharing about how God is using me to send new missionaries around the world.

If you are interested in supporting me financially, you can go here to donate. All donations are tax deductible.

Remember, click on to the next post if you have additional questions about how this works.

Author: Amy Medina Page 25 of 230

Christians, Diversity is Not a Bad Word

Leaving Early Has Complicated All the Complicated Emotions of Re-Entry

The Quiet Summer

Not Home Yet

Why I’m Becoming a Third Class Missionary