| Hey faithful blog readers, Below is an adaption of the Christmas letter I sent out to my ministry email list. If you’re interested in news about my family, read on! If you’ve prayed for us in 2023, I am so grateful. God is good; all the time. Every year we’ve been back in the States has gotten a little better, a little easier. Raising three teenagers (and one almost-teenager) who are working through a variety of layers of loss and identity keeps Gil and I on our knees, but we are thankful for so much in 2023: Grace’s baptism, academic improvement in a couple of kids, lots of reunions with friends from Tanzania this year, and a number of wonderful adults who are pouring into our kids’ lives. Here’s some updates and pictures about all of us:    Grace had an amazing year! She went to Panama on a short-term service trip, starred as Ursula in “The Little Mermaid,” made it onto “All-League First Team” in varsity basketball, helped to choreograph the church musical, works a part-time job in child care, and is taking several AP classes. She brightens everyone’s day with her sunny personality. Grace is now a senior and would love to go to Biola next year but she’s thinking she will likely go to our local community college first to save money. She wants to be a middle school English/History teacher, and of course, we think that’s a great idea!  Josiah (now a sophomore) continues to excel in soccer, making “All-League First Team” on the Varsity team as a freshman — which is quite an accomplishment. He just turned 16 so his aspirations are now to learn to drive and get a job (so that we let him drive!). Josiah likes to pretend he’s tough but he still hugs his mom (and still greatly enjoys jumping out and scaring the living daylights out of her).   Lily graduated from 8th grade in May which means we have three high schoolers this year! She’s decided she is done with sports and is sticking with creating things. She took a sewing class and bought her own sewing machine this year. She also happily takes over the kitchen whenever I travel to Minnesota for work.    Johnny is now in 6th grade and is nurturing a love for music — he plays clarinet in the school band, but he also started piano lessons and is taking off. (His teacher says he is a natural at playing by ear!) He also joined the cross-country team and is pushing himself hard. He is especially proud of the fact that he broke his older brother’s 6th grade 1 mile time (under 6 minutes). This boy can run for days! He recently hit a growth spurt and is rapidly catching up to his siblings.  Gil continues to teach high school Bible full-time and was requested by the Class of 2023 to be their commencement speaker — a testimony to his impact and influence on his students. Gil’s favorite class to teach is “Worldviews,” where he challenges students to think deeply about what they believe.  And of course, we must acknowledge the happy presence of Mzungu the dog in our family, who can make even the grumpiest teenager smile. As a family, we continue to deepen our relationships at our church and in our community. The home group we host is thriving and has expanded this year. I joined the committee at church that plans short-term missions trips, and, in fact….we plan to lead one next year: Our family will be returning to Tanzania in June for three weeks (with a team from our church)!  I’m now in my fourth year serving with ReachGlobal (the organization that sent us to Tanzania). I am on the Engage Team, which means I help to interview, onboard, and train new cross-cultural workers. I was promoted to Associate Director this year and have enjoyed the challenge of new and different responsibilities. I work remotely most of the time but travel to Minnesota several times a year for interviewing and training events. I also have had several additional speaking events this year–to help train short-term teams in cross-cultural sensitivity, to train church missions leaders in creating a missions culture, and even to teach a weekend retreat on anxiety for teen girls. My job is a support-raising position, meaning I have to raise all the funds needed for my salary, benefits, and travel expenses. I haven’t yet met my fundraising goals for 2023, so if you would be interested in becoming a monthly partner or making an end-of-year gift, please click here to make a donation. It’s always tax deductible. If you are interested in joining my ministry email list, please let me know at contactamy@amy-medina.com. (This is different from subscribing to this blog by email.) Thank you for reading this post, and so many others! Your comments and emails in response to my articles are what keep me writing. I am so grateful to each of you! By grace, Amy |
Last week at a pre-op appointment, I needed to sign a document that read, “I understand that I will not be able to become pregnant if I undergo this procedure,” and my breath caught in my throat and tears stung my eyes.
The next moment, that reaction surprised me. I am 47 years old and I haven’t thought about becoming pregnant in years. I long ago lost the hope of bearing a child and eventually lost the desire as well. But somehow initialing my name next to that sentence compressed the last 20 years, and I was suddenly a young wife again, crying over Dollar Store pregnancy tests that stubbornly refused to show me two pink lines.
The EFCA blog is doing a series on marriage and asked me to write this one.
A guy in college told me that if I wanted to be a missionary in Africa, no one would date me. I didn’t care. And he was wrong.
In fact, it was during college that Gil Medina came into my life, and we got to know each other while co-leading a ministry in a cross-cultural, low-income neighborhood near our church. The two of us became a team before we were even friends. We hit it off and worked well together: he was the visionary, relational guy, and I was the administrative and logistics gal.
I wanted to be more than friends but didn’t think he did, so I barreled along with my plans to move overseas. I was accepted with ReachGlobal, agreed to teach in Tanzania, raised all my support and got a visa.
Meanwhile, Gil wanted to be more than friends too, but kept his mouth shut so as not to get in the way of God’s plan for my life. Finally, some mutual friends helped us break through our self-sacrificing martyrdom and pointed us in the other’s direction. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that, really, we wanted to do this missionary life together.
When we got engaged, we weren’t sure if Tanzania would be as good of a ministry fit for Gil as it was for me and considered serving in a different country. But then a youth sports outreach position opened up in Tanzania, which felt like Gil’s dream job. We got married on October 7, 2000, and nine months later, we were on a plane out of California. We arrived in Tanzania just a year after my original plan to leave. ReachGlobal got two for the price of one and I felt like I had everything I could ever want: I got to serve in Africa, and with my best friend and ministry partner. The Gil and Amy Medina Team couldn’t have been more perfect.
Turns out, it wasn’t so perfect.
Go here to read the rest.
This post was written for A Life Overseas.
My mom sits at her mom’s breakfast table, wailing and pleading. My grandmother sits opposite her, wailing and angry.
It is one of my earliest memories.
I’d never heard so much emotion out of either of them, and the sunny little room encircled by cabinets of glassware suddenly felt tense, alarming, to my five-year-old soul.
My Gram struggled to accept that we were moving to Africa, so that day at her table was one of many tense conversations. In her anger that my mom was taking away her grandchildren, Gram even consulted a lawyer to see if she could sue for custody.
During our first two-year term in Liberia, we faithfully sent her letters and pictures. My mom tape-recorded my brother’s and my voices and mailed the cassettes off too. Gram didn’t call once during the entire two years. She didn’t send a single letter. Her anger and grief consumed her.
My grandmother never understood my parents’ love for Jesus, so their motivation to become missionaries didn’t make sense to her either. But unfortunately, her response wasn’t all that different from many parents who do share their children’s faith.
In Mobilizing Gen Z, Jolene Erlacher and Katy White quote the Future of Missions study from Barna: “Only 35 percent of engaged Christian parents of young adults say they would definitely encourage their child to serve in missions, while 25 percent are not open to the idea at all.”
They continue, “Career success and physical safety are the top concerns. Nearly half said, ‘I’d rather my child get a well-paying job than be a career missionary.’”
This piece assumes you are familiar with the story of Renee Bach, which was recently depicted in the documentary Savior Complex on HBO, but also in the 2020 podcast series called The Missionary.
I have a lot of sympathy for Renee Bach because I could have been her.
I remember questioning whether a college education was worth the price when so many in Africa urgently needed that money and my help. If I had gotten the notion in my idealistic head that it was possible to go to Africa at age 19 and start a charity, I might have jumped on the next plane.
Did Renee Bach have a Savior Complex? Absolutely. So did I. So do a lot of young people. It might not be about missions for all of them – it might be climate change or racial reconciliation or anti-sex trafficking or gender equality or whatever is the current hot-button topic – but young people are known for their passion and idealism. Renee’s intentions were noble, and she helped to save babies’ lives. Isn’t this a good thing? It sure is a lot more inspiring than playing video games in the basement.
But young people don’t know what they don’t know, and this is what the adults in their lives need to help them see. So when I consider Renee’s story, that’s the part that strikes me as the avoidable tragedy.
I’m not sure what was in the water in Jinja, Uganda, that caused dozens of young American women to zip over and start charities all by themselves. (We never saw this trend in Tanzania.) Renee moved to Uganda the same year that Katie Davis published her New York Times bestseller Kisses from Katie about doing the exact thing. Katie was the darling of the evangelical world that year, so why would Renee question if this was a wise move?
