Sometimes the mission field is the same as what my dad used to say happens a lot in the army… i.e. ‘Hurry up –> AND WAIT!’ Quite often people’s schedules are unable to ‘mesh’ very well on the field; m’s arrive in one place at a certain time,

but then due to all kinds of schedule conflicts, it might be days between destinations and ‘being settled’ which is so important for us all! One m family needed to arrive in a NEW allocation from another country, but they had about 3 weeks+ until they could ‘settle in’ to their new rental home… This necessitated stays at both our team Guest House and then living with another family for a couple more weeks…all the while feeling ‘underfoot’ and not knowing how to keep children entertained! This coupled with the stress of a HUGE job change, having to learn another language and you can just ponder the stress level they were dealing with. In some ways it makes our ‘prayers sound hollow’ in the face of their emotional storm’! So badly do we want to immediately ‘FIX’ those kinds of situations, in our flesh, but of course all we really can do is listen and pray and empathize… BUT is that enough…? And yes, it simply has to be enough… and so we ourselves continue to live with that tension of being ‘VICARIOUSLY out of sorts with and for them’… And life on the field goes on… sometimes in a rather stumbling/fumbling way!