A last-minute train ride to Turin!

Our tired team had just made it back to the hotel after that awesome evening of bowling and dinner with the students. "Do you want to come with us to Torino in the morning? They're having an encouragement time for the ladies there tomorrow."

What a beautiful surprise, plopped right into our lap! I was thrilled, but hubby was ecstatic. Years before our church's partnership in Milan, he had been on a short-term team to Turin and he still had many friends in that beautiful city.

The rest of the team planned to spend the day in Milan's historic center, so we left Chrissy in charge and gave her the team cell phone.

Early the next morning, we boarded a train!

Milan rests in a fertile valley ringed by hazy blue Alps. The view out the window was a gorgeous panorama of blue skies, red-tiled roofs, and flooded rice fields. (Who would have guessed that Italy was the place to grow rice, right?)

Turin has the kind of picturesque charm that can turn even a camera phone snapshot into something frame-able. I took this one at a half-jog as we crossed a street on our way to enjoy a delicious lunch at the home of one of the pastors. 

After lunch, I had a sweet walk and a coffee with Pam, and I realized all over again just how beautiful her heart is. 

We made our way back to the deceptively tiny storefront of the church, and into the underground rooms below the street. There were about ten of us crowded into the Sunday school room, representing about five different countries. I felt so encouraged simply to be there, surrounded by women seeking the Lord in a city known for its darkness. 

And then it just kept getting better! As I talked with some of the younger girls, I learned that three of them were from Romania! As we talked and shared in the beautiful Romanian language, it was as if sweet oil were being poured on the rusty door holding memories of my past time in Moldova. As it swung open, my heart was flooded with the joy of it all. It was as if Jesus, knowing the love I still carry deep for that nation, said, "Here; I haven't forgotten. I see your heart."

At dinner, I finally met one of the dear friends that hubby had made years earlier. "You know?" she said. "Those years, being involved with English Clubs...those were the most fun years I have ever had."

My new Chinese friend

Have you ever lived overseas?

I'm not talking about a vacation packed with non-stop pictures and travel and fun. I'm talking about a time long enough for laundry to be done, long enough for grocery shopping routines to form, long enough for lonliness to set in.

  Someone once told me that the number of calories an immersed language student burns daily from sheer mental effort to understand and be understood is equivalent to what a bricklayer would burn if he worked eight hours in the sun. I believe them.

I had the chance to spend half a year overseas after high school. The mental exhaustion was intense. The new language was an extra layer of difficulty that had to be peeled back from the most ordinary of tasks. I remember searching for words, lining them up in my mind, rehearsing them over and over as I stepped to a desk or cashier and hoped that the other person would be kind.

Now I am the person behind the desk. In my new office, every other visitor speaks with an accent. Their syllables halt in strange places and their faulty intonations make commonplace words sound like music.

For a long time, I have enjoyed tiny slivers of interaction with internationals--a few minutes on the bus, visits with a Chinese friend who now lives 3 hours away, or a Turkish friend who is very busy with her baby. Because our ministry focus is on a student homegroup that has mostly American students (by accident, not design), there just hasn't been the opportunity to interact very much.

Now, not only do I get to see and talk to foreign students every day at my job, I have a new friend from China! Lynn* is a first-semester graduate student from Shanghai, and she is my new conversation partner. Several months ago, she jotted down her name on a sheet of paper at an international student welcome event to ask for an American friend. We got connected, and I'm so excited to get to know her!

I'm sure I'll have plenty more to tell as we get to know each other, but for now, please pray for our friendship, and for Lynn as she adjusts to American life and our (very!) strange language.

*Not her real name

Global Week

Last week our church tried something new.

We have always been a “missional” church. We are dedicated to evangelism and discipleship both here in our college town and overseas. For years, we have had special partnerships with churches overseas in countries like Nigeria, Italy, and Mexico, and we send teams each year to those partners. (Shameless plug for the Italy mission trip! It will change your life!)

We usually talk about the trips in spaced-out spurts: Mexico one week, Nigeria another week.

Not this year.

This year, our leaders decided to streamline, focus, and intensify by creating Global Week: a seven day period of teachings, prayer, worship and information about Jesus' Great Commission. We had a free missions conference by The Traveling Team, a half-night of prayer, info lunches about each mission trip—the works.

To be honest, I was nervous about last week. I was afraid that all this talk of missions would rip the band-aid off the old, unmet desire to go to the ends of the earth. That it would poke the wound raw, stir up the discontent I had almost ignored.

Here is my old pattern:
1) I see a need.
2) It’s huge.
3) My heart breaks.
4) I jump to the rescue.

And just to clarify,“Rescue” usually involves prayer, tears, and an intense desire to sell my car and hop on a plane. In the end, I feel frustrated because I’m here, not there.

Like I said, this is the old pattern.

 On that Sunday as the last session by The Traveling Team ended and we folded our chairs to leave, I realized that something was missing. The heart-wrenching, hopeless, urgent feeling was gone. In its place was a quiet, growing excitement to be so stratigically placed.

I remembered with a jolt that almost every hero of the Traveling Team’s stories was a man or woman whose most meaningful work was the mobilization of students. They were willing to go themselves, but humble enough to realize that God’s glory is often more magnified through community than through a single man or woman's zeal. It made me feel honored—not displaced—to be living here among college students.

After all, what could be more strategic?

He has placed me here. Until he reassigns me, I will be faithful in this place, with these students, with these kids and the kids on our street. At this moment, I simply feel content to pray, trusting that God will tell me the next step.

If you’d like to read more, check out this post, in which I realized that staying and sending can sometimes be radical obedience.

My friend, Dana

I had planned to write a happy post today. My sister is in town for a rare visit, and we had a blast last night in historic downtown Bryan. But today, I am grieving the death of my dear friend, Dana Ciumac. This morning, at around 3 am, Jesus took her home to heaven.

Though I lost both of my beautiful grandmothers to cancer, my heart is feeling a deeper, sharper sense of tragedy because this was a friend who had not yet reached her thirties.

I met Dana in the fall of 2006. With my high school graduation only months behind me, I had flown to Europe for a six-month mission trip with Operation Mobilization. I was such an eager, skinny twig, excited to be abroad where nothing was familiar except the Latin sounds that the Romanian language holds in common with Spanish. Dana, who was Romanian, was one of perhaps 3 people on the team who spoke English, and her accepting hugs and smiles made me feel at home almost immediately.

She was young--only 22--but I was only nineteen and deeply admired her. She was so gentle, so cheerful, and if there was a joke or party, Dana was probably in the middle of it. Kids in the villages we visited would flock around her, glowing under the individual attention she gave so freely. As I greedily learned every Romanian word I could, she would patiently help me with spelling and correct my pronunciations. She led teams of young people as we served widows, created puppet shows for kid programs, and told people on the streets about the freedom and joy of knowing God personally.

After I left Europe, she continued to serve on the team, and I would receive emails, facebook messages, and even precious letters from her in Romanian. In November of 2009, she married a young man who had also been our teammate, and I celebrated with her by oooing and ahhhing over her wedding pictures online.

For approximately the last nine months, her husband Eugen has served and loved and encouraged her as few men could have done. He kept hundreds of supporters and friends informed as the cancer gradually took its course, always with unwavering faith in God's goodness and love. Only God could have known that a healthy young woman like Dana would die so soon, and I am so glad that He brought such a wonderful man into her life.

Even this morning, Eugen wrote: "I know that this is a shocking news for you, but I thank God that He released her from all the pain she had...Please pray for our families and all the friends that kept Dana close to their hearts.

Be blessed and don’t forget, God is good!"

Dana, goodbye, my beautiful friend. I will see you someday again soon.