How to Move to Malawi

Sometimes (not always. sometimes) I wish that this blog post existed. I have been frenetically making lists, checking things off, re-writing the lists, and thinking, what am I forgetting?. I need want a step-by-step guide. "This is how you pack everything you need." "This is how you make sure you don't lose any luggage." "This is how to speak Chichewa." "This is how you become part of a new community." "This is how you cook." "This is how..." The list goes on and on.

I'm still anticipating my move. I'm still excited (and a bit impatient) to be and live and teach in Malawi. But I'm also still learning to trust God, because after all, this is what the Lord said to His followers: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14.27).

And, well, this is where I'm going: (photo from nat.geo)

Wisdom for the Missionary from E. Elliot

One of the beautiful aspects of living the Christian life is the occasional encounter with a true kindred spirit--someone whose mind and heart somehow resonate with one's own, their lives, no matter how different, in sync because of a shared faith and hope. Sometimes I feel such a connection with believers I have never met; the individual on my mind today (and for the past two weeks or so) is Elisabeth Elliot.

Although I know (to clarify by means of Spanish, saber) and do not know (conocer) this lady, her writing provides an opportunity to see her heart, a heart dedicated to truth, holiness, and love. Most recently, I read her account of her one-year stay with the [then-known-as] Auca Indians of Ecuador. After a fascinating, better-than-ethnography account, she concludes with these wise words:

We must not proceed from our own notions of God's actions (it will appear He has not acted) but must look clearly and unflinchingly at what happens and seek to understand it through the revelation of God in Christ. His life on earth had a most inauspicious beginning...Yet out of this seeming weakness and failure, out of His very humbling to death, what exaltation and glory. For the will of God is not a quantitative thing, static and measurable. The Sovereign God moves in mysterious relation to the freedom of man's will. We can demand no instant reversals. Things must be worked out according to a divine design and timetable. Sometimes the light rises excruciatingly slowly. The Kingdom of God is like leaven and seed, things which work silently, secretly, slowly, but there is in them an incalculable transforming power. Even in the plain soil, even in the dull dough, lies the possibility of transformation for, as the psalmist wrote, 'All things serve Thee.'     The missionary, with all his sin and worldliness, stands nevertheless with Christ for the salvation of the world. As I learned when I was with the 'savages,' they do not need Christ more than I do, for we are all of us sheep who have turned every one to his own way. If I know who the Shepherd is and how to find Him, it is surely my duty to do what I can to point other sheep to Him. (E. Elliot, The Savage My Kinsman, 1961)

Did you catch all that? I've been reading it over and over, praying that the words be engrained in my memory, because I know that when I take the next step to being a teacher and missionary, challenges will most certainly arise and shake my confidence. But if I can remember that "There is only one ultimate guarantee...The love of Christ", then, only then, will I rise above my doubts, or rather, forsake my doubts, and continue in faith.