our trip to Iowa

Thank you so much for your prayers for our time in Iowa.

When we got off the last plane at the end of our journey back to Spokane, Abraham's first words were, "Are we going home to our house in Iowa now?" Keith and I looked at each other rather glumly and acknowledged through our exhaustion that we felt the same way.

We got home to our city and home to our apartment and when we walked in, it didn't feel like home anymore. We kinda looked around and saw our stuff here and went, yeah, this must be our place, but to be honest it just didn't feel like it. It still doesn't really feel like it.

I would say that we fell in love with the little church in Iowa, but that's not really accurate. Rather, we seem to have this tremendous, unquenchable love for the people there. Agape love. Their faces are constantly on our minds, their needs and the struggles we perceived and their upcoming surgeries are continually on our heart. We are filled with a sincere love for them and a sincere desire to serve there.

We do not yet know if that is to be. The position of pastor has not been offered to Keith and we do not yet know if it will be. But we hope very much that it will. We've been home for two days and yet everything still feels strangely flat here.

Keith did alright while preaching, but since he studied theology in college and not actually the preaching end of things, this is essentially his first time since we went to Sudan (almost eight years ago) that he's actually preached. He is rusty. But he has so much good wisdom and truth to share, and I believe that he would be a fantastic preacher with some practice. I long to see him have the opportunity to be a pastor. I think it is what he was meant to do. It is so clearly his heart's desire, planted there by the Lord, to preach and to serve and to teach and to love and to lead. I've never known anybody who loves old people so well as he does. I've never known anyone who gets along as well with youth. I constantly hear and see how fueled he is to teach God's Word and how it applies to living out our faith in the here and now of life.

And it is amazing how well our natural affinities and the desires of our heart would fit in Iowa. From house styles to homeschooling, it seems like an astonishingly good fit for us. We could see moving there and living there forever, if that is the Lord's will for us.

So. This week we are waiting. And the waiting may go for a month or more while the church prays and discusses and waits on the Lord. And we question ourselves a little bit. Should we have tried to be more "professional" in our approach? We didn't try to polish ourselves up, didn't aim to impress. Keith has been reading Brothers, We Are Not Professionals by John Piper, and that has made him not want to pump himself up as a professional. And I read an Oswald Chambers entry soon after our arrival that made me think it was more important to give glory to Jesus than try to make a name for ourselves. I didn't embrace, either with hugs or with words or with deeds, as much as I wanted to while we were there, because I thought perhaps it would be irresponsible to try to get them to love us if we didn't know for sure whether we would return. Now I wonder if we should have let them know more how deeply right it felt to be there with them and how much we long to return to them.

It was hard to leave, and it's hard to wait here in the unknowing. Little church in Iowa, we love you with sincere love. "God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:8). We are waiting patiently, praying for the Lord's will and for discernment on your end and on ours.