I don't know why you say goodbye; I say hello!

So here is a weird part of our weird life that you may never have thought of before... the “goodbyes” don’t end when we leave the States. 

Just today I was thinking about how our life here in Zambia is just saturated with goodbyes. In fact, one of our family mottos has become, “It’s hard to say goodbye, and that’s okay.” Since we’ve been back over the past coupla months we’ve already had a number of ministry guests come and go. We love hosting people!!!! but it can be hard saying goodbye all the time.

We try to think about it as getting to say “hello” a lot too and sometimes that’s very true. Like today, we had almost our whole staff at staff meeting today. It’s not just ministry guests that come and go, but even our own teammates. Just recently we welcomed back Tracy and Karen Singleton who were in the States on their furlough. They work with Action Zambia’s pastors’ college (ACTION Pastors’ College or APC for short). It was super exciting to see them again and we are looking forward to working with them again. Between our furlough and theirs, it had been ten months since we were together on the field! Crazy!

Now that they are back, we have just a short time before parts of our team will be missing again. This is just a constant part of life here. At any given time, some of the folks you love are in the States on furlough. Soon, Tyler Dingman who works at Ciyanjano will be on his furlough, and very soon after he leaves our directors Tim and Andrea Hilty will be leaving too. Needless to say our ACTION Zambia team can feel very short-handed at times. Later in the year our friends, Derek and Kristin Dearth who run the CROSS project which is our HIV program, will also be heading back for furlough. At least Tyler and the Hiltys will be back before the Dearths leave....

Anyway, it’s complicated!!!! It’s just one aspect of ministry that can be kind of crazy here as we look at our schedule of ministry for this year. Please pray for our team that we can maintain the unity we enjoy as well as continue Christ-centered and effective ministry throughout 2014 no matter to whom we might be waving hello or goodbye.