The Missing Years (Martha's Furlough Reflections)

The subject of grief is talked about a lot in the missionary world. We live a life of perpetual goodbyes that take it’s toll on the heart, but I think the thing I grieve the most are the missing years.

When we arrived back into the states after three and a half years I didn't realize how much I would expect everything to be the same. I knew in my head that people and circumstances had changed, but not in my heart. In my heart I believed that time had stood still. We would come back and just carry on as if we had never left. But that is not how life works. The missing years are gone and you never get them back.

I can remember a time right before we left, when my son said, "I want to be the same age when I get back." Those words haunt me at times. They were the words of my six year old son Jacob before we left for Papua New Guinea in January 2012. I was stunned when I heard them. At his young age he completely understood that he was about to lose three and a half years with his best friend that he would never get back—experiences that would never happen because they would miss those stages of life together.

Jacob with his best friend Jerry in 2011

My children met many cousins that they barely remembered this year. I have beautiful memories of watching them make instant bonds with cousins they hardly knew. It was extraordinary to watch them play together like they’ve done it their whole lives, and it was heartbreaking when I was hit with the reality that they don’t get to grow up together. I could have stayed in that place of sadness and loss all furlough long, but I didn’t. I chose to embrace a gift.

Living the missionary life makes you more awake. You become keenly aware of how fleeting every moment is. A few nights ago I watched my family tightly squeeze into my Aunt Ruth’s kitchen. It was roaring loud with laughter, teasing, and story telling. It was a moment I wish I could I freeze forever. And in a way I did. I stood back and watched and memorized. That is the gift a missionary gets. We don’t get to rely on 'See you next holiday' or even 'See you next year'. We know it will be a long time before we can recreate it and that we may never get to recreate it all, because next time someone might be missing. And so we make the decision over and over to sit in the chair a little longer, to put the kids to bed a little later, and to linger in the moment. We understand that the moment may be all we get, and we live, more awake.

That is the amazing thing about furlough. No moment is taken for granted. I am fully present with every gathering, every meal, every conversation, because more often than not, it will be the only one I have with that person. And there is something really beautiful about that. You have an intense appreciation for people who were once taken for granted. This awareness is a beautiful gift, and it has allowed me to replace the missing years with great moments and memories.

This has been one of the hardest years of my life. But instead of focusing on the loss, I am choosing to focus on the gift. The gift of being more awake. I can choose to believe in a God who never wastes our pain, who redeems all people, and who turns our loss into gain.

Those two boys with the three and a half missing years picked up right where they left off. God is our Redeemer and he restores all things. He turns my mourning into dancing. He always has and always will.

Jacob with his best friend Jerry now

I worry all the time. My Aunt Ruth once said to me, “Martha, it is a sin to worry.” Well, I guess I am a great big sinner. But really it is worse than that. When I worry I am choosing to believe that God is not capable. In my mind I think I am more capable of fixing things, and there are so many things that I want to fix.

Not too long ago I went on a walk to the store alone. It was a cloudy, miserable day and I felt like the weight of the world was on me—a dark heaviness that had been there for weeks. I was angry—angry at the circumstances of life that I couldn’t fix. I walked to the store listening to worship music, but not really hearing it. I daydreamed about fighting some bad guy and rescuing someone. On the way home I had a view of the mountains that were covered with dark, menacing clouds. All I could see and feel was the dark heaviness that sat on my chest like a ton of bricks. And then I began to listen, to hear the song that was playing on my head phones:

It’s only in surrender that I am free
It’s only in surrender that I am truly free
All that I am for all that you are

And that’s when I understood. Surrender. That is all I can do. Surrender. Surrender to a great big wonderful God—a God that is far more capable than I am of fixing anything. A God who will be faithful to complete the work He began. A God who created me for a purpose.

Saying goodbye this time is harder than the first because, as a good friend recently wrote, “We love you more now than we did before.” I have loved every minute that we got to spend with friends and family. Thank you to all of you who rearranged your schedule to make time for us. That meant everything.

All year long we have visited with people and spoken at churches, and we have heard the words thank you, over and over. Thank you for all that you do, thank you for your sacrifice, thank you for following the call of God. We are put on pedestals that honestly, we don’t feel like we deserve. We are honored and made to feel like heroes at times. But there are other people that also deserve a thank you. Our family and close friends who let us go. We are not the only ones who grieve and sacrifice. Our family and close friends grieve too. They lose something too. They sacrifice something too. And it is no small thing to miss Christmases and birthdays and never get them back. The memories are missing for them as well. So we say thank you. Thank you for letting us go with grace and not bitterness. Thank you for your sacrifice.

This year it feels like the entire world turned upside down, both personally and in the news. I am not sure that I will ever feel like anything is home again. But I am not discouraged. I know that God is in control, that He loves me unconditionally, and that my true home is waiting for me in heaven. Our only answer to all the turmoil is to call on the name of Jesus.

Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to get by

Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to shine

Oh if God is on my side
Who can be against me

Furlough by the Numbers

As our time in America comes to an end, we thought it would be interesting to look back on our furlough by the numbers:

Places We Called Home: 3

Nights Away From Home: 71

Miles Traveled: 25,530

Hubcaps Lost: 1

States Visited: 30

Cousins Visited: 34

Churches Visited: 29

People Receiving Christ: 50-75

You know you are a missionary kid when...
The number one highlight of your trips to New York City, Niagara Falls, and Washington, DC is seeing squirrels.

What we will miss most about America:
Friends and Family
Convenience of Life

What we look forward to most in Papua New Guinea:
Being Home
Simplicity of Life

We want to thank all of our friends and family for making us feel so welcome and loved during our time here in America, especially our parents: Bob & Heather Boyd and Charles Zimmerman. We love you and we will miss you dearly!

We will be at Covina Assembly of God on Sunday, July 3. If you would like to say goodbye to us, please look for us in the lobby after the 9 and 11 a.m. services.

Please pray for us as we transition back to life in Papua New Guinea.

Asher, Jacob, and Bella with the Grandpa Zimmerman and cousin Somaya

The kids with their Grandma and Grandpa Boyd

Eternity in Their Hearts

In his book Eternity in Their Hearts, Christian anthropologist Don Richardson asks, "Has the God who prepared the gospel for all peoples also prepared all peoples for the gospel?" His answer is a resounding yes, and he goes on to state that "more than 90 percent of this world's folk religions acknowledge at least the existence of God. Some even anticipate His redeeming concern for mankind."

Enga fits right into that pattern. Although Engans have a deep-rooted fear of the spiritual world (as we explored in our last two newsletters), traditional Enga culture believes in a male creator God named Aitawe. According to Enga tradition, Aitawe is symbolized by the sun and inhabits the upper realm of the heavens, controlling all aspects of the universe. He is considered to be benevolent and kind but nonetheless capable of stubbornness and wrath. Although he is interested in the lives of people, he does not often intervene and is therefore viewed as distant.

Along with the assistance of the moon, Aitawe created the sky beings. The sky beings live lives just like normal Engans in that they raise pigs, grow crops, and get married, but they do so without any of the problems and tensions that people encounter on this earth. In fact, they live an abundant life that is in perfect order. And because they drink from the 'water of life', the sky beings are immortal.

Many Enga traditions state that some of the sky beings came down to earth and became the founders of the various tribes. The sky beings who stayed in the heavens above maintained relationships with the sky beings that came to the earth below, particularly to continue providing them with the 'water of life' so that they could maintain their perfect immortal life, free from problems and death. However, when the wives of the sky beings gave birth to children, they fed them with breastmilk instead of the water of life. This caused them to lose the blissful life of immortality, leaving them with the burdensome life of problems and death they now have.

As we read about this traditional Engan worldview, we can't help but notice parallels with the biblical worldview. Just as God created everything and it was good, so too did Aitawe create a good, peaceful existence for the sky beings. And just as Eve rejected the other trees in the Garden of Eden, choosing instead to take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so too did the wives of the sky beings forsake the water of life, choosing instead to feed their children with breastmilk. And just as Adam and Eve's decision to eat the forbidden fruit brought sin and death into the world, so too did the decision to feed breastmilk to children bring in death and all the problems that plague Enga society.

God was preparing the Enga people for the gospel long before missionaries ever came.

The traditional Enga worldview is ripe for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Engans know that something is horribly wrong that has taken us from the blissful world of the creator. They understand that we have rejected the water of life that gives us perfect peace and immortal life and exchanged it for the things of this world that lead only to death. But until the good news of the gospel came to them, they did not understand that there was a way to undo what has been done. But as they hear God's Word in their own language, they know that it is possible once again to drink from the water of life.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” – John 7:37 (ESV)

I would like to acknowledge and thank Paul Brennan for his anthropological research among the Enga people, which has proven to be quite valuable in understanding the traditional Engan worldview.

She Stole My Heart

In English when a man says ‘She stole my heart’, it means that he fell completely in love with a woman. In Enga the meaning is much more literal and horrifying.

Last month I shared about how fear of the spiritual world drives the traditional Enga worldview. In the past, rituals were performed to keep evil spiritual forces at bay. And while most of those rituals have now been abandoned, the underlying fear of the spiritual world is very much alive, and this fear is manifesting itself in new and horrifying ways.

Recently a Engan man named Max (not my friend Max) accused four women of using witchcraft to invisibly steal his heart and cut it into pieces. Max says that as he lay dead, his relatives ‘dealt with the women’ by tying them up, beating them, and then burning them. Max further claims that as a result of his relatives’ actions, the women returned his heart to him and he came back to life. (Click here to read the story for yourself and see video of Max making his claims.)

This is not an isolated incident in Enga but a rising trend. Engans believe that everything in life has a spiritual cause, and so when a man like Max is sick, he either looks for sin in his own life as the cause or he looks outwardly to see who might be practicing witchcraft to influence the spiritual world to cause him harm.

These beliefs are widespread, even among some who call themselves Christians. Many people in Enga don’t realize that ‘if God is for us then who can be against us?’. Nor do they realize that ‘neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’. They need God’s Word in their own language.

An Engan man named Max accusing a woman of stealing his heart

Busy Busy Busy
Before we came home on furlough, we had heard that we shouldn’t expect our time in America to be restful, and we have discovered that to be the case. In fact we chuckle to ourselves when asked how our ‘time off’ is going, because we feel busier than ever. Between homeschooling the kids, completing endless paperwork for visas and work permits, getting in three years worth of doctor visits, trying to buy clothes and other necessities for the next three years, visiting friends and family, preaching at a different church every Sunday, and trying to get in a little translation work, we are looking forward to enjoying a few boring weekends when we get back to Papua New Guinea. Nevertheless, despite the busyness, it has been so wonderful to reconnect with friends and family. We wouldn’t trade it for the world! So many of you have gone out of your way to make time to see us and to make the kids feel special, and we appreciate it more than you know!

Spending time with Martha's family at Easter

Halfway There!
In April the Enga translation team began drafting Acts 11, which marks the halfway point of the New Testament. In the past it was common for a New Testament translation to take thirty years. But by God’s grace and the efforts of many who have gone before us, He has enabled us to draft half of the New Testament in just under two and a half years. Now there are many other steps that need to be completed after drafting, but it is worth celebrating this important milestone. May God speed the second half of the New Testament!

When Do You Return to PNG?
The good news is that the time and effort we have invested in applying for renewed visas and work permits has paid off as we now have all the documents we need to return to Papua New Guinea. We have purchased our plane tickets and will be departing from Los Angeles on July 10. Please pray for us as we make our final preparations and say our final goodbyes. Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things we have to do, and so we would really appreciate your prayers.

Thank You Covina Assembly
In April we shared at our home church of Covina Assembly. We were so blessed by the outpouring of love and support of our church family. Thank you, church, for making us feel so loved and for standing with us to help us translate the Bible into Enga. We love you all!

Bitten by a Ghost

"I must obey my father (in life) so that he won't bite me (in death)."

Perhaps no saying better summarizes the underlying spiritual fears of the Enga people than this one. Traditional Enga culture teaches that every person is born with a spirit, which is received from their father. At death, this spirit leaves the body and becomes a ghost. The ghost then wanders through the clan's territory, often accompanied by whistling or rustling sounds at night. It perceives human thoughts and influences human events, usually in malevolent ways. It can even kill an individual by 'biting' him. Although, much like a honey bee, the ghost can do this only once. Usually the ghost will bite a close relative with whom he is displeased. After 'biting' someone, the ghost then descends through a hole in the ground to join the realm of the ancestral ghosts, who act together as a whole to influence the entire clan, also in malevolent ways. So if you don't want to be bitten by your father after he dies, you better obey him while he is alive. And if you don't want the fraternity of ancestral ghosts to disrupt the livelihood of your clan, you better maintain good relationships among the clan and uphold the traditions of the ancestors.

How different the Enga worldview is from our own! I thank God that I don't live in fear of being bitten by the ghosts of my recently deceased ancestors, who can read my thoughts and destroy my life. Rather, I thank God that He sent his son Jesus, who, by his death, gave us the hope of eternal life, freeing us from fear and death.

A man dressed as an evil spirit at the Enga cultural show

One criticism that is often leveled against missionaries is, "Why don't you just let people believe what they want to believe instead of forcing your beliefs upon them?" Criticisms like that incorrectly assume that people are living their lives in a perfect spiritual harmony, which Christians disrupt by forcing Christianity upon them. The reality is, however, that people are often held in great fear and bondage by their belief systems. And without the gospel of Jesus Christ, they have nowhere else to turn and end up living their lives in spiritual darkness.

In the past, the Enga people would perform various rituals to try to manage the spiritual forces that were always working in malevolent ways against them. Today most of those rituals have been abandoned, however the underlying fear of the spiritual world is very much alive. Next month, I will share a recent example of how this fear of the spiritual world is rearing its ugly head in Enga, and just how much people need the hope and freedom that comes from believing in the good news of Jesus Christ.

Speaking at Covina Assembly
We will be speaking at Covina Assembly of God (our home church) on April 24 at the 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services, and again with a different message at the 5 p.m. service. We invite you to join with us and hear our story of what God has been doing among the Enga people.

I would like to acknowledge and thank Paul Brennan for his anthropological research among the Enga people, which has proven to be quite valuable in understanding the traditional Engan worldview.

Forgiveness is Contagious

They say that in order to be an effective Bible translator, you not only have to translate the text, but you have to let the text translate you. Well, during our first term in Papua New Guinea, we had the opportunity to translate the following text,

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
– Mat 6:14-15 (ESV)

It is one thing to translate that text into Enga, it is quite another to live it out. During our first term in Papua New Guinea, we not only had the chance to see our Engan coworkers living out this text (see our Feb 2014 update), but the Lord challenged us to live it out as well (see our Sep 2014 and Feb 2015 updates). And after seeing our coworker forgive, we too were encouraged to forgive.

Sharing about forgiveness at a recent church service

Now, as we share about our experiences at different churches each Sunday, we talk about how the Lord challenged us to forgive those who had wronged us, and we encourage others to do the same. A couple of weeks ago after a service, the youth pastor came up to us and shared the following story about a high school senior I will call Mary (not her real name).

Mary has had a tough life due to the lack of a stable family environment. Her parents were divorced when she was very young and her mom received custody of all the kids. She went on to have three more children and none of those relationships lasted. Mary was abused physically, sexually, and verbally, and she will tell you to this day that it was all her fault because that was what she was told for thirteen years. Finally, when she was thirteen years old, the courts stepped in and gave custody of all the children to her father. It has been a very hard path the past four years. Mary has struggled with suicide attempts, depression, PTSD, and cutting, but she started faithfully coming to our youth group about a year and a half ago. She is seeking God but still feels as if she is not worthy of God's love. She came to me this past week after you spoke and said that the service was great. She started to tear up and said that when the service came to an end and you said, "If you need to forgive someone to please consider forgiving them," she felt God's presence and was lead to forgive her Mom. She knows that this will be a work in progress and that this hurt and pain will still be there, but she is on the road to forgiving, which is one of the largest steps a person can make towards having a stable life. We are still in prayer for Mary and her whole family. They still have a ton of work to do, and a lot of healing needs to take place, but it gives Mary hope to know that you were able to forgive a man who committed murder, burned down houses, and destroyed lives. She has started to see the hope that she has in God and is starting to understand that she is also worthy of God's forgiveness.

Praise God that He is working in Mary's life, and please join with us in prayer that the work He has started in Mary's life will be brought to completion according to His perfect will.

Golf Ball-Sized Hail

During our cross-country trip in January, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a storm with golf ball-sized hail stones, and it got me thinking that sometimes that’s what missionary life feels like.

"What was that noise? It sounded like someone just threw a rock at our car. There it is again. It keeps coming. I think that is hail. I hope the windshield doesn't crack. Maybe we should pull over. No, just keep driving through it." Those were our words as we made our way cross-country just north of Houston. It had been a nice clear day, and then all of a sudden a hail storm was upon us, with golf ball-sized stones pelting the car, leaving large dents in the exterior. It was a bit terrifying. But we kept driving, and even though the storm subsided, the dents are still there.

Sometimes the transition of missionary life feels like that hail storm. Everything is going along just fine, and then out of nowhere it feels like we are getting pelted with large hail stones. Sure, the hail lets up sooner or later, but we wonder if the damage that is done might be permanent.

Since arriving in America in July, we have ‘lived’ in three different homes and spent the night in more than twenty other locations. And along with the joy of saying hello in each new place is the pain and grief of saying goodbye to those we are leaving behind, yearning for the stability of a life lived in one place surrounded by family. And when we finally get a moment to settle down and think about it all, the hail storm hits and we wonder if the damage done is permanent.

Yet we know that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18). And so when the hail storms come, we keep driving through, confident that our Lord will bring us safely into His arms, even if we pick up a few dents along the way.

Dents on our hood from the golf ball-sized hail storm that hit us just north of Houston

Release of Matthew in Enga
In November the Enga Bible translation team released the book of Matthew in Enga. They traveled to four of the five districts in Enga Province to make the new book available in audio format and found that there was a high demand for the ‘top-up’ memory cards, which people can insert into their Audibibles to receive the new book. In fact all of the top-up memory cards sold out! Last month we also received a surprise email from an Engan man who said,

“I live and work in Enga as a civil engineer. I am from a small village called Lakui in the Ambum Kompiam district. I am so moved by the incredible work that you have done in translating the Bible into the Enga language. I am enquiring to find out where I can source some of those audio bibles so that I can distribute to Christians in my community who cannot read the Word of God in Tok Pisin and English. I believe that according to Romans 10:17, ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’ It is my prayer that the Lord continuously bless you as you carry out the great commission of spreading the Word of God to the ends of the earth.”

It is so encouraging to get feedback like this and to see people excited about receiving God’s Word in Enga.

Cross-Country
We spent the first couple weeks of January traveling cross-country from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Pasadena, California, where we are now settled into a two-bedroom apartment in a missionary housing complex. (You can reach us at the address below until mid-July.) During our trip we enjoyed visiting friends and relatives in Priceville, Alabama; Bethany, Oklahoma; Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas; and Phoenix, Arizona. It was a special treat in Houston to visit Martha’s aunt and cousins, who are the only stateside connection to Martha’s Mexican family that we have. We hadn’t seem them since our wedding, and it was wonderful to reconnect with them and practice our Spanish (which apparently has rented out the space in our brains that is now being occupied by Tok Pisin and Enga). Bella especially enjoyed getting to meet her second cousin Ramiro Jr. and became like a big sister to him during our stay in Houston. Thank you, Lord, for a great trip!

Jacob, Bella, and Asher with their cousin Ramiro Jr.