I came across this, a blog I wrote on July 9th, 2006. It was right after my return to Slovakia and it’s very helpful now, as I’m thinking forward about going to live there for a year. Here it is:
well i’m back. here i am. i miss europe, desperately. all i can think about it the people, the place, the culture, the language, the spiritual deadness, the food, the way there is no air conditioning, the public transportation, the prices, the exchange rates, the life there, our apartment in prague, being a local. all of these things and more come back to me as i am sitting in my freezing home in wilmington. it’s hard for me to understand completely what God did in my heart while I was in Slovakia - but it was cool. I definite overhaul of my heart and things that I focus on. even as i think back to how i’ve lived in the past few years without regard to hundreds of other countries out there, in comfort. i know it’s time for a change. God is calling me to something different, something not as comfortable, something for the world. i loved getting to know people there, being with the students on campus was difficult and really draining as we labored for two weeks to share our faith with medical and law students. some took the time to listen, mostly we saw girls turn their heads to their books instead of to Christ. it was a hard two weeks, mostly rainy and cold. the hardest part was trusting God with the results. in these two weeks and the weeks that followed i learned a lot about how God’s word does not return void. it accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent (isaiah 55:10). overall it was a learning curve to trust God and take steps of faith. i think that might just be the definition of successful witnessing. now that i’m home i’m finding it hard to get back into life in america. people seem back stabbing, non caring, shallow. i guess i can be the one who isn’t those things, and that somehow changes other people, i don’t know - that’s a ghandiism, and we all know that it’s God who changes people. not us. if there is one thing i learned in SK, it’s that. He opens the eyes of the nonbeliever, my job is to go.

Although, God has never awakened me to go to Africa, I do have several friends who have been and who care very deeply for the country impoverished and wounded by rape, violence, and corruption. As a part of a continued effort to reach and love African people, two American women from Wilmington, NC, left the comfort of their homes to reach out to women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. My church, and specifically Evan Vetter, and his talented team, are documenting their story through a Congo Cast. I do believe this could and will change the world. I pray God uses it in the lives of many, to be a catalyst amongst the apathetic, and an encouragement to those with dreams and ambitions to reach the people of Africa with the hope of the gospel. There are two episodes available, here is the first.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3666371568517019415]

Also, I wanted to highlight someone very special to me today, because its her birthday! Happy Birthday Courtney Pearsall! Thanks for serving in Swaziland. Currently Courtney is on an eleven month long mission with Adventures in Missions, she will visit several countries before her return to the states next April. Courtney’s obedience to God, her desire to go, her willingness to not settle, have all caused me to worship God over these last few weeks as I prepare to go over to Slovakia. Courtney, if you ever get internet long enough to read this while you’re there, I want to just say thank you for running after God, for loving him so deeply and for obeying His call on your life. All of us here in Wilmington love and miss you dearly. Happy Birthday, I pray you are surrounded by your team and you experience God’s love on a new level today. Love you Court!

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Last night, I listened to a talk by Donald Miller, which helped me to fall in love with him all over again. He was talking about story and how the protagonist has to want something in the story, and there has to be conflict for the story to be interesting. I feel like this sums up my life pretty well right now. I want something. I want to go, but even internally, it’s really hard. But what does that mean? I shouldn’t go. Oh contraire. I think it means I must go. I think it means that I’m living inside of a great story. Donald Miller tossed out some great quotes by Robert McKee, who literally, wrote the book called Story. It’s apparently 500 pages of how to write good stories, and Robert McKee is a fierce man, an agnostic. Yet he says things that capture the essence of living a Biblical life, like “story is a map of life’s hidden order.” One thing that I find very surfacing is this idea of conflict, and the reality that it must exist, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4) I think another thing that strikes me about this idea of story, and us living it out, is to think about this question, would they, the theoretical “they” make a story about this ambition? And then, knowing that, something that opposes your ambition is good, it helps us appreciate things, stories without conflict are boring. Or how about this, for me, this really makes my eyes pop, “the story we’re living in will make sense if that scene happens, and if that scene is preceded by scenes that lead up to it.” My eyes pop, because I know, my life after Slovakia will make sense because I’m going now. The thing that is so crazy is that everything on this side of going, doesn’t really make sense. I want to live inside of a great story.