Ladies and gentlemen, the first guest post.😊 Tonight I’m leaving Arauca. It’s with mixed feelings that I enter this new adventure. A few months ago another worker down here left and what I am going to share are his thought on saying goodbye, which really echo how I’m feeling.
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So I do best processing stuff by writing it out... So here are some departure airplane thoughts...
One of the hardest parts of missionary work in a foreign country is the farewells... People come and people go... Friends are made, and then they leave... We crave a normal, but it doesn't exist... Change happens... Alot... I write this on the one hour flight from Arauca to Bogotá... A flight I have made many times... But tonight it is different... I have no planned return date... I said goodbye to folks that have become family... I walked out of the door of the little humble abode I have called home for over a year... I got on an airplane and through tear-filled eyes, watched the lights of Arauca slip away... Away... My city for the past year and nine months... But God is good... God's plans are perfect... As I look over the past two years, I see my own big plans and ideas just ground to powder... But that powder became the cement that God used to work things I couldn't have even begun to imagine... I am blown away by what God has done in my life, and in the lives of those I have come to love deeply... Sometimes I look at my Latin American family, and I covet their deep faith and child like trust in God... And then I realize... It wasn't the good times that taught them this faith... A faith that works... A faith grounded in God's faithfulness through incredible difficulty... I remember clearly the afternoon, as I watched the sun set in the west... I had just watched some of my grandest plans crash to the ground in a million pieces... I thought I knew what was best... But I didn't... That evening it seemed like God had painted a special sunset just for me... As I watched that sunset, it was as if God spoke audibly to me... "Son, if it wasn't for the sunset and the black of night, you would never get to see a sunrise, or experience a new day." So hang in there... God is good... All the time...
-Merle Eberly
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