Counting the Cost

Several nights ago, as I was putting the kids to bed, they wanted to hear a story -- so I told them about winter time growing up: building snow forts, playing outside for so long we'd get frostbite, and Grandpa hooking an inner-tube up behind the 3-wheeler and taking us for rides!  What fun times and fun memories!

The girls were so jealous.  Three of our kids have never experienced snow, Elise was too young to remember.  "No fair!" "Ni hao hao oh!"  "Mom, can we go back in the winter some time so we can play in the snow?"

This evening, as I was looking at our blog, wondering how/what to update, I noticed Seth & Joy had a new video post.  So, I watched it:



It almost made me cry.  These are the kinds of things that when you watch them, it makes you realize the sacrifice of being away from family.  The brother, sisters, nieces, nephews you haven't seen for nearly 4 years.  A niece and two nephews you've never met.  I think of the whole Christmas season and the excitement of hanging out with family, eating food, playing games together, the Christmas grab bag, sardines at Walmart (a game)...  and know we'll miss that ...again.

Being so far away from family and friends in the States & Australia is definitely hard at times.  We do feel the cost of overseas missions.  However, we also feel such a burden and a passion and a calling to be doing what we're doing -- we feel humbled and honored to be in Asia, training up more teachers of God's Word and sending them out to the nations!  What an incredible privilege!

We are really looking forward to our furlough in the States coming up this summer.  We probably won't get to go sledding and inner-tubing behind the 4-wheeler in the snow (unless there's a blizzard in July!), but I'm sure we'll have lots of fun! :-)