In the book “Mi Ni Amaru Megumi – Undeserved Grace” the memoirs of the Australia/Canadian missionary couple David and Dorothy Brook, they mention that the life of a missionary is a life of continual farewells. The reason for this they said was they were always welcoming people and sending them off, visiting home on furlough then returning, moving from town to town as they helped train Japanese pastors and plant new churches. Around the time that we had Dave, Jonathan and Jayden staying with us, I was reading the this inspirational book by a couple who had served as missionaries in Japan for 25 years.
It seemed that while they were with us we gained extra members of our family. It was especially hard to say goodbye to Dave who stayed with us for three weeks. We just seemed to all work well together. You know even though we went to a lot of cool places with the guys, it was the simple things that are such good memories: One of the really cool things Dave and I did together was to play kick to kick Aussie Rules Football on two occasions; at a local park and also by the river. It's been so long since I've played kick to kick Aussie Rules and it was great to relive those memories in a foreign land. What was even cooler was that Dave goes for the Eagles (we don't hold that against him) which is the arch enemy of my team the Dockers and thus we wore our opposing teams gear for the kick to kick... The Nagaokakyo Western Derby! Sorry no one took any photos of that...
So after seeing Dave off at the airport, I paused a while to watch the planes depart one after another and that phrase “the life of continual farewells” just struck to the heart. This is the life I choose and sometimes it's tough, but I know I'm where God wants me to be.