I'm going to Gamala

“ How old are you Eliza?”

“I’m going to be fwee on my birthday.”

“When is your birthday?”

“When I go to Gamala”

“When are you going to Guatemala?”

“When I’m fwee.”  When I come back I’ll be dwiving.”

“No you won’t you’ll just be four.”

“Oh.”

Last Thursday morning early I put my son, his pretty wife and four of my five grandchildren on a plane to Guatemala, it was Eliza’s birthday.  They were quite a sight lined up at the security check just before they moved out of sight headed for the gate, each with their backpack, and carryon.  They are headed to Guatemala for a year to help design a water system to bring clean water to 16 villages in in the Ulpan valley, coordinate work teams to install the systems, train some of the local men to maintain the systems, and be molded by God in whatever way He sees fit.

Sixty-four years ago my grandparents watched their children pack everything on a boat and set out for Honduras, experiencing, I am sure, the same pride, anxiety, loss, unknowing, and joy that we feel.  When my Mom questioned my son about the whole idea of taking his family to live with no indoor plumbing or electricity for a year he just laughed and said, “Lala, you started all this.”  She was expressing to me her anxiety about where they we going and I pointed out to her, like Mark did, that she had done the same thing and for twenty years, not one.  There was a long pause, and then she said, “You’re right, actually where we lived was worse, but I’m still going to miss them.”

The past five months since they decided to go have been a blur of packing, selling their house, getting supplies, transitioning work,and raising support.  The last two and a half weeks they moved in with us quickly turning our house into a zoo, full of suitcases, piles of clothes, toys, supplies being sorted for here or there, and four grandkids caught up in the swirl of unknowing.  Guatemala to them just a word and a place hard to imagine.  For a couple of empty nesters used to our decidedly slower pace and routines it has been a wild, wooly, and wonderful couple of weeks of intense “quality” time before they left.  

It has been five months full of questions, doubts, fears, excitement, planning, intense activity, prayer, and more emotion than we know what to do with.  All this enveloped with a deep sense of the presence of God, the rightness of what is coming to be and an anticipation of something new. They and we have been surrounded by a wonderful community of folks who have loved and supported us beyond reason.  For this we are humbled and deeply grateful.

Their van is still in our driveway and when I saw it out the window yesterday I found myself listening expectantly for one of my favorite sounds, “Papa!”  Yep, I miss them already.  I’m looking forward to Christmas when they will invade the house again.

Until then, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy!