Belgian forget-me-nots

It has been exactly one year (and half a day) since I arrived in Belgium.

That seems completely impossible.

In two weeks I will have taught for an entire year (school year, that is).

I think I’ve grown more in this last year than I have in my whole adulthood over the course of several years, which is saying a lot, because there was much growing to do during itineration.

It was largely thanks to my itineration speaking experiences that when I stood up to teach on my very first day on September 19, 2016, I felt almost completely comfortable and fairly confident. I was astonished at how natural it felt. I talked a lot during itineration about how teaching theology was something God had given me to do that suited who I am intimately, but experiencing exactly that very thing was still incredible and delightful. But I’ve also learned so very much.

I’ve learned how to be authoritative and assertive without feeling uncomfortable about it and also without shutting down the inquisitive nature of many of my students. I’ve learned (am learning) how to keep control of a classroom, how to balance friendliness and firmness without harshness, how to decide when to follow tangents and when not to. I’ve learned to be comfortable with ambiguity and with not knowing things. I’ve learned (sort of) to be fine with dealing with controversial theological topics. In short, I am learning how to be comfortable with leadership in ways I’ve never been before.

Both my students and I are getting quite a lot out of my classes. One of the students, whom I’ve had in two different classes, told me yesterday that it seemed he’d gotten more out of my classes than a single year seemed to warrant. The same is true for me. Both in preparing my lectures and giving them, I’ve been learning new things, old things in new ways, deeper backgrounds and wider perspectives on all my subjects than I’ve had before. Teaching is amazing.

Buttercup field

Up until now I’ve often wondered why I had to wait until I was in my 30s before I could finally get into missions. Now I know that it’s because I needed the time to develop my theological and psychological depth. I have much more depth to give my students now than I would have in my 20s. Long years spent in preparation are not wasted.

All of the above I attribute to God’s wisdom, providence, and kindness. People don’t go into missions to please themselves but to please God and to use what they have to grow His Kingdom, but of course God, being the kind and wise and intelligent Person that He is, uses missions to grow the very people doing it. That’s part of being the Body of Christ. Not only do you contribute to the growth of others, but your growth is also contributed to. I like the way God works.

And what people mean by “something better” is something spectacular, something amazing, something miraculous, something that will burst over you all of a sudden with fireworks and magnificence and joyousness. A miraculous provision of funds. A perfect, European, missions-oriented spouse. A place in missions which will be all the better for the long delay.  God’s better must always be something that will make our hearts cry out in joy, right?

But then, what if it doesn’t happen? What if you prayed desperately for a spouse, or a baby, or a healing, or a miraculous provision of funds, or supernatural favor, and either it didn’t happen, or it didn’t work out the way you planned and dreamed it would? Does this mean God has failed, or didn’t care, or has been too busy to take notice of you? Does it mean “God has something better” is a lie? Should we just stop hoping?

By “God has something better,” people never mean, “You are just going to keep slogging on and on and on in the face of a stony silence in regards to miraculous outpourings.” They never mean, “Actually what you dreamed when you were 9 is never, ever going to happen.” They never mean, “You won’t get to the mission field until you’re 35, and then only by sidling in sideways.”

This is a gratuitous photo of the weather conditions on my last big itineration trip.

But what if that’s what “God has something better” actually means? What if God’s better is actually the thing that feels so much worse while it’s happening? What if the very thing that is undesired and feels harder and more painful and unfair and even traumatizing is actually God’s better, better for you than miracles and short cuts and open doors and being given what you want so badly?

Over my two years of itineration, I filled 12 journals with reflections on my journey. I was reading over them this week and realizing how many times I made plans that I was certain were what I needed. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by January 2015. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by May 2015. And when those plans fell through, how many times I wrote confidently that God was sure to do something miraculous just around the corner to cover for it. And He never did. Nothing miraculous and extraordinary happened to make up for the dashing of my plans.

This is a gratuitous picture of a mushroom in the rain.

I’m making more plans right now, because I am a natural planner and plotter and dreamer. I plan on getting my visa application into the mail by next week, and I plan for God to expedite the process through the Belgian bureaucracy, and I plan to have it approved in time for me to be in Europe before a big missionary conference that is happening on my birthday. It’s a brilliant plan. So reasonable. So logical. It could happen.

It also could not happen. Maybe I’ll spend my 35th birthday pouting to myself in my apartment in Missoula. Maybe nothing remarkable or joyous or delicious will happen in exchange for my lovely plans not coming to fruition.

This is not a cynical, hopeless blog post. It’s actually a joyous one. Because God’s better is better, no matter how it feels at the moment.

What’s better than instantaneous, miraculous provision that makes people glorify God? How could struggle and pain and lots and lots of crying and pouting and disappointed hopes and slogging and finally having to take the undesired route be better than miracles?

Because of this:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5

I actually never understood these verses before. I didn’t even like them.

But the hope for favorable events, the hope for our own (perfectly good and God-honoring) plans to come about, the hope even for miracles to get us out of our situations is a hope in circumstances. Such hope is easily dashed. Whereas the hope that comes from perseverance in the face of difficulty and pain, and the character and maturity God desires for us that come from such dodged, white-knuckled perseverance…that is a hope in God. A trust in His authority, His sovereignty, His wisdom, His superior plans. That hope does not disappoint us.

That is the better that God has planned for us: not necessarily (but not necessarily not) better external circumstances but rather better internal development into who He created us to be. Better maturity, better faith in His never-changing goodness, better submission to His will. It may be wretched getting there (or it may be brilliantly delightful—it may be both at the same time), but it is better. Better than having what we ask for and never getting there.

God did not give me financial and timeline miracles while I itinerated (well, maybe one or two little ones…), and He paid absolutely no attention to my brilliant and reasonable plans, and He did not expedite my process, except at the end, when He did it in a way I absolutely didn’t want. But He’s made me into a person who understands perseverance a whole lot better than I did two years ago and who is willing to say, “I want this awesome thing…but if You don’t give it to me, I trust You.” It took a great deal of whining and “Whaaaii aren’t You helping meeeee?” and no doubt I have more opportunities for whining and pity parties to look forward to in the future. But I have greater hope in God’s eternal character than I did when I started out itinerating with all my optimistic plans for Him to follow. I suppose that’s better.

This is a gratuitous picture of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean in Washington.

The Belgian Synod Attestation is a statement from a religious body in Belgium attesting to the fact that you are a religious worker in official standing with a religious body in your home country which has official affiliation with the Belgian Synod. The application for it requires these documents:

• The application, which is longer and more complicated than the visa application.
• A notarized affidavit from the Assemblies of God that it is what it is and you are what you are in relation to it.
• A notarized letter from the Assemblies of God that it endorses your visa application and guarantees your salary.
• A notarized letter from your insurance company affirming that you have insurance that is effective worldwide.
• A list of your educational credentials.
• A photocopy of the official agreements between the Assemblies of God and the Belgian government or the Belgian Synod, or something Belgian.
• A photocopy of your passport.

6. All of this must be scanned and emailed to the nice person with AGWM who will pass it on to the Belgian Synod. It can take up to three months to get the attestation.
7. Select the FBI background check request as the second thing to do. Really it should have been the first thing. Tsk tsk.
8. Rush madly about all the tiny towns in the area of western Washington where you still are until you find a police station that is doing fingerprinting. Find out they require cash payments and run to the nearest ATM to get some. Get fingerprinted, which is a most interesting procedure.
9. Go to a Rite-Aid to buy a money order to send with the FBI background check request, and stand in line for ages only to find out they, too, require cash. Spend more money at an ATM to get more cash and stand in line for ages again. Get the money order.
10. Send in your fingerprints and request to the FBI. This can take up to 15 weeks to get back.
11. Finally go home to Montana and start packing your house.
12. Pack a lot.
13. Receive the original documents from AGWM that were sent in digital form to the Belgian Synod. Don’t lose them. I almost did.
13. Pack some more.
14. Find out from another missionary also going to Belgium all the absurd things you have to do for the medical form required for the visa. Realize you’re going to have to go to Billings (5 hours away) to get it apostilled (a governmental certification).
15. Suddenly receive the Belgian Synod Attestation in the mail with a lovely cover letter, only a month after you sent in the application.
16. Pack some more.
17. Find out from another missionary that if you send in your background check request to an FBI-approved channeler, you might get it way faster than you will from the FBI.
18. Rush madly about Missoula to find a place to get re-fingerprinted (electronically, which is also a very interesting procedure).
19. Send off your second background check request with an even larger fee.
20. Make a doctor’s appointment for the medical form. Make sure they know you have to have a notary present. Make sure they make sure the notary knows he or she has to have his or her notarial certification present.
21. Pack some more.
22. Study a lot of Dutch. Ik leren Nederlands graag.
23. Find out you actually have to go to Helena (3 hours away) instead of Billings for the apostilling of the medical form. You have to make an appointment and pay another fee.
24. Pack some more.
25. Sell a lot of stuff.

This is where I am presently. Here are the additional steps I know about but have not yet taken:

26. Go to your doctor’s appointment and have a lot of bloodwork done to certify the following:

And has found him/her free of one of the following illnesses as mentioned in the annex of the law of 15/12/1980 and representing a danger for public health :
1 Illnesses requiring quarantine as stated by the international health regulation n°2 dated 25 May 1951, of the World Health Organization;
2 Pulmonary tuberculosis, active or progressive ;
3 Other contagious or transmittable diseases by infection or parasites if they are subject in the host country to provisions of protection of the nationals

Who knows what these are?

27. Wait for the bloodwork to come back, possibly several days.
28. Pack some more.
20. Go back to the doctor’s and have the paperwork signed and notarized.
30. See if the notary will also notarize your signature on the visa application.
31. If not, find some other notary to do it.
32. Make an appointment in Helena for the apostilling. Send them a scan of the medical certificate first to make sure it’s been notarized properly.
33. Drive to Helena and get the medical certificate apostilled.
34. Hope desperately the FBI-channeler background check has come.
35. Make sure you have all the pertinent forms from AGWM. Make lots of copies of them.
36. Get a certified check in dollars from your bank made out extreeeemly carefully to the Consulate General of Belgium.
37. Place 2 copies of your visa application (which took about 3 minutes to fill out) tenderly and graciously into a large envelope with the following:

• Your passport
• A language form completely in Dutch explaining that you want all your paperwork in Dutch because you will be living in a Dutch-speaking section of Belgium. The other options are French and German.
• 3 passport photographs
• The originals and two copies of all the documents you already sent to the Belgian Synod
• The Belgian Synod Attestation
• The FBI background check
• The signed, notarized, apostilled, and bathed in camel’s milk (not really) medical certificate with two copies of the same.
• Yet another fee, the certified check.
• A self-addressed, self-stamped address so you can get back your passport and all the other documents, which you need to have in hand to get into Belgium.
•  Your firstborn child who can spin straw into gold (not really).

38. Take said envelope to the post office and give them a lot of money to send it very quickly to the Belgian Consulate in Los Angeles, which has jurisdiction over Montana.
39. Have your bank wire yet another fee, in Euros, to the Consulate.
40. Gnaw on your fingernails and pray it doesn’t take the possible two months that it could take, because by this point you want to be in Europe much sooner than that.
41. Pack some more.
42. Have a goodbye party.
42. Find out, oh frabjous day, that you have been issued a visa.
43. Make an appointment to receive it.
44. Fly to Los Angeles. Yes. Fly to Los Angeles to pick it up. You have never had any desire to go to Los Angeles—in fact you have sometimes in the past said to yourself that while San Diego is perfectly lovely, you never ever want to go to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, fly to Los Angeles.
45. Figure out how to get to the Belgian Consulate from the airport.
46. Do whatever you have to do at the Consulate to get the visa.
47. Go see the La Brea Tar Pits, because they’re like 3 blocks away.
48. Fly home again.
49. Buy a plane ticket.
50. Go to Belgium, taking care to bring all the reams of paperwork with you to bemuse the poor immigration agents.

This has taken you five months. But if all goes to plan, you will be celebrating your 35th birthday at a missionary convention in Croatia.

I was in western Washington three times between Christmas and Easter. Sometimes scheduling services just works like that. Once when I went, I got to take Highway 12 between Lolo, Montana, where my mom lives, and Napavine, Washington, where my sister lives, with two services along the way, and it was a truly magnificent drive.

In Washington, I got to stay with my sister, her husband, and their three rapidly-growing children each time I went, which is grand, because once I’m gone to Europe, I won’t get to see them in person. While there I conducted three (or four?) international teas with various groups at various churches and had a number of church services as well and a number of exquisite drives around northwestern Washington.

In March I went directly from Washington to South Dakota, where I spent a month traveling around to church services and staying between them with dear old professorial friends from Trinity in Ellendale, North Dakota, five miles north of the South Dakota border. I adore the Dakotas, and I was there just in time to see the immigration of massive flocks of birds, mostly geese. What an enchanting place.

After South Dakota, I had three district councils in a row, in North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, where various ministry friends assisted me greatly by introducing me to loads of pastors. One of my weaknesses is in the area of networking, so I subsidized my lack by asking other people to help, and that worked beautifully. It was also very exhausting.

In a little over a week, I am off to Nebraska, where I have a month of services lined up. After that, who knows. Please pray that I’ll get July filled up with services. But pray especially that God’s plan will be accomplished throughout all of this and that both I and AGWM will have the patience to let His plan be what He wants it to be.

It’s not that I have nothing to write about. I’ve been traveling all over the country, more or less, and seeing lovely things and meeting lovely people and having lovely services. I kept thinking, I should write a blog post about that, and then not doing so.

The truth is that during November through January I was too discouraged to do so, really. Some of the things I write about take a lot out of me to write, and I simply didn’t want to. Yes, foreign missionaries are allowed to be discouraged, even when they’re perfectly convinced they are actually doing God’s will. There’s nothing about being a missionary that makes you automatically more holy and faith-filled and strong and all that. There is, however, that about the missionary journey (even just itinerating) that makes you grow quite quickly. Your faith will either increase, or you’ll lose it, I am convinced.

In my case, my discouragement was because I was quite certain God was going to do some sort of drastic, amazing thing to suddenly slay the giant or move the mountain (take your pick) of my budget so that I could get to Belgium on the timeline laid down by myself and AGWM, and He hasn’t done so. No slaying, no plunging of mountains into the sea, just one slow, dragging step after another. Well, honestly, it’s difficult not to be discouraged under such circumstances, isn’t it?

Eventually my natural optimistic, quietly cheerful nature reasserted itself, thank God, because being discouraged is very dull and unpleasant. Assisted, in great part, by God’s gentle, gradual reminding me of what I already know perfectly well, that He’s in charge and I’m just along for the ride.

But then I became very busy and had no time or mental energy for writing blog posts. Hopefully that has changed (not the busy but the mental energy part) and I will be able to carry on being my usual scintillating self. Or something. Prepare yourself for a deluge. Or something.

This is not remotely symbolic. It’s just awesome.

A teapot named Claudia, teacups, and Greek study books, on a sari.

Itinerating usually means speaking to large groups, usually churches, about one’s call to missions and the work one is going to do. For me, in November it meant holding tea parties.

I have a lot of family and friends in the Missoula, Montana, area, and few of them go to any of the churches I would be itinerating at. So when I was thinking about how I could introduce them all to my new life, short of sending out a mass letter, which can be a bit boring, I remembered that when my sister Maria came home from her two missions trips to Kenya, she held a Kenyan dinner for her friends and family. What a great idea! People always want to come and have food.

However, I’ve never been to Belgium. I know nothing about Belgian food and Belgian customs. In addition, I’m not technically going to do ministry to Belgians. I’m going to do ministry in a multicultural setting. And then I realized that I already have everything I need to hold a multicultural event. I own loads of tea, and tea is drunk around the world in a million different ways. I own loads of teacups and loads of teapots from all around the world. I have cookbooks with many European recipes. I love to bake. Why not have a multicultural tea?

So I had three multicultural teas. I sent out about forty hand-written invitations on neat little notecards to about sixty people and spent three weekends crafting and holding tea parties. I held the teas in my programming team office in an old, quirky, brick building and decorated with saris (of which I have many), a few foreign objects I own, and Greek-study books. I baked European desserts, like these Hungarian butter biscuits, Italian olive oil cake from a recipe by the same cookbook author as the Hungarian biscuits (one of my clients), and proper cucumber sandwiches, because what is tea without cucumber sandwiches?

Japanese tetsubin and Chinese yixing teapots.

And I had many kinds of tea in their proper teapots with their proper teacups. Black tea (a blend I created called Romany Caravan), served English-style with sugar and milk in a lovely vintage teapot (named Claudia) with lovely vintage teacups. Indian chai in an English Brown Betty teapot (named Harold) with mugs. Kenya chai in Kenyan thermoses printed with Bible verses, also with mugs. Chinese oolong and pu-ehr in little clay Yixing teapots with small tea bowls. Japanese genmaicha (green tea with toasted rice) in a Japanese cast iron tetsubin with Japanese rice bowls and tea bowls.

Mathalia, who makes and sells potholders in Missoula.

Four people came to my first tea, including my friend Mathalia and her mom, whose website I’ve helped with, and we had a lovely, cozy time. Eight or nine people came to my second tea the next weekend, mostly people I know from church but also one of my web development clients and my aunt and uncle. And about nine people came to my third tea, all of whom just happened to be family members, including my sister’s very dear in-laws and my two brothers, neither of whom I get to see very often.

We all sat and stood about eating and talking and having a lovely time, and presently I drew everybody together and told about my future missions work in Europe and my current itineration journey. The lovely thing was that I wasn’t giving a speech. I was just telling people things, and they were interested and asking questions and giving ideas and discussing among themselves.

Even if none of the people who came ever support me (which some of them already have, lovely them), it was valuable for me to meet with them and get them involved in a way in my ministry. I learned that about itineration recently: it’s not about raising funds so much as it is getting people involved in ministry and in your own missionary journey. I hope I inspired my friends and family. At the very least, they had a lovely tea.

Because I have no pictures to represent a missions application, here is a completely random picture of a chandelier in a Serbian Orthodox church in Croatia.

Applying for AG World Missions is quite a process. They take great care to make sure you’re called, able, prepared, and willing to abide by the rules and procedures of one of the world’s biggest and yet most family-like missions-sending agencies. You’re not only representing yourself and your church as a missionary but you’re also representing a fellowship that spans the globe. They invest heavily in you as a missionary. You’re not just going out as an individual facing the world. You have a whole vast group of people behind you supporting you, from the leaders of the World Missions Board to the person designing the program that sends you emails when you get new supporters.

To prepare before ever applying, I studied for two theology degrees, applied for a ministerial license, and worked to pay down my loans as fast as possible. Once all those things had come together, it was time to do what I’d been looking forward to doing since college and requested an application for full-time missions from AGWM.

An outtake from the photoshoot.

Just to do that, I had to go through my district (Montana) and ask them to recommend to AGWM that I be sent an application. This means that as a missionary, I have my district behind me. They knew of me from my licensing application process.

The application was massive. I received it by email in July 2012, and it took me until January 2013 to complete it. I had to have eleven references from such people as district presbyters, college professors, and assorted friends. I had to have a physical. I had to poll all my family members for any obscure diseases in our history. I had to write a ten-page paper on my call, my family history, my strengths and weaknesses, and so forth. I had to have a professional photograph taken. I had to hunt down my immunizations and take a psych/personality test. I had to permit a background check and a credit report. I had to evaluate my language proficiency. No simple thing, this application.

Once I turned it in, by email and by mail to two or three different AGWM addresses, I waited until February to get news that it had been received. In April, I took a second psych/personality test. In June or July I received the news that my application had made it past the first round of approvals. There are multiple levels that you have to pass through: an initial examination of your application, an interview with someone from Personnel and Member Care, a second examination of your application if the interviewer recommended you to continue in the process, an invitation to Candidate Orientation in the fall of that year, a round of interviews at Orientation, verbal approval by the World Missions Executive Committee and Board, and finally official approval in writing.

It’s scary but a bit neat going through the levels. Every time I received a notice that I was approved and passing on to the next level, it was a mini celebration. I had my Member Care interview with Butch Frey in July 2013. It took about an hour and a half, and I cried through the whole thing. Despite the fact that I am quite an even-keeled sort of person, I do tend to cry rather a lot at certain things, such as talking about my call to missions and watching the end of the “The Dark Knight” Batman movie. Butch started me out talking about my call to missions, I lost it, and never regained it during the entire interview. It didn’t seem to faze him. He asked about everything. My strengths, my weaknesses, my family, my personality test results, my dreams for the future, my views on authority and marriage and local church leadership… I felt utterly wrung out by the time we were done. But he told me he was going to recommend my application to proceed in the approval process.

In the end of August, I received an official invitation to Candidate Orientation in Springfield, Missouri, in October. And there was much rejoicing. I’d been told before that if you’re invited to Orientation, there’s only a very, very low chance that you won’t be finally approved.

I’m going to have to write a completely new blog post about Candidate Orientation, because it was so terribly splendid and long that it deserves its own blog post. Suffice it to say that after 8 days of meetings, classes, and interviews, I received a letter on October 17, 2013 welcoming me to Assemblies of God World Missions.

I am at both an end and a beginning. I am at the beginning of the journey of being a missionary. It’s one I’ve been looking forward to for most of my life. But I’m at an end, too. This is the end of “normal life” (whatever that might be). This is the end of being a plain old American, a Montanan, a member of the workforce. I am already leaving my culture.

I am so excited.

My journey from “called to missions” to “itinerating as a missionary” has been a long one, 20 years in the making. I always thought I would be about 22 when I got here, not 32. I’m glad it didn’t happen when I was 22, because then I would be doing something entirely different than what I now feel called to do. It’s been a sort of gradual, gentle, meandering process of God sort of gently leading me here and there, giving me new ideas and dreams, and making me ready (I hope…*she says with some trepidation*) for the sudden fruition of my long-ago calling.

You can read about the initial development of my call here. I’ll write other posts about how my dreams have changed and grown over the last twenty years.

But here is the process I have been working through for the last few years:

Paying off loans.
“I’m in the ministry of paying off my loans so I can go into full-time missions.” I’ve said that often over the last couple of years.
To apply for AG missions, you have to not have above a certain amount of debt, because some of the money you raise in itineration will go to paying off your debt, and it’s not quite fair to ask all the hard-working people who support you to also support outrageous debt. I’ve spent the ten years since I graduated from college and the four years since I graduated from seminary paying as much of my school loans as possible, always paying more than the required amount in a bill. My college loans are almost paid off, and my seminary loans are cut down by half. God has always provided what I needed.

Being with my family.
I’ve known for twenty years that I’m going to spend the rest of my life far away from my family. After I moved away to college, I spent the next ten years not living in Montana, where most of my family lives. Soon after graduating from AGTS, I suddenly felt the need to move back to Montana and spend a few years with my family before the rest of my life happens.
I’ve been here longer than I anticipated, four years. I’ve worked with my mom, lived with my dad, seen my two sisters married, met my baby niece and two nephews soon after their births, visited with my younger brother on his return from Iraq and Afghanistan Army tours, gotten to know my other younger brother as an adult, hosted Christmas at my house for the first time, been involved in my younger sister’s in-laws’ ministry, and been present for three deaths and many weddings and births.

A portion of my family. Photo by Dan Hockensmith.

Getting my ministerial license.
A minister’s license, if not ordination, is usually a prerequisite for full-time missions.
This was a journey in and of itself. There was an application process, multiple references needed, a test to take, two interviews, and finally approval and the licensing service. In the interviews with local pastors and district leaders, I found that telling them why I wanted a license when I wasn’t going into pastoral ministry and describing my calling moved me deeply and made me cry. I tend to find this a little humiliating, but the fact was that the men I was talking to could see my passion for my unusual calling, and God gave me favor in their eyes.

Applying for Assemblies of God missions.
This was such a process that I’m going to write a whole blog post about it. The short version is that it took more than a year from the time I first asked for an application until the time I was officially approved by the World Missions Executive Committee on October 18, 2013. The long version is…it was ultimately a good process.