Transition

The Transition of LifeNet is going great.  Pastor Kudzai is doing an amazing job.  As we have returned, it is a little hard to find where we are needed anymore.  That is what is supposed to happen.  But it is a transition for our family, as well.  To become attenders only.  Because that is not who we are.  It is hard to just "sit".  Of course, we are still doing things.  I recently spoke to the women.  Lee spoke last Sunday as well.  I will lead my Net Group this week...for the last time.

The reality of everything becoming our last is getting real.  As I say goodbye now, I realize it will be for a while.  It is a hard reality.  As we leave every May, and always come back.  I feel like those around me grasp the reality of us leaving more than I do.  I have gone back and forth so many times over the past seven and half years.  It just feels like I am going on another trip again.  And part of that is because we do not know where we are going.  We do not have a home we are moving to.  Our possessions are in two crates in my in-laws barn.  We have no furniture, no appliances.  It is a weird place.

And transition is hard on the ones leaving.  Yesterday, we went to help set up the chairs and they didn't really need us.  They had already done it all.  They sent Lee home on Friday because they have surprises they are working on and needed him gone.  It is a freeing feeling, but also a feeling of what is my purpose now?  When for seven and half years, we have lived and breathed to pour into a church body. 

Our days are a little boring.  Our evenings are spent eating dinner with different friends in the church.  We will have a special dinner with the council on Monday and all church party on Friday.  Then a team comes.  And we will fly out in the middle of the team being here.  All the teams we have hosted over the years, and now we don't have to host them anymore.  Another strange feeling.  Its a relief, but also sad.  We always looked so forward to teams coming.

Lee and I came to plant and raise up young men and women to pastor and be leadership in the church.  We have seen it happen beautifully.  The journey was long and so often I just wanted to give up.  At times, it was excruciating.  The spiritual warfare was so intense at times.  We watched old videos over the past years on Friday.  It was a reminder of all we have gone through.  But now, we sit in the fruit of all the warfare, all the work, all the sweat, all the prayers.  GOD HAS BEEN FAITHFUL.  And He truly has never let us down. 

Since we came back this month, each service at LifeNet is so special to me.  I feel like a grandmother looking around at my children, doing what I used to do.  I feel proud as I look and see different races and different cultures worshiping together.  I rejoice as I see mothers teaching their children to worship and know God, just like I have done with my children.  I see the men that Lee has poured into being the men of God they are supposed to be.  I see a lot of men...and that is not the norm in Belize.  Dads and moms worshiping together.  I rejoice as I hear of people who have co-habitated for years getting married.  I rejoice that the Lord used little 'ole Lee and Robyn to touch a nation and bring a church that was different.  A church that not only preached the Word, but walked it out day by day with people who were hungry for something more.  I watch as I see generations that are being changed.  A group of boys that comes from the roughest village, most without father, being raised to be men of God and change the future.

"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it is what happens in the middle that counts...."

That is how I feel right now.  I am so nervous for what is next.  But right now, just rejoicing in what has been over these years.  Rejoicing over the new family I now have in Belize.  I am forever changed for these years.  My faith in God is so much deeper.  I know He is who He says He is.