You know the Cheers song--"making your way in the world today takes every thing you've got..." "... sometimes you want to go where everybody know's your name, and they're always glad you came..."
Yeah, I'm feeling that way. Moving to Kansas City has been something like an episode of "Sliders"--the sci fi show where Jerry O'Connell and friends jump/"slide" through wormholes into alternate realities of earth where many things seem the same but something is always off. We recognize restaurants, we see some things between KC and Indianapolis as very similar, we experience some things (and people) that are totally different. I'm in the local grocery store and see someone that I think I recognize, yet the person I know is 500 miles away.
And nobody knows us. Not just our name, but WHO we are and what we are about. In many ways we are starting from scratch; missionaries in a different culture, learning the language, discerning the cultural norms, navigating new roads, pioneering a new community of faith in this "wild west" that is just different enough from what we know and where we are known.
It would be so much easier to just go back East to where we are known...inside and out. God give us the patience and the strength to forge ahead in this new world, that we may become known, but much more than that, so that the people we come to know may come to know You.
