Three months AND three days AND counting...

...with both a sense of anticipation, nervousness and,

depending on the day,

either a little bit or a lotta bit of dread!

We've accomplished a lot since Christmas (in no particular order):

• Home assignment housing secured?     ✔
• Plane tickets purchased?     ✔
• Hotel reservations made?       ✔
• Travel vehicles, where required, rented     ✔
• Furlough vehicle purchased?     □
• Sell list/spread sheet made?     ✔
• 3 major recording studio projects?     1.5 ✔
• Plan for the studio while we are gone?     □
• Homes found for our pets (43 goats, 54 pigeons, 3 cats, 2 dogs)?     □    
• luggage that could be sent on ahead?     ✔
• Final packing lists?     ✔
• Brendan's senior pictures?     ✔
• College paperwork completed?     □
• Scholarship paperwork completed?     □
• Drivers' licenses renewed?     ✔
• Family vacation scheduled?     ✔
• Family vacation planned?     □
• House repairs and walls painted?     □
• Sell vehicle 1?     ✔
• Sell vehicle 2?     □
• Home school curriculum sorted, stored or delivered?     ✔
• Educational options/possibilities for our 8 children explored... discussed... evaluated... decided?     □
• Schedule meetings with home/sending church     □
• Schedule meetings with financial and prayer partners     □

In some senses, though? Those are all the easy things. They take time, but they are all relatively concrete and tangible. They can be put on a list and checked off as they are completed... and completion is usually pretty cut and dried. Either it is done or it isn't.

What about the intangibles that we have on our list?

Photo by Jessica Neff

Of course, many of those "intangibles" have to do with people - colleagues, friends, neighbors... all those dear folks we've come to love over the past years, those people who've become our family when we weren't near to our blood families.

Photo by Christine Banke

Whether or not there is the intention to return after a time of home assignment, preparing to leave well and recognizing that there is no guarantee for what the Lord might bring into our lives underscores the importance of ending well each term we spend in this expat world. Those preparations will inevitably include asking some probing, uncomfortable or even downright hard questions: 

• "What has/have been the high point/s of this term?"
• “What were some of the most difficult experiences?”
• "Where do I feel I've succeeded?"
• "How do I feel I have failed? Is this failure due to sin?"
• “How have I spied God working in my life personally, professionally and spiritually?”
• “What did I hope to achieve - long term goals and short term objectives?" 
• "Did I accomplish them, have I not yet achieved them, or are they currently in progress?”
• “The activities I have been involved with during this term - would I describe them as satisfying or fulfilling?  Are they consistent with my reasons for becoming a missionary in this particular place? Am I doing what I told our partners back in my home country I'd be doing? Do my activities apply to my specific responsibilities?"
• “What did/is God accomplish/ing through me?"
• “What have been the greatest roadblocks and frustrations I have encountered?"
• “Are there unresolved on-field relationships (expat and local colleagues) I need to reconcile before leaving?”
• "What goodbyes need to be said, how do they need to be said and what memories do I hope to make in the time remaining? How do I say goodbye well?"
• "What will I miss most when I am not here? How can I treasure that unique aspect of my life in these final times?" 
• "How do I help my children to ask, work through and answer all of these same types of questions?"

Photo by Sally Manhard 

What intangibles and questions to ask would be top of the list for you and your family... if you were leaving for home assignment this summer?

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Other posts in this series of preparing to leave the field:

In which I'm charged by a hippo...
Jumping the Gun? Or Procrastination?
Turning over that TCK leaf