Best Wishes

Ellen headed back to Canada Tuesday. She was the English teacher/missionary this past year in the church and school, and also the one who trained me most in the ways of Paraguay since I got here. She introduced me to the joys and sorrows of being a first-time missionary a year ago when I first started reading her blog, and last March she was the one who invited me to come take her place as a teacher. Basically, God’s work through her is the reason I’ve arrived where I am.

Now that Ellen’s gotten me all ready to live and teach on my own, though, her work seems complete. A full year-long circle with a trained replacement and all, Ellen’s leaving a well-finished time in the southern tropics for more and new Christian service in the colder North. Her legacy in the church and school is rich in relationship, love, and charisma, and the shoes that she leaves behind for me to fill seem overwhelmingly large. I know I’ll have my own ministries and ways of doing things here, but Ellen has really been a God-given example of faithfulness to the church, His ministries, and Christian service in general.

Seeing her leave brings me mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m really jealous of her: the fact that she’ll get to spend Christmas with her family, be reunited with her North American church and friends, and get to live at home in a culture that she recognizes and knows. Right now, the idea of spending time with my loved ones on a cold, snowy, winter day inside and in front of a warm fire with sweaters and hot cocoa and football games and a real Christmas tree sounds like a dream come true. On the other hand, though, I recognize really how blessed Ellen has been to spend a year learning another culture and language and making an entirely new spiritual family in South America. The experiences that she’s had, and those that I’m having and am going to have this next year, are invaluable as life and faith lessons-learned. Seeing all the things I’ve learned in only two months and all the new ways I’ve had to trust God more, I can only imagine how much a different, and more spiritually mature, person Ellen is now after a full year. For us short term missionaries in Paraguay, I really think the spiritual environment is much like the physical environment: with plenty of sunny and sometimes uncomfortable heat, enough humidity and rain to stifle or drown even the best-accustomed Ohioan, and the richest, most colorfully fertile soil I’ve ever seen, it seems as if, by the grace of God, our souls can’t help but grow lush and green and be more productive like so many mango trees and hibiscus flowers and banana fruits. Life, spiritual and otherwise, is abundant in all forms here. It’s not always easy, either, but it’s very good.

And so, my prayer for Ellen is that, like a mango tree miraculously transplanted and sustained in the middle of the Albertan winter plain, she might stand out and continue to bear many new spiritual fruits when she returns home. I’m certain, too, that she’ll bring along with her all the sunshine of her God-given gifts, personality, and everything that she’s learned in order to share with so many more. I’ve seen that her “delight is in the law of the Lord,” and for this reason I trust that wherever she goes, Ellen will be like “a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that (she) does, (she) prospers.”