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To say that these last couple of years have been filled with adventure, challenges, grief, and joy would be to leave out the endless shades of experiences and emotions in between. When we reflect on our journey, it is not without both tremendous joy and tremendous sadness, and a lot of moments when we so clearly saw God work in ways we didn’t expect or understand. Where we are today is just one example of God moving in a way we didn’t expect.
On May 20th, we medically evacuated from Tonj due to an unexplained high fever that Clark had been having for a few days (read the full story here). That evacuation answered our prayers in many ways.
While we are confident that Clark will soon recover from what appears to be a bacterial infection and we would, at that point, have the option of returning to Tonj, with Clark’s immune system compromised and with the months of health struggles that he’s already had, we feel that the best thing for our family at this time is to return to the States just a bit early. We anticipate that we will make that transition within the next couple of weeks.
We are grieving deeply about leaving our teammates, our friends, and our home in Tonj. This has been one of the most difficult decisions we’ve made thus far, but we feel like in this season of our lives, we need to take some time to get ourselves healthy—emotionally and physically—and reframe our perspectives. God has been so good in continuing to affirm our decision in the midst of so much doubt, so many questions, and so much transition. God has also continued to remind us that not one minute of our time on the field has been wasted and that much fruit will come from our faithfulness, whether we can see it or not.
Going forward, I will continue to blog regularly to retrospectively share stories about life, impact of ministry, and humor from the mission field (because there’s SO MUCH that I just haven’t had time to share…but it’s too good not to share!), as well as keep you updated on our family.
We do ask that you continue to lift our family up in prayer over the next weeks and months. Specifically, that you would pray for the upcoming transition from Africa to America: all of the adjustments, the reverse culture shock, the ability to tell our story well and glorify God through it, and the reunions with family and friends. We would also love prayers for God to clearly speak to us about what’s next for our family. We do not know what the future holds, and while we do hope and pray that we’ll be back in South Sudan in the near future, we also want to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Tonj falls away…
