About three quarters of the way through our first year in Tanzania Josh and I made a quick trip back to the US to attend a WV conference and while walking through the airport in LA, I remember marveling at how sparkly and clean the floor looked, wall to wall; I wanted to touch it and try to eat off it. I found myself unconsciously searching for dirt and dust-balls and feeling puzzled why we couldn’t find any at LAX! I was amazed how the floors met so cleanly and perfectly with the walls – no wonky seals or gaps for bugs and water to seep through. I was struck by how much pavement there was everywhere and wondered how much it cost and when it all happened for California. I remember driving down toward San Diego and reeling from the sight of homes at the tops of the hills. My first reaction was, How ridiculous! How would anyone get water up there?

Re-entry and reverse culture shock. My friend recently lent me a book to read more about it:

10 Ways International Volunteers [like Peace Corps volunteers] Know They Have Readjusted (from The Art of Coming Home by Craig Storti)

1. You’ve stopped carrying toilet paper with you wherever you go.
2. You no longer eat all the hors d’oeuvres at dinner parties.
3. Some of your clothes are not out of date.
4. Other people no longer avoid the dish you bring to pot-luck dinners.
5. You have a friend who was never an international volunteer. (This one doesn’t apply because out of all our friends we were the weirdos who went away)
6. You occasionally stay in a hotel when you are in strange city. (I’ve personally been a softy much of the last 10 or so years of my life and it’s the RARE occasion that I don’t sleep in a hotel – LOL!)
7. You dream in your native language. (Pretty much always)
8. You use tissues to blow your nose.
9. You occasionally use public transportation instead of walking. (Actually now we walk and use public transportation instead of driving)
10. You’re not afraid to swallow water while showering.

In some ways, this list illustrates a little bit of what we’re all going through, especially our first few weeks. I’m also realizing that as I read this book that there are more subtle things that might take months to process (to learn more, google “TCK” and “Re-entry Shock”). We’re writing this blog partly because we recognize that there may be a small fraction of readers out there who do not know that our family has finished our Tanzania assignment, handed off the baton to new volunteers far more capable than we… (more later on a new blog to stalk) and relocated to Asia. Hong Kong, specifically. Our kids have also been on our tails about writing an update.

HONG KONG? What? Why does your family move around like this?

From Day 1 everyone had been asking us how long our we planned to stay in Tanzania. No joke, it was almost a daily question that we had to field. We honestly didn’t know. We went in with one year of schooling in mind and round-trip plane tickets, but never a pre-conceived hard stop. The questioning became so relentless and annoying that I made a conscious decision to never ask anyone that question ever again. Not that we didn’t wonder a little too, but we figured that if God could bring up something as far flung as Tanzania for our family then we’d better keep an open mind to what His timing would be. So, you could say that we’d pondered our exit from the start only because people kept asking, but it didn’t become serious or forefront in our thinking until we had to do our BIG think about it around spring time 2016. That was when our school in Seattle asked if our kids would be coming back for the Fall Term. After we decided to extend our stay in Tanzania for another year we pushed all other thoughts about returning to the back of our minds. Naturally, our future was something we knew we had to consider at some point but it wasn’t anything we seriously dwelled on.

When telling people our plans for Tanzania or Hong Kong we often encounter the kind of expression that says, Oh my gosh, I’m truly standing in the face of a crazy person. These guys really are nuts!

Well, one crazy blessing that happened as a result of our uprooting and living out of suitcases in a rental house for a year is that we realized that we could do it and, more importantly, how little of our stuff back home we really “needed” to be happy. And it wasn’t just the stuff but also the routine we had created for ourselves and our family in Seattle. We lived by arbitrary parameters and goals that we set for ourselves in relation to community and societal expectations. Not that anyone had told us to do anything specifically, but it was an unsaid expectation that we were to run as fast as our family of 6 could go to try and keep up with a fast-moving train. Do you know what I mean? And by removing ourselves from it for a year, it sounds silly it’s so obvious, but we realized that life and raising our children doesn’t really have to be done in any one specific way. And not only did our kids survive one year away from their routine, parts of them even thrived and for sure their minds opened and expanded in ways we cannot measure. We’re not saying that everyone needs to do this, but rather in retrospect the whole idea of moving to Tanzania (and now Hong Kong) wasn’t as crazy as we imagined. It was, in some ways, kind of freeing for all of us.

God sometimes seems to uniquely heighten our sensitivity towards some things in life while dimming the light over other things, changing our perception of what seems most important (kind of like the lyrics to Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus: And the things of this world will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace). We’ve found that in major life decisions—adopting our youngest son and our decision to move to Tanzania—things have worked out with immeasurable blessing and confirmation of His presence with us each step of the way. So, in this freed-up mindset about location, we started considering how to be intentional with our next step. Setting aside some material things, what trail of clues, gifts or talents has He laid out for us? Like the Parable of the Talents (that we mused about in one of our early entries) what unique opportunities do we have as a family right now?

Without the distance and uprooting from our home, we would never have stepped off the moving train. We just built ourselves a designer house in what we thought was the perfect corner of Seattle and my next project was going to be getting family photos on the walls when I got back. At one point Josh brought up the idea of mentally shelving our new home and our perfect school in Seattle in order to think about an intentional “next step”: Do we move back to Seattle, stay longer in Tanzania or do something else? Honestly, I was so appalled at the thought the first time he brought it up, I couldn’t engage. What an unhinged and outrageous thought. I think it was a few months before he brought it up again.

We were on vacation as a family visiting my parents as we did every year, in Hong Kong. This year was different. We weren’t gasping for air, clawing at and inhaling every first-world amenity we could grasp as we had been the previous time we visited from Tanzania, when we were still quite new to Africa. Back then we gorged ourselves at every meal like it would be our last and then ate every snack or street food we walked by in between. We shopped and scoured the town for items the kids needed but couldn’t find in Tanzania, emergency spares and basic survival tools (like old-fashioned hand fans). We reveled in and breathed polluted air deeply because suddenly it was exotic but, even more than that, it meant development: transportation, efficiency, air-conditioning, reliable wifi…you name it. The more man-made, the better. We were desperate because we knew that all too soon our break would be over and we’d be pulled underwater by the rapids of the third world again…bigly. And we were. After that trip to Hong Kong in 2015, we landed in Yatta, Kenya (see Lia’s blog). These are all hilarious memories now 🙂

This most recent visit, I remember descending toward Hong Kong airport, sailing over the outlying islands that were like dark silhouettes against the ripple of waves, shrouded in swirls of polluted haze and clouds that made for a dramatic (both in a beautiful and yucky way), orangey sunset and thinking as I gazed wistfully: This place that I used to call home is indeed becoming a sunset memory for me, a once-a-year visit for how many more to come? If we didn’t have my parents to visit I wasn’t sure how often we would make this trip anymore. The city was changing so quickly and even though I grew up in Hong Kong, I’d been away many years. It was around then that Josh posed that incredulous question again and we decided to meet up and talk with a friend who had recently moved his family back to Hong Kong to pick his brain about the ups and downs of living there. Even at that point we never thought Hong Kong would be a feasible or logical place for us as Josh’s business used to be based in the Mainland and Hong Kong is so different. China was the unconquered land of opportunity when we first moved to Beijing in 1998. Hong Kong was a bit over its prime, too predictable and passé for twenty-something-year-olds looking for adventure. It had never occurred to us to re-evaluate that judgement.

Our friend warned us about the woes of housing and schooling in Hong Kong. He advised us that if we wanted to take advantage of my position as an alumnus of the colonially-established British school system called the English Schools Foundation and have our children attend an English-speaking local school, we would do well to throw in applications right away with the added note that we’d be open to a mid-year move. Applying for the start of next school year would have put our kids at the bottom of a prohibitive (3 year) wait-list. As for housing, Josh’s mom recently found an article in Travel magazine listing the most expensive places in the world to live and Hong Kong came out ranking: #1. Hong Kong, China: For the seventh year in a row, Hong Kong has the least affordable housing market, with a median multiple of 18.1. This is down from 19 last year, the worst ever ranking on record.

How could we justify that sort of expenditure especially when coming from a year and a half working among some of the world’s poorest and most needy communities? The contrast between living in Tanzania and living in Hong Kong was so stark, it felt sacrilegious. But we tried to keep an open mind to the possibility.

Josh is not normally a schmoozer or much of a socializer but decided to have a quick catch-up coffee with an old colleague whom he enjoyed and respected from his China days who was living in Hong Kong, and out of the blue his friend said, “We need someone with exactly your work profile to join us part-time.” The pay would cover our rent. That was weird. It was also the first time a serious work proposition came up since we left China five years ago. Hmmm…. Noted.

My sister lives in Minneapolis and neither of us have lived in Hong Kong since we were about 18, so my parents have made their lives in Hong Kong without their children around. Both my parents have had cancer diagnoses and really no one would have ever thought we’d end up living near each other again. We could see that our being in Hong Kong might be a blessing for them, as well as for us, and for our children to really get close to their grandparents.

The last step was to ask our children their opinion. To our genuine surprise, they were all excited about the idea, whether it was because they were a bit disillusioned and wanted to live in “grandparent vacation land”, because it was novel, or because it afforded another fresh start with school and friends, they never spelled it out completely. So we went ahead and submitted school applications, and to our absolute shock they notified us a week later that Lia and Arial had spaces available for them starting in only eight weeks. If we waited any longer, the spaces would be taken by others—hence the suddenness of our move.

When we first arrived in Tanzania, it became clear what Josh and I were there to do—why God had placed us in Tanzania at that time. Now God has brought new people with greater skills than ours to carry on the work in Tanzania that He cares about and started (even before our time with Larry Jacobs and Sandra Belin) and in which He allowed us to take part. These new volunteers will bring His work to a higher level. You all need to check out Jim’s blog – you’ll find out everything about him and what he’s doing with GAFCo and his (often side-stichingly-hilarious) observations about life in Tanzania at www.vp2volunteer.org. The timing of our departure from Tanzania could not have been more perfectly orchestrated. A total God-thing! In fact, that’s how we view everything about our time in Tanzania. We just don’t seem to have the same sort of clarity for our move to Hong Kong yet.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps – Proverbs 16:9 From one former British colony to another…

What we know is that we have a window of opportunity to be close to my parents. The signals to change course for Hong Kong were like beacons on buoys at night dotting our way across the waters: the school opportunity, the work prospect for Josh, an available apartment on the same street as my parents, and then the perfect special needs program for Gabriel at a Christian school. We’re convinced we’re on a path that God has cleared for us, but what we don’t know yet is whether there is another purpose for our being in Hong Kong beyond the needs of our family …and of course we have no idea how long we will stay. One thing we’ve learned over the past few years is that when we release the lines that make us feel secure, and allow ourselves to drift in His oceans, God’s tide alone will take us places we never would have dreamed possible or safe to explore.

I was commiserating with a friend that I’m feeling antsy these days about not having a list of tasks or a goal to work toward every day to keep me busy (no more ‘hapa kazi tu’). After unpacking and frantically putting things away and setting up house to receive our first guests over spring break and then running around to explore Hong Kong with them, our slate of urgent to-do’s has suddenly been wiped clean. Re-establishing routines and a new life takes time, I just learned it’s called Transition Time. I understand that conceptually, but inside I’m really impatient.

In a devotional I was reminded just this morning: Rest in the stillness of My Presence while I prepare you for this day. Let the radiance of My Glory shine upon you as you wait on Me in confident trust. Be still and know that I am God. There is both a passive and an active side to trusting me. As you rest in My Presence, focusing on Me, I quietly build bonds of trust between us. When you respond to the circumstances of your life with affirmations of trust, you actively participate in this process…(Jesus Calling) It’s almost noon and I’m still in my pajamas as I write. And I am grateful for the time of reflection, time to count blessings, time to think about what we might have learned over the past months and time to laugh about some of the quirky things that we’re going through now.

While we’re now finally getting sick of the constant odor of cigarette smoke and bus fumes on the street (how quickly we find ways to grumble), I’m grateful that the kids have settled so smoothly and for the amount of exercise we’re now getting walking around town. I’m grateful for the prolific network of clean, public transportation, including regular ferries to access outlying islands. Gabriel gets more walking therapy here than anywhere else we’ve ever lived. He’s become an expert at escalators and elevator buttons!

Of course there are positives and negatives to any place, but as a family I think we’ve learned to appreciate the positives. One aspect that has amused me quite a bit are the kid’s lunch options at school. The variety is nothing like anything we’ve seen anywhere else; in Shanghai, Seattle or Tanzania. The kids actually often prefer a simpler home-lunch, but …check out this coming month’s possibilities at both their schools:

Gosh I’m having a hard time ending this and lunch menus is a bit of a strange note 🙂 so…

To take it all back to the beginning, full-circle… the blessing we held to when we departed for this journey was Aaron’s blessing over the Israelites, that goes like this (English Standard Version):

^{Numbers 6:22} The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²³ “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

²⁷ “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

Kwa kweli (for sure), no matter how out of control our circumstances ever felt in Tanzania, the one constant was God’s ever-present availability to us. He opened doors and laid confirmation to each of us all the way. It was a learning season for us to experience that He really hears our deepest cries and knows the limits of what we can bear…maybe even like the bruised reed that doesn’t get broken. He knew that one more night in Yatta was going to feel like the end of us, but we made it.  Another time, He knew that the we were at our brink, freaking out that we would run out of gas and fall into a ditch in the middle of lion territory and be out of any cell phone coverage, but He let our vehicle limp out of the park on fumes and put an attendant at the deserted-looking gas station…and provided ‘petroli’ (as opposed to diesel) when not all gas stations always carried it. He saw my exhaustion when I was at the coast (read: sweltering heat and humidity with mosquitoes) at the end of my ’round the world of Tanzania’ trip and He allowed the power / generator to get turned on at 9pm, just in time to get a good nights rest. He was there with us as we drove our snorkle-less SUV through a flooded river (twice) to get our friend to the hospital. He brought good men to help us when we were stuck in the mud at midnight and not thugs. He provided just what we needed with friends, fellowship and support. And He indulged us with a front-row view of His work. Not reacting as often to life out of fear, we have a renewed sense of trust and peace. I could go on and on…

Rafiki (friends), we appreciate you all so much for faithfully safari-ing (journeying) with us on our Tanzania adventure and for your consistent prayers and words of encouragement to us. We are so humbled and grateful for your care (prayers, emails and hand-delivered packages!) and patience in following our spiritual bushwalk.

Mshukurini Bwana!

I met Martha and her husband Daniel during my trip around Tanzania. They are farmers in Nzega in the region of Tabora and not particularly doing great financially. They were so inspiring in that their faith was not based on anything material, but a deep reverence and love for God. Despite the fact that they had so little, they oozed joy and made it their priority to help others around them. They’re both musical, but Martha likes to compose her own tunes and their biggest dream is to save enough money to record their own gospel album.

Stay tuned – tunarudi nengine – we may have a few more stories from Africa…and don’t forget to check out Jim’s blog!