why don't you just be missionaries in America?

Without fail, every summer when we would come to America for 6 weeks, speaking in churches and traveling all around visiting friends and family, there would be a handful of people who would say the same old thing: "Why don't you just be missionaries in America? America needs missionaries, too, don't you know."

I can't help but chuckle a little by how incredibly obvious it has been these first two months as missionaries in America that America is in great need of missionaries. Like, seriously? Right now is when He's called us to be missionaries in the States?

The Ayars girls are so used to passing by men with riffles at the door of every store in Haiti. But this week to pass by rows of shops here in Jackson and have armed security
at every door?

To the Ayars it is old hat to be going through hard seasons where everyone has to stay at home, sometimes for weeks or months at time. But suddenly America has been staying home for months?

We are so accustomed to not being able to find certain things, but here we are in the US of A and I still can't buy yeast, hair clippers, a freezer, a small dog or bleach here (with 2 pounds, two pairs, 6 on campus, 8000 in our village and 6 gallons, respectively, in my little house in Haiti)?

We are so well worn to education being difficult...so homeschool, and suddenly everyone in almost every country is?

For the Ayars, it is so commonplace to live in political upheaval, in uncertainty, in insecurity, to be hunkering down, to standing up, to battling fear, to keeping our courage...But suddenly we are living these same things in such a different context!  And this is all coming to pass in the exact season when we begin our "missionary term" in America!?

What a huge and heavy burden the missionfield of American feels these days.

"This was supposed to be ice cream shops and roller coasters and visiting friends and going to the zoo!" Lily and Sofie have wailed more than once as plan after plan has been cancelled.

Maybe we're all feeling a bit of the loss right now, aren't we.  

Life was hard in Haiti, and this was supposed to be double scoops and merry-go-rounds.  You've come through a lot and this year you were planning peaches and cream.  It's 2020, and it was supposed to be Disney year.

Call us creatures of habit, or maybe we're still struggling so much with all this transition that we're just clinging to what we know, but...we are trying.  We are missionaries here. We absolutely see our lives that way and from nightly family walks around the neighborhood to talk to people, to pulling hurting people into our home, to trying to learn the language and the culture, to finding people of peace, to securing a few local translators and worshipping in the local churches to even trying to learn to cook, speak and dress more like the people here do, WE ARE, we are trying.

But do you know what else we are really used to?

Our response for fifteen years when people told us WE should be missionaries here.

"Sir, That's why God's got YOU here."

"M'am? That's why God's got YOU here."

Right where you are.

It is no mistake and no rotten apple that you are right where you are today. It's God's good gift...to you (if it doesn't look like it, trust Him) and to those around you (are you being God's good gift to others?)

Spend a few minutes in your Bible and you'll see this to be true: the most heartbreaking, stressful and painful times can be the golden hour of the Christian. In our weakness, He is made strong. In prison, the Word goes out. In chains, so many have been set free. In our struggle, we find Him nearer still. In our pain, He is purposeful. In sickness, He is found dependable. In persecution, the church grows. In the storm, He's walking on water, in our darkness, it is not darkness to Him.

To the hungry, even what is bitter tastes sweet. Proverbs 27:7

I dare to venture that EVERY SINGLE missionfield on planet Earth is HUNGRY right now. 

Pandemic means everyone is struggling. Suffering. Sacrificing. Hurting. Afraid. Confused. In a season of loss. In a season of dark. In a season of hunger.

Pandemic means that what we all still really can't GO.

So don't.

Where you are, Haitian friends, is in Great Need of missionaries. Where you are, fellow-North Americans, is in Great Need of Missionaries. Where you are, brothers and sisters in Asia, Africa, Europe...is in Great Need of Missionaries.

The people around us, TODAY, are hungry.

We all wanted mint chocolate chip, and we all together got many things bitter, instead, and many still are, and have been for a long time.

But we, Christ-followers, we say that He tastes GOOD, and true and strong and lovely and that He is the One Thing Needed.

We will only be bitter today if we've been drinking from the world instead of His Word.  If our number one influence is NOT the news, but is the Lord of Lords and Prince of Peace, it will reign in our hearts.

Instead of mourning our hunger, today, family (this is a judge free zone...I have been struggling!) let us celebrate the way it's gnawing makes even the most bitter burdens sweet. Let us celebrate the great burdens of being missionaries right where we are, for this work of loving one another and pointing towards Jesus is SACRED.  

And it's why God's got YOU right here.

Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

His purpose was for the nations to seek after God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and FIND Him, though He was not far off from any one of us. Acts 17:27