Somewhere over the Atlantic

The airport staff look at our tickets, see we’re bound for the US, and comment, “Going home?”

“Changing home,” we reply. Madeira has been home for almost 40 years. Now we have to start over again and make a home.

The church has been so helpful in our departure preparations, in spite of the fact they all 1) hate to see us go; 2) feel a sense of misgiving at what it will be like from now on. A couple of the members are elderly and are finding it difficult to adjust to the fact that it won’t be me who conducts their funeral. Sister Alice (91) cried and said, “I never thought Pastor Edgar would ever leave.”  In her lifetime, anyway, which is what she’s thinking.

She’s not the only one who’s cried. Saturday there was a get-together at Pastor Roland’s house. I commented that it was gratifying to see so many people gathered together to celebrate our departure. J  At the last services Sunday, one of the passages I read was Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders. It’s OK to shed tears…Paul did, and so have we and the members.

It still hasn’t really hit us yet, the fact that we walked out of our house for the last time, a “For Sale” sign hung on the front gate; the fact that the leadership of the church is no longer our responsibility. The infant church whose birth we witnessed and we taught to walk…to sing, to love, to serve; the body of Christ we have seen come through the normal growing pains that precede the coming of age; the church that has matured and must now take full responsibility before the Lord to complete the mission Christ has set before her.

The church has been a tremendous help in our being able to dispose of the things accumulated over a period of 40 years. A lot went to the trash bin; we rejoiced at being able to give away many things; members have taken on the task of selling many of the other items, so we could concentrate on sorting through everything.

All has gone so smoothly in this complicated process that we don’t say the Lord is leading us to leave Madeira---He’s “running us out”! J

Now in the middle of the long London-Chicago flight, scheduled to last 9h50m, it will take less than 8 hours. The plane is only 1/3 full, so we got a whole row of 5 seats just for us, so unlike the crowded conditions we’ve always had to put up with when crossing the Atlantic. In this most difficult of times for us, the Lord is graciously making it as easy as possible.

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It's now Saturday in Arkansas. Our travels went well and we are trying to adjust to the new time zone. Our bodies still want to go to bed in the afternoon and get up in the middle of the night. We are in the early stages of resettlement, establishing telephone services being a first step as we clear a trail through the thick underbrush of service providers and the tangle of plans offered. Long gone are the simple days of finding the guy who knew how to send smoke signals. Not to say the communication guys today aren't putting out a lot of smoke themselves.