One of our workers, during a support raising season, paints a picture for what it is like for some of our Third Culture Kids to be Boots on the Ground.

The Pastors treated our kids to a plate of Sopapillas after we ate lunch this past Sunday. “Are you excited about going back?” she asked the kids. “Not really. Well…if we were going back to the same city, I would be.”  

Many Third Culture Kids’ (TCKs) lives are defined by moving a lot. Our children were fortunate to spend our long second term—some of the most foundational years of early childhood– in the same apartment, in the same city along the Silk Road. So, as we left our city for a year of awareness and support raising, it was hard to say ‘goodbye’ to the spacious courtyard where they rode bikes and played soccer, the neighborhood school that we walked to and from almost every day and especially their best friends. 

My ten-year-old son said, “I can see why my Mom and Dad want to let God tell us where to go, but I also really, really want to go back to where we were.”

I can also see why they want to go somewhere else because there’s already a church there, that we helped plant. And so, it makes sense to go somewhere else where there isn’t a church and plant a church there too.” 

I’m glad he gets our Romans 15 vision for church planting among the unreached, but I also know it doesn’t make transition and newness any easier. 

The pastor’s wife had grown up as a TCK in Africa and she leaned over the table with a timely encouragement: “When I was a kid, when I was in America I wanted to just stay in America and when I was in Africa I wanted to just stay in Africa. We moved a lot, and I was always afraid I would not like the new place we were moving too. But you know what, I always liked it better.” I can’t wait to see the Lord bring that word to life in my children’s lives. 

In another conversation about this, my son said, “I think God is leading us, I guess.” Yes, son, I believe He is.