The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

I’m an in-the-moment kind of guy, sometimes.

I often have to catch my self wavering between two extremes: fretting about the future (which Jesus, pointing out the obvious, already told us does no good) and totally living in the moment. I mean, so totally in the moment that I forget what tomorrow actually brings! I think it’s a defense mechanism. Sometimes the forest is so intimidating that it’s nice to just look at one tree at a time.

That’s where I am right now, I think: I have been doing a lot of stuff, along with Anne, to get ready for Bolivia, and have caught myself hearing the word “Bolivia” and thinking: Hey, I’m actually going there, right? Weird…

Part of that might come from the starts and stops we (and probably all missionaries-in-training) have to go thru: we had two amazingly intense and wonderful weeks of pfo (see Anne’s post about it), and then, after spending all that time with missionaries heading all around the globe… we hang out with family, Anne has grad school and I have minor surgery (prayer appreciated this Friday, 2:00 p.m. thanks!)… all before leaving the country to begin a brand new stage of our life!

Time with family has been a good thing. Very good.

But the strangeness can’t be denied. It’s like our situation as Christians: holy, but still sinners; saved, but awaiting salvation’s final consumation; fully-vested members of God’s Kingdom, but still unable to enjoy its fullness; a whole world of already and not yet.

We are there in some ways, already. We’re ready to go and excited to be at home in a new place, make new friends and join in what God has been doing in Bolivia for, oh, so long. We are eager to share with our American friends (and other friends, now all over the globe!) and to rejoice with them.

But, at the same time, life here seems so real that, at times, it is easy to forget where we will be in less than 2 weeks.