The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

I am convinced (now, this is just my opinion – go ahead and disagree, but I’m stickin’ to my guns, here) that you only really get where you’re from.

I can learn to like, love, even appreciate places to which I move, but there’s only one place where everything just makes sense, overall, to me.

Chicago, I love.  I love the pizzas, the people, the two churches Anne and I attended there, you name it. We were married there.  I discovered the awesomeness of refugee ministry there.  We got hooked on church-planting and intergenerational church life there.  Who couldn’t love a city with a free zoo and restaurants that serve Swedish pancakes?

But I don’t fully get Chicago.  I will always shake my head in a bit of wonder at how people can stand the gridlock on the Dan Ryan, or how a commute to work can top an hour an a half in the same city.  Or how one mayor can rule (yes, rule, though exceedingly well) for so long.  It will always be a bit of an alien world to me.

And the Carolinas… Can’t get enough of that BBQ sauce, or the hospitality I have found at church.  Bible classes in the public schools?  Love it!  But (and I shake my head in perpetual cluelessness – with all due respect to those who do not concur) NASCAR?  Total mystery to me.  I am sure it’s my loss.

Naw, Ohio is the only place where, when something occurs, I just nod and say, “Yup.  That’s Ohio.”  It just all seems – homey – when I come home.  I’m not saying I love everything about it (I would not be quite complete without my experience of living in Chicago, Charlotte or La Paz), but I get it.  It’s where I’m from.

Today, I am reminded, more than ever, that La Paz is not… quite… home.  Maybe, it never will be.  But I am just having one of those days where it, well, couldn’t be farther away from home.

We just finished our school’s Spring Festival.  Spring.  When, back “home”, leaves are turning amazing colors and falling all around, painting the earth with beauty.  Here?  Dust storms and the earliest hints of a sopping wet rainy season.  It’s not bad, but it’s just so… different… that I think I would be insane if I didn’t go into shock every once in a while.  The burgers (that just never taste the way my brain knows they should!), the two-and-a-half hour church service (in Spanish), the driving rules that seem to be the exact opposite of those in the States, the river that never smells right… it’s just so… alien.

Now, a little perspective: a few weeks before we came here, we had this amazing training experience called PFO (Pre-field orientation), and this marvel of a speaker named Libby (a life-long teaching missionary), who told us about what we would go through.  She called it many things, but one of the most memorable was “transition”.  We would face four main stages: Fun, Fight, Flight and Fit.

Fun: (”Isn’t this a neat place to live?  Oh!  Everything is so new!) This lasted until we had completed our second week and I still couldn’t get a good Internet connection (or was it the second day, when Avery and I got lost on our way home in a taxi who didn’t know our neighborhood any better than we did?).  At any rate, Fun is a shortlived time of ignorant bliss).

Fight: (”This place does everything all wrong!”)  This “character-building” period went into full-swing right about the middle of when the immigration people were screwing with us for about the second week straight, with unannounced appointments to get fingerprinted, photographed and generally treated poorly.  The rock-bottom for me was when, after just getting from work to the local gelato place (the only place that I could, at the time, get online), Anne called to tell me that our principal was on his way because we just had to get our photos taken right then for our visas!  That day, my photo looked not unlike Nick Nolte’s mug shots.  The way Fed Ex (boycott them, by the way) treated us here way another beautiful moment for me.

Flight: (”When will this place just leave me in peace?”)  This is the stage of transition in which I am now residing (quite comfortably, if I might add).  I just want to be at home with my lovely wife and adorable daughter.  I just want to chat on Skype with my friends in the states (anyone up for an online game of Scrabulous?  No, I’m serious!).  I just want to catch up with those episodes of The Nine and The Office I can’t watch (but then, I discovered the wonders of iTunes – and this from a Windows guy!).  I just want to hide.

More on Flight.  Now, none of these things are bad, per se.  The fam is worthy of my attention.  The old friends are a connection to where I’m from and who I am.  Those shows are just so nice to watch, and they provide a good outlet after a long week.  It’s just that - if I am to move on (at some point) to being a good Fit for the work God has placed in our laps in Bolivia – I can’t keep hiding behind these things, or depending on them for joy or comfort.

I’m sure that, in time, I’ll get there.  In time.

Fit: (”This place is beginning to… well… fit.)  I’ll let you know what it feels like when I get there.  By God’s grace, I just might.