Sometimes It Feels Like a Dream
I have been thinking about when I should write another blog entry. Should I do it while I am still officially the principal of Greater Grace Christian Academy? Should I do it when I am a missionary in Korea? Or should I do it during the two week in-between time when I am neither principal nor missionary? Well, I am writing now while I am still the principal, and this may be my last blog entry in this position. It is Thursday afternoon during GGWO International Convention week, and I am in my office alone while many others are watching a World Cup match between Team USA and Team Germany down at the other end of the plaza in one of the MVC&S classrooms. I can hear the voices of the vacation Bible school teachers down the hall where they are enjoying their respite from the little children they have been ministering to this week. They sound a bit giddy, the giddiness the byproduct of tiredness, and they are becoming more like the children they work with than the adults they are. It happens.
As I walk up and down the sidewalk, I encounter GGCA students on their summer vacation. Some express surprise and delight that I am still here in Baltimore. Others come up and hug me. I hope to find such sweet souls in Korea.
Tomorrow I take some time away from work here at the school to go to Washington, D.C. where my visa for China awaits me. I look forward to using that visa over the next year. The closest I have come to China was during a layover day in Hong Kong on my way to Thailand. I hope to be in China long enough and often enough to appreciate the culture there and note the similarities and differences among Korea, Thailand, and China and report them to Mrs. Janssen's Asian geography class this fall.
I have been working a few hours a day with Pastor Barry Quirk, GGCA's next principal who begins officially next Monday, and I have done what I can to clue him in to what I have been doing here. He is genuinely excited to start this new adventure in his life, and I believe that God has called him here to be a blessing to our school family. He is a man of faith and integrity and he desires to serve the school however he can, which is what a principal must do.
I haven't given much thought to what it is going to be like to get into a car next Tuesday morning and drive away from this school, this city, this church body. I suspect I will feel like I am setting out on my usual summer vacation and that the enormity of what is going on in my life won't really hit me until I board my flight on July 16 and wave goodbye to my family or until the conference in Korea ends and everyone else from away goes home and I stay behind to settle into my new life there. Maybe there will be several moments of reality sinking in. I think that when I see all of the Korean kids going back to school in the fall, I will experience an absence of something, a feeling that school is going on without me being there, either as a student or as a teacher/principal, and that GGCA is carrying on without me for the first time since August of 1989.
It is going to require some getting used to.
I was so blessed to hear Pastor Luigi Palmieri speak last Sunday morning on how our unchanging God orchestrates and uses change in each of our lives for His eternal purpose. I am not a man given to change, but God made it very clear to me last summer and fall that it was time for a BIG change in my life. And here it is, just days away... I'm not afraid of it any more, because I have seen God's faithfulness to uphold every step of faith I have had to make to bring me to this moment where I am about to participate in my first Missions March and clean off my desk here at GGCA next Monday at 3 o'clock or so. Sometimes it feels like a dream.
As I walk up and down the sidewalk, I encounter GGCA students on their summer vacation. Some express surprise and delight that I am still here in Baltimore. Others come up and hug me. I hope to find such sweet souls in Korea.
Tomorrow I take some time away from work here at the school to go to Washington, D.C. where my visa for China awaits me. I look forward to using that visa over the next year. The closest I have come to China was during a layover day in Hong Kong on my way to Thailand. I hope to be in China long enough and often enough to appreciate the culture there and note the similarities and differences among Korea, Thailand, and China and report them to Mrs. Janssen's Asian geography class this fall.
I have been working a few hours a day with Pastor Barry Quirk, GGCA's next principal who begins officially next Monday, and I have done what I can to clue him in to what I have been doing here. He is genuinely excited to start this new adventure in his life, and I believe that God has called him here to be a blessing to our school family. He is a man of faith and integrity and he desires to serve the school however he can, which is what a principal must do.
I haven't given much thought to what it is going to be like to get into a car next Tuesday morning and drive away from this school, this city, this church body. I suspect I will feel like I am setting out on my usual summer vacation and that the enormity of what is going on in my life won't really hit me until I board my flight on July 16 and wave goodbye to my family or until the conference in Korea ends and everyone else from away goes home and I stay behind to settle into my new life there. Maybe there will be several moments of reality sinking in. I think that when I see all of the Korean kids going back to school in the fall, I will experience an absence of something, a feeling that school is going on without me being there, either as a student or as a teacher/principal, and that GGCA is carrying on without me for the first time since August of 1989.
It is going to require some getting used to.
I was so blessed to hear Pastor Luigi Palmieri speak last Sunday morning on how our unchanging God orchestrates and uses change in each of our lives for His eternal purpose. I am not a man given to change, but God made it very clear to me last summer and fall that it was time for a BIG change in my life. And here it is, just days away... I'm not afraid of it any more, because I have seen God's faithfulness to uphold every step of faith I have had to make to bring me to this moment where I am about to participate in my first Missions March and clean off my desk here at GGCA next Monday at 3 o'clock or so. Sometimes it feels like a dream.
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