“2 Years is such a long time.”
Dear Future Goer,
As I was deciding on being a Goer to Innsbruck, Austria, I wrestled with many questions and the “costs”, which the two year commitment would require of me – one particular cost would be to move away from my family (with whom I am very close) and friends, who know me, get me, love me and whom I love very much.
Since moving to Innsbruck, I have experienced a variety of challenges, but one of the biggest ones was loneliness as I missed the deep connections that I had built over 20+ years (and a pandemic did not help much either).
But I have also experienced such grace and incredible blessings at the same time. Elisabeth Elliot writes in The Path of Loneliness that “God makes a home for the lonely [and] sets the lonely in families (pg 56, brackets added).” And I have experienced this firsthand, particularly through the larger Christian family. Nothing will ever be able to take the place of my family and those relationships, but my team and some other families across Austria have opened their homes – taking me in and accepting me as one of the family. My life has been incredibly blessed through the hospitality of these caring individuals. In this way, I have first-hand seen how God takes our worries and sacrifices and turns them into gifts exponentially more than I ever imagined.
So dear future Goer, as you consider the pros and cons and the “cost” of going, take heart that when we open up our hands and offer what we have to God, he takes that gift and multiplies our sacrifice exponentially as a blessing to many – including us. He is not in the business of waste, but rather uses every single thing for a purpose and does not leave us empty.
Anni
“Stand Firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the LORD, because you know that your labor in the LORD is not in vain.” 1. Corinthians 15:58