A Missionary Road Trip (Part One)

What's it like to be a missionary?  Well, one of the parts of being a missionary are the road trips. You can't really avoid them.  Whether you're in the US or on the Field you inevitably have to travel.  In Paraguay I have a traveling ministry and love bounding down the dirt roads for an hour or two to meet with friends and lead a youth leader training session.  The capital city, Asuncion, pulls us six hours away from home every two or three months and living out of Rubbermaid bins for a week or two is second nature for us now.  Here, in the US we want to connect with as many of our ministry partners as possible.  To do that we plan road trips and we just got back from one that took us up and down the East Coast for three weeks!

Eight bodies in a minivan for three weeks... yeah, we weren't sure how it would go either.  While I won't say it was the perfect road trip I can't speak highly enough about my family and the intrepid travelers that they all are- true road warriors!  After a day of packing and with coffee in our travel mugs we buckled the sleeping kids into their seats before the sun was up.  Leaving from Upstate New York our goal was to get as far away from the snowy roads as possible.  We were in Pennsylvania when the sun came up.  Sarah opened a home school book and started to read to the kids about the Civil war.  Landmarks like Gettysburg and the Stonewall Jackson Memorial passed us by as we read about the people and the places... it was living history!  Sarah read about Savannah Georgia, and I announced to the kids, "We'll be there tomorrow!"  And before we knew it we we're in 80 degree weather sipping peach tea with old friends in the South!  The snow was gone and we were shocked that we had put so many miles behind us all before dinner time... or supper.

After wonderful visits with a couple families and attending one of the Nations largest home school conferences we spoke at one of our supporting churches in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.  In case we forgot where we were in the middle of his sermon the pastor started to sing an old country song. The whole congregation chimed in on cue and finished the song when the pastor stopped and looked straight at the visiting missionaries from the North.  "You all don't recognize that song do you."  he said and graciously explained to me that while I was watching the news growing up folks down south were singing that song on a television show called Hee Haw.  We returned to that church again and gave our Field Report on Wednesday.  In between we stayed at SIM's guesthouse only an hour away where we saw dear friends who had previously served with us on the field.  We also visited a couple other ministry partners and celebrated Toby's ninth birthday!  Since Toby loves animals our family spent his special day at an aquarium.  We all had a blast!

From there we pushed farther north and reunited with two missionary-kid brothers who had grown up in Paraguay and are now at college.  Over the past eight years they have played with our children, told them stories and drank Terere with us.  I (Dan) had the privilege of investing in them as disciples and led them on wild MK Adventures each year wielding machetes to the top of Paraguay's highest mountain or launching a homemade raft down a river in flood season.  I told them that dinner would be on us and they could pick where we ate.  They chose an Asian hibachi buffet with all you can eat everything including a chocolate fondue fountain which our kids especially fell in love with.  Tanked up on sugar we said good byes (another part of missionary life) and packed our kids quivering bodies back in the van- I'm just glad they were strapped down!  We then made the push into northern Virginia where we would share with another one of our supporting churches at their mission conference Friday, Saturday and Sunday.