“Hon, temam… uh, afwan, hon, temam…” I am in a cab on the street where I am staying during what I hope will be my final ‘vision’ trip before I move later this year. I’ve told the driver “here is great”, in exactly the way I tell cab drivers I’d like them to stop in the country I’ve been living in for seven months. Except here it doesn’t seem to be working …
My pleas for this to be the final destination seem to be falling on deaf ears, even though I am using pretty simple words which I have been assured they will understand in this dialect of Arabic …
Don’t worry, I did eventually get out of the cab. It was yet another reminder that while I have spent a few months acclimatising to this very different part of the world, my cultural and language formation programme really was only ever going to be a stepping stone. There will be another big leap as I hop into the place I hope to call home for several years.
I’ve been learning language and trying to immerse myself in culture in an Arabic speaking nation in the Middle East since September. I hope to join a small group of people in a closed country in the region but although I felt God’s call and doors opening there, I was overwhelmed by my first visit. It seemed that moving there would be too much too soon. I’d be out of my depth in culture, language and ministry.
Incredibly, God provided an opportunity to live in a nearby country for just under a year, where they are a little more used to foreigners and white faces, with an opportunity to start language and to be under the guidance of people who have been working in this area for decades.
It hasn’t been plain sailing … and yet the promises of the Lord Jesus ring true wherever I put my feet and lay my head.
It hasn’t been plain sailing and even though I am in phase three of my language programme, and have gone through some 300 hours of sessions that form our wider spiritual training outside of Arabic, sometimes I don’t feel like I have really moved on in any sense since I arrived. The gaps feel more exposed, the solutions further out of reach, the task of going on to the next country as daunting as when I landed here.
And yet the promises of the Lord Jesus ring true wherever I put my feet and lay my head. He will be with me to the end of the age. All those who give up houses, father, mother, brother, sister, will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life.
Yes, I might feel like I start all over again when I transition to a new dialect of Arabic. But the cultural information I have picked up, the practice I have had, and the exposure to different approaches to ministry in a place where I really have felt every one of the thousands of miles from home, is invaluable. And the presence of the Lord Jesus? That is worth giving up everything for.
B is serving with UFM in the Middle East
Photos: Lexi Anderson and Olena Bohovyk, Unsplash