Hannah waiting at Newark

Karrah and Hannah eating lunch at the National Zoo in DC

Praise the Lord we have made it to Spain. It took us 4 days from the time we left our beloved mission home in Winston-Salem. We drove out of Winston-Salem, NC on Sunday afternoon to drive to Richmond, VA. We spent the night and then got up next morning to drive to Washington D.C. to the Spanish Consulate to get Hannah’s visa stamped into her passport. We were going to drive up on Tuesday and get it done but we were scared because we were flying out Tuesday evening to Spain. If it took a while to get the visa we did not want to have to miss our flight.

The whole process of getting the visa stamped took about 30 minutes. It was super quick. After we left the embassy we drove around DC. Not on purpose though. We were trying to get to the National Zoo. We took a wrong road and ended up on a sight-seeing adventure of DC. We asked a motorcyclist for directions and he got us on the right path!

Hannah really enjoys seeing animals, so going to the zoo was for her. She really enjoyed herself. The National Zoo is free so we were thankful that we did not have to pay. It was a beautiful day too. The sun was shining and I think it was about 72 degrees F. The next day though was something else. We woke up and it was raining cats and dogs. We had to check out of the hotel by 12 noon, so we went to the Dulles Town Center. It is a pretty big mall. We wasted several hours there before going to the airport to check in.

As we waited for our flight, we started to realize that it was getting delayed. Sadly it was delayed to the point that we were not able to

Hannah at the National Zoo

catch our flight from Newark to Madrid. We arrived in Newark right at 8:15 pm when the plane was supposed to leave. I ran to the gate and they were closing the door and would not wait on us. We were not very happy. We went to customer service desk to get the matter fixed. The gentleman that we got must have been nursed on a pickle growing up because he was so sour and just a pain to be around.  Unfortunately we had to encourage him to do the right thing because he did not want to do anything for us. At the end of the night they put us up in the Sheraton. The next day we ended up hanging out at the Newark Airport for 8 hours. That is not something I would recommend if you have a toddler.

We arrived in Spain on Thursday morning. My parents and Kent Albright were waiting for us at the airport. We had some breakfast and then we drove two hours up to Salamanca, specifically Santa Marta de Tormes. We have been super busy looking for an apartment and trying to set up life here in Spain. This is all for now.

Breakfast in Madrid with Kent Albright, and Tim and Pam Darling

Hannah hanging out at the airport before the flight.

Daniel trying to communicate in Venezuela

come up and tell me “Daniel, don’t you think that it would be better for me to send money so that a national can win their own? If I go to the mission field, then I will waste a lot of time trying to learn the language and culture. It would be better if I worked in the States and sent money over to people in different countries so that they can reach people with their own language and culture.”

The idea of supporting national missionaries does seem logical. It takes a lifetime to learn a language. So much is involved in communicating. Communication is not just putting words in a certain order in a certain language. That is only part of the communication process. I grew up in Venezuela to American missionary parents. We spoke English at home. Even though I can speak English very well I had trouble communicating with people when I went to Clark Summit, PA and to Winston-Salem, NC for school. There were idiomatic expression, past and current political issues, foods, traditions, and ways of articulating words that I did not know. Oh, I could get my point across and people could tell me things and I understand them; but as to fitting in with the culture, that was a different issue.

Language acquisition is probably one of most discouraging factors on the field. A missionary will spend years on the field trying to learn the language. The nationals always judge a foreigner tougher than they judge themselves. For example, a national makes a mistake in pronouncing a word and his peers say he just got tongue tide. A foreigner makes a mistake, and people blame it on the person being a foreigner. “They don’t know our language” they might say.

Karrah teaching the girls in Venezuela

One could see where the line of logic, it being more advantages to send nationals to reach their own, as to being sound. The fault in the logic is that it puts our reason and logic above that of God’s calling. In this line of logic God is not in the picture. The only thing that is being considered is that the person does not want to seem like an idiot trying to speak another language. What we fail to think about is that God may want to use our weakness to show the world His strength. If God has called a person to go to a certain place to do a certain job, then who better to go than that person?

Using logic, rather than submission to God, is not going to get the nations to worship God. One should put down their pride and logic and follow God where ever He leads him. These excuses that Carey has presented have been very convicting to me. It is amazing to see how we still try to use the old excuses that were in existence way back when Carey lived.

Another beautiful fall day in Winston-Salem, NC.

Getting some food before working

Jonathan helping pack the trailer

Caleb being a manly man!

Sarah is sad that we are leaving!

I could not believe that all our stuff fit into a 5X8 trailer!

After a 6 hour trip to Charleston, SC I unloaded everything onto two pallets and a forklift operator took it inside the warehouse. Lord willing we will see it in Spain in a about a month.

When I arrived at the warehouse in Charleston, I really did not know what to expect. I thought I was going to get some help but that was not the case. The people gave me some pallets and told me to put my things on it. So, the best I could I got everything on two pallets. Supposedly it would cost more if I used a third pallet. I wanted to do this the less expensive way. I can’t believe that we have shipped our things to Spain! Next step is shipping ourselves to Spain, although we plan on using a plane not a boat. I tried talking Karrah into traveling on the freight ship. She was not at all thrilled of the idea. I told her we could be like William Carey. She still was not impressed.

Necessities of Life!

The fourth excuse is “As to the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life.” The way this excuse is stated I think it can be taken in a different way than what Carey intended. I will first deal with what Carey intended and then I will take it a step further and apply it to modern concerns. Carey, when he stated this excuse, had in mind “procuring” European food and products. Many people struggle with going to another country and not being able to find the things that they are used to eating, washing clothes with, cleaning the house with, and living day to day with. The job of looking for new foods, finding new products, and experimenting with them, is rather annoying. We went to language school in Costa Rica. We thought we would stay with a Tica (Costa Rican) so as to learn the language better. There are other benefits too, such as, they cook your food, wash your clothes and clean up after you. This is handy so that you can just focus on studying the language. We had been there for two months eating Costa Rican food every day. One weekend we had a long weekend because there was a holiday. We decided to trek across the city over to where the airport was because over in that section there was a Denny’s. We had waffles and hash browns. The Costa Rican food was not bad, it was just after two months of having it we wanted something familiar.

Familiar things can not be the motivating factor of our lives. Living with our familiar products cannot be what keeps us put when God is telling us to move. One has to admit that in the picture of eternity, our diets, what we like to eat, and our little comforts, like having our cloths smell like Tide, is very small and insignificant. What is food compared with a soul in hell for all eternity?

In response to this excuse Carey states, “a Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to him. by entering on that sacred office he solemnly undertakes to be always engaged, as much as possible, in the Lord’s work, and not to choose his own pleasure, or employment, or pursue the ministry something that is to subserve his own ends, or interests, or as a kind of bye-work. He engages to go where God please, and to do or endure what he sees fit to command, or call him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell to friends, pleasures, and comforts and stands in readiness to endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord and Master” (Smith 168-9).

Another way that this excuse can be used is in the area of financial support. I remember when my wife was telling a person that she was going to be a missionary. The man pulled out a big roll of cash and told her that she had made a stupid decision because it would never bring in money like what he had. There is something rather tempting about having the “necessaries of life.” Usually we interpret wants as necessaries. The world yells in our face that we need a certain lifestyle, and if we do not have it we are weirdos.

This is nothing more than having one’s focus on the wrong thing. Sure, it would be nice to own a home, a car, be able to afford nice

Bangladesh, the most densely populated country in the world.

vacations, but is this really all there is to life? Thousands of starving children in the world and we think that we deserve a new car every couple of years? Thousands refugees who have lost just about everything, and we are focused on getting a bigger house in a nicer area? And what about the BILLIONS of lost people, on their way to hell? When we focus on our lifestyle that the world tells us we need, it is a rather selfish and narrow way of looking at life. People all around us are suffering, our co-workers are struggling with their marriage, with raising their kids, and the excuse we give for not going is because we want more stuff.

Don’t live that life. It is a small, narrow, self-centered life. It doesn’t bring joy, and you will never have enough.