Transitions

The decision to take an assignment with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in India with responsibilities for program in Afghanistan, India, and Nepal felt exotic and challenging. Beyond that, Ruth and I were keen to lean from Christians and other people from outside our American context. Ruth wanted to develop the many international relationships she hand built up during her years of working at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. I was gradually feeling more and more distance between the global ethics courses I was teaching at Eastern Mennonite University and my experience on the field. Both of us felt a pull toward returning to Asia that is hard to explain. We just felt it in our spirits. And we clearly felt the call to follow Jesus wherever our adventure would take us.

Saying goodbye to our home and community in Virginia to take a mission assignment in India, however, was more difficult, when it came down to the process of uprooting ourselves and welcoming our new lives, than either Ruth or I had imagined. We had underestimated how firmly we had put down our roots in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where we had lived and worked for fourteen years.

Our professional positions had deeply shaped our identities. Ruth was the administrative director at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU); I was a professor at EMU and a long-time pastor of Shalom Mennonite Congregation. Fortunately I had the summer to prepare for our move but Ruth worked right up until the day we left. There were so many last minute details that neither of us had anticipated. Tensions rose as we both felt the strain.

Giving up her identity and relationships at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding was painful for Ruth. Likewise, I found it very difficult to leave my identity as a pastor. We had both developed deep friendships. The process of saying goodbye that actually began months earlier seemed to drag on indefinitely. Eventually, we just wanted it to end.

It was difficult to leave the passive-solar house we had built early in our marriage when I was a seminary student and our children were still young. Again, we didn’t completely realize the extent to which our identities were wrapped up in our home. Ruth had spent countless enjoyable hours laying out and caring for flower gardens, perennials, and groundcovers. I had planted trees, built a deck in various installations, and undertook various house remodeling projects through the years.

Both of us sensed that our house no longer fit what we felt called to in the next phase of our lives. Yet, how does one say goodbye to something like that? It was made easier by being able to sell it to a family that was so thrilled with what we had created and loved it from the first time they laid eyes on it. Even so, we shed some bitter tears when we finally had to say goodbye.

The hardest part was saying goodbye to our three children. They had gone with us to the Philippines on our first Asian adventure twenty six years ago. Now they had their own lives even though we were still very close as a family. At a family gathering last Christmas, they had all encouraged us to follow our hearts back to Asia. This summer we had a wonderful family vacation in the highlands of Virginia in anticipation of our new adventure. But it hurt so much to say goodbye to our youngest daughter Sara at the end of the summer when she returned to her theatre studies in California. Finally saying goodbye to our daughter Krista, our son Stephen, and Stephen’s wife Stacy hurt equally much when we finally flew from Washington, DC to Kolkata India,.

During the summer, Ruth and I had read many books and watched various films on India to prepare ourselves for our new assignment. But nothing could prepare us for our final arrival in Kolkata. Our frame of reference had been the six years in which we lived in Manila. The old city of Manila was a helpful reference point but it did not prepare us for the yellow ambassador taxis, auto rickshaws, pedi-cabs, and even hand-pulled rickshaws plying the hot, crowded streets of Kolkata.

It rapidly sank in that this was all very foreign even though we had previously lived in Manila for six years. We would need to start over in a very different life. We swallowed our rising panic and tried to put on a brave face. What had possessed us to leave our secure world in Virginia? How would we ever cope? Our restless sense of adventure had taken us too far from the familiar and the comfortable.

A redeeming factor was the welcoming hospitality we received from the Indian MCC staff in Kolkata. They were a wonderful oasis in this strange teeming city with an infrastructure that felt twenty years behind what we had known in Manila. We saw the passion on the faces of the MCC staff as they explained the various ministries they were involved. And they so much wanted us to succeed. What an opportunity to be part of this ministry.

At a regional MCC meeting in Bangkok, several days after we dropped off our bags in Kolkata, we were quickly immersed in the MCC world in a way that felt a little overwhelming. We were now the new people rather than the people who knew our organizational family from the inside out. I found myself thinking like a detached anthropologist studying the peculiar habits and relationships of the natives.

Now we’re back in Kolkata waiting for our train ride across India to New Delhi where we will study Hindi for three months. Yesterday we walked to the Sisters of Charity mother house where Mother Theresa lived and worked. We have had various meetings with our Indian team and feel excited to be part of the many program activities they are involved in. We’re beginning to design our respective roles and figure out what we bring to MCC India. We’ll keep you posted.