What's ahead??

I am a worry-er by nature...well, maybe not so much a worry-er, as a planner. I love to plan. I love to organize. I'm the typical type-A personality. I have to laugh at my friend, Denisha, who calls herself an "OCO"--Obsessive-Compulsive Organizer!! That is me, to a "T". The reason I bring this up, is because we now have more or less of an idea of when we are leaving Abancay and leaving Peru. If you don't know, which most of you do, we are leaving the field for a few years while Jeff pursues more studies to get his Ph.D. Once he finishes that, we will return to Peru, but will live in the capital so Jeff can teach at the Seminary there and our boys can go to a good school.

Our plan is to leave Abancay on January 1st and go to Lima. The January 4-8 we will have our annual Spiritual Life Conference at the beach with the other SIM missionaries who serve in Peru. The last 3 weeks of January will be spent in Arequipa while Jeff teaches 3 week-long classes. The boys and I will hang out with friends, maybe I'll put them in a soccer camp again, but mostly it will be just enjoying friends. We will fly to Lima around the 30th of January, and hopefully leave the country on February 2nd. We don't have our tickets yet, but that is the tentative plan. We will spend that first week of February at the SIM offices in Charlotte, NC and then fly to Minneapolis. Unless we buy a car, then we'll drive to MN. But of course that still needs to be planned out. Maybe I'll plan that out next week. ha ha

Am I excited to be going home? Yes. Will I miss Abancay? Yes. I will miss our friends, our church, and the teachers at the boys' school. I'll miss hanging laundry in the warm sunshine. I'll miss the sound of roosters at 4am (I really will miss this sound). I'll miss the smell of our neighbors burning wood to cook their food. I'll miss the sound of chopping wood. I'll miss having a maid (vain, I know)--not only because of her help but because she is a good friend to me. I'll miss the ministry opportunities of telling taxi driver why we are here. I'll miss people "petting" my kids' heads because they love seeing the gringos on the street. I'll miss eating out for cheap.

The thing is, now that I have Sophia, I'm finding it hard to be "here"...meaning to focus on the things here and now. I find my mind wandering at planning and I know I need to just stop and enjoy life here for these last 6-7 months and stop making a list of the things we are going to sell. I need to call the girls in my mom's group and invite them over, instead of packing a suitcase for Jeff to take with him to the States. I need to call my friend, Silvia, or go to her house to visit her instead of packing up some of the boys' books. My prayer is that I will enjoy these last months and finish well. I feel completely blessed to have served here and to have been touched by the many people we have come to know and love. God has been so good to us. Please pray that we can stay focused!