Our Covid tests came back negative for all of us this morning. We’ll be leaving for Indonesia this coming Friday morning at 9:00 am, Arizona time. Thank you for your prayers – past, present, and future!
All along we’ve had a peace about this final step, trusting that whatever the results were, God was in control. We had to drive 45-minutes to the other side of Phoenix to the testing site. As we pulled into the parking lot Gena noticed I had received a text but she didn’t look at it. As we reviewed the final instructions for our tests in the car before going in I checked my texts. It was from the property management company of the short-term rental we’ve been living in since arriving back in the Phoenix area on December 6th. They informed me our unit had just been rented by someone – we would need to leave our rental unit before 11:00am this Friday morning regardless of our test results.
I didn’t share the text with the family as we filed in for our tests. No sense adding additional stress to the moment, right? But I wondered – was this God’s way of telling me everything was going to turn out fine for our departure? I’m not one to see divine images in my toast and such but the timing was just a bit too perfect. I shared the text with the family on the ride back to Gilbert. I was pleased everyone was so calm. If our tests didn’t come out all negative, God would undoubtedly provide somewhere else for us to stay for the next month.
It’s hard to articulate things at this moment. Excitement. Relief. A small measure of panic, to be fair 🙂 But overall, mostly gratefulness. We didn’t ask for this Call, but once we felt the Holy Spirit wanted us to do this we haven’t drawn back from it. The guiding hand of God is often best discerned in hindsight but through the many changes and relocations and travels of the last year or so it’s always been clear to us as a family that we’re in God’s hands and He’s leading us into this venture. We’re excited for the adventure ahead while knowing we’ll continue to miss the dear friends and family we’ve had to say goodbye to over the past year. Our comfort in this lies in knowing farewells are never permanent, and that in Christ we look forward to a glorious reunion on the other side of whatever this life holds for us.
Thank you for your continued support in so many ways. We’ll need that support even more now that we’re about to leave behind our familiar geography and culture and family. We are grateful we don’t go alone, and that we continue to be surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1). Knowing such, we strive daily to set aside every weight and run the race set before us. Indonesia isn’t the finish line – our Lord is. What a glorious victory celebration – his, not ours – we’ll participate in when that line is finally crossed!
The Nelson Family Indonesia 