Semi-Official

Posted but not mailed. Certified but still sealed. Ready but waiting.

According to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Bethel Ministries and my iCal, I will teaching English in Central Europe from June 1-July 26. But according to the FAA, I will not be going anywhere. I am still waiting on flight confirmation from my travel agent. She's a family friend doing me a favor (a huge one, given the particularity of my itinerary), so I can't be irritated that this isn't getting done as fast as I want it (as in, an hour from when I put in the request). But I can't help being anxious: what if the ticket price goes up 700 dollars this weekend? what if all outgoing flights to Prague are full? what if I commit a felony tomorrow and cannot leave the country?

I just want the waiting to be over. I have been waiting...
...to return to Europe: 2 years
...to see what I'll be doing this summer: 6 months
...to hear from CBF about programs: 1 month
...for confirmation with student.go: 3 weeks
...to get a flight: 2 weeks

I could buy my ticket today and still be waiting to go...6 weeks. Nothing will make that date come sooner. And no matter how anxious I am to go ahead and leave already, nothing will make me ready for that day to get here, or me to get there.

Sure, I've tutored some people, and I've taught English as a Second Language for a few months. But how does that qualify me to step into a classroom? To make curriculum? To be the only thing standing between little Czech children and them learning an entirely incomprehensible but completely necessary language?

And speaking of incomprehensible...how am I going to learn enough Czech to make a good impression? I know a total of two phrases in Czech: "beer please" (pivo prosim) and "good morning, how are you?" (dobry den, jak se mate?). I don't like beer and I'll need to greet people in the afternoon too, so these phrases are limited in their usefulness.

You know, I did pretty well with Swahili. I learned enough that I could exchange the basics with the African students at ESL. They understood me (despite the stuttering, Yankee pronunciation and mixed up grammer) and sometimes I could pick out a few words they were saying. And I had thought to myself, "If an African language makes sense to me, surely an Indo-European language will be even easier."

Then I looked at a teach-yourself-Czech book and found out that the Slavic language family is a bird with some pretty different feathers. I'm not even sure it's a bird. I'm an ornithologist looking at a bear. Or maybe a waterfall. Point being, I'm intimidated.

To recap: I am an intimidated, unprepared, anxious, neophyte missionary. Oh, and I don't like evangelizing. Add 'uncomfortable' to the list.

And from what I know about people in ministry...I am in good company. As much as I feel like the most wrong person for this job, I still feel like God has been calling me to this mission. I feel like there's a reason.

There has to be a reason why the internships that I wanted with BGAV and Baptist Joint Committee were closed doors. Why the May Term "Church and State" class that I wanted so much to take was cancelled. Why the student.go orientation will prevent me from attending an on-site May Term class at BTSR. There has to be a reason why I was unable to work in Ukraine, when I so wanted to live in an Eastern European, Orthodox country. Why out of the 10 CBF programs in Europe, the only one to get in touch with me is in Czech Republic, a place I've been to before that I didn't really want to return to. I'm sure there's a reason why. I'm sure God has a reason why.

But like the second-coming, or injustice, or mosquitoes, only God knows the why. The rest of us have to wait and see.

...and maybe the time of waiting has a reason too.