my highway to zion

To leave again. Well, we will have been in the USA for 17 month on the dot the day we leave for Southeast Asia. So much has happened, and yet our lives in Cape Town feel like just a breath away. Our entire season in America has been marked by the decision that it was a temporary step in a journey our family is on. It wasn’t permanent, although many times we were tempted to make it be so. What is it like to leave again, this time after our longest season in the States in 15 years? I don’t really have words, except to say that there is this mixture of intense grief and loss, AND this feeling that saying goodbye has become so so normal, it almost feels easier than it should. Goodbye has become such a part of our vocabulary. But that doesn’t happen in isolation. For every goodbye, there was a glorious hello preceding it, which means that there are more hellos awaiting us on the other side. Life is so transient, we are but a vapor, and the Smeddle family has been PRIVILEGED to spend our liv...

We had our traditional farewell breakfast with Joe Joe & Margie yesterday at First Watch. We love these two, who have journeyed with me/us since the beginning of our missionary journeys. It’s so special being a part of their extended family & great big hearts ❤️ Joe Joe & Margie always bring JP a new toy to play with, passed down by their precious grandkids. Today it was new trains 🚂🚂🚂 Holding sweet Hannah Joy 💗 Precious memories 📸

   I am hoping this is the beginning of a long and meaningful relationship between you, the reader, and The Smeddle's blog! I love writing, but am not disciplined in doing it. I'm sorry. Discipline is something I am adding to my life in this new season we are entering.    A brief update on our family and the plans to move abroad... We are nearing the end of our 7 week training. Our first two weeks here were a flurry of settling in, then hopping on an Amtrak to New York City where we stayed for a week in Brooklyn with some other trainees, then returning to Virginia and hitting the ground running. New York was fun, challenging, eye-opening, and a great training for how to engage a neighborhood as the newbie in town. We fell in love with Brooklyn, and are encouraged that we can fall in love with another city God might put us in. " And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people w...