Final

This is going to be a final blog on the summer and also a brainstorming outlet for my final report to be sent out to my reporters.
It was extremely weird to come back to the states. It’s been really good to be home. It took a while, like a week, to get over jet lag. I’m not close to having finished processing everything, but I can at least attempt to report the progress so far.
I see two categories of what to say in the report letter. One is an overview of what we did on the internship; I’ll skip that here since this blog already covers that. The other is what I took from the experience, what I learned. Like I said, I’m sure I will continue to discover and learn lesson from my summer in PNG as time goes on, but this is what I can come up with for now:
I learned about missionwork, as done by the Alotau team, on a practical level. I now know enough to know what questions to ask other missionaries and what goes into it on a logistical level and I have a better idea of what goes into missionwork on a mental/emotional/spiritual level. From to missionary families themselves I learned gentleness as I’ve never known it before. I learned a lot about parenting, and the roles of the man and wife in a family, applicable to being on a foreign mission field or not. I saw that wherever I end up, on a foreign mission field or not, if I’m going to be married, my first ministry and responsibility will be to my family. By having to work with the other interns, planning, communicating and just being around each other ALL the time, I learned a lot about giving and accepting grace, teamwork skills, how to respectfully disagree and compromise, etc.
I learned a lot about myself this summer. It was very humbling. I have no idea if the other interns read this blog, but if you do: Thank you for putting up with me and loving me through everything. I appreciate and respect and love each of you… I was brought face to face with my selfishness and weakness and insecurities. It is clear to me that I have a lot of learning and growing to do before I could be a missionary. I need to have more biblical knowledge and a firmer grip on doctrinal truths before thinking about being able to teach anybody else. In my weakness and insufficiency, I saw God’s power and goodness and strength in such a greater more beautiful way.
One of the biggest things God taught me while I was in PNG was to have an active hope of my true home in heaven, something I’ve hardly thought about before. He showed me the verses “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt ?), “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life,” (Mat. 19:29), and “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:18).
I hoped to come away from this summer knowing for sure whether I would do longterm missionwork or not. I do not have a yes or no answer, but the answer I do have is that it’s ok not to know and it’s good to have to trust God. Whatever occupation or place in life, every christian’s primary goal should be to seek God and know him better and to please and Glorify Him. This is what I will do, and trust God for each next step.