Did someone send you here?
My move to Spain has been a fascinating blend between being a freeform expatriate and a sent church worker. Some days the bleed is frustrating, but many days it is a blast. The duality is actually so complicated that I often find myself unsure where one part ends and the next begins. So I love to honor the confusion of the situation when the topic comes up.
One of my favorite memories of this conversation happened during a church meeting. We were all talking and one of my friends asked the church to keep in mind that I had come to Spain as a missionary. My neighbor called out from the middle row with a laugh in his voice. “I know he came on a mission! He came on a mission to marry Jeni!” It’s fairly true.
The question came up the other day too. Some church friends invited me over to watch Real destroy Celta Vigo. Their son actually had the idea and invited me during one of our English tutoring sessions. So we were all eating snacks and watching football. And one friend asked me “You’re a missionary, aren’t you?”
I am completing an unpaid missions internship in Madrid. I moved without completing my organization’s launch program, but with their blessing. The government of Spain is paying me to live here and teach English in the public school system. And moving here was really important to my personal goals because I was getting ready to marry a woman residing here. Duality.
In many stories I read of the people before me, they changed nations to follow God. Without a partner, without a job, into isolation. I stand in awe of their decision, but I am grateful for the different purpose God has been giving me for this time away from home. Loving and enjoying my wife, joining into a church that is already powerfully active, getting to know my new family members from our marriage.
I continue to live freeform in the midst of my flexible internship. The employment based income my wife and I bring in results in a permission of space to choose how to live. But I am serving as a representative of my church back home. And I purposefully seek to support their team members and projects. The overlap is usually quite natural. Because Jeni and I, along with the church team that guides me, are all getting to know and learning to follow Jesus. And that brings clarity and consistency to these dualistic years.
