Holsten Child: “Mom, can I go out to play?”

Me: “Sure, but do you have bug spray on?”

Holsten Child assumes the position: arms outstretched, eyes closed, as I cover him/her in a cloud of bug repellant. A slight cough, a blinking of the eyes, and they’re off.

And I breathe a prayer: “Lord, please…”

I have a new enemy, and it is the mosquito. That wee little creature, barely a quarter inch long, made me fear moving to Papua.

It’s not so much the mosquito, but the diseases it can carry––malaria and dengue fever––and the suffering it could potentially cause to my family, that I fear. And I had to face that fear head on when my son was diagnosed with malaria last week.

Living overseas we expose our kids to risks they would not face in our home country. There are different diseases, parasites, crazy modes of transportation, and good hospitals are thousands of miles away. As a mom, I can be very prone to fear and worry for my kids’ well-being.

I knew a woman whose husband was a pilot with MAF, and she absolutely hated to fly. Yet she had a vibrant ministry in villages interior and had no choice but to fly. She told me that she looked at each flight as an opportunity to trust the Lord.

So I have tried to see living in a malarial part of the world as an opportunity to trust the Lord. We try to be wise and do what we can with bug spray, screens, and zappers, but ultimately my kids’ health and safety––no matter where I am in the world––is ultimately in the Lord’s hands.

There is a steep learning curve––new stores to learn, new way of driving (the traffic lights go from red to yellow to green . . . still trying to figure that one out), new weather patterns to learn, and new people groups to get to know.

But one thing is back-achingly familiar––the unending and tedious housework that comes with life here, and the exhaustion I feel after a day of said housework.

Just coming back from furlough, my housekeeping muscles are pretty weak. Not that I was a total slob when staying with our parents, but loading the dishwasher and running the vacuum in a climate-controlled and convenience-oriented home is a whole different animal from mopping floors, hand washing dishes, and hanging out laundry in the tropics.

I am thankful for housework. I mean, might as well be thankful for it, since it’s an inevitable, right? And while I don’t love housework, there are definitely some benefits from it––besides the obvious (we eat, have clean clothes, and have fairly-clean floors).

Housework shapes my soul. I find I have more time to think, and to pray. Pushing a mop back and forth across the floor, different people and situations come to mind, and I pray for them. Mindless tasks can become meaningful times of prayer, if I’m intentional about making them so.

Housework gets me outside. Lugging the laundry basket to the backyard, I can look up and see magnificent Cyclops Mountain behind our house. The ritual of hanging up our clean laundry makes for strong arms, and gets me a good dose of vitamin D. And there’s nothing like the smell of clothes fresh off a clothesline––that amazing mix of sunshine and wind.

My housekeeping duties are definitely not fodder for any newsletter (“Dear Supporters, can you believe it? Natalie mopped the floors, again!!!”), but they’re a very real and necessary aspect of life over here.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the toilet needs scrubbing.

The snow fell steadily, and my son bounced impatiently as I wrangled his hand into a glove.

“You have to work with me here, buddy,” I coached him. He had three fingers jammed into one finger of the glove.

“Mom, I don’t know how – I live in the tropics, you know!”

I smiled at him and pulled off the glove. “How about a mitten, then? They are much easier.”

Hands finally mittened, he ran outside and reveled in an experience that comes for us only every few years when we’re on furlough.

As I watched him, I mentally added “putting on gloves” to my list of things/skills my kids don’t get growing up in Indonesia. Also on this list are items such as drinking from water fountains, counting back change, rules of football and tying shoes.

It’s not just the kids who have adjustments to make when we journey back to America every few years. Here is my personal list of “Things to Remember While on Furlough”:

• Weight gain is inevitable.
• Awkward moments will happen (Did I really just answer that cashier in Indonesian?).
• When driving: STAY ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD. Windshield wipers: on the right. Blinker: on the left.
• The car horn is not used as excessively or benignly as in other countries. Use caution before deploying horn – you could get hurt.
• Be prepared for menu paralysis. It is common for me to stand in front of a fast-food menu board and gape for 15 minutes before defaulting to combo No. 1. Paralysis also frequently occurs on the cereal aisle at the grocery store.
• Self check-out: Fun at the library, scary at the grocery store.
• Furlough – with its requisite traveling and speaking engagements – will get chaotic. Don’t forget to take time to rest, relax, and stop and see the World’s Largest Prairie Dog if your spouse asks to.

Last month we said that kind of awful goodbye to our home of almost 10 years in Tarakan, Indonesia, as we departed for furlough and an eventual move to the MAF base in Papua.

In the weeks leading up to our departure, I anticipated the goodbye being hard. We allowed our roots to sink deep in Tarakan, and I knew it would be painful to leave. I figured I would shed some tears (on top of the normal ridiculous amount I cry; I cry like I sweat – involuntarily and profusely). But I was not prepared for the depth of emotion that swept over me as I said goodbye to friends.

And I was also not prepared for the outpouring of emotion from my Indonesian friends. On the morning of our departure a group of neighbors came over for one last hug.

My neighbor clung tightly to me. “You can’t leave us,” she choked out as I stroked her hair.

Her elderly grandmother chided her softly, “Ibu isn’t dead, she’s only moving to Papua!” And we laughed through our tears.

Later at the airport a group of friends gathered for one last farewell. A few, per local custom, brought parting gifts – a beaded necklace, photographs, a jeweled brooch.

Our longtime house helper Orpa wrapped her arms around me, and with tears in her big brown eyes said, “Ibu, you were the first person who really loved me.” I want to cry right now, just remembering that moment.

But as difficult as the goodbyes were, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. My tears, my heartache at leaving beloved friends, are a testimony to God’s faithfulness in giving me a love for the people he called us to serve.

Me with Lina and her daughter

My neighbor, “Lina,” has been asking me for weeks if she could give me a massage. She and her husband and their young kids live in a rambling shack beside our house. Over the years, the MAF families in our neighborhood have befriended them, given them work, and helped them with medical bills.

“Please, Ibu, let me do this for you,” she begged. “You’ve done so much for me, and we’re so poor, and this is the only way I can repay you.”

Years ago when I envisioned myself doing missions, I pictured myself in Africa somewhere with a group of half-naked children gathered around me as I told Bible stories with a flannel graph, or maybe teaching English somewhere to a group of college students. But lying on a mattress on the floor with an Indonesian woman vigorously rubbing lotion into my tired arms and legs? Never would have imagined it.

There was something about being on the receiving end that didn’t set right. I felt like I needed to be the one helping her. But I knew that by allowing her to do this for me, I was helping her feel she had something to give to me.

And it truly was a help to me. After months of recurring stomach issues, I have been feeling worn down to a nub, wasted, exhausted. During the hour and a half she spent kneading my weary body we talked––about her relationship with her husband, about the house they’re hoping to build, about her kids, about my upcoming move. Silently I prayed for her.

Lord, bless this woman. Bless her and her family––especially her frail little boy––with good health. May this woman find You as she searches for the truth.

I watched in an unlikely place – a large luxury mall in downtown Jakarta, surrounded by a hundred or more enthusiastic Indonesians who cheered when Catherine Middleton walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey.

Tears sprang to my eyes as I watched – not so much for the royal family, but because two weeks ago I was the “mother-of-the-bride” to my long-time house helper, Orpa, and the emotions of marrying off my beloved “daughter” were still so fresh.

Nine years ago when Orpa first came to work for us, she was a young woman of 18 who had lived a nightmarish life. Abused by former employers, and on the brink of taking her life, she came to Christ just a few months before coming to live with us.

When we anticipated our life overseas serving with MAF, I never imagined that a big part of my personal ministry would be investing in the lives of my hired help. It sounds so extravagant to think of having domestic help, but over here it is often a necessity. When every plate has to be hand-washed, all the clothes hung out to dry, every carrot and lettuce leaf scrubbed, and the kids home-schooled on top of it all, life is busy. Add in language learning and a bout of intestinal parasites and it can be downright overwhelming. Without Orpa’s help over the years, our lives would have been significantly more difficult.

Orpa and me at her wedding

Our employment of Orpa allowed her not only a job but a safe environment in which to live and grow in her walk with the Lord. We were able to love on her, disciple and mentor her. After a few months of living with us, she told me, “Ibu Natalie, before I lived with you, I didn’t know husbands and wives could live together without throwing pots and pans at each other.”

Unlike my husband David who is more on the front lines of MAF’s ministry – actually flying the planes and interacting with our users – there are many days when I rarely even leave my house. But day after day, I have had the opportunity to speak truth into Orpa’s life, and into the life of her younger sister Dorkas who also came to live with us.

After years of working and living with this amazing young woman, my heart was full to bursting when she emerged from our guest room a radiant bride, ready to take on the joys and challenges of marriage.

So when in years to come people refer to the Wedding of 2011, it will not be – sorry, Will and Kate – the royal wedding that comes to mind, but that of my daughter in the Lord, Orpa Parukku.