A Family Update

This is the email update we just sent out to our prayer list. I haven’t posted many of these here to my blog, but wanted to do so for this one because it provides a good overview of the road we’ve walked over the past year or so.

Fourteen months ago we left Central Asia for an extended medical leave, not sure if we would be coming back. After seven years laboring to see healthy churches started among our focus people group, our bodies and hearts were showing the strain – even though we had tried hard to find a posture of sustainable sacrifice. One teammate put it best, it was like we had patched most of the many holes in our boat, only to realize when we slowed down that the boat was still full of water. And it would take a long time to bail it out. Our medical personnel, counselors, and teammates told us it was time for a season bailing water, rest, and hopefully, healing.

The year that followed was a strange one. We moved back to Kentucky, put the kids in a full-time school for the first time, plugged into regular counseling, saw numerous doctors, and wrestled with our future. It’s hard to wait. Hard to wait for healing. Hard to wait for clarity. And it was hard to come to terms with the costs we’d incurred as a family. I (A.W.) for the first time found myself profoundly doubting if the costs of mission are actually worth it, if God will actually take care of those who are sent. Sure, good fruit around them comes from their ministries. But what about them? What about their hearts, their bodies, their kids?

In the midst of a season where we felt great perplexity and disorientation, when God himself seemed distant, God’s people were not. We were surrounded by steady, kind, faithful Christian friends and family. I remember realizing that God was showing his nearness to us through his people. In the midst of this community we felt like we could stay in the US, if that was what God would ask. But what if he asked us to go back overseas? Could we do that if he asked? All we knew for a long time was that we did not have enough clarity to commit to either. So we waited some more.

In the meantime, our health improved. And even though we didn’t get complete clarity on the causes of the different health challenges affecting our family, we gained much insight into more effective prevention and treatment. Slowly our hearts began to heal also. During the fall, we received an invitation to return and serve in a city we lived in four years ago. Our response to this invitation surprised us. We were actually open to it! We decided that we’d pray, get counsel, and make a decision by the new year.

On Christmas Eve, we said yes. We feel that returning is the right next step of obedience, the right next step of faith in a God who is truly trustworthy and a rewarder, even in suffering. Some things will be different upon our return. We’ll be going back with one of our partner organizations, though still in close partnership with our former org teams and churches. The role that we’ve been invited into is one of content creation. I (A.W.) will be overseeing the creation and translation of solid local language articles, books, and hopefully also audio and video resources. The aim will be to give the fledgling churches, new leaders, and new believers among our people group true, compelling, and beautiful resources that will help to establish them more deeply in their faith – resources that will help healthy churches get planted and endure, which has been our aim from the beginning. This role will allow my wife to focus more on family during this season, and allow us to find the right posture as a family to support the crucial ongoing church planting work.

We are hoping to move back to Central Asia in August of this year. This time around, we will be raising support. So that means we’ll need a solid network of individuals and churches who will commit to regular support or one-time gifts, and in this way to partner with us. Would you consider supporting us in this costly, yet practical way?

We have immediate need of one-time gifts that will help us transition onto support, and then we will building our monthly support and moving fund over the next six months.

As always, we will continue to be in desperate need of your prayers and friendship as we head back into this wonderful and difficult labor. We know that many of you have kept on praying for us, because we’ve experienced some very clear answers to prayer over this past year. Not the least of which is the recovery of our faith to trust again that the costs are indeed worth it. Worth it now, by faith. And worth it in the resurrection, by sight.

We’ll be sending out more updates soon. But for now we wanted to tell you how God has been faithful to us and how he has opened up a new door of service back overseas. We’d love prayer for the following things:

-For God to continue growing our trust in Him, no matter where we are

-For wisdom in shepherding our kids through yet another transition

-For God to raise up a solid network of supporting individuals and churches

-For our ongoing efforts to help local believers from a distance get theological education, be supported in ministry, and start businesses

-For the church plants that have been started in our region to grow in maturity and health

In Him,

A.W. Workman and family

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Unsplash.com