Return to Congo April 2025

Playing while packing up the plane

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Returning from an evacuation is always met with mixed emotions, disorientation, and questioning yourself and God. You're happy and relieved to go home, but are met with the aftermath of the evacuation, which brings grief, disappointment, sadness, and even anger. Things strike at your heart when you see them; memories missed, events passed, things lost, even as simple as time in your home. This time we lost 6.5 weeks of the remaining 21 weeks in our home - almost a third of what time we had left here, leaving us 14 weeks now after our return home. The countdown clock has definitely started. We're grateful to be safe but it was still a blow.

The biggest loss for our family this time was the scheduled visit from our sending church's mission pastor and his wife, which had been scheduled for a week during our time out in Uganda. This was the thing that I had been looking forward to since moving back in October and hanging onto as the happy special event that gets you through the hard days here. Saying that we, in particular me, was disappointed, grieved, sad, and even angry at the circumstances, would be an understatement. Many tears were shed. The week of vacation time right after their visit was also cancelled.

The container with the empty egg shells. Sad but it was still fun to see that it was a success and the empty shells.

After getting home, the little losses start piling up as you go along. Things like the boys' gecko eggs they'd found and put in a container of dirt to hatch were all hatched out, the geckos gone. Only empty shells remain. The garden had yet again, gone to seed with the items not eaten. The number of times I've come back to a wrecked garden can really damage the heart of a gardener. This isn't the natural passage of time with things going to seed in the fall after it's passed; it's a robbery of time that leaves it a mess and the gardener discouraged. Other things I noticed were the countdown chains made for the arrival of our visitors, the calendar being two months past, homeschooling records being two months out of date, and the general mess throughout every room in the house.

If you didn't know, when you have only 15 minutes to a few hours to pack (this time I had a whopping 2 hours), you tend to make and leave a mess. You then return to this mess and chaos when you get back, which looks like a robber truly went through your house. Except that robber was you, trying to pack and remember all the essentials you need to live and irreplaceable items you don't want to lose. Even then you forget things, miss things, or simply don't have the weight to bring it all. What would you pack in your house if you had 15 minutes and 1 50lbs bag per person? Don't forget your passport, money, medical records, medications, and hopefully some clothes. Kiss your furniture, pictures, and anything else not in the bag goodbye, possibly permanently. This time I did pretty well but did forget Daniel's toothbrush, and the camera for our baby monitor that was on Katherine's crib, along with a few other items. We eventually got what we needed from trips the pilots made going back to continue flights in EDRC, or we supplemented the items from Kampala, like the toothbrush.

The boys didn't want to be left behind.

Along with all our luggage and the program manager's, we also went shopping and brought back some groceries like meat and cream.

For moving home, we packed up our things in Uganda and eventually got to the airport with everything, including the additions of a chameleon Daniel had found and made a pet of weeks earlier and a small flock of chickens I couldn't help but acquire. Yes, I know I have a problem, but the joy they bring me, and the kids are 100% worth it. They're currently running around the yard getting used to it, and hopefully they will resume laying very soon despite the upset. I bought them as ones that had already started laying, supposedly, from a man in Uganda. I didn't have a lot of time or motivation in the rainy morning to spend forever inspecting them, so we will see. Could have been taken on that but I'm still enjoying them around the yard.

My addiction in full-swing.

The trip back went smoothly and was uneventful, other than poor Jeremiah's congestion causing him some pain during landing. Many warm greetings were exchanged with the Congolese at the airport, who were both happy and encouraged to have us back. Soon enough we loaded up our things in our car and drove home. We let out the chickens, moved the chameleon to his cage, and dumped all of our bags in the living room to unpack the next day. Relief is the dominant emotion for the first while, until the little sad things start to pile up and you feel overwhelmed or stressed by the disorganization all over the house. That is still a problem I'm working on rectifying.

We are the first family back in for our organization, along with the program manager who is flying solo for a couple weeks while his wife is in the states. The others will begin returning this Friday, and the following week hopefully.

So, we're back in our home, exhausted with an even lower margin than before, trying to get back into the swing of life here, while managing emotions and chaos from the evacuation. I can tell you as a seasoned veteran of evacuations (this being the 7th or 8th time, I still can't remember) that regardless of where you evacuate to, it's not a vacation. It's a stressful time of limbo, transition, processing, and frustration, even if you can order a pizza or go to a public pool. It's the kind of stress that sneaks up on you, hovering, and you may not even know it's there until things fall apart, which they eventually will after some time. Why are we all screaming at each other, as we eat Indian take-out? Oh yeah...no matter the conveniences, this is still not home, we are still uprooted, and this is still transition.

I literally cannot put to words how weary of transition I am at this point. I'm aware life is full of transitions, even when you're not a missionary, but I mean the big ones. The moving. The living in fear of evacuating. The long-term, difficult goodbyes. That is all different from the "normal" transitions of life like saying goodbye after Christmas is over (see you again soon for _____), changing seasons, school ending or starting, going on a vacation, etc. I'm so weary of transitions that I don't even like going on vacations anymore - seriously. We choose to have "stay-cation" instead of traveling places because we have to do it by force too much already. Maybe someday I will enjoy going places for vacation again, but probably not for a while.

"So, what now?" you may be asking. Now, we try to get life back on track. I'm getting back to my way of eating after cheating in Uganda with European pastries and grafted mangoes. I normally eat meat-based keto, called ketovoire, which consists of eating mostly animal products, focusing on high-fat and moderate protein, while allowing seasoning and the occasional low-oxalate vegetable. I combine that with intermittent fasting and low carb for multiple health reasons. I could do an entire post on that journey, which I still don't have completely figured out and am still learning.

Also, for the first time since my pregnancy and subsequent injury, I'm working out again, doing resistance training. My plan is to start to work on my health as much as I can here, and then when we transition back, I'll go more-strict carnivore for a few months as I do some bloodwork, loose this baby weight, and focus on intense nutrition to heal my body, injury included. I had intended to add in some things to my diet that would have come with our visitors, but now that will simply have to wait until after we move back.

We're diving back into the normal swing of things as a family right now with Dave going back to work, Daniel having homeschooling, and eventually here I'll add in packing with my list of everyday things I'm doing. The truth is, we could have to evacuate tomorrow due to a rebel group called M23 that is being backed by Rwanda, who wants the minerals. They've taken over several of the larger cities down south of us and are slowly making their way North toward us. If they reach a certain point on the map, it would be another evacuation, most-likely for the long term and possibly to not return as a program; for our family, it would mean returning to the US earlier than planned. We could lose our entire household of things we'd be putting into our shipment to come home with, so the idea is to start packing as much up as we can to send out to Uganda for storage.

So, that is where we're at for the moment, and we covet your prayers. Prayers for our family to settle and enjoy our remaining weeks here at our home, and especially for peace in this area of Congo, so we don't have to leave early. It would be an even more-difficult end to our decade of service here in Congo. We returned and we don't want to leave again, until it's our scheduled departure.