Intermission Retreat Begins

Heading into the dining hall

On April 19th, the Intermission Retreat finally began.  It was held at Brackenhurst Retreat Center near Nairobi.  It's late fall in this part of the world, or as close to late fall as you can get in a rainy season/dry season climate. The highs were in the low 70s, so it was in the 60s a lot of the time, which felt amazing and we hadn't had anything anywhere near that cool yet in Tanzania.  The first day of the Intermission retreat was pretty relaxed for those of us who arrived late the night before as we had time to explore the grounds and chat and eat (and eat and eat...the food at Brackenhurst is great!) while the rest of the crowd trickled in throughout the day.  

Intermission is a great ministry.  If you haven't heard of it, it is a mission run by four couple who are all former long-term missionaries themselves.  They realized that the lives of missionaries could be made much easier and more effective if there were more resources available to prepare them, encourage them while on the field, and help them work through reentry when they return to their home country.  It's a life with unique challenges, so it's nice to have people who understand and have studied intercultural communication, culture shock, the psychology of children who are third-culture kids (kids who have grown up in a culture that is different from their parents' home culture, and often end up with an interesting mix as a personal culture, and have challenges fitting in).  They do retreats in the US for recently returned missionaries that are incredibly helpful; so many people assume coming home is the easy part, but it can be really stressful as we have to start over again in a country we're expected to fit right back into but don't anymore.  I've been to two of the retreats in the US over the years, so I was really looking forward to this one. 

Besides the reentry retreats, they also do a retreat every couple of years or so in a different part of the world for missionaries in that area.  This year was our turn; at the East Africa retreat we had people who live in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi.  It's incredible to build a network of missionaries in our area, especially as I'm still new to the work here and hadn't met most of these people before.  I learned a lot from hearing their stories and experiences.  These are people that truly understand my experiences as an American in this culture.  

If you want to find out more about the Intermission ministry, check out their website, intermissionministry.org.  

We started the program late in the afternoon on Thursday.  Over the next few days, we had periods of singing together, sessions with speakers and group discussions on various topics related to missionary life (furloughs, family relationships across continents, communication with a home congregation, how to deal with burn out, etc.), small discussion groups, one on one prayer time with the leaders, and plenty of time to spend in fellowship over food.  It was a truly refreshing time. 

It was an especially great weekend for the teenagers.  Being a teenager is hard anyhow, but especially when you are always the odd one when living in another culture.