To add to the few thoughts in my last post, I recognize that our little condo in Kuala Lumpur certainly is our home, and I am very grateful for it. It is the place to which I return to when my work in Cambodia  is over, a haven from the chaos of life in cosmopolitan KL, the place where I can find rest and refreshment, healing and the strength and courage to go out again.  It provides privacy from the intrusions of the laws and occasional lawlessness of the country, a place to read and to find quiet time alone with God.

It has been a sometimes strange and round-about journey that has led me to this place. Some of my very earliest recollections are of hours spent with every National Geographic magazine I could get my hands on.  I am not sure if I could even read at the time but I was captivated by the pictures and I knew that I greatly desired to visit all of the exotic places, see those wondrous sights, and get to know those strange and resilient women who wore bones in their earlobes.

Another thing that I learned pretty early is that I have never totally fit in anywhere. In fact I have felt like a misfit on four continents and I have learned to be okay with that.  I am enough of a conformist that I wasn’t about to go running off into the wide world without a plan, and I am incredibly grateful that God has directed me to live a life that is not driven by a need to be comfortable, but rather to live wherever the Lord determines according to His infinite wisdom.  The older I get and the more experiences I can look back on, the more I appreciate the purposefulness of each situation He has placed me in.

It seems to me now that a part of me has remained in every place I have been, and those places remain in me.  I can’t begin to imagine how much poorer I would be if we had not packed up our kids and moved them to Bangladesh, or thought that it was too much trouble to move our reluctant pre-teens to Germany for a year, or feared the hard physical labour involved in a construction of an orphanage in Burkina Faso, or the uncertainty of setting up mobile clinics in the Dominican Republic or decided on a comfortable retirement in Ontario rather than setting out for a new adventure in Asia.

One day of course we will return to our home in Canada, somewhat older and probably bit more battered-looking seeking for a place to finish out our days. But I will remain connected to the all people we have lived, worked, and worshipped with in the many places we have lived. And I will continue to be enriched by all those we grew to love for they are an integral part of the person I am today. And of course it is a real comfort to a wandering kind of person like myself to know that while I may never have the stable family home that many of our readers enjoy, someday I will live in a permanent home with the Saviour I have sought to serve my whole life.