West

from here

My husband and I have been thinking about and heading in the direction of mission for a long time now. We first talked about it after a challenge from a CMS missionary at MYC in 2005, a couple of months after we started dating. But then we broke up. Then a month later we got back together, and then a couple of years after that we got married. And mission has stayed on the cards for us throughout it all. We’ve never agreed on where to go, though. I have romantic dreams of Africa or the Northern Territory; my husband was super keen on the Middle East for a while before randomly starting to get excited about one day heading to South America.

We don’t agree on what a too-comfortable, easy-way-out life looks like, either: I love the idea of heading overseas and am horrified by the thought of spending the rest of my life doing ministry in the country or the ‘burbs, living an ordinary, Aussie life; for me, overseas is the easy option. My husband, on the other hand, thinks heading overseas would be hard and settling down somewhere like Wee Waa is the choice he’d definitely make if he didn’t think he’d be eaten up by guilt every day for choosing it. He’s also an optimist, a recipe-follower and someone who whole-heartedly believes that baths are an acceptable place for a person to read a book or snooze - sometimes I wonder why God thought we’d make a good couple. It seems He has a quirky sense of humour.

This sense of humour (along with a dash of my pessimism) is exactly why I’m not at all surprised that my husband has been offered a student minister position for next year in Penrith – PENRITH!! – which we have accepted. My husband loved working with the church on mission earlier this year, and it was the first time since he started at college that he’s felt God pushing him in any specific direction. I’m excited for us, though it means that we’re moving to Penrith (PENRITH!!), or somewhere nearby. Last night as I searched for houses online, my husband explained that you can tell if the area is good or not by driving around the surrounding streets: If the grass is mown, he said, it’s good. They never cut the grass in the bad areas. Not long after this lesson, we were talking with some friends about our son’s almost-mullet and one of them (who grew up out west and therefore must know what he’s talking about) joked that our son would fit right in out west with a hairdo like that.

I’m trying not to freak out about mullet-haired people who don’t mow their lawns mugging me each time I leave my house (I know absolutely nothing about Sydney’s west; this may very well be a valid concern) and focusing instead on the positives, like the fact that we’ll get to live in a house! With a backyard! And maybe even air-conditioning! And we’ll be where we know God wants us, and the church is GREAT, and we get to make a stack of new friends and pay less rent and be closer to the mountains and slightly warmer in winter.

I've also been studying maps to get acquainted with the area, so that it doesn't feel quite so foreign to me (my husband grew up in those parts, he's all too relaxed about this move). I’m not sure if places like Kingswood or Glenmore Park are suburbs of Penrith, which is itself a suburb of Sydney, but I've decided I do rather like the idea of living in a subsuburb*. Plus, it’ll only be for a few years and then we’ll set off for an exotic location, like Africa or the Northern Territory. Right, God?

[Crickets chirping]

God? 


* Yes I'm grasping at straws here, but did I mention that we were moving to Penrith?! PENRITH, people!!