Moving Forward

I've been thinking about a scene in C.S. Lewis' book, The Magician's Nephew , where the two main characters, kids, have meddled with their uncle's experimental rings. They put them on their fingers and were taken out of this world into another world, a sleepy place, flat and nondescript but for pools littered across the landscape. The rings had taken them out of this world and into that place by way of one of the pools. Every pool connects to a different world and the book is about their adventures exploring the different pools and then trying to get safely back into their own world through its pool. The nondescript, pool-filled landscape was called the world between worlds, a place where nobody can live for long because it gives no life. Life is in the pools.  Although we do not change planets as did the book's characters when jumping from one pool into another, in real life we too change worlds on occasion. What is will not always be. I am in that spot right now...

I have thought all week about what I might like to write in what will likely be my final post of the summer from the Saipan location. I thought about telling you about the last couple of days we spent with the newly appointed Micronesia District Superintendent who visited our church to start the process of becoming acquainted with the churches he will be overseeing. He is from South Korea, a place unlike Saipan yet somewhat similar to Davenport climate-wise, but unlike both in mannerisms and customs. Sharing our various stories with him as a church the past couple of days is something I will remember for the rest of my life. Monday night we all ate together as a church, and around the table five different heart languages were represented as we conversed in our only common language, English. We ate grilled brats and hotdogs, spaghetti and mac-n-cheese bites with forks and spoons --- and cupcakes for dessert. The next night three of us went with him to a Korean restaurant wher...