“Eat, drink, sing, dance.” Our friend smiled, pausing to allow this information to sink in. “This is my best description of Georgia,” he continued, holding a steaming khinkali—Georgian dumpling—over his plate. “This is what Georgians live for.”
Freshly arrived in the country of Georgia just two days earlier, we couldn’t have been more thankful to find an English-speaking native Georgian friend who shared our beliefs and was happy to guide us through the culture and local mindset.
“We have a saying that goes, ‘A guest is a gift from God,’” he smiled proudly. “There is no greater insult to a Georgian than to imply that he was not a good host.”
A gift from God, I thought. Wow! I could write an endless list of God’s gifts to us—people who stepped in and made our lives a little bit easier, a little bit happier and a whole lot brighter. The past six months have been a challenge for our whole family, a rollercoaster of events and emotions: completing training, finishing fundraising, welcoming a new baby, two surgeries (one of them on the new baby), moving overseas, mountains of paperwork, exhausting travel, losing a dear grandmother and then some more traveling. We wouldn’t have made it without many gifts from God.
We wouldn’t be here without our supporters who made this whole project possible. Your encouragements and contributions mean the world to us. AFM training wouldn’t have been so enjoyable without our missionary colleagues’ friendship and constant prayers. They will forever be our family. We have more gifts from God working for us in the AFM office. They taught us valuable lessons, showered us with love and support and prayed with us and for us. Even the hospitals—oh, the hospitals! I had no idea they could be filled with so many compassionate doctors and nurses. Besides being excellent at their jobs, they went the extra mile, sharing hugs and encouragement, praying with us, calling us at home and treating our family as their own. Yet more gifts from God are the friends who sacrificed hours to help us pack and clean our apartment before leaving. I’m perfectly confident that if it wasn’t for them, we would still be packing today, getting to enjoy our third Michigan winter! At the airport, total strangers offered to help us carry our luggage so we could hold our kids. Airline workers—who would have thought they could turn out to be such a blessing? Well, when you’re flying to a new home, not having to pay for lots of extra bags counts as a huge blessing.
And the list doesn’t stop there. The lovely Georgian people have so surprised us with their hospitality, warmth and desire to help that my heart almost explodes with gratitude. They knock at our door bringing fruit. They race to offer us their seats on the metro. They want to help in any way they can. We actually had to turn down their offer to take our trash!
Thinking of this, it becomes clearer to me what God is asking from us here in Georgia. It is to be what the people already expect us to be—gifts from God. It is such a huge responsibility. I have learned how to travel, how to adjust to new places and how to learn a foreign language. I know how to peel a quail egg for my child while standing on one foot and holding the other child who is sleeping. I have learned that I can carry an impressive amount of luggage without breaking my back. I even learned to sleep in half-hour increments and to get over jet lag in less than two days. But nobody ever taught me how to be a gift from God!
Well, I hear a still, small voice say, maybe that is why you had to go through so many things. Now you know what a blessing feels like! Maybe it’s true. Maybe you, dear friends, have been our actual training. Through your love, you taught us how we can be gifts of God here where the European and Asian worlds meet, in the land of hospitality, traffic chaos and boisterous music. Please pray that we can rise to the challenge!
