Sacrifices of Normalcy, Familiarity, and Ease of Life I just want to respond to the article about sacrifice. For me, I came to the realization that to sacrifice oftentimes means more than just the tangible. I really can not complain about my living situation here on our field. I have had the pleasure of living in large, spacious homes, with the added benefit of having live-in house help for much of the time. Even the loss of privacy wasn't as hard to deal with because of the ability to close doors, have aircon to drown out noises, and having our own vehicles. What has been hard to sacrifice is the normalcy of life before leaving for overseas. A life where the decision to live privately isn't even thought about, but taken for granted. A normal life means being surrounded by people you can easily communicate with and who usually hold similar values. Normal means being able to more easily blend into the crowd and having fairly regular access to aunts, uncles, and grandparents for your children. Normal is being able to buy most things (including clothes that actually fit large Westerners) at easily accessible stores and malls. Another thing I've realized I have had to sacrifice is familiarity. One of our last home-leaves we were at a camp with nature trails for a week's conference. I ended up having the privledge of escorting a group of my colleagues along a "nature walk" as I had once been an environmental camp counselor, and was very familiar with the flora and fauna of that area. The experience was fun for me, and enlightening for the others. However, I also felt a sense of loss, as it had been years since I had done somehting similar. I do not know the trees and flowers and bushes where I have lived most of the past 18 years. I live in the midst of a huge city, and have had little opportunity to study botony here. Oftentimes, there are areas of talent, giftedness, or inclination, which we sacrifice in order to serve God in a particular time or place. The familiarity of those things may not totally evaporate over the years, nor should they, perhaps. They are also aspects of our personality God had built into our lives. My response was to simply view these areas of sacrifice as gifts of obedience to God. Jesus, after all, sacrificed the pleasures of Heaven to take on the form of humanity. I still struggle with this now and then, and have learned it's ok to mourn the loss of normalcy, familiarity, and ease of life. But it is not ok to stay stuck in grief for the loss of convenience, or the absence of friends who no longer live on this side of the world. I must daily embrace the where and what and why and who of what God has for me. Daily. This isn't easy for me. Though I feel I know a bit more about what is meant by the sacrifice of praise. It costs to praise God. It means giving up my me-ness and fixing my eyes and heart on the goodness of God. Not easy in any culture or any side of the world. From Mary serving in Asia Sacrifices or Opportunity When reading about sacrifices, I was aware of the difference between what westerners think of sacrifice and what local friends understand about sacrifice. We can see our kids taken out of public school as a sacrifice or we can see it as an opportunity to get a bigger world view, to know another culture, language, school, and have more friends. I think it depends on our perspective. It can be a sacrifice or a privileged lesson the Lord helps us to grow in. While learning what kind of sacrifices the locals need to make in being a follower of Christ, I realized how little my sacrifices are. I am also learning how little persecution is taught in western culture, yet so much is written about it in the Bible. This is a topic we need to study again. Our locals friends are much more aware of it because they are living in midst of it. A friend once said to me, "I feel so sorry that your kids need to sacrifice going oversea." I really don't feel this way. Because of our calling, we experience how much God takes care of our kids, blesses them, and how much more mature they are compared to other classmates. Instead of sacrifice, let's think of it as a chance to experience God's dependency that we wouldn't have experienced back home. From Regula preparing to go to another Asian country