What do you do when you’ve been run off your feet for longer than you can remember; you’ve tried to run a medical programme with a staff who are paid whether they turn up for work or not (and often they don’t); you’ve had to watch as a little girl you’d cared for finally succumbs to an infection; another young man left blind and deaf after brain surgery dies: and, to cap it all, you have a car accident… And all this happens in a culture emphatically not your own.
Answer: you go on holiday. This is why we found ourselves in Cyprus for a week’s holiday. No, that stuff hadn’t happened to us: but it had happened to our friend, and Jonathan’s god-mother, Judith (not her real name) who works in northern Iraq. It didn’t do us any harm to be in a warmer climate for a week: days of pool, beach and the hard question of which restaurant to dine in that evening. Our boys loved it, because Judith is a great story-teller! I’ve had to take notes of the stories they made up together and promise to write them up.
Another thing about going to meet Judith was being able to take her post – there is no trustworthy postal system, so we had a bundle of letters, magazines, books and, at Judith’s request, a couple of baby outfits… no, not for Judith!! But, as she said: “they make good presents…” We were asked for “two for girls and two for boys of early born (the newborn are usually too big for the babies here).”
So, we spent a week where all we did was chat, play, discuss, swim, build sandcastles, eat together – basically everyone was able to “be me” and relax. Which for Judith, was just as well: the second night Judith was back, she was in a local hospital “looking after our driver’s son who had just had pins put into a broken arm and was coming out of general anaesthetic, without pain relief until 5:30 the next morning. It was a long night!”
But her holiday? “My whole time in Cyprus was so good and a time where God refreshed, reenergised and revisioned (if you can have that word!) me!”
Sometimes, you can do good just by treating yourself – and a missionary – to a holiday!