Today is exactly one year since I touched down at Frankfurt/Main, Germany, kicking off my five years (God willing) of missionary service for the Lutheran—Church Missouri Synod. This is my boarding pass from back then, along with a beautiful reminder of God’s protection, given to me by a dear church member in my last stateside church, Trinity Lutheran in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. What is my assessment one year into this deployment? Sadly, serving God in this way has been tougher for some members of my family than I had expected, namely those with roots in America (while also more joyful for other members of our family living in Germany). On the other hand, my mission work goes much further beyond Germany than I would have thought since I daily interact with Iranians, Afghans, Latvians, and now also Ukrainians. Next month I will fly to a Central Asian country for ten days. Perhaps the Bible verse that defines the past twelve months best is, once again, 1 Corinthians 12:12: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” This past year has shown me more than ever how the Lord’s Church is truly a body of people with myriad gifts, interconnected and collaborating toward a common goal—whether it is the dear people of Oklahoma who tearfully released us as we received our call to serve the Lord in a different part of the world, or the many supporters we are blessed with all over the United States, or God’s people in the Kaiserslautern Military Community or in Frankfurt/Main; or in Hamburg, Finland, Latvia, across Central Europe, or Central Asia. Truly, we seem to be most useful to the Kingdom when we stay interconnected with one another—different members of the body, all being used by the Holy Spirit to work toward the same goal: to feed the sheep and reach the lost. Thank you all for helping make this first year even more powerful than we could have hoped for.
tiewsfamily.org 