Grief and Loss & Goodbyes

First off....HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRETA!!!

Tuesday morning was a long morning, the module was on grief and loss. To me it was digging up (looking back) at stuff I would just as soon leave alone and let it come up when it comes up. We talked about how God (the Bible) views grief and loss, what does that look like? How do we view it? How do we/I live it out? Have we been taught to mourn biblically? This is something that our Father cares about and has shown us a model In the scriptures and it is NOT the western/American model. This is but one of many daily life issues that our Father has addressed in His Holy Scriptures that isn’t often taught anywhere.

Today this is what the entire day was on. It started out with each person/ couple going up in front of the class and sharing where we were going and what we thought our mission was going to be there (we learned it so often not what we think it will be), also to share one prayer request for the country we will be going to and a request for ourselves. Then people from the class would gather around us and one person would pray for us. It took the entire morning but man was it GOOD!! This afternoon was on goodbyes. How important they are for ourselves and for others, and how to properly do that. We talked about how it is done on other cultures and the emphasis that is placed on it. Then for an hour and a half we walked around and said goodbye to each other. This consisted of a lot more than a simple goodbye. We had to speak a word of encourage, exhortation to each individual and than they would reciprocate it. It was rather uncomfortable, but it was also very encouraging. We had a lot of compliments on the kids and their behavior, on how they interacted with the adults, especially Cybil and Mariah. After class we sat down with the kids’ teacher and discussed his observations. A lot of them were things we had an idea of already, and some things we didn’t notice as much anymore-we have become used to it. So it was good to hear what other people saw. I think we put their teacher on the spot!