A few days ago someone who knew that we can’t eat good beef on our island treated us to a real tasty Porterhouse steak.  Ruth and I enjoyed the tender medium rare meat immensely.  While we were looking though the menu, we noticed something interesting.  Maybe it is the health conscience culture of our time.  Each dish has the number of calories.  Thus when the time came for dessert Ruth just passed it up and had coffee.  I know how much she loves cheesecake, but once she saw the number ‘1,200 Cal’ she couldn’t do it.  The next morning, probably out of slight regret, she looked up on the internet how many calories we burn as we walk around the lake in our neighborhood for 2 miles in 30 minutes.  She got so frustrated once she found out the number, a meager 125 cal. “Thank goodness I skipped that cake!  I have to walk around the Elk Horn 10 times!  Six or seven bites in 10 minutes, but to burn it we have to walk 5 hours!” In the same token, a few months ago while we were talking with Pastor Jamie about my new role as the GP/USA director, he commented, “It took you guys 16 years to build the SICAP Ministry in toil and sweat as it is now, but it would only take a year maybe even less to topple the ministry.”  I thought to myself, “So true.”
Aren’t our lives often like that?  It is so easy to take in 1,000 Cal, but to burn it off, it takes pain and sweat. It takes years to build a relationship, but it only takes a simple stupid incident to destroy it.  You have to put in at least 8 hours a day to keep a job to make money, but to spend that money, it only takes the swipe of a card.  It took us 16 years of hard work and pain of separation, but who knows… That is why Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”  To find and walk through this narrow gate and road does require time, effort, sweat, or occasional pain.  In contrast, the other road is easy, comfortable and natural.  Automatically our feet take us there.    Lately I have noticed this road is getting more traveler-friendly.  Faster, broader, more comfortable…
Should we follow the crowd?  Without much consideration should we just travel as our feet take us?  Since I am a typical type A person, before the days of GPS, I had to have a map before I traveled.  It didn’t matter whether I knew the road or not.  I needed to make sure I was going to take the right path.  Since there are so many choices and roads which we can take in our journey of life, how can a person think that one can travel without a map as the guide and just follow the crowd?  We do have the perfect map, the ultimate guide which we can rely on daily to find the narrow gate and the path.  The Word of God is the map, the GPS.  It guides and tells us every turn, every street and avenue. 
Ruth and I have traveled as missionaries the past seventeen years in Samar Island.  We have depended on the Map everyday for the right path where not many people traveled. However we came to a junction where we need to make an enormous turn.  Thus for some time we have to travel slower than usual and keep on referring back to the Map for the right direction since this is a brand new path.

From Pastor Daniel’s Heart
December 9, 2012

“Re-entry Shock” is a term to explain the culture shock when missionaries come back home after many years in the mission field. We too definitely are going through it. Since we left home, Samar Island, on November 1st, we have been living out of suitcases for 10 days in Seoul, Korea, 10 days in LA, California, now in Columbia, Maryland. Thus my body and heart are trying so hard to adjust to each time zone, weather and culture. Though my previous experiences tell me eventually my body will get used to whatever changes it faces, the issues of my heart are a totally different matter.
This past Thanksgiving was the first holiday get-together in nearly six years.  That evening when all the food was spread out, I was literally shocked by the amount of food we had on the table.  Automatically my mind was racing to Samar and the gathering we just had a month ago.  For the 20th anniversary celebration of the SICAP Ministry, we had to feed close to 90-100 people for almost a whole week. Beginning with Sunday dinner to Saturday breakfast, seventeen meals altogether we spent $2,000 which also included two whole roasted pigs. Does it mean that the cost of food is much cheaper in Samar?  Actually it is pretty comparable with the food price here except rice.  Then how did we do it?  Tons of rice with one side dish usually in the form of soup or stew which contains meat and vegetables.  However, even that one dish meal is far better than our people usually have at their homes. By contrast, on the Thanksgiving table we had almost ten different kinds of food which were cooked by four different families.
I guess the natural part of the re-entry shock is to compare constantly between where you came from and where you are now.  But I usually don’t verbally express it because a few years ago I learned a lesson.  I kept saying every time we had gathering, “I can’t believe you guys throw these things away (meant disposable plastic utensils).  In Samar we would use these for years.”  Then Sofia got tired of it and said, “Mom, don’t say things like that.  You can make people here very uncomfortable.” Therefore although I won’t say anything, in my mind, I am immediately estimating how many people I can feed with this much food.  How long could these disposable utensils last in Samar ?  I even think about our dogs and cats which can be fed for days with all the fruit peels, bones and leftover food. The difficult part is that we live the re -entry lifestyle back and forth  constantly.  After a couple months of plenty and comfort here, we need to re-enter back to the other life style in Samar again in January.
Hence how do we deal with these often head spinning encounters? Consequently over the years, we have learned to rely on things that remain perpetual like this enduring body of Christ we call our home church and its familiar faces.  Around next March when we move most of our possessions from Samar to Southern California, our lives will again go through topsy-turvy moments.  Nevertheless we will keep on looking upward for our Father and eastward for our Family.

From Missionary Ruth’s Heart
December 2, 2012