“When it comes time to leave, it will be hard.”

This was a promise God made to me early on in our Taiwan days. I was a new bride in a new culture, a fish out of water, desperate to feel at home. Many nights I cried myself to sleep, wondering if I had made a mistake in committing to Taiwan – all of the confidence I had carried in my home culture vanished overnight, to the point I’d rather stay at home than go outside. But as I continued to pray and seek, God not only said we’d be okay – but one day this place would be a home we would not want to leave.

God knew our time to leave would be in May of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and crashing economy. And He was right – as we hugged our friends goodbye, friends from all over the world, it was really hard. These were the friends who visited me in the hospital when my sons were born. They shared our table as we transitioned from newlyweds to a family. I made my first real friends that weren’t born in my country – friends from Guatemala, South Africa, the Philippines, England, and Taiwan. I loved them with a genuine love that can only come through the fellowship of the cross.

And I found a truth I had always known – but now I could see it. Jesus is for everybody. The Holy Spirit is not only willing, but longing to embody people from every corner of the world. And when He does, people who were dead come alive. Every tribe, every color, every nation, and every language – finding their home in the only place they ever could.

Travis and I hauled the boys to our last base meeting the week before we left – a weekly time for all of the missionaries in YWAM Taipei to gather and worship together. COVID-19 forced us to wear masks, even as the sweltering heat climbed the top of our thermometers. And as I held my new son in the back of the church I cried out to God – why these masks? This is the last time we will see most of these people this side of heaven and we’re doing so with a stuffy, sweaty veil.

Exactly.

God spoke.

Do you know the next time you will worship with everyone in this room? Rejoice, Rachel, for then there will be no more masks. In the place I have prepared there will be no disease, no pandemics. There will be no suffering, and no more goodbyes. So rejoice now, for that is where your hope lies.

As I bid farewell to people who have truly captured my heart I knew it was not a forever goodbye. I hope to see them soon, but if not, Heaven awaits us. Jesus awaits.

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God’s right hand in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3