Jeff and I stood on a crowded Saigon street and watched Drew and Diane walk away from us. We were alone in a country that is about as far away from home as we could possibly get. Neither of us speaks Vietnamese. We turned to each other and smiled. Then we turned the other direction and began to wander. All the fears we brought to Viet Nam melted away as we wandered. We were comfortable. We loved it here. In unison we said, "We could do this." We were talking about serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We could go anywhere. Unfamiliar places with oh-so-different smells, foods and sounds were not scary anymore. We were ready for this great adventure. Bring it on!
Flash forward to Wednesday, October 16, 2013. Our dream was reality. We had been called to serve in the Philippines as humanitarian missionaries. We were to report to the MTC in Provo on Dec. 2. We had been given our specific assignment to work as liaison between NGOs and other organizations seeking assistance for humanitarian projects and the Church to make sure help was given and paperwork was complete and accurate. We were learning Tagalog with help from the SMTC in Provo. (Thank You Jake Budge) Our car was sold and we were actively looking for a renter for our house.
The unthinkable happened. As we sat in Barnes and Noble working on our Ipads (language training), Jeff jumped up with a look of horror on his face. He began to pace.
"What," fear settled inside of me.
"It's back," was his only reply. The look of horror on his face said the rest. It has been 7 years. But I knew without hearing anything else.
So, in the middle of our turbo charged preparations, we came to screeching halt, did an about face, and began the process of diagnosis and finding treatment. It was devastating.
There are some, who in an attempt to help us feel better have likened this situation to that of Abraham of the Old Testament when he was asked to sacrifice his son. In the case of Abraham... he was spared. His son was spared. The sacrifice was not required. Our friends have said that our sacrifice of serving was mission was not required. They do not understand. Going on a mission was not a sacrifice. We wanted to go. We looked forward to going. We felt like we could do what was being asked of us, and do it well. We saw it as a great adventure that would give us the opportunity to serve in a way that was really in the realm of our skill set.
The sacrifice for us was not going on a mission. Jeff's diagnosis is Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. It is the same cancer that he had 8 years ago. We both know what that means, and it is frightening. It is a sacrifice to give up a mission in the part of the world we fell in love with a year ago. It is sacrifice to go from attending to learning a langauage and emailing the Area Welfare Manager of Quezon City to emailing the doctors at Johns Hopkins for scheduling appointments and talking chemo choices.
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