Perplexities, Prayer Request, and Ponderings

I guess I should have lumped this in with my previous post, but (obviously) I didn't, so you'll just have to deal with two posts from your favorite crazy blogger girl. ;-)

As some of you may know, my dad's working for Samaritan's Purse in Japan. He's helping rebuild the homes destroyed by the tsunami. Apparently, Samaritan's Purse likes him. They talked him into staying an extra month and upped his pay. So now Dad's asking if the rest of us want to come to Japan so we can help with the re-building/cleanup/whatever needs to be done, and have the added bonus of getting to see him before his homecoming on March 1st. We're talking a free trip to Japan. Free plane tickets. Free food. Free lodgings. And, get this, I don't want to go.

Yeah, I'll run that by you again: I don't want to go to Japan. Me, Janie, the globe trotter. The girl with itchy feet (and we're not talking about my athlete's foot, just so you know). The girl who will go anywhere. I'm turning down a free trip to Japan. Am I crazy? I don't really know for sure, but I think I might be.

Admittedly, I've never really wanted to go to the far East. China, Japan, Korea...none of them have ever been very interesting or exciting to me. I also had a rather unpleasant experience the last time I volunteered for Samaritan's Purse. I went to Joplin and did tornado cleanup. The scale of the disaster was discouragingly huge, the weather was blisteringly hot, and I got some sort of weird, extremely painful muscle spasms that kept me up at night. Not the most pleasant experience, but I've had worse, and been able to laugh about them later. Also, there's a very slim likelihood that working for Samaritan's Purse in Japan will be very much like working for Samaritan's Purse in Missouri.

So, why don't I want to go? I still don't know, and that's what's bothering me. I like to have reasons for the things I do. My reasons don't even have to be terribly logical. As long as they will serve to explain my actions, I'm satisfied. This is all very perplexing to me.

I suppose the real purpose of this blog post was three-fold: 1) To let you know what's going on in my life. 2) That, by writing my perplexities out, I might be able to understand them a little better. I think, though, that this almost-infallible method of sorting out my thoughts has proved to be sadly fallible. 3) To ask, if you're a praying kind of person and you're reading this, that you would pray for direction for me and my whole family. It is very troublesome that I, who want to be an international missionary, would feel totally unmotivated to jump at such a golden opportunity.

I want my desires to mirror God's desires. I want to be in tune with His master symphony. I realize that I am called to be His hands of compassion to my corner of the hurting world, and, whether that corner is in Japan, or Africa, or right here in Missouri, I want to be His faithful messenger. I realize that my unwillingness could be a signal that Japan really isn't 'my corner'. But it could just as easily be a result of my stubborn heart.