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Baerly There …

Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two …

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May 2018

unfiltered: death, life, and Salvation Army suitcases

Dear friends,

We buried Raymond Daniel Baer’s mortal remains two weeks, six days, and two hours ago, on a hill not two hundred yards from where I sit. Dad was 90 years old and is now safe in the embrace of Jesus.

I don’t think news get any more *unfiltered* than this, and I tear up for the three-thousandth time as I tell you so.

If you want to glimpse a bit into who Dad was for us, check out www.canterbridge.org. I haven’t been able to write anything since the day the phone call came and we gathered to accompany Dad as he made his way from one life to another in the hours that followed. So a reflection on his life as well as his obituary remain right at the top of the blog, undisturbed by any subsequent scribblings. You won’t need to fatigue your scroll muscles.

*And then*, on Thursday, I received my Colombian ‘migrant worker’ visa (You just gotta’ love that …) from the very fine people at the Colombian consulate in Newark. Karen’s visa followed by a digital path, yesterday. Approximately 1.3 zillion things had to go right before that could happen.

Yes, we are on our way.

*And then*, when I was scoping out flights to Medellín this morning, I realized that my somewhat arbitrarily chosen departure date is my son John’s 30th birthday.

Didn’t you know it would be like this?

Everything happens at the same time.

For those who like facts, here are some dandies:

√  Our path from twelve years of organizational leadership at Overseas Council into this new phase of ministry has taken just under two years. That’s not more than it’s supposed to take. Yet it makes for a bit of an adrenaline jolt to realize that our step across this threshold is, well, upon us. No more theory. We’re movin’.

√  So whenya’ movin’?, one might deign to ask. Well, my slightly arbitrary working travel date is May 20. ‘Might be slightly later, could possibly be a little earlier. But, basically, May 20 will mean USA to Colombia, Pennsylvania to Medellín, rural to metropolitan, English to Spanish, plan to reality, organizational leadership to pastor-teacher-mentor. May 20. About fifteen sleepies, as I would have counted them out for little Christopher and Johnny back in the day.

√  Down at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, Gonzalo and his dudes have been layerin’ fresh paint on the walls of our apartment and otherwise tidying up for ‘the Baers’. Community and service——both of necessity encased in laughter and tears, though we cannot predict the moments or the causes——will be lived from that new home base.

√  We’ve been telling you a lot about the financial structure of our missionary service over these last eighteen months. We’re waiting for our third sending church to define the number of their financial commitment, but I can guess pretty reliably that we still need to raise about $800/month to make our United-World-Mission-based budget whole. We’ll plan to raise any remaining amount of that budget from down south, since these first six months in Colombia represent the less expensive half of our six-months-south, six-months-north rhythm of service. Let us know if now is your time to join us.

√  We have one-time moving and set-up costs, too. Our mission sets those at $25,600, which I believe will prove sufficient for our set-up in Colombia this month and then in Connecticut next January, as well as the travel around it. If a one-time contribution to the cause matches a nudge of your heart and mind, we’ll be grateful for every consideration.

√  The site for either kind of financial participation is: https://uwm.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d51738c53f3016d069e94ccb0&id=0f1a9e4f70&e=670d06dbc3

√  We plan to travel light: eight suitcases. Not nine. Not ten. And a dog. Right at this moment, little Rhea still plans to accompany us, particularly since her assignment as Official Therapy Dog of Dad Baer and his nursing home comrades has come to its end.

√  So far, I’ve bought two used suitcases from an Amish neighbor (and given one away), one from the Salvation Army, and another forlorn little piece from the local Goodwill store. There’s no telling what people carried in’em over bygone miles. Ours will hold our ‘Medellin Gear’. Eight. Not nine (the man reminds himself…).

√  We look forward to having a bit over a month in our new place before my first semester of teaching strikes with its unforgiving deadlines and its invigorating new friendships with colleagues, students, and those unidentified passersby who weasel themselves into heart and mind. A young college woman from our first sending church will arrive about two weeks after we do to live with us and get a taste of cross-cultural service in Medellín, mentored by Karen and supervised in that remote-alpha-male way by me. Plus, we’ll just need to settle in, find the safe running routes, the sources for fruits, vegetables, and soul food. Dog food. You know the drill.

√  Are we eager to get there? You betcha’. Are we eager to leave? Not on your life. Life happens all at the same time, mixed up like peas and corn.

√  We had two empowering ‘commissioning services’ at the loving hands of our first and second sending churches. We don’t go alone.

√  Over the past eighteen months, I’ve given time and energy to working with a knot of Colombian colleagues on a Biblical-Hebrew-instruction platform for Spanish speakers. My role in that project has expanded delightful and demandingly, and there are several aspects of it that I’ll want to stomp on with fast-forward intentions during our month of settling. I suppose we’ll hit the ground running, as people unaccustomed to doing so sometimes like to say.

√  Why eight?, you might ask. Eight suitcases. I don’t know. It came to me as in a dream.

√  I’m a ‘migrant worker’. How cool is that? Karen is my ‘dependent’, but they got that all backwards.

√  Some people are really good at making precise lists of ‘prayer needs’. This moment feels too fluid for that, everything happening at the same time, everything peas and corn. But if you pray, you’ll already know how to pray for us. And we breathe back at you little Baer-breaths of incalculable gratitude.

√  If we didn’t think that the Lord Jesus had taken up residence in Colombia eons ago, and that our eventual arrival in May of 2018 represents a tiny step of obedience to join in on what he’s doing there for some considerable time now, I wouldn’t be buying a single suitcase and we wouldn’t be goin’ nowheres. But I’ll soon have eight of the battered old things.

√  And we’re goin’ somewheres.

√  You with us? Game on.

√  It’s all happening. All at once.

√  Celtics over Sixers in six.

√  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta’ go snag an airline-worthy dog crate. Next time from Colombia!

With very much love and appreciation,

David (for the intrepid and slightly staggering Karen, who is in Connecticut for Quinnie’s first communion)

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Baerly there … : no pushing

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I confess. I choked up over a piece of farmland yesterday.

This is not supposed to happen to a veteran missionary, fluid and experienced in entering and departing places and their cultures.

It happened on that short level stretch of Matterstown Road, where it evens out between the pull up from E’ville and the descent down to Killinger. I had just dropped Mom off at the hair salon to meet Junior after visiting with Dad in his nursing home. I was tooling home in the pickup to the day’s re-start at my desk when my eyes suddenly teared up and that lump formed in my throat.

I have often reached this stretch of the road on the bike. It runs across a ridge at the center of this lush agricultural valley, its slight superiority in altitude offering a commanding view of the rural glory that stretches from Berry’s Mountain—just over there—all the away along to the Mahantonga, beyond Shippy. No matter which direction I’m riding, the bike coasts along when it hits this quarter-mile plateau as though on its own power after the exhaustion of lung and leg that the climb from either end of it claims as its toll. I feel a bit, well, royal, as I coast along on this high mini-plain. I sit up in the saddle and survey our Valley, wondering how places like this one come to be and how many people pause to take in this view. Perhaps it was yesterday’s golden corn stubble that made the scene get to me as it did, glowing promisingly in air swept clean and clear by a cold rain, fields all but groaning for Spring and promising it fresh life when it finally appears. I wasn’t thinking about it. I was just driving.

 

Then it choked me up.
You see, this will soon be a memory. In fact, the next Baerly There … you read may well be written in Medellín, Colombia, a place with its own glories and groaning, a place that will in time become just as hard to place behind us as this place, this Valley, this view.
Missionaries are like this, far more often than not. We do not go because we do not like who and where we are. We go into an alien place at the expense of detachment from a familiar one. We leave.

There have, without doubt, been some who go because they disdain who and where they have been, who and where they come from. These are the dangerous ones, missionaries to be avoided. They damage everyone as they flail about in search of a place to belong.

Karen and I could stay, could be happy with never seeing another airplane except as one passes over some country road with memories nailed to every fencepost, barely visible from far below at its anonymous 30,000 feet. Oh, how we could stay.

Yet we have this great privilege of being called at a ripe age to a new place where what our Redeemer has baked into our healed and healing lives will become accessible to people who don’t know West Matterstown Road, never will, and need not. He’ll be there ahead of us—has been for uncountable ages—and will have work for us to do.

We are almost there. We are almost in Medellín, almost among a bodacious family of colleagues and emerging Colombian leaders with grace in their smiles and blisters on their hands, almost there in neighborhoods that will become familiar, will in time become ours.

It pulls us. You may hear from us next as we steal an hour from the quick pace of leadership and service in Colombia itself in order to pommel you with lines like these from that South American nation we are learning to love.

Medellín pulls us.

But no driving wind is at our back. Nobody’s pushing.
Straight talk on the financial challenge

 

Missionaries like us embrace the task of raising the funds that allow us to do the work to which we and the churches who endorse us believe God has called us.
This fund-raising labor is tough work, but it’s not ugly and it’s not charity. It’s part of the calling and, frankly, has a helpful weeding-out function built into it. You don’t get there if you don’t get through this.
A support requirement is given to us by the United World Mission in order to provide for a modest and sustainable lifestyle after due consideration of our responsibilities, our life stage, and any special needs the missionary might have. We are required to raise 100% of that support level. In our case, the number is a daunting one because of where we are in life and the reality that our new responsibilities require us to maintain two home bases (one in Colombia, one in Connecticut).

We are almost there, but we are not yet there.

Here’s reality:

People and churches who believe in us have already committed a stupendous amount of resources to our work. We need to raise another $1302/month in ongoing financial commitments in order to get across the goal line of our support requirement.

Let me break it down like this. We need …

  • 5 financials supporters who will sign on at $75/month.
  • 3 who will say ‘I’m in’ at $100/month.
  • 2 who will derive great satisfaction from pledging $150/month.
  • 1 who warms to the quirky notion of plunking down $327 of hard-earned, God-given cash each and every month.

But that’s not all.

Then we have travel and set-up costs which the United World Mission estimates at $25,600. Candidly, we have not begun to raise this money yet because the ongoing support is by a country mile the highest priority. But we’re now within a month and a little of our move to Colombia, so we need to make this additional need known to you.
It’s wild, isn’t it? Huge, actually.
Only God can do this, He who owns the famous ‘cattle on a thousand hills’.
Will He deploy you as one of his not-so-secret agents?
If so, click the button just below.
I’m in!
I promise you, soon these digital updates will migrate from the preliminary work of getting there to reports and stories about some of the most amazing people on the planet in the thriving nation called Colombia!
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You are receiving this email because we believe you may want to stand with our work in Latin America and beyond.

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