The Lord Makes Everything New
By Wendy Gutierrez
Recently a song has been going through my head. I think it is due to the start of a new year, 2020. I taught this song several years ago to a group of 1st grade students who were learning English. The song is based on Acts 3:19 — “Turn away from your sins, and turn to God and then, your sins will be wiped away, turn to God.” It is a great song to teach the concept of repentance with younger children and is available free on YouTube:
The chorus of this song says, “The Lord makes everything new; the Lord makes everything new, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.” I LOVE this concept. During the last year, my family experienced significant change. My husband and I are missionary administrators at a school in Ecuador. During the last year, we lived in two different countries: 5 months in the US and 7 months in Ecuador. We were visitors in the US, as Ecuador is our full-time base. For our two teenage sons, age 13 and 15 and daughter age 7, the US does not feel like going home as it does to me. For them, it is an unfamiliar culture and is a real challenge for them. Our first son, despite being very opposed to the trip, adapted to a new school after about a month and was able to integrate into high school life and sports. By the time we returned to Ecuador, he talked about wanting to stay in the US and struggled to re-adapt to his life in Ecuador. Our daughter had some struggles at first with her new kindergarten class in the US, going from a small Christian school to a class of 25, full of students who had spent significant amounts of time in daycare. The lack of respect for adults and different values of her classmates were a struggles for me as I corrected her attitude after school each day. Our second son experienced significant struggles with adapting to a new culture and began to struggle with an eating disorder, becoming so ill he was hospitalized for 2 weeks and had to complete months of recovery. For me, I struggled to re-adapt to my own culture while living in temporary housing provided by our church family on a farm, half an hour drive from my mom and over an hour drive from my sister. It was difficult to plan frequent get-togethers and I often felt isolated by our location, despite the incredible amount of support we had from my family and our church, which was half an hour away. My husband, Robin also was impacted by our change in location but quickly arose to the occasion to raise funds to pay for land for our new school campus. When we were close to the end of our five months, we felt close to family and friends in the US, very sorry to say goodbye and returned to Ecuador with full suitcases and many memories.
Returning to Ecuador was a new season for us and this school year has felt like a combination of the new and the old. We are working with a new leadership team at a Christian school in the Ecuador jungle region, a school where we have served for thirteen years. I have had the challenge of teaching new classes and coordinating our English as a Second Language program with a few new faces. I am learning to teach Jr. Highers, which has brought me tears at times and euphoric feelings of success when my class goes well. I have struggled with my roles as mom, wife, administrator, teacher, team-mate and friend and self-doubt has often been my reality, sometimes leading me toward anger at my circumstances or misdirected at my family. I have been talking to a Christian counselor about this and recently completed a questionnaire about stress, the Holmes-Rahe Scale. My score was very high due to all the transition we experienced this year. I have found a great blog post that explains this scale and how it often effects missionaries:
A new year has felt to me like a new start; a time to focus on taking care of my health and doing what I can to have a good relationship with God, my family and the people I serve. It is a time to re-evaluate and think about what I can and can’t change, working to accept the circumstances I can’t change and to change what I can. It is a time to re-evaluate relationships and focus on what I feel called to do while at the same time, not taking on the challenge to try to be a superhero in all parts of my life. “The Lord makes everything new, the Lord makes everything new, hallelujah, praise the Lord.” My husband has been incredibly supportive to me in this process. Despite the self-doubt that often resurfaces, I am working on living each day in the strength of the Lord and allowing Him to change me, help me to grow past some of the doubt and fear.
