The Lost Months

Hello Dear friends and supporters, family and churches. I want to start with something that I have been wanting to say for months: I’m so sorry.

We have not communicated well. We have not communicated at all. Our last newsletter was in February as the Ukraine-Russia war started and 30+ refugees flooded our base and filled every room and more. It was a crazy time, but that is not why have i not messaged you all. I could use excuses but the truth is, we have not been doing well.

For some months now we have been on an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, facing disappointments and grief long unaddressed. I want to share now that I have perspective and to break the silence that is not honouring of you all and your commitment to us and what God is doing through us in Germany

First, let me summarize what has happened since February.

SPRING

After the refugees arrived it was all hands on deck. Many of our staff we helping settle them, food, cloths, medicine and emotional care after coming out of a war zone. Most came from the eastern side of the country and so had seen horrors. After the initial shock wore off the task was to help those who wanted to settle, temporarily or permanently in the surrounding area. Some also wanted to go back to Ukraine and in some cases were able to do so. For those that stayed, Housing outside of the base had to be sorted, doctors found and visited, schooling to be sorted for the children and teenagers, furniture to fill these houses to be acquired, and the German language to be taught and learned. Our staff worked long hours and many days doing so much I can’t write it all down, but I was so proud of them and continued my job of making sure that even in a crisis, they rested, spent time with God, or just bought their own groceries. We all play our part as best we can, some more then their share but their hearts were good.

I had found that in taking care of staff that there was much I didn’t know; What are the signs of burnout? What to do when someone has suicidal thoughts? What do you say when someone says they lost their calling to missions? How do you counsel someone though a fight with leadership or minister to someone who is not fitting into this new culture for the last 5 years? I knew there was answers to these questions as we are not the first to do missions. So I joined a course called the Practical Member Care Course organized by the European Member Care Resource Team. It was 3 months long and gave me the answers to all my questions and more. I now have a network around Europe with wise and caring people to help with the care of our staff and therefore the sustainability and resilience of our mission and the reaching of the lost. i am so grateful.

While I was part time student Matt stepped back to part time at the base to make up the difference we both knew this was have long term fruit even if the timing was not great at all. I was thankful to be able to use what I learned on the daily as it was online and I was still meeting with staff. I was also doing support raising coaching with a handful of them to help them raise their support so they could stay with what God told them to do. It impacted their lives as God was able to meet them so many times through our talks and their support was raised when old mindsets that held them back broken down. I am so proud of each of them.

When the Member Care course finished in May with a final in-person week in Budapest, I returned thinking Matt would jump back into ministry. But something was off...

SUMMER

I (Matt) was also having some good conversations with some of the staff while gleaning from the resources Gillian was finding. But I started to experience short bouts of depression. It took me a while to realize it was more than just having a bad day. So I began to apply the same principles on myself that I was giving to others. Nevertheless, by the time Gillian finished her course the bouts of depression had become more frequent. From maybe one every other week to about three times a week. It became clear to me a self-help approach was not going to cut it.

We had heard about a ministry in the south of Germany that offers a week-long “Debrief'' by a trained counselor for people in full-time ministry, and they even have a background in YWAM.

Debrief might not be a familiar word to you. Mostly it is used in military intelligence, after a team returns from a mission. For our purposes it refers to the act of reflecting with someone on what has happened over the past “x” amount of time for the purpose of bringing closer, clarity, identifying and bringing healing to emotional wounds and more. Through Gillian’s member care course we learned that actually many missions organizations require their staff to Debrief every four to five years. I was in year 8 of full time ministry, so that seemed like it would be a good place to start. It would take a few pages to recount my whole debrief process, but basically I realized I had experienced emotional pain and losses through the years, and had been bottling it up insteding grieving. It was more than I could work though in a week, so I returned home, the process started, some much needed tools in my hands, and the homework of continuing to grieve. This also required me to take a leave of absence from daily base life in an effort to create space for things to surface in my heart. I wish there was some way to get it all out and over with, but as you might have experienced in your life… Grief doesn't respond very well to the phrase “Hurry UP!”

(Gillian here again) When Matt returned from his debrief we took a week of summer holiday and upon returning packed our house for our move to a new apartment in town. I am so happy to say we are thrilled with our new ground floor apartment as it has all that we need and is much nicer than our last place. We are so blessed and have had many opportunities to bless others through meals, bible studies, debriefs, counseling, and even some babysitting.

My (Gillian’s) mom and our good family friend Auntie Weaz (Louise Chozen) were able to visit us after our move in August. They were here for Elaina’s birthday and some of the hottest days of year (ouch!) but we had such a wonderful time with them!!

AUTUNM

Getting back into the swing of things was hard going. The DTS began a the be base but all of September we took turns being sick in our house; Bad colds, a terrible flu, more colds, all ending with us taking Elaina to the hopsital on the 23rd. Her asthma reared its head again in a lung infection and her puffers were not working. Her and Matt were in the hospital for 7 days as a result. Meanwhile, this was the week that I also had planned to do a debrief and process the last 10 years in missions, also to get a taste of what Matt had gone through. This had been recommended by a couple mentors of mine and insisted upon by another. So with the further insistence of Matt and the assistance of our close friend Jenn who took Emeth for a week, I was able to go.

It was just what I needed to reconnect with God, process my time in missions, and give me clear perspective for the next season which would prove to be vital to our family, ministry, and our lives.

The last 3 weeks have been filled with checking in and reconnecting with staff at the base and preparing for our next move which started this week. I (Gillian) have started the lifelong dream of writing a book this will take all my mornings for the next 6 months. I am taking a modular course (4 weeks in person spread out, and the rest online or solo work) that ends at the end of April. I intend to still continue my part time work at the base but with Matt’s progress things will have to flexible both with writing and ministry.

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It has been a hard summer and a challenging fall, but we are hopeful for the future. My biggest regret from this year will be that we did not communicate with you all. It was on our minds but for a good chunk of the time I did not know what to say. Things seemed too hard to explain or too volatile. But you all said you wanted to stand with us in prayer and be our support and I am sorry that we did not lean on you when you said we could.

If you have questions, want further explanation or just want to talk, please reach out to us our our email our iMessage me at gilldean2111@gmail.com. We don’t want to do this alone, but sometimes don’t know how.

Thank you for your grace and for reading this very long message.