Originally published on the CBF Blog, November 3, 2020. By Jon and Tanya Parks.

“Well, this isn’t going as we expected…”

That sentence has become something of a refrain in 2020. We had plans for this year. Good plans, we thought – programs to launch, relationships to deepen, a literacy initiative to expand. And then the pandemic arrived, and the plans dissolved almost overnight.

Schools closed. The after-school program stopped. The university students who had been volunteering were suddenly home with their own families. The Roma families we work with – already living with limited resources and fragile support systems – faced new and acute pressures.

We found ourselves doing things we hadn’t planned: delivering groceries, making phone calls, sitting in cars outside apartment buildings to have conversations through rolled-down windows.

Figuring and re-figuring. That’s what mission looks like in a year like this.

But here’s what we’ve come to believe: the figuring and re-figuring is not a departure from God’s mission. It is God’s mission. The call was never to execute a program. It was to be present – to show up, to adapt, to stay.

We don’t know what 2021 will bring. We’ve learned not to be too confident in our plans. But we know we’ll be here, figuring and re-figuring alongside the people who have become our neighbors and our friends.

That’s enough. That’s everything.