Welcoming Home Emily

Our Emily arrived home last week from almost 3 weeks of travel in Asia. From all accounts, it was fantastical and she experienced a ton of stuff, including 2 countries, 4 cities [the smallest being 2M people!], villages, baby pandas, Chinese opera, the art of batik fabric, the Great Wall, 9 flights and almost 20,000 air miles, sea urchins, and lots of rice. I was jealous.

As you would expect, we are trying to help Em decompress this experience and we are doing this in a few ways. First, we let her talk and talk and talk. Most people, family members included, are awful at actively listening to their friends and family after they have returned from something like this. We also ask lots of questions. Last night, she showed us about a thousand pictures. Second, we encourage Em to have a light schedule. A good rule of thumb for recovering for jet lag is that it takes one day for every timezone traveled. Third, I gave her decompression homework based on our past experiences with Ember teams. Yeah, homework in the summer, how awful.

After working with hundreds of students on many, many mission teams over the past 15 years, I can definitively tell you: do not miss helping the people around you process experiences like these. The proper decompression is one of the best ways to ensure that these kinds of trips translate experience into action.