All in, From Billboard to Precipice: Part 2

Foreshadowing

The Greggs were well-established in Daiji and enjoying ministry, work and relationships when the political winds in East Asia began to shift. Zach and Denise started hearing about missionaries in other parts of the country having a hard time renewing their visas. Some were interrogated about their connections to other foreigners. The police confiscated and searched their phones and computers. Some were deported with little notice. Zach and Denise updated their contingency plans and waited. Denise frequently asked herself, Is today the day the police are showing up at our door? Will I be asked questions? Will our kids see that? One day at the peak of the tension, Zach noticed police cars in front of the university administration building as he walked to class, and he wondered, Are they here for me?

But the police didn’t come for them, not then or ever. As days and then weeks passed without incident, the Greggs relaxed. It seemed that the obscurity of Daiji had protected them from scrutiny. We’re in the forgotten province, Denise comforted herself. We’re going to be fine. Zach and Denise had a new work contract with the university and valid visas. In the last week of July, they headed to the U.S. for a few months to deliver their third baby. They walked out of their apartment with four carry-ons and one large suitcase.

As the Greggs loaded a friend’s car for the drive to the train station, Zach had an impulse to run back upstairs and grab a few more things. He says it must have been the Lord prompting him because he is not a planner or a detail guy. Zach pulled out their original marriage license, diplomas and the kids’ birth certificates and grabbed a pair of sentimental Christmas stockings. He shoved it all into their suitcase and the Greggs started the long journey around the world with every intention to come back.

The Point of No Return

Once they settled in the U.S., Zach and Denise heard a fuller story of what was happening politically in East Asia and their uneasiness returned. Maybe we’re not forgotten after all. A few months later, they received a phone call from a teammate who had just returned to Daiji after a visit to her home country. She told them she had walked into her Daiji apartment, travel-weary and jetlagged, to find it completely ransacked. The police were waiting, and they interrogated her for the next 15 hours. They gained access to files on her computer that directly implicated Zach and Denise as missionaries and team leaders. Then they gave her 72 hours to leave the country.

That phone call set off a flurry of communication, prayer and decision-making. The Greggs conferred with their mission agency leadership and asked, What’s the best way we can love everybody even if it’s the hard thing? If the government had identified Zach and Denise as missionaries, they were confident police would soon be knocking at their teammates’ doors. To minimize the danger to local believers, the whole team would have to leave—and quickly. Zach and Denise called each family, one after another, and gave them three days to pack up, say what goodbyes they could and leave East Asia permanently. “I know this is like a gut shot,” Zach told them, “But we really feel it’s the best move.”

The hardest part of those three days for Zach was not being with his team during the crisis. It went against everything he believed about leadership. His team was in trouble, but he could only watch from the other side of the world. He talked to Denise about flying back to help the others evacuate, but they didn’t know if he’d be allowed in and decided not to risk drawing attention to their friends in Daiji.

The Greggs’ teammates insisted on going to their apartment to retrieve a few special items for them, but Zach and Denise struggled with what to ask for. The things they wanted most wouldn’t fit in a suitcase, like a crib Zach had built for Joel when he was a baby. In the end, they settled on a book and stuffed animal for each of the kids—Winnie-the-Pooh and Minnie Mouse—and sentimental mugs for Zach and Denise. The team said a few goodbyes in Daiji and then dispersed to their home countries.

Just like that, Zach and Denise’s all-in, long-haul ministry in East Asia was over.

Grieving

When the crisis of the evacuation passed, Zach and Denise began to process the finality of their departure. For a while they kept asking each other, Can we really not go back? Sometimes Zach would say, “Maybe I’ll just try,” and Denise would caution him, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You have three kids now.” And then another day she’d tell him, “Maybe you should try.”

The Greggs had struggled through phases of confusion and frustration in Daiji until they grew to love the city in all its mixed-up eccentricity. Now they grieved the sudden loss of relationships with teachers, neighbors, friends, shopkeepers and students. They wanted their friends in Daiji to know they didn’t just abandon them. Everyone had expected them to come back with a new baby.

Zach and Denise’s family and friends in Georgia hurt for them and tried to understand their grief. “It’s like you had a house fire and lost everything,” people said. And in a way that was true. “We did lose sentimental things,” Zach acknowledges, “but it was more an abrupt end to a season of life where God did so much in our hearts. What do we do with that?” If your house burns down, you don’t also lose dozens of relationships and all the familiar landmarks of your life. The Greggs lost all of that and didn’t even get to say goodbye. Denise describes it as “a whole life that is dead now.”

The Greggs’ youngest children were too little to feel the losses, but Joel kept asking, “When are we going home?” He asked about his favorite stuffed animals and the students he had played with at the university in Daiji. He loved digging in the long-jump sand pit in the athletic complex and wanted to know when he could do that again. Zach and Denise had to tell him, “We don’t think you’re going to get to.”

As disorienting as the sudden transition was for all of them, the Greggs saw God’s graciousness in protecting them, especially the kids. Joel, now four, thought policemen and soldiers were the coolest thing ever. Denise is grateful he never had to see his dad arrested by scary men. His happy memories of Daiji weren’t tarnished by fear or trauma related to their departure. He just didn’t understand why they couldn’t go home.

Besides the physical and relational losses, the Greggs also struggled with the loss of their ministry dreams. They were just finally hitting their stride in Daiji. After years of effort, they were proficient enough in the language to have deep spiritual conversations. More and more students were interested in reading the Bible and learning about Jesus.

As the start of the next semester approached, the dean of the university in Daiji texted Zach, Where are you? What’s going on? Zach and Denise decided to just tell their friends that it was becoming harder for Americans to live in Daiji because of the strained relationship between their countries. Even Han, the police chief, seemed to be unaware of the crackdown on foreigners. It was probably conducted on a federal level, well above his pay grade. He still calls Zach every once in a while to share news from Daiji and ask when the Greggs are coming back.

Zach and Denise will probably never go back to Daiji. But they didn’t stay in Georgia, either. God had a few more precipices for them to step off and plenty more surprises along the way.

Recalibrating

As some of the initial shock and grief of not being able to return to East Asia wore off, Zach and Denise looked at their options. Lots of options. Their sending church approached them about taking a position at the church. Zach looked for jobs and considered going back to school. The Greggs thought and prayed about each possibility, but ultimately set it aside. For them, the decision boiled down to Where does God want us to follow Him? While they felt confident to turn down each option, they also had a sense that time was running out. Zach felt like a failure because he didn’t know how to lead his family forward. They couldn’t receive missionary support indefinitely without some clarity on their next ministry role.

All the while, Zach and Denise struggled to understand what their departure from East Asia meant in relation to their calling to missions. Had God closed the door completely? It felt like everyone’s assumption before they left for the field had come true: They hadn’t stayed for the long haul. The Greggs turned to Mark and Alice, who encouraged them, saying, “Don’t forget your original calling.” But Zach and Denise wondered, What does it mean when that door is closed and locked and boarded up?

As they wrestled through their grief and confusion, the Lord nudged the Greggs toward a next step through a series of unconnected conversations each suggesting they talk to the same church planter in New England. After the third nudge in less than a week, Zach told the Lord, I’m a little thick-headed sometimes, but I hear You. I’ll call him. Denise listened in the background as Zach and the pastor had a long conversation, and by the time they hung up, she knew, We’re moving to New England.

Through the process of considering and turning down job possibilities, the Greggs were still convinced, Ministry to the unreached is absolutely where our hearts are. That’s why they had gone to Daiji and one reason it hurt so much to leave. They were surprised to hear that New England also had a huge spiritual need and very few gospel-teaching churches.

So, the Greggs made their next all-in decision. With the door back to Daiji solidly closed, they resigned from Pioneers, moved to New England and joined the staff of the young church plant. Even though Zach and Denise believed they were following the Lord, it felt like another loss. Pioneers was family, and leaving meant that door was really closed. Denise cried when they sent their resignation letter.

Just a few months after leaving almost everything they owned in Daiji, the Greggs pulled away from Georgia in a U-Haul full of household items donated by their friends and church family—couches, beds, a dining room set, a crib. One of Denise’s college friends turned up at their door with a stack of towels, adding, “I got you gray because you have kids.” Zach and Denise’s new church family in New England rallied around them, listened to their stories from East Asia and let them continue to process the transition. The Greggs hadn’t expected that their time there would be as much for their own processing and recovery as anything they could offer to the church. The pastor became like a brother to Zach, and Denise joined other women in a tight-knit accountability group. They both began to heal as they felt the Lord loving them through His Church. He gently provided what they needed even when they didn’t know what that was.

Reconsidering

About six months after Zach and Denise moved to New England, they were invited to join a think tank about how to help the missionaries who had been displaced from East Asia re-engage with the unreached. Many of the participants had been through similar experiences. “It was encouraging to be with them,” Zach remembers, “praying, dreaming and expecting God to work. It was powerful to see and be among those who the Spirit of God was pushing along to continue the race.” Much to their surprise, Zach and Denise felt the Lord rekindling their desire to continue the race.

Denise describes their first nudges back to the field as an initial Well, maybe. “We had walked through the process of grieving and were getting to a point where we could sense the Lord still calling us,” Zach explains. The Greggs found themselves perpetually drawn to their town’s international markets and neighborhoods, always on the lookout for immigrants or refugees to befriend. They realized their hearts were wired to seek out cross-cultural relationships.

And the Greggs weren’t the only ones lifting their eyes to the wider world. Zach’s role at the church included teaching about the needs of the global Church and encouraging prayer for the unreached. When he shared with the elders that he and Denise were considering another cross-cultural role, they were surprised but supportive. The young church had never sent a missionary to the field before. While Zach and Denise would be sorely missed, they saw the opportunity to send a family who had become one of their own as an exciting new challenge.

A few months later, the missions pastor at one of the Greggs’ supporting churches in Georgia called with some news. “I think God is raising up a team of people from this church to go overseas. They could use someone with experience to lead them. Would you pray about it?” The Georgia church had decided to focus its mission efforts on the people group the Greggs had originally planned to work among in East Asia before they heard about the unengaged groups near Daiji. Zach was ready to consider anything. Denise wasn’t as open. She felt like they’d “been there, tried that.” But they did pray, inviting Mark and Alice and others to join them, and after a month they both felt the Lord confirm His calling to lead the team. With East Asia closed to them, they decided to reach a large cluster of the church’s focus people group who live in Central Asia.

The Greggs’ church in Georgia agreed that this time the Greggs would formally be sent out by their new church in New England since they had never sent a missionary before. To Zach and Denise, it felt like jumping into the river of what God was already doing among their partner churches. And they jumped in deep. To minister effectively to their focus people group, they expected to have to learn three more languages. They would face a new wave of culture shock and begin building a network of relationships from scratch. Much more aware of the cost this time than when they first went to the field, the Greggs re-joined Pioneers and moved back to Georgia temporarily with the expectation of leaving for Central Asia two months later. That was the spring of 2020.

All-in Again

The Greggs and their team were stuck in Georgia for 14 months. COVID-19 restrictions shut down visa processing, universities and businesses across Central Asia. Zach and Denise remember that year of waiting as one of the toughest of their lives. They lived with constant ambiguity, having no idea when borders would reopen. They questioned everything. What are we doing? When are we going to get there? Are we going to get there?

Their team hung on as they tried one entry strategy after another. Originally, they wanted to go as English teachers. They were told they could only teach online from the U.S., and their classes would be in the middle of the night, Georgia time. Then they tried to go as students, but the government was not issuing student visas. Out of desperation, Zach and Denise eventually applied for a business visa.

Their visas were granted in July 2021 and within weeks they were on a plane to their new home in Central Asia. Remembering some of the hard lessons from their arrival in Daiji, Zach sent Denise out on the second day to buy kitchen supplies and pillows for the house. They had just 30 days to legally register a business, and they made it—just barely.

Although most of the people group Zach and Denise desire to serve have lived in the region for generations, they have never really had a homeland. The two dominant regional powers have each attempted to eradicate their language and culture. No country fully claims them. They are a minority everywhere.

Zach and Denise understand that persistent sense of un-rootedness at some level, although the reasons are different. In 10 years of marriage, the Greggs lived in 13 homes. Their choices impact their kids as well. Moving to Central Asia triggered a new stage of processing for Joel. For nearly a year he told everyone, “I’m from Asia.” He’s not wrong, and thanks to his dad’s last-minute packing addition, he has a birth certificate to prove it.

Whether they realized it or not, Zach and Denise chose a life of perpetual transition and uncertainty when they answered God’s call to serve the unreached. The experience has changed Zach’s understanding of faithfulness and perseverance. “Before going to East Asia, I felt like it was my responsibility to stick it out when things got hard. I looked up to the generation of missionaries before us who persevered and stayed on the field. But I’ve learned that it’s not always up to us. For me, now, it’s not so much the length of time, the people I serve with, even what I’m doing on the field. I’ve been reminded that this journey is about being with the Lord, and when you are confused or hurting, to be real with the Body and let the Body do what God’s made it to do.”

Zach and Denise are still all-in people. They’ve just broadened their definition of what giving their all includes, and the number of places they may invest in. They learned that faithfulness doesn’t always mean digging in and staying on. Sometimes it means stepping back and starting over. Following God rarely takes us where we expect, and even when it does, He doesn’t necessarily keep us there for long.