Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about homecomings. With my son’s arrival just 72 hours away (he’s returning home following a medical discharge from the army), I’ve been trying to play it all through my mind. Should we have a big banner? But what if he’d prefer something less public, less showy? Will he want to go on a weekend camping trip with me to talk about his experiences — to “debrief?” Or would he rather just ‘chill’ with his friends. Those questions — and more — are on my mind.

Along a similar vein, I wonder what kinds of approaches our Brigada participants have taken to welcoming missionaries home. When your worker comes home from Kosova or Kazakhstan, Mozambique or Morocco, Ukraine or Uganda, how do you say ‘hello’ again? What are your “rules of engagement”? How much do you plan in advance, vs. how much do you leave ‘unstructured’? Does your church try to provide a vehicle? Does your organization have furlough housing?

Would you take a moment to spell out some of the broad strokes of your approach to ‘homecomings’, and if you have link(s) to resources for further reading, please be kind enough to share those too.