Do you consider yourself a “doer”? Maybe you love creating to-do lists, accomplishing tasks and finishing projects. A lot of Wycliffe Bible Translators missionaries can relate to this mentality: They spearhead projects, innovate and pioneer in pursuit of fulfilling the call God has placed on their lives.

But even if you’re a “doer,” you’ve probably found yourself in seasons where you are waiting and can’t really do much of anything at all.

If you talk to any Wycliffe missionary, you’ll likely hear stories about how God provided and was faithful in difficult seasons, but you’ll also hear about unforeseen delays and periods of waiting. How you learn to handle those delays can impact your entire life.

Isaac and Heidi Kaufman* have experienced many different seasons of waiting over their years as translation advisers with Wycliffe USA. After unexpectedly needing to leave their host country and language project, they faced that uncertainty once again. Isaac and Heidi share their journey and what God has been teaching them through seasons of waiting.

Delayed in the Beginning

“We were delayed even before we reached our host country!” Heidi laughed.

Isaac elaborated: “We were originally scheduled to arrive in August, but we found out that Heidi was expecting and that pushed our arrival date to March of the next year. That was an interesting time of ambiguity. We had given up our apartment [to go to a summer graduate school program for linguistics].”

Isaac and Heidi needed to apartment hunt in addition to preparing for the arrival of their new baby! They scrambled to find an apartment and come up with things to do, like attempt remote language learning, while they waited.

It was a hard season for the couple. “We [as Americans] are very much built as productive, task-oriented people,” Isaac said. “That’s how we measure our output and our identity and who we are, and then we live through ambiguous seasons where we don’t have a lot of clarity or … goals and work to do, it’s easy to feel [lost].”

Isaac continued: “But you need to realize that’s part of what this [missionary] lifestyle is. You’re going to have seasons and … times when [things are] really open-ended and unstructured.” He concluded: “We’re not used to that.”

Delayed on the Field

When Isaac and Heidi left the U.S. with their 2-month-old baby, they were excited to finally begin their job! But the changes had only just begun as the couple moved houses and cities multiple times in the first three weeks.

Eventually they dove into language learning and after a year of hard work, they were finally functional enough in the language to start a project. That’s when Heidi became pregnant with the couple’s second child. They returned to the U.S. for what they thought would be just a few months to have the baby, but encountered multiple delays that prevented them from returning to their country of assignment.

Finally they returned to the country and hoped they’d be able to start the translation project. “That’s when the language community asked us to start some multilingual education preschools instead,” Isaac said.

“We hadn’t had any literacy experience at that point!” Heidi said. “Thankfully there was another woman on our team [who] had lots of literacy experience.” Heidi continued: “She came and helped us … and it just fell into place!”

“It was very much a God thing,” Isaac said.

For the next several years, Heidi and Isaac focused on the schools and were thrilled with the progress that was happening. But they still wanted to do Bible translation and kept praying for an opening. Finally Heidi had conversations with some school staff, who expressed interest in starting translation!

Five days later, Isaac and Heidi had to unexpectedly leave the country due to safety reasons.

“It felt like a waste,” Heidi commented. “We had just gotten to the door! It was wide open in front of us. This is what we had been waiting for! And we couldn’t walk through.”

Holding On In Delays

Despite years of delays, Heidi and Isaac are still persevering and are still joyful.

Heidi noted that it’s important to talk about the loss that’s felt when things don’t go according to plan or God tells us to wait. “We need to realize it’s a process,” she said. “Dealing with loss has been a process that we’ve engaged with for many months. The heaviest grief has only been recently. You have to process it as it comes.”

Isaac tries to look at delays as another season of life. “We’re in a waiting season, a less productive season,” he said. “I know that at some point I will have a season that is super crazy, and I will wish I had more time [to pause]. So right now, I identify my priorities. These are times I get to spend … with my kids, I get to be introspective and think about life, and [go at a slower pace], even though it’s still uncomfortable. That discomfort never fully goes away. It’s there, and it’s okay.”

Isaac is encouraged when he remembers how God has cared for people who have been delayed, such as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. “It’s never comfortable to be in the wilderness,” he said. “But it’s usually in the wilderness where you see God provide miraculously … and how you respond will prepare you for the next season.”

“It’s trying to live in the season with faith,” Isaac continued. “I’m uncomfortable. I don't know what’s going to happen. It [can] feel like my life has been a waste. And I don’t want to just ignore those feelings.”

He concluded: “But at the same time, we need to not let those [feelings] control us. We need to push back and say, ‘No, God is bigger than what I'm feeling right now.’ God has agency in this process. And just because he has agency doesn’t mean that sometimes he won’t just let us sit for a while.”

God in the Delays

Right now, Heidi and Isaac are still waiting. But even as they wait, they can see God moving.

While working remotely, they started translating prayers from Scripture with some of the local staff members, who have freely shared the prayers around the language community. When Heidi and Isaac asked them for feedback, they responded, “These snippets are really good, but please give us more!”

Now the couple is working on creative ways to continue the translation and work with the language community so they can have the whole story of Scripture in their language.

Isaac and Heidi’s journey has been marked by waiting, but they also see God’s plan and timing in that waiting “We look back and see how God was orchestrating and guiding us during that time,” Heidi affirmed.

Even that first delay was part of God’s timing: Because their trip was postponed, they didn’t have to go through some difficult experiences that would have been extremely challenging for newcomers. Now as they face this new delay of an unknown length, they hold onto God’s promises.

“In some senses we feel like maybe God is doing things [here] that he couldn’t do if we were [overseas],” Heidi said. “We don’t know where it’s going to go. … We don’t know what God is doing. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been painful and hard … but [sometimes] we get to see God's grace in the timing. And so we’re keeping our eyes open to see the blessings that would come out of the discomfort.”

*Names changed.