By Amy Walters — I was doing okay until I looked at her face. The 12-year-old girl was silently sobbing as friends and family gathered around her for prayer. She was huddled together with her siblings and parents, all of them preparing to leave for ministry in East Asia in just a few days. This was their send-off, another goodbye in a long line of goodbyes.

Saying goodbye is hard. It’s one of the few things that doesn’t get easier with practice.

Here at the SEND International US office, we say a lot of goodbyes. In a way, it’s good—we exist to help churches send missionaries to the far corners of the world. But with each one, we know there is great mourning. Each missionary leaves behind a circle of family, friends, church, and neighbors. Many of these relationships have deepened over the past months in the process of raising support.

Missionaries don’t just say goodbye to friends and family. Many are leaving homes, jobs, communities, and everything that is familiar. In fact, in 12 years of working at SEND, I’ve noticed that it’s often when people are most comfortable or most successful that God calls them to leave it all behind. Just like Peter, who dropped his nets after his best day of fishing.

On days like these, when you are looking into the red, tear-stained face of a young girl, and passing around the tissues, it’s easy to get lost in the loss. You start to focus on the bitter and forget that there is also sweet. And you have to intentionally remind yourself of why we say goodbye.

We say goodbye now so that there will be many more “hellos” in eternity. We do it because we believe that our obedience to God’s call, no matter how far away it might take us, will lead to more people hearing and responding to the gospel. We support family and friends, knowing that our dollars will take them far from us, because we believe in the eternal value of that sacrifice.

So we say the hard goodbyes now trusting that God will use them to bring more people to the family reunion in heaven.