Merv, our new local contact, has been a missionary his whole life. He is blunt and knows how to get things done. He runs a large aboriginal hospital hostel called the Christian Outreach Centre, and has numerous small businesses designed to obtain additional funding for mission projects. When asked what his plan for us this month was, he told us he wanted to wait and see how much he can trust us before deciding how much responsibility to bestow upon us. This lead me to the following predicament; how do you make a complete stranger trust you?
At most churches I have seen in America, anyone willing to volunteer their time is generally given immediate responsibility (Gracepoint being a rare exception). At all other churches, however, my willingness to serve and lack of a criminal record were generally sufficient qualifications for service. So when Merv told us to find random stuff do do around the complex until he had a better impression of our character, I was a bit surprised.
Whats the first step to winning a person’s respect? We can’t really list out all of our accomplishments or hand someone a resume of our heart. Even basic conversations only tell part of the story of what is really going on within. So God basically told me to get over myself and whatever preconceived ideas of what I was capable of and just dive in head first into whatever work I could find. Little did I know what would happen when I decided to get my hands dirty.
Digging holes for plumbing, moving gigantic mounds of dirt, kitchen duty, tearing down a building infested with rats, termites, giant toads…easy stuff. Then came the rotting veggies. We routinely have to dig through trash dumpsters full of rotting vegetables in search of plastic and other inedible things before we mulch the stuff and feed it to the pigs. Guess what! Even piglets won’t eat onions (I feel so validated). So I spend some afternoons bending over a trash can sorting through rotting onions. Not exactly what I expected to do with my law degree! But wait, it gets better! A few days ago, I got to help slaughter a cow and some pigs! Although I didn’t pull the trigger, I did have the opportunity to pick up all the entrails and guts that had been left out in the hot sun the whole day…with my bare hands. The biggest problem were the thousands of swarming flies, but fear not, only a few of them got into my mouth. (Don’t worry, the picture below isn’t of the cute piggies, we only slaughtered the old ugly ones).
We also have had the opportunity to meet and have conversations with a lot of people here. Just today, three of us went to a hospital and prayed over some of the aboriginees there. There is a crisis at the moment among the aboriginal people, as practically nobody under the age of about 50 is walking with the Lord. As we build more rapport with Merv, I suspect he will start sending us out more directly to interact with the young people.
I want to take the opportunity to apologize to all my friends and family back home for not having a servant’s heart. I generally tried to do just enough to meet whatever the standard was, but my inward motivations were pretty much always lacking. I also want to send a shout out to all my C3 homies back in Clayton: This week, get your hands dirty for the benefit of someone else. Shoot me an email and tell me what you do and I will be sure to read it (even if it takes awhile to respond).
I have tons of great pictures and videos but haven’t been able to get my laptop connected to internet. At some point, I will do a massive picture/movie dump, I promise! Until next time, get your hands a little dirty.
(The video didn’t upload properly from Charity’s site, I will repost it when it gets fixed). In the meantime, enjoy this video of our Maori friends doing the Haka!)
