Kids International Ministries currently operates a children’s home and a campsite in Malaybalay. The campsite is where we are staying. We are staying in a half-finished dorm building with beautifully finished dorm rooms. Across a large expanse that will later house a soccer field, gymnasium and a few other buildings, construction is already underway on a new children’s home that will have the capacity to house 100 children.
On our first day here we helped to pour some concrete columns and trusses on the third floor of the new children’s home and I really felt led to get to know the workers that are constructing that building. I’ve been spending my mornings doing whatever needs doing at the construction site. I’ve made a personal commitment to take a bunch of bananas around to the workers at about 2:00 each day. By that time I’m usually done with whatever my task was for the day. I’m beginning to learn a few names and I know which workers are most excited for their daily snack.
In our first month we are getting a pretty clear picture of what ministry on the World Race will most likely look like. There hasn’t really been a definite plan for our time here, rather we have been given freedom to get to know the people and the area and try to sense God’s heart for this place. As we do we will try to fulfill our calling to be Christ to everyone we meet.
As we’ve settled in a few of us have felt a bit of a letdown in the struggle to be making some big splash of an impact in this place. Some of us have been reading World Race blogs for almost a year and have read about the big, life-changing ministries that Racers before us have experienced. We long for God to be moving in a similar way.
What I’m beginning to realize is that God is moving. He’s moving in the way that from the moment I learned the name of a construction worker on the first day I wanted to build the strongest relationships I could on that site in three weeks. God speaks and calls us to major acts of service every day. It’s up to us to listen, not to doubt his voice, and answer the call. We named our team Quake in the hope that our time in ministry would have an effect that far outlasted our physical presence. So we come, we get to know people as well as we can, we show them our heart that longs for them to feel Christ’s love, and we pray that God does the rest.
We’ve been told time and again that the World Race is not real life, it is training for real life. We’re learning that in real life we won’t always see God move in amazing power in our timing, we may have to plant seeds and wait. We’re learning that in real life there is no plan for ministry, all you can do is listen for God’s heart and serve where you are needed. We’re learning that relationships are built when you bring a hungry man some of the tastiest bananas you can find in the world.
So often we think we need to raise the dead or save a drug addict to show God’s love to the world. Sometimes God’s love is a tasty afternoon snack. When we walk into a situation trying to dictate the way God works, we limit His power. The power of God is that He works however he wants. When we stop painting our own picture of God’s love and let Him paint the picture Himself, some pretty amazing things can happen. The less we limit God’s love to the pictures we’ve painted for him the more we realize that – God’s love is bananas!
