Our week of orientation is over and we have our ministry locations! There will be four teams going to Haiti, and seven teams are staying in the D.R. We´re staying here in San Juan, Dominican Republic for the next three weeks, and our team´s informal ministry description is the ¨traveling VBS team!¨For anyone who doesn´t know what VBS means, it´s the acronym for Vacation Bible Study, which means we´ll be doing kids ministries for the next few weeks!
On the one hand, I´m super excited to be working with kids. On the other hand, working with kids is a little scary for me, I think because I tend to be a little to intense to relate to them. But that´s also why I´m excited, because I´ll have to reconnect with my inner goofy child which… umm… doesn´t come out to play very much. Was that awkward? Haha. (awkward laugh) lol
The run down is this: All seven teams will lodge at a common location which is complete with dorm-style rooming and running water and electricity… sometimes. As far as I know we´ll be staying there each night and set out each day for a ministry location, most likely within walking distance of our… habitat. we´ll be designing kids´activities centered around bible stories… or something. I´ve actually never been involved in a VBS before, but I´m very thankful for the four amazing women on my team who are passionate about children and experienced in VBS as well.
(Two days later…)
It´s now two days since I started writing this blog and guess what… EVERYONE´S MINISTRY HAS CHANGED! We were once told, ¨The only thing you should expect to be constant is change.¨Expectation met! So we now have 5 teams doing work in the local slums and 2 teams doing work in a more rural, agricultural community. What our ministries will look like is anyone´s guess; we´ll find out on Tuesday.
In the meantime we´re figuring out what it looks like to live in community as more than 40 of us share a two bedroom, two story, four bathroom house. It´s interesting and fun, so far! I´ve really noticed that in order for such a tight community to be healthy and effective, the teachings of Jesus and the apostles really have to be taken seriously. I´m talking specifically about the passages concerning the words that come out of our mouths. Chapter 3 of the book of James has come to life around here. James´ point in that chatper is that the whole course of your day and live, and the days and lives of those around you, are largely influenced by our words to ourselves and each other. Ever had a bad day and someone just said stuff to cheer you up, or vice versa? And it makes sense that words should be so powerful: When God created the heavens and the earth, for example, he simply spoke; and were we not originally made in his image? Psalms 33:9 says, ¨For God spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
So we try to be careful with how we speak to each other. And if not? Just watch any reality TV show where they cram a bunch of people into a house and see what happens. Drama! I´ve not saying that we don´t have drama, rather we choose to deal with it in a biblical, healthy and constructive way through a daily ¨feedback¨time where we come together as a team to openly and transparently praise and also exhort one another. Sometimes it´s great, other times it gets a little messy, but it´s always real, because the last thing we need is a bunch of fake people trying to witness to the truth. Oh yeah, we say we´ll change the world (and for some people we will), but the biggest changes will happen in us. Thank you, Jesus, because I always need to be more like you!
