Most people love pop (or soda for all of you crazy people
out there including my entire team). I,
on the other hand, am one of those strange people who do NOT like pop. There’s just something about anything
carbonated that makes me cringe. The
feeling of carbonation running down my throat hurts! I was always that girl at birthday parties who would ask for milk with my pizza
or ask what kind of teas a restaurant had instead of what kind of pop.
Here in Malanga people love
to hand out pop. Doing door to door
ministry we had many people ask us if we could stay for a bottle of pop but most
days, our translators insisted that we needed to keep going so we could reach
as many houses as we could. Although I
would have liked to continue our conversation, I wasn’t sad about missing out
on a bottle of pop. Sometime though,
they insisted that we stay. I tried
politely telling them that I had a Nalgene full of water so I didn’t need a pop
or insisting that I could share with one of my teammates but how can you resist
someone who asks you to bless them by drinking a bottle of pop or a grandma who
sends out someone to specifically buy us each a bottle? That’s where
my teammates come in…
Each and every one of my teammates have in some way drank most
of almost all of the bottles of pop that were put in front of me. Beks has taken a few large gulps of my Sprite
to “taste how extra fizzy it is!” (It actually was really fizzy even to
her.) Leslie has downed half of my Fanta
at one of the elder’s house when nobody was looking even though she had an
entire Fanta in front of her and she doesn’t even really like it. Callan has sacrificed many days by drinking 2
Cokes when we get home from our “mission” that Mama Pastor has so kindly put
out 6 pops on the table for us and tells us, “PLEASE drink this for me”. Chad is one of the sneakiest of my teammates
for drinking my pop with nobody noticing.
There have been numerous times when we’ve been handed pop and I think to
myself, “there’s no way anybody’s going to be able to help me out on this one”
and Chad pulls through. Whether it is
grabbing my drink when I’m not looking to make the others think he’s playing a
trick on me or placing his pop in a way that looks like he’s grabbing his but
he’s really drinking mine.
On Thursday we spoke at a school and when we finished they
hurried out with a box full of pop.
Holland and I had realized earlier that everyone except her had drank at
least one of my pop so lucky for her I was sitting next to her and she happily
grabbed my Fanta and drank most of it.
We left the school and ran into a woman who had been waiting for us so
we could pray for her sick child. We
arrive at her house to…surprise! more pop.
Another Fanta was put in front of me in which Holland proceeded to
down. I had just a few sips left to
drink and the woman came back and put another
one in front of me. Bummer! Being a true servant Holland drank that one
as well, making her total pop consumption within a couple hours 5…3 of mine
along with 2 of her own.
So if you ever wondered what true love is, look at my
team. They all know how much I despise
pop and that it’ll give me a stomach ache if I drink it and so they sacrifice
for me. It’s the little things in life
that show people that you care for them…or it at least shows how much you love
pop. J
