Our first few days in Greece were a blur after long travel days and an 8 hour time difference. After a 9 hour flight to Amsterdam, a layover spent exploring the city, a 4 hour flight to Athens, and a 12 hour ferry ride, we arrived in Mytilini on the island of Lesvos. We rented a car and a van and headed to the other side of the island to Molyvos. We settled into our homes for the next two weeks, grabbed a gyro (probably, I don’t remember), and gathered for orientation. After learning about our work in Greece, we went to sleep pretty early — or I did, anyway.
The next day we met as a team to discuss our schedules and were offered a tour of Sykaminia, one of the transition points where refugees who have just arrived on the island receive food, blankets, and dry clothes. Most people agreed to go on the tour, the rest drove back to Mytilini to work at a community center, and I went to take a nap (I don’t rest/sleep well with travel and time changes). So there I was, in my cold apartment, all bundled up, napping on and off, when I got this message:
Kelsey! The tour group that Katherine took is stuck at the camp overnight due to the snow and bad (black ice) roads. Katherine has told me that you are still scheduled for the 11pm shift with IRC and she will find someone else to take Courtney’s place. The rest of us girls in my car are staying the night here as well and will hopefully be back tomorrow night. We love you and will be praying for you!
So, I was alone. In Greece. On my first day night of ministry. I went back to sleep thinking something might change between then and 10:50 pm when I would go to the IRC refugee transition point by myself. As an introvert and not a very big people person, this was so NOT exciting for me.
On the World Race, we were asked to never go anywhere along. This was not always our favorite rule and sometimes we ignored it, but I appreciated always having someone around to enjoy life with.
But that day, nothing changed. There I was, in Greece, on an island — literally and figuratively — going to ministry by myself. That first night, no boats came in so I tried to sleep. Time passed uneventfully and the next morning I returned to my empty hotel. I wasn’t expecting anyone back because the sun was just rising and the roads were probably still icy. So I napped.
When I woke up, I hadn’t heard anything from anyone (wifi is tricky and scarce), so I went exploring. Just up the hill, I ran into Nikkos, who manages the apartments we stayed in. He was on his way to help his family in their olive grove, so of course, I asked to go along and jumped in the car.
The olive grove was beautiful. It had been in his family for many, many years, and the trees are between 200–300 years old. Nikkos’s family didn’t speak much English, but it was a beautiful afternoon to enjoy and get lost in my thoughts.
Picking olives is not a glorious job. A few weeks prior to this, the family went and laid nets down all around the trees. Before Nikkos and I arrived, the other men were beating the branches to make the olives fall, his mom was folding the nets in to gather all the olives in one place where she picked out the large sticks and then put them into a bag. My job was to pick up stray olives, the ones that fell after the net had been moved or the ones that had fallen off the net.
So there I was, picking up the ‘stray’ olives and making sure they were bagged up with the others to be taken to the mill where they would be turned into olive oil. It was nothing, really — just hanging out with the family for an afternoon. I am not sure if I even helped them, but they provided me something to do for the afternoon instead of being by myself.
One of the things I learned on the Race is that ministry doesn’t have to be and isn’t always hard. I love just living life with people. Spending time getting to know different people, different cultures, and different ways of doing life makes me happy, It is so simple and easy, but it can mean so much.
Church services, VBS, preaching, teaching, worship, serving the poor, feeding the hungry — those are all good wonderful things, and I encourage you to take any opportunity you have to serve those around you.
But ministry doesn’t have to be — and in fact, shouldn’t always be — defined. I encourage you to also look around you and see things close by. Take your neighbor brownies. Shovel their driveway. Sit with them for an hour and hear about their lives. Help with ‘mundane’ tasks. Live life together and reflect Jesus through that.
Life is ministry and ministry is life. Find what brings you life and what reflects Jesus to others, even if it is just picking olives with
