So picture this. You think you have a day off from ministry to blog, read, and spend time with your little buddy only to find out that road crew is indeed needed. So, reluctantly, I walked back up to where we meet for daily ministry to find Manja in the garage trying to organize the tools. He says, “I am so sorry girls but I really need your help today with the storeroom.” I remember having a bad attitude at first but then knew that this was exactly what I signed up for when I applied for the race. And besides, how hard could a storeroom full of tools be to organize?
I was way too quick to assume he needed our help with that particular room. I followed him into the pig pen attempting to dodge all the poop, pee, and pigs running around frantically towards nothing. And there it is: the door. I walk in and the smell hit me like a brick wall. The indescribable smell that occupied my nose for the next couple hours was one of months worth of rat droppings, varnish, tile adhesive, engine oil, hay and pig. Inches of rat feces, hay and other garbage covers the floor and Manja gives me the ‘this is it’ nod. My eyes are now watering and there is an instant fear of losing the contents of my stomach. We had shovels, a wheelbarrel and masks to protect our lungs from the toxicity. You may think this all sounds incredibly theatrical . . . but I promise, it was so much worse than this.
We began to shovel the heaps of unknowns into the wheelbarrel and each movement just intensified the odor. As if the smell and the task at hand wasn’t bad enough, there were live rats running around above my head in the rafters and they were hiding underneath a pallet in the corner. The sound was haunting. Manja began to hit the roof with the handle of a broom to get them to scurry into his range. And when that failed, he took the broom and shoved it under the pallet to trick them into running out into the open room. The next sound was even more haunting. Several whacks later, Manja got ’em with what looked like a broken curtain rod. As if this wasn’t traumatizing enough, let’s add airborne dead rats into the story. Manja started flinging the deceased rats through the air in my direction. I let an involuntary scream escape my mouth to which Manja responds with “you might want to turn around for this.” So I ran away, jump on a ledge and faced the corner while he continued tossing them to the pigs for a mid- morning snack. My squad mate, Brittany, and I took all the garbage down to burn pile several times; each time we watched our friends play games with the children. I was harboring bitterness and resentment toward everyone in sight that didn’t have to do what we were currently doing. It was the most repulsive thing that I have ever been asked to do and I was wearing my disgust right on my face.
That is when the guilt and shame started rising up within me. I signed up for the race to be flexible, adaptable, to do the dirty work and to humble myself toward others and their needs. But I was walking around with the worst attitude. God checked my heart immediately and I turned to Brittany saying “lets choose joy.” It was like Jesus gave us a heart transplant right when those words were spoken. We spent the rest of our time laughing at absolutely nothing, bonding over country music, and singing praises to our King.
