The last four days my team has been doing manual labor on the Zion’s Gate’s property. They have taken in 11 boys to live there, but they also want to be able to house girls. Zion’s Gate is in the process of building a girls dorm that should be completed in a few weeks. To the left of the dorm there was a huge pile of dirt that had accumulated during the building process. A patio was to be built there so 7th Sparrow was tasked clearing all of it out. Just like last week it was tiring and repetitive, but we went to work with all we had. Renaldo was in charge of the dorm construction; he would direct us and come check on our progress.
It seemed like we were only going to be moving a big pile of dirt… but it turned out to be much more than that. We started unearthing rocks while we were digging. Rock after rock. For the most part they were small rocks until we got about halfway down. We started hitting huge boulders – some larger than the ones last week. The only thing to do now was to break them and move them (Renaldo helped a lot in this part).
We all loved Renaldo! He had been to the States before so he spoke pretty good English. We talked to him some while we worked. Renaldo started to joke with us when we were moving the big rocks, saying, Tu puedes! Tu Puedes!” (“You can do it! You can do it!”). Pretty soon we were all saying it… all the time.
Throughout the week several things became evident. Between last week and this week, because of the manual labor assigned to us, we were severely underestimated as an all girls team. Last week Donnie was a bit disappointed that he was sent an all girls team and another team with only two guys. As it turned out, we did a great job and blew away his expectations. Tony made the schedules before knowing anything about the teams; hence, he did not know an all girls team was working on the dorm and was surprised when he came over on the first day. You could see on his face that he was worried about our ability to make a difference there. The last two days when he came to look at our progress, the shock we saw on his face was from seeing how much we had done. Not only that, but it seemed as if our squad mates underestimated our abilities as well.
In the end, each of us on the team had to realize (1) it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, we just need to do our work to the best of our ability, (2) we are capable of so much more than others and ourselves realize, (3) in the end it’s about God and not the work we did on the dorm.
A couple final thoughts… Jeremy pointed out something to us the day he joined our team. He said, “Isn’t it amazing that millions of years ago when God put these rocks here, He knew we would be digging them up today?” God placed them there for a reason. God placed us there for a purpose. Maybe it was to show us how much we were capable of when we work together. Maybe it was just so we could see the trash can beside us with a sparrow painted on it and the words, “Cristo Nos Hizo Libres” (Christ Made Us Free). Jesus Christ having set us free and chains being broken have been a theme throughout the race so far.
