My team finally got to delve into our ministry this week! While I was anticipating having stories of Billy Graham-like revivals, healings, fiery sermons and all of the other things one would expect to encounter in a church in the Third World, I regret to inform you it wasn’t the case. In fact it was somewhat disappointing to be honest. Let me explain.
On Monday the team rode the wild blue bus to the church which is located in an area called Carapungo. We arrived early for orientation, and things started out pretty fantastic. We shared our testimonies with the pastor, Efren, and listened to his. It was pretty neat. Then it came time to talk about what exactly we would be doing during our time in Quito and with him. The plan is we’re going to start teaching English at the church next week. This week though we were going to be tasked with advertising the classes. That first day though the pastor didn’t have much for us to do, so he made stuff up (so it seemed). We cleaned the bathrooms, we cleaned the chairs, we mopped the floors, we folded clothes, and I had the opportunity to clean the wires for the sound equipment. Have you ever done anything so seemingly ridiculous that you can do nothing but laugh? Well, that was me.
By the time the day was over it was clear that I wasn’t the only one a tad upset at how things turned out. The whole team couldn’t imagine doing what seemed so utterly useless for the rest of the month. The next day we showed up to our ministry a little less excited then we were the day before. The task for the day was to start the advertising. Before we could do that though we had to make copies of the flyers that we would be passing out to folks on the street. The pastor asked if I could tag along with him to the place that would make the copies. During the drive to the store we were able to talk about quite a bit (he spoke English). One of the topics covered was what being a pastor truly looks like. He explained that it’s not always fiery sermons, healings, or Billy Graham-like revivals. He said that a majority of it is service. You need to think about and care about the people in your congregation. He also said that you have to realize that worship is not just music and praying; it’s everything we do, even cleaning the bathroom (his words). It may not seem glamorous, but it’s a service to the people and to God. That hit me like a bus going 60 mph. I realized that my attitude towards what I was doing was less than healthy. I was stuck on thinking about the uselessness of cleaning wires that I never stopped for a second to think about the fact that in doing so I was worshipping. It sounds weird I know, but it’s so true. Keeping that in mind the rest of the week helped me to see the value in what we were doing, and carry out the tasks with a good attitude.
