Patience, it’s a fruit of the Spirit, it’s a characteristic of my Jesus, of God and of the Holy Spirit inside of me. It’s a character trait I often overlooked as one I would eventually live out or one I thought that I already had.
10 months ago I didn’t know what patience was. What defined patience for me was waiting in line at chipotle, 5 o’clock traffic and the car wash. Sometimes patiences looked like occasionally waiting for my sister to get ready at much slower pace than I but even so, my perspective wasn’t very wide. I had tunnel vision.
Stepping off the plane in October of 2017 in Santiago, Chile, there was an immediate culture shock. I walked off the plane and instantaneously knew and recognized my place; I was different. I couldn’t communicate, I couldn’t read signs and I stood out. My first meal in the Santiago airport was a 10 dollar plate of eggs because I didn’t understand the menu, the waitress didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand the currency exchange. This is where my journey of learning patience began.
Here are a few ways the word patient has come to mind of the race:
In Chile, we had to walk almost a mile to and from the church to eat everyday. We walked over 3 miles a day just for food. I was hungry long before dinner and patience was hard when you wait on a meal that isn’t always satisfying.
In Argentina, we ate all of our meals as a whole squad. That is 48 mouths being fed at once. The trick to meals was waiting for everyone to be served before indulging and let me tell you, waiting was hard.
In Bolivia, I still hadn’t caught onto Spanish as well as I had hoped. 9 years of Spanish and I was still struggling. The whole month was dedicated to building relationships so I had to rely on google translate to communicate with the girls we were serving all month. I heard heartbreaking stories and stories of success all over broken translation on my phone.
In Cambodia, I struggled with patience in communication when people around us were constantly talking in Khmer and conversing in front of us as we waited hours at a time for ministry to start or for someone to tell us what we were supposed to do.
In Thailand, I learned patience in growth for myself. I had a month of accelerated growth that frustrated me. I had wished I had been learning the same things the first four months but I learned grace for myself. I learned to allow myself the time I needed to learn important lessons. This month, patience was redefined for me.
In Serbia, we had a slow start. Our first week we didn’t have much ministry and I struggled to wait on a routine that I could clearly follow.
Romania is when I recognized my growth in this fruit. My mom came for five days to visit and do ministry with me in Romania and I got to experience my mom’s first real culture shock. For the first time, she experienced what it was like to order food in a foreign country. You usually won’t get what you order because even when you think they understood your request, you will still get tomatoes on your gyro even though you told them you were allergic. Romania was a month of constant miscommunication with our daily hosts and missed expectations as a result.
In Bulgaria, we walked over an hour to get anywhere, we didn’t have a host to show us around or translate and this was a month of figuring things out on our own.
Month 9, we landed in Ethiopia without a plan, without a host and without housing. We struggled through hour long phone calls trying to communicate needs, we struggled to trust God to provide. This month I learned to wait on the Lord.
This month? Five hours of waiting at the hospital as my teammate waited on her results, dinners scheduled for seven but that aren’t served until 8, hour waits at the bus stop for a ten minute trip, ordering coffee as soon as the store opens and waiting an hour and a half to receive it.
Patience has looked like respecting their culture of relationship over time and everything starting at least 30 minutes late the entire year. Patience has looked like constant miscommunication. Patience looks like accepting things that we cannot change and finding gratitude and positivity in the moments that other people fail to meet our expectations.
Patience in a fruit of the Spirit that I thought I walked in but now have learned means so much more than waiting in lines or people disrespecting my own time table. Patience is a characteristic and a habit that I hope will stay with me as I transition home, into a culture of fast pace lives and a culture that prioritizes time. I am going to choose patience that ultimately chooses love.
