When we pray for patience, God won’t give it to us for free. Rather, he’ll give us opportunities to practice it.
I actually preached on this idea a few weeks ago in Ecuador, and during the sermon I reiterated several times that I was preaching as much to myself as I was to everyone in the congregation. Having lived briefly in Latin America a couple times, I knew going into the Race that this was something that I needed to pray over myself, and that it would not be easy. To say it conservatively, my personality does not thrive in laid back, go-with-the-flow type of environments. I get frustrated when there is no schedule and when deadlines and start times are more loose suggestions than anything else. I struggle when plans are not laid out weeks in advance and instead are given on a day-by-day, often hour-by-hour basis. In short, the last three months have not been comfortable, but it’s getting better.
I was praying for all of this in the weeks leading up to the Race, and my first evening on the field was proof to me that God has a sense of humor. We had just arrived that day at our ministry site in Medellin, after two days of flights and layovers, so our host gave us the afternoon to rest and recover. Even in those moments of rest, I was a bit preoccupied with what the month had in store for us, as we still had not been given very many details and a lot of pieces still seemed to be up in the air. I didn’t know what work we’d be doing, or when we’d be doing it, and people were more than likely getting irritated with all of my questions and complaints. In the middle of these thoughts, as I was eating dinner, the screen of my Apple Watch fell off onto the table. It hasn’t worked since, and it was a very visible reminder for me to leave all of these preoccupations about time and schedules behind and just live in the moment.
Obviously, that was not the end. That one small event was not enough to cause a 180-degree personality shift. It has been a slow, daily process of learning to let go of my own needs and desires and just let God work how He wants to work in each new situation. In Colombia at City of Refuge, that looked like being flexible with my ministry assignments as they came. There were so many facets to what we did there that no one day looked the same as the next, but all the work was incredible. Each new day brought new opportunities for me to grow, and as the month went on, I found myself caring less and less about only knowing the schedule a couple days in advance. I also found myself checking the time less often, as I stopped caring as much about when things were supposed to start and finish. It certainly helped not having it displayed on my wrist all the time, and honestly, that’s why I still haven’t bought even a cheap replacement.
During month two, I was challenged even further. Looking back at Colombia after my experiences in Ecuador, I laugh at what I thought then was a lack of structure. There were times during ministry last month that I would have given anything to have my ministry schedule from Colombia back. Another example of God having a sense of humor – I thought I grew in patience during month one, but He apparently knew it wasn’t enough. I don’t think I can properly put into words how chaotic our days were in Ecuador. We found out what we were doing each day the night before, often not until ten or eleven at night. Our ministry days often stretched for twelve hours, which is four hours more than we were supposed to work. And even in the middle of each day, we had to be ready for plans to change as we went, sometimes two or three times. It kept us all on our toes for sure, and, at least for the first half of the month, kept me in a near-constant state of frustration.
None of this is to say that I didn’t enjoy the work we were doing, or that it wasn’t fruitful. For more details on that, check this post out. My team was incredibly gracious and encouraging to me through all of this, and they helped me grow even further in what I had been praying into before the Race. They continually helped me refocus my perspective, and they never discounted what I had to say when I voiced my frustrations. At one point they joked that I should try to go the rest of the month without saying the word ‘schedule’ but I didnt last longer than a day. Not only did I grow in patience and flexibility, but God also used this to teach me how to lean into a community that was not there to judge me or treat me as an irritation, but rather one that was there to help me through whatever I was struggling with.
This brings me to month three, and honestly, God bless our ministry hosts, and thank God for giving me some relief. My teammates told me by the end of last month that they had seen me grow significantly since the beginning of the Race, but going into Peru I wasn’t sure how much more of that I could take. We sat down with our hosts for an orientation on the second day in Peru, after taking a day to recover from the forty hour bus ride. They spent almost two hours covering in detail their testimony and vision for their ministry, as well as their vision for our team during our month there. They laid out, in detail, what the full schedule for the month would look like, what days we had off, what days we’d be traveling, and where we’d be working each week. The full details of the work have been laid out at the beginning of each week. And the joy this has all brought me is hard to express. Not only does God have a sense of humor, He also knows exactly what I need, and when I need it.
I knew from the beginning that I would love our hosts, and that I would love the work we’d do with them. Each new day has brought further confirmation of that, and I have a lot of stories to share from our time with them. During our first and third weeks, we worked in a church on the poorer outskirts of Lima, splitting our time between evangelizing in the local market and playing soccer with the kids in the neighborhood. The fruit from both aspects of this ministry has been abundant, and I am anxious to hear the follow-up stories from the pastor we worked with in the months to come. Our second week here was my favorite week from the Race so far. We had the unique opportunity to go into the Peruvian jungle to work with an indigenous people group there and help the church build a permanent missionary base in their community. This week I’ll be posting a couple updates about all of that, and I’m so excited to share in more detail how God has been working here through my team.
We’re almost at the end of our time here already, and I’ve been slacking pretty hard on getting updates out. I’ll be playing catch up this week, so stay tuned!
