At the start of this week, on both Sunday and on Monday, I was very tired and just drained and I didn’t want to do ministry anymore. I had a very hard day on Monday and I wished we were doing some kind of ministry that interacted with people more. I could see why we were building the wall, and I saw why it was needed, but I didn’t see why I needed to be serving God in this way on the Race. I was tired after every day, just trying to survive the day and push through to the weekend of rest. I somewhat forgot the faces of the girls who were staying on the grounds and that they have a story too. I forgot of the many things God showed me when I could think in silence and be amazed at the beauty around me.
On Monday night, Fabi went over the 5 main “key ideas” that were listed on the wall in the living room and took a survey of how everyone was doing. I realized that the “choosing joy” part of the day, I was falling short on. At first with ministry I was excited on the ministry set before us. But slowly after time, I wasn’t choosing joy and my days were getting harder and harder.
On Tuesday, the devotions prompt was to look up in the concordance the thing that I am struggling with and find scripture that talks about it. I then looked for scripture that mentioned the word joy. It then lead me to Nehemiah 8:10. I looked back a few chapters and the context of the verse was; Israel was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. They had to rebuild the walls while the enemies of Jerusalem were starting to become a growing threat for the builders. Half of the people had to be on watch with holding the spears and the remaining builders had to work with only one hand because they had to hold their swords while building. At the end of the time that took them to finish the wall they were filled with JOY.
This encourages me because I also am buiding a wall. For me to turn to that passage on the day that I was struggling with choosing joy is crazy. God directed my hands to turn the pages of my Bible to that passage in Nehemiah and for it to tie in my day like that. It was very encouraging for me to read something in the Word that applied to what I was doing at ministry. On Tuesday at Dunamis we got to be with the girls for the morning until lunch. During that time we got to play soccer with them and talk with them. I love soccer. It is the best sport ever. It was nice to play with the girls and for me to be joyful in that. It was very encouraging to me. After lunch, we started up making the wall again and I got a lot of rows of the wall done with group of people I was working with.
These next few days after that we have done very well in getting the rows of the wall done fast. In a normal day, we would get done 2 1/2 – 3 rows of the wall done. On Wednesday, Brittany, Savannah, and I finished 6 1/2 rows of the wall. It was awesome to see how smoothly we did the work and how well we worked together. I enjoyed working on the rows a lot.
God is awesome! He has shown himself to me even when I thought that my day couldn’t get better, and that I was stuck where I was at with not enjoying my ministry days. God is surprising me, and I’m ready to see the new things that He will move in.
The most interesting thing of my week happened on Friday. For the first time ever I lost what are the odds. For those of you that do not now what “what are the odds”, it is pretty much a game that will get the other person to do something if they lose. I challenged Kyla, one of the team leaders to eat a grub-a very thick caterpillar that we found at ministry. She said 1 in 10. Someone counted us down, and we said different numbers. She said havesies so it was then 1 in 5. Someone counted us down and we both said 2. I had to eat the grub. Reality hit me. I had made a big mistake. The grub was so plump, and after removing the head it was even more unappealing. I cleaned it off with water, and then someone counted down and I put it into my mouth. Wow… I will never do “what are the odds” again. But, now I can say that I have eaten a grub, yet I don’t recommend it at all! 🙂
This week showed me a lot, and I’m excited for next week as we will be having debrief for 5 days. Debrief is a time to step away from ministry, reflect on what is going on, and be able to do some adventurous things. It will be good. Right now, I am just excited for the weekend for rest and be able to chill with friends.
