My team is is composed of 6 very unique and genuinely awesome humans. One thing we’ve noticed this month is that we’re all task-oriented and have a big yes in our souls. Although this sounds great, we’ve hit a few roadblocks as a team and have been finding it hard to just enjoy each others company.
It’s hard to have fun!
We do a great job at giving each other feedback, praying for one another, pointing each other to Scripture, asking challenging questions, respecting each others space, and creating an environment where we are each able to be vulnerable.
But, we’re too serious!
Each ministry day, we put our gloves on, grip those shovels, and work hard until the work is done. We do find moments of laughter and amusement, but I wouldn’t describe my team as one that is full of joy…until now.
I’ve known this about the Lord, but He is one funny guy! As a team, we’ve been praying for moments where we can have fun together and grow comfortable sharing in our own goofiness. God answers our prayers and He definitely hears us when we call out to Him, we just don’t always expect His responses sometimes.
I’m going to share a story with you guys because 1) it’s hilarious and 2) God is good!
I don’t know if you’re ready for this…
Yesterday, my team was assigned Property where we helped clean the campus we’re staying on. Our morning started off by picking up dead and decaying leaves, bamboo trees, animals, and God knows what else. We smelled absolutely horrid and had juices dripping from our clothes. “This is all for Your name, Lord”, I said internally while picking up yet another saturated, moldy, and termite infested log. As we picked up tree leaves and carried them to a pile to be burned, my arms began to burn and sting. I threw down the leaves and found fire ants all over me. OUCH! I turned to my team, more specifically Abby who is allergic to fire ants, and warned them. No more than a minute later, Abby leaned down and whacked her foot, saying, “Guys, I think I just got bit.” Everybody froze. Off I ran to go get Benadryl, hydrocortisone cream, and After Bite. I can’t tell you the last time I ran that fast. I made it back in a jiffy, nursed her to health, and told her to take the rest of the morning off to make sure she’s okay.
Remember how I said we are all super task-oriented? Yeah, well being bit by fire ants and surrounded by the stench coming from the air sure didn’t stop us from continuing. So onward we went. Every so often we heard cries of agony coming from someone as we stubbed our toes, climbed up the huge hill yet again, had ants attack our arms and legs, and threw heavy objects over our heads onto the mound we created.
Lunch FINALLY came and we each looked at each other and said, “I don’t think we can come back and do that again.” Little did we know what the afternoon had in store for us and what the Lord was going to show us. Down the mountain we went to rake and pile up more debris by the cows. At least this time it didn’t stink that bad, although there were plenty of piles of cow dung everywhere. Okay, let me tell you about one of their cows. His name is Moreno and he’s not very friendly. He bucks and charges at us often and sure does hate being pinned up, so he finds his way out very often. Well, we get up to where the enclosure was and found both cows out and about. Terrified, we asked Wes to put him back in the enclosure so we felt safe enough to do our job. Success…well sort of. About an hour into our job and after setting ablaze a couple debris piles, we heard stomping and mooing coming straight for us. Ashley and Emenski were trying to set another pile on fire while Lauren, Hannah and I watched. Lauren screamed, “There he is!” and immediately jumped into the nearby tree, Hannah not far behind. I, with no more room on the tree, grabbed the nearest weapon, a ho, and clung to it for dear life internally saying to myself, “This could be it. This is how I go.” The cow charged and bucked as we screamed and ran (well those of us who weren’t in a tree). After a few minutes passed and Moreno seemed to have calmed down, Hannah yelled, “Oh my gosh there’s termites on me!” Her and Lauren were now covered in termites, but were too afraid to get down because the cow was still so close. I was laughing, Ashley was laughing, Lauren was laughing, and Hannah was laugh-crying.
Could our day get any worse?
Remember the cow poop I mentioned? Yeah well not only did I step in a pile once, but twice…all over my big toe. My white flag had now been raised.
But that’s not all!
So we finally got the last debris pile to ignite and watched it grow. As Ashley was videotaping she sensed that her chest was hurting. Not an internal pain, but external like something was on her. She looked down and saw that her shirt was on fire! She screamed, “I’m on fire!” as she went to the nearest tree to put it out. I ran over, patted the embers off her shirt collar and could not stop laughing. (She’s fine by the way…I made sure.) At this point, all of our white flags were up! We were laughing hysterically and couldn’t believe what the day had turned into. How in the world did all this happen in one day? All we could do was laugh!
As a team (although not all 6 of us were together), we finally experienced pure moments of joy and goofiness that we’ve been longing for. We laughed the hardest we had in a while, hugged each other more than we had before, and could not wipe a grin off of our faces for the rest of the day. God is good y’all. I definitely did not expect Him to answer in the way He did, but it worked. We now have memories burned into our minds (and shirt) about the time we were struggling to have fun together. Yesterday was hilarious and it was our attitude that helped make the day a great one. We could have easily been upset and angry at all the stuff that happened, but the Lord helped us see each other and experience joy from Him.
Hope you had just as much fun reading that as we did experiencing it 🙂
~A
