When you think of mission trips you think of the joyful, free spirited, “I’m going to serve the nations” outlook, but sometimes it turns out to be the exact opposite of that. Sometimes it is the most frustrating thing in the world and language barriers take over. You want to serve you really do, but the task becomes impossible and you end up just sitting on a slab of metal beams.
Here in Nepal we are with an amazing ministry host, Ruben, who is in the works of building an orphanage and also runs an awesome football ministry. It has been a great month so far, but the language barrier has been a prevalent theme while being here, which up to this point on the race I have yet to experience. Ruben speaks English very well along with another one of the guys here, Solomon, but that about cuts it for the amount of people who speak English living here. Now don’t get me wrong, a few of the locals living here do know some English words, but only a very few that can only be used to give slim direction as to what we are supposed to be doing ministry wise.
‘Mixing concrete’, my leader Racquel tells us our ministry task for the day, which she and Gretchen have both already done this on the race several times. With the girls having a slight knowledge of how to mix concrete they kind of knew what to expect, but on the race, as cliche as it sounds, you truly do learn to throw your expectations out the window and ironically expect to never see them again.
Previously the week before we had moved large piles of sand and gravel stones to the top of the roof, so now a week later lays 6 large piles of sand and gravel stones ready to be mixed in with the concrete mixture. One of the guys here helping with construction, David, is one of the ones who only knows a few simple English words. David works really hard at what he does, but after this day of ministry I learned David would much rather just do it himself than have to try to explain to 12 American girls how to mix concrete in the most efficient way.
We get to the top of the roof ready to put in a lot of manual labour for the day, but we quickly learned that David was going to do most all of the work. Standing on top of the roof was 6 of us ready to mix the concrete, while the other 6 were ready to get started on sending the buckets of water to the top to mix with. There were only 2 shovels and only 2 people were needed to send water to the top of the roof. You see the problem here, 12 girls, only 4 actually needed for the task.
Standing around the looks of what are we supposed to be doing quickly comes across all of our faces. The girls who have done this before jumped in to try to mix it the way they know, but they quickly learned that this is not the way David was going to mix it. David then takes the shovel from one of the girls without speaking, because he truly just doesn’t know much English, then proceeding he showed us how it was going to be done. Racquel then tried to start subtly pouring water on to the mix and try to start mixing it when David comes and takes her arm directing her to sit. After forcing her to sit he then points to the rest of us standing directing us to sit as well.This pattern continued for a while after as we tried to ask David what he needed us to do, but the only response we continued to get was “sit” or to “wait.”
I would say this is possibly one of the most frustrating things about ministry on the race. Sometimes you are told to sit and you have watch others work really hard. You want to do so much, but really sitting in these moments is maybe the best thing needed.
This is how God is with us at times. He has the work all planned out for us, but He also wants us to be able to take a step back at times and allow Him to show us how the work needs to be done. If we jump right in assuming we know the best way without allowing Him to take the lead and show us how it needs to be done then we miss the point of what He may be trying to teach us.
Patiently sitting and waiting for David to direct us as to what we are supposed to be doing.
David finally allowing us girls to start doing some work.
