I don’t know if you, dear reader, have been keeping up with my blog since the beginning. If you haven’t (traitor) here is a little bit of context. When I went on the Race I had no grand plans of saving the world. I was going to set up the chairs for someone else to preach. I was going to hold the bags while other people did evangelism. I was going to guard the stuff while someone else led people to Christ. I loved, and still do, the backstage part. I love equipping other people and making it possible for them to succeed to their fullest. Unfortunately I loved this partially because I did not think myself able to do anything else.
In Honduras I was all about the building fences and doing dishes. Leading Bible study for the kids freaked me out. I had to do it twice. I was still far more at home painting the music classroom and most days would hide out there while the rest of the team played with the kids. But I was doing my part in ministry, so it was great.
In Guatemala I was right at home. The entire month was manual labor and I didn’t have to speak once. It was awesome. But I noticed other people on my squad building deep connections with the people at our ministry. Every time I tried to make these connections I felt awkward. Try as I might it never came to me naturally. So I blamed it on the language barrier and retreated to my sewing room to make more coffee bags than any human had in recorded history.
In El Salvador the ministry was entirely relationship based. There was no “work” or anywhere to hide. But a large portion of the ministry was holding babies, which you don’t have to hold a conversation with, so it was all sort of fine. I shared a little devotion at the girls prison and walked away feeling like I hadn’t given them anything. Was my story about how God has used unlikely skills of mine on the missions field relatable to them at all? These girls lives had been ravaged by the gang culture and here I was talking about being an art major.
While we were there one of our squad leaders asked me if I would speak at the upcoming Leadership Development Weekend. Through lots of nervous laughter I agreed to it. Prepare 20 minutes for an afternoon devotional. Easy right? Yea. Sure.
I walked away from that conversation and immediately began praying and asking:
“God what do you want to say to the squad? What do they need to hear?”
In that moment I had the sense that God wanted me to talk about identity, a subject that had come up on our team a lot that month. Before I knew it I was sitting with my notebook in my lap furiously scribbling down notes. 15 mins later in the truck on our way to ministry I had my outline. Later that day I had the whole thing written out. I had my leader read and approve it and got additional thoughts and additions from one of my teammates. I had a finished talk.
The day came and I was there, hands shaking, talking too fast, but there I was. 20 minutes and an elaborate Lion King reference later it was over.
The experience afterwards was a little surreal. I didn’t expect that people would enjoy it that much, much less that they would be impacted by it. Nonetheless I found a way to brush it off as a bit of a fluke. After all I had used the Lion King reference from a sermon I had heard in college. I didn’t really come up with it on my own. It wasn’t really a sermon. Let’s return to our regularly scheduled programming.
The following month we were in Uganda and our ministry was even more relationship based than El Salvador. We were living at a vocational school and what we did all day was just life with the girls. We went to their classes, played with their children, drew water, played soccer, and went to prayers with them. There were no chairs to set up, trenches to dig, or fences to build. I was completely out of my comfort zone. There was no language barrier and nowhere to hide. If I was going to be “doing ministry” that month I’d have to set aside everything that came easily and dig in. It wasn’t easy. I felt awkward a lot. I stumbled around and was often discouraged by the lack of quantifiable ministry. What was I really contributing? Did giving the morning devotional once really count as giving something of value to the ministry? Don’t get me wrong, it was a great month. I learned a lot about doing relational ministry and God worked in my life in a lot of ways. But I was excited to move on to Rwanda with my brand new shiny team.
When we got our ministry sheet for the month though one thing became abundantly clear: we would be preaching the entire month. We would be living and working with the Pastor, sharing at two different different churches 5 days a week. No running from the preaching game anymore. Our first day of ministry we worked out a schedule for who would speak what night so we would have plenty of time to prepare. It was Tuesday and I wasn’t slotted to speak till Sunday. Perfect! Plenty of time to prepare! I started blocking out my sermon that day because procrastination is nobody’s friend.
Through all of this our beloved team leader Brittany had been plagued with a sinus headache. She has been in constant pain for the past three days and nothing seemed to help. She was slotted to preach that evening. But the headache wouldn’t yield. The team was praying for her that afternoon and after the amen I asked her if maybe she didn’t want to preach that evening. She said yes, it would be great to not have to preach and just like that I was on the docket.
I still had notes. It was bullet points and not written out word for word but notes nonetheless. It’s good to let the Spirit move when you speak but the Spirit moves better for me when I have notes. I ended up giving an expanded version of the devotional I have given in Uganda about Gods strength and faithfulness. It was the longest talk I had ever given and I couldn’t deny it, it was a sermon, I had preached.
Afterward one of my teammates Jules came up to me and told me how proud of me she was. (For those of you who need to be brought up to speed, Jules has been one of my closest friends since training camp and has been a voice of encouragement in my life since I met her). She reminded me of when I had visited her in NYC before launch and we sat and watched the sunset on the promenade. That night I had spilled my guts to her about all of the doubt and frustration I was experiencing with God and what was I doing going on this Race thing anyway? She asked my why I was going and I responded:
“To help, I just want to help.”
And I gave her the speech about chairs and trenches and how I was going to be backstage while everyone else did the real ministry.
But here we were in Rwanda and I had just preached a sermon. She told me how she was reminded of that night in Brooklyn and how she saw how much work God had done in my life in the past four months.
And she’s right. In a lot of ways God has turned me upside down and inside out. I’m not the same person who launched in October and I’m not done cooking yet. I know now that as much as I enjoy being the backstage person who makes the thing happen, that God has different plans for me. I guess that means getting dragged onto the stage every once in a while. Even if I go kicking and screaming.
I wouldn’t say that I have developed plans of single handedly taking on the world and saving every one in site. But I think God is developing things in me that I didn’t anticipate at the start of this journey. I don’t know what the rest of the race or the rest of my life is going to look like, but I have a feeling it’s a lot bigger and a lot crazier than I have ever thought possible.
Today is Feb 1st which means I am past the deadline of being fully funded. I am however still short of that goal. If you would like to help make it possible for me to stay on the field just click the donate tab at the top of the page!
