“Ministry is life. Life is ministry.” This is an “AIM-ism” (Adventures in Missions-ism) encouraging us not to have an on-off switch when it comes to ministry.
“That’s nice,” I thought to myself, “for extroverts.” That’s for the people who routinely get into conversations with strangers, the people who confidently bring up the name of Jesus without blinking an eye. And certainly, I’m hoping to grow in that area, but I am definitely not there yet, so let that burden rest on the others and I’ll keep to my introverted self.
Can I tell you what happened on our first travel day? Literally before we even left the country?
We had a total of five flights to get to Australia. Atlanta to Denver to LAX to Shanghai to Singapore to the Gold Coast. We had a 14 hour layover in LA. I’ve already been to LA so I decided to stay in and save my personal money for later down the road. So I walked with my squadmates, Andrea, Melissa, Kristine, and Nicole to another terminal where we had lunch. After lunch we still had to wait until midnight for our flight. Expecting a long, boring wait and hoping for no more than to find a seat and a place to charge our phones, we headed back.
That’s when a woman came up to Andrea, asking for help getting her brother with down-syndrome out of the car. He was having anxiety about leaving and would not get up. She asked her to touch him and comfort him, thinking an outside influence might help. Her flight was in two hours. So Andrea tried, but the man refused to budge and the woman told us we could go. Against my natural inclination, I decided to be bold and suggested we pray for him. We had plenty of time. The lady said, “sure, try anything, pray for me too,” although she confessed she didn’t believe in God or prayer. So we prayed, and afterward she continued to suggest new strategies to get him out of the car. Ask for a hug, hold his hand, ask him for help pushing the cart to our gate, get him to open his eyes, etc. We sang, danced, prayed, did “hug rotations,” and played “good cop, bad cop” with his sister all to try to get him out of the car. Andrea even shared with him that God loved him! Although his sister said we could go, we kept trying. I’m not sure when, but at a point I realized we were “all in.” We were either going to see this man get out of the car or we were going to wave them goodbye as they drove away because they missed their flight. The woman called the airline to reschedule their flight for a few hours later. All five of us were praying for a miracle. And eventually, after about two hours, praise God, he got out of the car! Stunningly, as soon as he was out, (because his sister convinced him they were actually going to visit his friend) his demeaner changed from anxiety to peace and we walked to check-in and security together. He joked and laughed and made fun of his sister. The woman thanked us and we said our goodbyes, each of us a little shocked by what had just happened. This was day ONE?!?! What had we gotten ourself into?
It was amazing though, to see each of us with our different gifts trying our best in that moment to be the body of Christ to the two siblings. I considered how I had dreaded the layover, expecting it to be an unneccessary delay on the way to our real ministry. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure I would have smiled politely as I sidestepped this lady, in a rush to make it onto my own flight. But this layover, which I hadn’t thought would have value, ended up being a huge ministry opportunity. Oh and by the way, three out of five of us girls are introverts, so there goes my previous excuse. Life is ministry, ministry is life. It had officially begun.
