A common theme seems to keep popping up. Am I willing to be faithful? During month 1, I asked myself if I was willing to be faithful in my relationship with God, to spend time with Him when I’d rather (being the HUGE extrovert that I am) be with the amazing people of team Brilla (the combined teams of Firestarters and Salmo 45:11). In month 2, Roz, Vicky’s mom, who is a Christian counselor, asked if I was willing to be faithful even if God doesn’t answer my questions. At the beginning of month 3 I felt like I was being challenged to be faithful even when things don’t make sense or work out like I think they should. Now we’re finishing up month 4. We spent the weeks between Vitor, a desert village of 3,000 people and Arequipa, the 2nd largest city of Peru with over 860,000 people. During the month, we spent 2 ½ days painting 1 church and then passed out tracks and did door-to-door evangelism. The 2nd church only took us ½ day to paint and in our short time there we didn’t meet any of the church members. Am I willing to still be faithful when my work isn’t noticed? What if I don’t feel like we really “accomplished” anything, will I still be faithful?
(Painting the 2nd church in Villa Hermosa)
I realized some other hard truths about myself. For example, on Easter Sunday we had the opportunity to visit 3 of Guido and Cindy’s 7 church plants, 2 of which Guido led the worship and gave the sermon. Between the morning and afternoon church services we had 4 hours of down time. Am I willing to be faithful when it takes me literally giving up a whole day of “my time”?
At 3:00pm is the church service in Vitor which is held where we lived for the month. Even 1 week later, water still had not been delivered to the church. Am I willing to be faithful when it’s uncomfortable? What if there isn’t water, if I can’t flush the toilet, if dishes take twice as long because they have to be washed and then sanitized with purified bleach water?
The church service started right on time and while there were quite a few kids in the children’s room, there was only 1 Peruvian lady, other than our team. Would I be faithful if my church only had 1 member? If you had asked me before the race I would never have said that numbers in a church matter, that of course it’s about quality, not quantity. Yet, standing there, facing Guido as he stood in the front and sang his heart out followed by our team and the one older lady, my heart hurt. Sadly, my automatic response was, maybe it was time to move on, maybe Cindy and Guido were missing God’s calling to go somewhere else. Shame on me. Who am I to say that the time spent during the week to prepare the sermon, choose worship songs, haul equipment the 1 ½ hour drive out to Vitor, prepare activities for the kids, and the time spent just waiting for the next service to start aren’t all worth it, even if it’s for only the 1 Peruvian lady?
(Guido preaching in Vitor)
My team just finished reading the book Forgotten God by Francis Chan and we talked about that exact same thing. Are we willing to be faithful in the small things? Am I willing to be faithful with my next 10 minutes or do I just want to talk about what God’s going to hypothetically do with my life in the future?
Tomorrow evening we head to the bus terminal to leave on a 16 hour bus ride to Lima where we’ll spend the next 5 days with the whole squad at our second debrief. During this debrief new squad leaders, team leaders and other positions will be raised up; new people will be given the chance to grow in those leadership positions. Teams will also be changing so I’ll be saying goodbye to team “Salmo 45:11”. Sounds like I’ll have lots of opportunities to put into practice what God has been teaching me.
