This month my team is serving at a YWAM base in Auckland, New Zealand. I know that all of you are expecting a blog about how I’m living in a tent and am taking cold showers, but the truth is I am living in World Race luxury. Not only do I have HOT SHOWERS, but I have a bed, a kitchen, and internet access. In fact my team is in complete awe of the fact that we are in walking distance of a free pool that has water slides. Our ministry this month is to serve the YWAM base. They typically are a mentorship center for kids in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Auckland, but school is out and this is there slow time of the year. So what are we doing? This base serves as a conference center and discipleship training school for YWAM. Many missionaries come through here. We have been asked to serve the staff by helping to run the base. This looks like making beds and preparing the base for 200 people who will stay here next week. It looks like picking up bread that gets donated by a local bakery, practicing English with missionaries from New Caledonia, washing sheets, and making a display board for a local conference. In fact we will be running the whole base by ourselves while the staff are away for the week. I know what your thinking… Caitlin, you didn’t have to go across the world to do that. Just come over to my house! I have to be honest, in the beginning I was wondering that too. Not questioning why I was on the race, but why God called me here if all I was going to do was make beds and do mundane things I could do back home.
I began to ask God why we weren’t doing a more fruitful ministry. Lord I wish we were bringing the gospel to those who don’t know you. We are ready. Please use us to heal the sick and let the blind see… Then God began to whisper to me, “Caitlin, be a servant” And in my stubbornness I really thought to myself, God Im trying but you Im making beds this month. That’s when it hit me. God’s lessons for us rarely come in the form we want them to. This is something I know. What makes serving one person any more or less glamorous than serving another? I wanted to have this HUGE ministry month working with the poor and the broken, but my brothers and sisters in Christ have a HUGE need this month that my team could fill.
The truth is that we are an answer to prayer. The staff at Kings Kids have a huge conference they are going to. They had no idea who would staff the base while they are gone and prepare the rooms for 200 people to come back from the conference with them. God called us here to be a blessing to them. He called me here to humble me and teach me to put others before myself. He called my team here so we could have a month to work out some of the kinks of living in intense community. We are being prepared.
