I’m giving nothing back, and doing nothing for this school.
As I painted the drama sets for the upcoming play, Dorothy in Wonderland, each day at BAIS, I grew more in this thought. It was overwhelming to hear from and read the stories of my fellow squad mates about their battles with drunken locals breaking into their homes, living in a jungle with little resources, and following what God told them to do; while I rode a bus to a school within walking distance, filled up a mug of coffee (at least three times a day) provided by the teachers, and listened to music while I painted fluffy mushrooms and colorful castles made of hearts meant for a queen. It was easy to let this thought come creeping in, and it almost seemed to be that I was welcoming it into my head.
It’s taken moving on to the next country for me to see that even the littlest of things can make a difference. I may not have solved world hunger or converted anyone to Christianity last month, but I took some stress off the shoulders of one of the teachers, bonded with the students, and prepared my heart to dive into the ministry that is not within my comfort zone. I’ll share more about life in the Philippines in my next blog, but for now, I wanted to share what ‘painting for Jesus’ looked like for me in Indonesia.
I got to spend the month diving deeper into my relationship with Caley. We would spend the day painting with one another; sharing stories from home, making new memories (we can fit into the lockers at the school!), and laughing until our sides hurt with Kimberly, the art teacher.
There were a couple of days where Caley was out sick and stayed home from ministry; so I was painting solo and learned what it was like to work in isolation. I wasn’t able to get through as much of the canvas on those days and it was prevalent that I needed a partner in paint to be successful in finishing the project in a timely manner…and be sure it turned out the way we had envisioned!
The above set of canvases were a doozy to accomplish! Getting the hearts and the canvases to match up sent Caley and me in circles, and we were constantly fixing up the lines of the heart and feeling disgruntled in our abilities to accomplish the task Kimberly had given us. In all honesty, I was pretty surprised with how the first two canvases had turned out and doubted myself in the delivery of the queen of hearts castle. In the end, we surpassed everything we had imagined and even had fun adding in extra little details to really jazz the whole thing up.
Coming out at the end of ministry in Indonesia I’m extremely thankful that God blessed me with such a soft landing into the World Race. I know life on the field will be crazy and totally wreck me this year, but starting things off on such a high note allows me to realize how lucky I have been in my life. I’ve challenged myself this month in the different ministries I’ve signed up for since we’ve been here, and by ‘challenged’ I mean I opted for construction two days in a row. That’s right, I said, “opted”! I had the option to play with kids and rock babies to sleep, but instead, I woke up, lathered on sunscreen, put the same sweaty tee on, and went back to a concrete daydream. I figure that even though I was worried about how the canvases would turn out last month, I was really quite comfortable in Indonesia; so why not let my back be a little sore, get my hands dirty, and learn something new.
