I’ve been lugging around my tent for 9 months for no reason. For my entire race, I have been blessed to have a roof over my head. So with the exception of a Christmas sleepover in our living room in Malawi month 3, I haven’t used my tent. I mean that thing weighs 3lbs and 15oz which is 3lbs and 15oz less that my pack could have weighed. That makes a difference. Trust me. My tent has traveled the entire world with me, but it has never been used for its purpose. It has never been my shelter.
UNTIL LAST NIGHT.
I finally got to pull that thing out of the bag. And it was great.
The team that I am with as well as another team on our squad went off the grid for the night and it was so fun. We had one mission: to build benches. The local church needed benches for their congregation, so we sanded (again) and nailed and drilled and laughed and inhaled sawdust. There were 17 of us total. Some spent majority of their time leveling the dirt ground of the church so that the benches could sit flat, others spent their time strengthening their right arms while sanding until the wood felt that of a baby’s bottom, while the rest nailed those benches together. Oh and Jonathan spent his time digging trenches around the church so that the rain water wouldn’t flood the church.
It took us about six to seven hours for 17 of us to finish seven benches. Let’s just say that the sanding took a little longer than we had anticipated.
Anyway, I was so thankful to be apart of this process. Now, the people of the church have somewhere to sit when they come to learn about the Lord. It may have been a blessing for the church that we could go and put in the labor, but it was honestly a blessing for us to get to be apart of what the Lord is doing in the mountains of Panama. Let me tell you, Jesus is present up there. He is present in the people, and He is present in the beautiful creation surrounding the villages.
As we were working, we were attracting quite the crowd of children. They were fascinated with what we were doing. Those cuties. So we spent lots of time practicing our Spanish with them while they picked up the sandpaper and started sanding the wood with us. At night, we got to play a game of soccer with some of the kids. We literally played until you couldn’t see anymore. After a little boy yelled, “Portera, portera,” at me, I ran back to play goalie. It didn’t seem so bad until I got back there just to realize I couldn’t actually see a single thing besides the ball when it was five feet away from me. They only scored a couple on me. I guess I’ll stick to playing in the field next time.
After a long day, I was finally able to climb into my tent and rest. At that moment, I was thankful to have my tent. Even if I had to carry the thing around for 9 months, last night made it all worth it. Because if we didn’t have our tents, we wouldn’t have gotten this experience. It makes my heart smile to know that my finger prints in the Kingdom are all around the world like they are on those benches in Pilon.
