This past week, our host had something new for us. We spent our days sitting on benches in a church, sanding rust off of metal bars. Everyday we would stop by the local bakery to get some guava bread (life-changing bread) to eat on our lunch break, drive to the church, rip off a new piece of sand paper, put our headphones in, and get to work. Sometimes for 5 hours straight.
And I loved it. I loved it cause I saw it’s purpose. You see, our host was welding these sanded bars together to create barriers for the church. So as we finished our job, he was able to do his job. Since all eight of us were working, we must have saved him hours upon hours of work.
Sanding was something tangible that I could physically see the progress. It was surprisingly extremely satisfying to see the rust disappear as you stripped it. To see that bright silver metal underneath was so rewarding. There were other times when the bars were so red, it took 15 minutes to start seeing the silver peeking through. Those were a pain. But still. I appreciated the work we were doing because it was purposeful. Even though we got dirty in the first 5 minutes and let rust settle on our entire body like a new layer of skin, I enjoyed it.
We may not have made immediate impact in the Kingdom, but we gave others the time to. Because we are saving our host hours of work, he is now able to spend that time in the community with the people. He can go out and train local pastors in the area. He can go out and start plans for the runway he needs to build for his aviation ministry. The work we did gave him time.
It was a good week. It was tiring, but really good.
