Ministry is wild y’all. Some days it all makes perfect sense and goes to plan, and some days you feel like you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off.
This month in Ecuador has been wonderful. We helped build a house, dig a sewage hole, served in a feeding program, and threw a baller Christmas party.
I got to do one of my absolute favorite things-teach small children. We taught English in a school one day and got to teach a bible lesson at our ministry site another day.
Teaching and dancing with kids is easy for me. It’s one of my all time favorite things and I love it with my whole being. Kids are my jam.
One day I asked God to bring me the hard to love. The people that challenge me and stretch me.
I didn’t expect it to come in the form of a tiny smelly child.
The ministry we are working with this month is incredible. They have feeding programs twice a week in which the feed over 200 people both spiritually and physically. My team got to do the spiritual feeding for all the kids.
After we did the music and bible lesson we had craft time. Now let me be brutally honest with you for a hot second. Crafts with small children is fun for about 2 minutes and then it turns exhausting.
So I’m sitting in the floor with a group of precious tiny children trying to keep them interested in the craft. This one particularly cute child snuggles up to me and studiously does his craft. He and I were having a great snuggly time drawing a rainbow when it happened.
Little nugget peed all over me.
Instantly all the whiny thoughts came into my head.
I’d just washed all these clothes.
I still had to wear these wet smelly pants for hours before going home.
I didn’t want to take another shower today.
I’m soaked in someone else’s pee.
Is pee really sterile?
I…asked for difficult.
Dadgummit.
And in that moment God said “look at him. Do it”
So I looked in the tiny face of a little boy and I broke. I didn’t see a child that had just peed on me, I saw a child of God. I saw a kid that God has perfectly created and crafted to do incredible things. A kid that needed me to do something.
Love him. Prove to him that even when we do things that aren’t ideal it’s not enough to fall from grace.
As I snuggled that child to my chest (he cried. I picked him up and spread pee all over my human) I saw me and God (He didn’t cringe away from my mess though).
My sin is so much bigger than accidentally wetting my pants. But God loves me big anyway. He pulls me to Him and shows me grace anyway. The pain He experiences is so much more than the frustration of smelling like someone else’s pee for a couple of hours but He forgives me anyway.
There’s kingdom everywhere. Even in the pee of a small child.
