At the start of a new week, our ministry host Gustavo (we call him Goose) gave us a word that I thought was so good so I wanted to pass it along.
So side note to help you get a better feel for this blog, my team’s ministry changed two weeks ago from the school we were teaching at to back at the ministry where we spent Christmas and New Years, Dunamis the home for trafficking victims. Mornings look like (Em)manual labor (haha!!!) then we break for lunch, and in the afternoons we go into the community and help Goose and his wife teach various workshops (like acting, english, sewing, etc.) for all ages of people. Everyone is welcomed with a smile but it’s mostly kids that show up and a good number of them are the same kids we got to love on over the holidays so we already have established relationships.
Back to Goose’s word of encouragement to us though, he drew out this beautiful parallel between the work we do in the mornings and the ministry we do in the afternoon. In the mornings, we use our hands and tools to toil the ground. We use axes, hoes, shovels, and rakes to churn the soil to prepare it to plant a garden so it will produce crops and good food. We’ve just been doing the prep work, the sowing of the seeds has not been our job yet. But soon, planters will come to plant and take care of the baby crops. They will continue to tend them even after we leave this place, watering them, pulling weeds, and reaping their harvest. As much as this earth is made up of land it’s full of the people who inhabit the land, too. People make up the earth. Therefore, this work is reciprocated in the afternoon as we go out into the community. our divine interactions with our neighbors in Ecuador, the bubbly kids, the pastor of the church and his family are all for the greater good. If they haven’t already heard, we are preparing their hearts to hear. If they haven’t already seen, my hope is that we are representing him to the fullest. We may be sowing seeds or watering old ones, or we could be doing neither and just doing the prep work. But either way, it’s the will of the Father being carried out. I’ve come to learn over the past two weeks that there’s an intense amount of work put into constructing a garden for the first time. It’s exhausting, boring at times pick axing the same patch of dirt for the tenth time, requires getting dirty, and it’s not always the most fun, but nevertheless this work has to be done to ensure a plentiful harvest. You can’t just scatter seeds and hope they grow, you truly do have to put in the effort and when the time is right, the seeds will be sown. And if all goes well, the seeds will thrive and will not be eaten by birds, scorched by the sun, or choked by weeds like in the parable of the sower. We might only be doing the prep work in the garden and the hearts of the community but the preparation is the most important part if you want to the harvest to be seen to fruition.
