This month so far has been a blessed one. We got blessed with a great house to live in, we are fed every day, we are close to the center of town, we have incredible views, and we are working with a great organization. We are in beautiful Guatemala working with Loving Arms Ministries. This organization works with about 6 villages near Parramos helping to improve the lives of the indigenous Mayan people. They set up co-ops to teach trades so that they can earn money, they set up farms, work with schools, do food distributions, VBS, make water filters, help out around the community, and are in the process of building a dental and medical clinic for the surrounding villages. This is only a taste of what they are doing within the community.
When I first heard what our contact was, my thought was that we would be doing a lot of relational ministry within the villages. This didn’t happen to be the case. For the time that we have been here, we have done physical labor for the property and the house helping them to move forward in the projects that they are working on to better the community. We are thankful to get to help them move forward with their plans. It is great to get to work and sweat and feel like you’ve done a hard days work, but was also slightly frustrating, because I was excited for more hands-on relationship with the people in the villages. I guess this is why they tell you not to have expectations on the World Race. But you know what happens when you drop those? The Lord comes in and wrecks your view of what you think things are supposed to look like. We may not have organized and planned out “ministry” this month, but the Lord has been challenging my view of what ministry looks like.
I believe according to the Lord, ministry is this: loving the one in front of you.
Want to know the great news about that? We can be doing ministry at all times no matter if we are scheduled to be interacting with the community, or we are working along side people doing manual labor.
So what is our “ministry” this month? Our ministry is this:
It is loving the people beside us well as we work, whether that be our team or the Guatemalans that we are working with on projects
It is sharing the love and joy of Christ with the family that lives beside us because they just got relocated from their home because of a flood and don’t have much
It is stopping on the side of the street to share food, conversation and prayer with a man who can barely talk back and is overlooked nearly everyday because he has turrets
It is remembering a kid we hung out with in VBS and calling them out by name when we drive by them in the village, making them smile because we remembered who they were
It is knowing the treats that our teammates like and bringing them back to them some days after work so they have simple pleasures
It is speaking Spanish to the kids we pass by on our way home as they get out of school, making them giggle because we were terrible, but smile because we tried
It is learning about the families of the people we are working next to, and asking about them each day
It is having one-on-one talks with our teammates and getting to know their hearts
It is laughing until we are crying/can’t breathe with our teammates over nothing at all
It is running around town splashing in the puddles while it is pouring rain, offering others the freedom to join in and the joy of getting to be a child again
It is saying hi to people as we pass them on the streets, bringing a smile to their face
It is running up a steep hill with a group of children to share in their imagination and adventure
It is teaching English to our new Guatemalan friend and allowing him to teach us Spanish, because he wants to be able to converse with the gringos
It is telling a class of children about the love the Lord has for them and then showing them what that looks like through our actions
It is meeting an abandoned, single mother of 3 who was sad and hurting, and praying for her and loving her like Christ until she is smiling and laughing
It is making friends with a french fry vendor and visiting him most days after work to share in starches and relationship
It is playing hide-and-seek with two little girls, because we may not speak the same language, but everyone can count to ten
These things and more are what the Lord has asked us to do. Our ministry that we were assigned to may be manual labor, which we are enjoying, but the ministry that the Lord asks of us is to love one another.
What does your ministry look like today?
