Sometimes ministry is a little out of the ordinary. Often it’s not exactly what you expect it to be. Always it’s a blessing.
We arrived in Honduras in a large amount of excitement. New place, new hosts, new ministry, new opportunities to love God’s people. After a few rest days following travel, we began our new ministry at an orphanage up the road. This orphanage isn’t exactly what you’d expect though. It’s home to people of varying disabilities in a variety of ages. They live in houses of about 10 people and are cared for by wonderful women called Tias. These people are cared for 24/7 by a loving community. Within the confines of their community are buildings for general recreation to give them things to do and build skills. One of the buildings is a workshop in which they’re taught to make different crafts. The crafts are then sold in order to make money to support the work of the orphanage.
Their latest project has been rug making using long strands of t-shirt material donated to them. However, This material was not exactly organized when it arrived. You can imagine our surprise when they walked us into 2 rooms knee deep in extraordinarily tangled material and told us that was our ministry. Untangle.
We spent 4 weeks, 6 hours a day, 5 days a week unknotting and rolling this material. It was dusty beyond belief and I don’t think I’ve had more colorful boogers in my life as fuzz covered every inch of our being. This wasn’t exactly the glamorous world changing stuff I had expected. But I had 2 options: complain and hate life for however long I was to be stuck there, or look for God’s hand in it.
Deciding I didn’t particularly want to hate life for 2 months I started looking for God’s plan in it all. What I discovered was that this was one of those behind the scenes moments. By untangling the material I was able to give the residence a chance. Many of them were unable to untangle the material themselves so by doing it for them we gave them the ability to use the materials to support themselves. Something many had only dreamed of before hand. Being able to make things to sell gave them the chance to give back to a place that has loved them so well.
Sometimes ministry means doing strange behind the scenes jobs to let God’s love ripple. If rollin’ yarn for 4 weeks is what it takes to start the ripple of God’s love then rollin’ is where I’ll be.
