This month my teammate Katherine and I have been teaching Volleyball to Elementary and Middle School kids… which is hilarious because I am HORRIBLE at Volleyball. But in the eyes of my students, I held the allusion of skill.
We focused on teaching the “rules and fundamentals” of Volleyball. We were told that the students really wanted to learn the sport, after hearing they were no competition to the neighboring schools. I was relieved to be teaching with my teammate Katherine, as she was qualified from playing in high school.
An expectation I didn’t realize I put on myself at the start of the month was that, I was planning on preparing them for competition, and that I thought my purpose this month was Volleyball.
We soon discovered the level of skill we were facing… As time went on we learned for ourselves that it was not our job to create an “All-Start-Team”, and that not every student needed to be gifted in Volleyball.
At the beginning of the month, I was comparing my past experience in Honduras (which was my favorite month teaching) to my current ministry, which looked very different. The school appears very non-supervised because of the 4 different Reese time slots in the middle of the day. It didn’t help that our classroom (the Volleyball Court) was in the main courtyard either. Katherine and I were in the thick of it, with hundreds of kids and teenage-hormones running around. On top of that, the school this month was a lot more flexible in their scheduling and, not all the kids wanted to learn Volleyball or even seemed to try.
Yet, the school continually encouraged us to build relationships with the students – and that was their first priority. And in that, the school was right; it was about building relationships with the students. Something I already knew, but for some reason Volleyball distracted my focus and purpose for a while. I wasn’t serving in the best way I could because I was distracted with my own expectations.
This did change when I realized what was happening and I begun to be more intentional. It is so easy to be distracted by earthly things. Don’t let your own expectations get in the way of what God could be doing instead. This is something I am still trying to learn as an ambitious planner and dreamer.
I want to have determination in His plans – not my own. “I set my mind and keep it set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on earth” – Colossians 3:2
Funny facts, Reminders and gained wisdom:
- Not every month on the World Race will be life changing – but in that, you never know if you were life changing to someone else.
- Personal growth is a hard thing to measure, but over time growth happens slowly.
- I got to hike a volcano and the funniest part was “skiing” down it.
- Mac & Cheese is something I could eat everyday.
Grace and peace,
Matt
