Seeing God in the little things and during the rough times is so important. On the Race everything will not always be perfect. We are guaranteed to have times of sickness and times when ministry is slow. When you are immersing yourself in different cultures in 11 different countries things will affect you both physically and spiritually. This month, I have seen both things happen within myself and within our team.
Our time in Bolivia thus far has been a blessing. We are living in a remote town called Mapiri, in the jungle of Bolivia. It’s tropical, which means heat, lots of sun and bugs. It’s also rainy season so the rain can come at a moments notice. It rains most during the early mornings and toward lunchtime. When it rains in the afternoon it is usually a welcomed blessing and cools the temperature. We are blessed daily by our hosts, Pastor, Pastora and their 3 children. Pastora cooks all our meals for us and makes sure we have everything we need. They have made us feel like a part of their family; eating with us, taking us with them to the river for some fun and to do our laundry. The church people have also made us feel so welcomed. It feels so much like being “home”, except that I can’t speak their language.
Our ministry this month has involved a lot of manual labour. But that has happened to us since month 1. Here in Bolivia we are helping to construct a new building for the church we are working for. When in a rural area of an undeveloped country you never know what that might mean! Our manual labour has included gathering large rocks, leveling up ground with the leftover mud bricks from the old church building and creating a temporary building out of a tarp! We have been having our services 4 times a week under this tarp since we put it up! When it’s hot all year round, a tarp is all you need!
We have also been involved with helping in the services at the church. Three of our teammates have preached so far and we teach youth and children’s church on Sunday mornings. Thankfully, we have been blessed with having 3 Spanish speakers on our team and they graciously translate for us on a daily basis!
But we have also had downtime this month, time when there is no ministry assigned for us to do that day. At those times, you improvise and create a ministry opportunity. Sometimes that looks like prayer walking around the community, or spending one-on-one time with a teammate to go deeper into what God is doing in their life, other times, it looks like cleaning a whole kitchen and everything in it.
But other times, ministry looks like serving on each other. When sickness strikes your team, serving each other and pouring love on each other is your mission field. Our team had a rough week in which sickness of at least some form touched almost every member. Some were very sick and spend days lying in bed, others were just having severe digestive issues. But when you are eating new foods and are surrounded by new germs, “butt pee”, vomiting and sickness become a reality that you sometimes literally cannot control. But thankfully, the worst seems to be over and people are feeling much better.
Sometimes, serving the Kingdom may not look the way you thought it would or even the way you WANT it to look. But God will put you in the situations and places where He has called you and will use you in those places. There are so many God moments and opportunities to serve the Kingdom; sometimes you just have to open your eyes to see them in the little things…
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18
