One time back home there arose a tension between myself and a woman from my church. It was hard to put your finger on what had happened because no-one had done anything that bad – a hurt feeling or two, an inappropriate comment, the innocuous things that happen when you’re not careful. In all honesty I would have brushed it aside, except that a series of things happened that made me realize that there was more at stake than just a conflict between two people. That in fact unity in our community was at stake and our witness and impact in our city was at stake. So we were determined to come to an understanding, asking God to examine our hearts before talking.
Here on the Race, the fight for unity is as real as it is in any other community-maybe more so, because we are together 247 including periods of exhaustion and stress. In the month of November, we were scheduled to go to Swaziland. We were waiting for our visas to India to be processed but since the embassy had our passports we couldn’t leave South Africa. The entire squad ended up serving Manna Church and living on their campground. Then news came that there was political unrest in Mozambique, which we were scheduled to go to in December, so instead we went to Swaziland for 19 days with 2 other teams. 22 of us lived in a house with 3 rooms, one tub to take bucket showers, a kitchen with 3 burners and no running water. Outside were chickens, pigs, goats, cows, a rooster that liked to crow at 2 am and an out-house for us to do our business. This last month in particular, rest and downtime was hard to come by and there were times you couldn’t escape the noise.
Living with 45 people one month and then 22 people in tight quarters you see the best in people and the worst in people and you are confronted constantly with how to respond.. What do you do when things are handled poorly? What do you do when you see character flaws in your teammate? How do you move away from simply being dismissive to walking the hard road of forgiveness? What’s the difference between having grace and surrender about these things rather than indifference and apathy? And above all how do you respond in a way that brings true peace and moves towards unity in the community? Because even as we work these things out, what keeps me pressing on is that I believe there’s more at stake than things appear. It’s so easy to slip into sarcasm and eye-rolling and it doesn’t take much to affect the spirit of a community. I haven’t figured it out, but I know that if we let these things come between us, that we will not be the force God meant for us to be, when He put us together.
Ps. To those of you who email me telling me that you continue to pray frequently…thank you, thank you, thank you…it means so much to me. Sorry, I can only ever tell you until after the fact, but we usually find things out right before they happen.
Pps. If you’re interested in an update on what we did in November and December, a couple other squad-mates wrote blogs detailing where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.
Brittany’s Blog – Blog on Ministry last two months
Kayla’s Blog – South Africa Round 2 – Blog on ministry last two months
Kayla’s Blog – Relentless Light – Blog on Team Changes
