The Littlest Wall Flower

We are one week in. One week of ministry. One week of acting as team lead. One week of Spanish. One week of heartbreak. One week of living on mission.

 

One week.

 

It feels long and short all at once. Emotionally taxing and freeing at the same time. A blessing and also a chore. The paradoxes are endless to the life of missionaries.

 

About five days in, our ministry host Rachel said, “You’re taking on too much.” It was a statement I’m not unfamiliar with as striving tends to be where I land but it was also a beautiful compliment to the passion and heart our team has for these people and the amount of effort we long to put forth.

 

You see, if you’d met the people in this neighborhood you’d feel the same. If you knew the hearts of our hosts Rachel and Nolo, you’d want to work. You’d want to take on more. You’d want to exercise every skill you ever had and lay it before them and say here it is, here I am, what can I do for you next.

 

Our week has looked like this:

 

–       Sunday: Church, House Visits to Pray, Soccer with the Locals

–       Monday: Sabbath

–       Tuesday: Vacation Bible School (My team plans and owns this!), House Visits, Projects

–       Wednesday: Three hours of intercession for the community at the church, House Visits, Projects

–       Thursday: Market Day (it takes about half of the day to go to the various places to buy food, wash the food, etc.), Cleaning the house, Worship Room (a night where we worship for about 4 hours with locals from all around Guatemala)

–       Friday: Vacation Bible School, House Visits, Projects

–       Saturday: Sunday School for the littles all morning and teen night that night (this is our busiest day)

 

But our week has actually looked like this:

 

–       Sunday: Learning how to make homemade tortillas with Patti and sitting next to a crying woman and rubbing her back at church

–       Monday: Sitting with the Lord and roaming around Antigua having conversations with local shop owners and telling them about missions

–       Tuesday: Telling a little girl named Dulce how beautiful and smart she is and learning a bible verse in Spanish to teach the little ones to memorize

–       Wednesday: Weeping for 30 minutes straight over the young girls in this community and the emotional and sexual trauma they face – Then translating prayer requests so I can pray over the members of the church

–       Thursday: Wondering whether we have enough budget to buy cheese and stressing over meal planning but ending the day worshiping for 3 straight hours and glowing coming out of the presence of the Lord

–       Friday: Making bean burritos for the littles to have a filling snack at VBS and chatting with a teenage girl that broke her leg, praying for healing

–       Saturday: Holding the dirtiest and most precious little babe so his big sister could color with her friends and making pancakes for teen night

 

Last Saturday, I was sitting on the floor with a little girl named Diana watching her color. My Spanish isn’t great but it’s enough to get by with the little ones. Diana would point to the place on her sheet she wanted me to color and the crayon and I would color until she gave me the next directive. She’s shy. A loner. The littlest wall flower but one I’m sure is blooming. She doesn’t speak much and doesn’t smile much but she’s smart, a listener and I know she is taking in more than she leads on.

 

I had a moment.

 

A moment where I asked the Lord why in the world I was sitting on the floor of a garage in Guatemala coloring with a five year old. Why with everything I’ve learned, all the experience I have and everything it took me to get here, I would be doing this.

 

A moment of pride.

 

I know the Lord smiles and smirks when I do this. I know it. He simply said, “Hey, it’s not for you to decide what I’d like you to do and what is important for you to do. That’s for me to decide. Right now, I want you to sit here and smile at Diana and color with her. Don’t leave her side.”

 

And so I did. If I know one thing, I know that when he speaks, it’s best to listen.

 

I don’t know how the kingdom moved in that small act of obedience. I don’t know what God was doing in me or in her. I’ll probably never know. And I have to be ok with that.

 

This year is going to be full of those moments and those questions and those wonderings and those prideful little tantrums where I find my seemingly busy and important self sitting down for mundane tasks.

 

And I hope the Lord slices through every bit of that pride with a dose of beauty and humility leaving only an open heart with open hands, naked before Him, worthless without His direction.

 

I hope He continues to remind me that I am simply a vessel for His love and my job is to let it wash over me and let it pour out of me whenever and wherever I am.

 

This month will be about serving Rachel and Nolo and creating an impact that will continue after we are gone. It’s about being the hands and feet of Jesus and bringing kingdom through prayer, worship, and action. It’s about dying to our ideas of what should be done and how it should be done and letting Christ run this month.

 

I look at our schedule and there are two voices I hear:

 

One says “This doesn’t really sound like much. Is this even doing anything? Is that what you came to do? Really?”

 

The other one says “What an opportunity to serve this group of people. Wow, do you have any idea how the kingdom will move while you all are there concentrating on them? You are spreading the Holy Spirit’s presence in everything you are doing!”

 

I’m going to listen to the latter. I know my Father’s voice.

If Jesus can stop to look at the littlest and least, so can I. If Jesus can cut through the crowd and comfort the crying and the lonely, so can I. If Jesus can walk in humility and sacrifice and trade pride for the mocking voice of the powerful, so can I.

 

I left a life of money and success and comfort to roam the earth singing praises to our King and telling stories of his truth and goodness.

 

Sound’s wild doesn’t it?

 

It is.