// September 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Holy Random Batman!, I just started writing and..., Life
If we thought 6:30 was early, we were certainly surprised by the yelling and pounding on our doors shortly after 2am Tuesday morning. Fuming, I rolled out of bed, threw a shirt on, and harumphed my way down to the living room. We all looked tired and disheveled, but I was starting to get sick and silently harboring a lot of frustration at the early starts, especially after having a solid week of completely abnormal sleep patterns. When all of us had assembled, we were told why we had been so lovingly jarred from sleep. We were going to memorize Philippians 2:14-15 in English and and Spanish. After every single person could recite the verse in each language, we would all be allowed to go back to bed. In case you don’t know the verse: “14Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.” Needless to say, by the time we were done, my anger had dissipated, to be replaced by humility and repentance. We all got through it and some of us learned our lesson: that on the ministry field you will face surprises and discomforts, but your job is to be a genuine representative of Jesus Christ, never complaining or arguing.
As we were scurrying off to our still-warm beds, our leaders told us they would be providing us with breakfast after devotions at 8:30. This was a welcome word, but another surprise in waiting. Some of us didn’t really get back to sleep after the memorization (I tried, but I couldn’t get my head cleared of the Spanish worship music we’d heard on Sunday at church), so we all showed up to devotions a bit groggy, but pleased with what we had accomplished. We had a guest for devotions named Butch, who is basically the liaison between us and the Assemblies of God World Missions department. Butch shared a couple stories sandwiching the story of Jesus’ interactions with Zacchaeus. It was a great breakdown of how Jesus wasn’t only offering to come hang out with Zacchaeus. Instead, He was offering eternity to him and his whole family; He was offering genuine love and friendship to someone who had neither of them from anyone. We have the opportunity to offer that to everyone we come into contact with.
After devotions, we migrated to the breakfast table and sat down to….something very questionable. We were each given a plate with something that looked like catfood and tasted like spam, something that looked like fire-hot cheetos in the shape of tiny fish, and something slightly resembling green beans in color, but softer and chopped funny, which made them look like cross-sections of a cow-lilly (the only reason I know what that looks like is because I bit into one at Brian and Ashley’s wedding, with Ashley’s prompting. I threw up and my face tingled for about 45 minutes, so I wouldn’t recommend that). When everyone had spent enough time complaining, then correcting each other with the previous night’s verse, then shutting up and finally looking at the leaders with disgust written all over our faces, the speech came. “As missionaries, you need to understand something about the culture here and throughout the world. Many of the people you will be visiting will be so poor that the only way of offering you any gratitude is to fix you dinner. Many of them can’t even afford to do that, but they will anyway. Your task is to show grace, gratitude, and God’s love. At the same time, you need to realize that while you may not be able to communicate with words, your faces just told me everything I need to know about what you’re thinking. This is the time to practice. As soon as you all eat everything on your plate, we’ll talk about what’s next for the day.” The cat food turned out to be finely-chopped pig liver, the little cheetos were heavily-seasoned fried fish, and the green thingies were Nopales, a cactus. Gabi was the first one done, then Mike. Stacia was last…by a long shot. I was pretty much smack-dab in the middle, and I can honestly say that none of it tasted all that bad, but the textures were difficult to stomach.
The rest of the day was filled with a lot of learning about chores, expectations, ministries, schedules, and whatnot. After all of that, we gathered together to have a worship night, in English. As it turns out, our leadership team (the Missionaries in Training) is a husband and wife team that sound pretty amazing on a guitar with both of them singing. We were very blessed to have the time together and we won’t know what it meant to us until long down the road, but it lasted a couple hours and we had a lot of prophecy, a lot of bondage broken off, and we all entered into a new adventure with God at the helm.
