Humility Before God and Man

One of the things I began processing through in the last couple weeks of our summer adventure in Peru is the idea of humility before God and man.  It's no secret that Katie and I were surprised by the summer and what it ended up looking like.  We had very different ideas going in, and different hopes, and we ended up doing a lot of things that weren't much fun to say the least.  However, one of our goals going in had been to serve Inca Link's long-range goals in whatever way was best for them, and so as we got going that goal had to take precedence over the others.  We had been asked to work hard toward the physical completion of the children's home.  If that was how we were going to serve Inca Link, that's what we needed to do.

It goes beyond our goals of serving, however.  Regardless of our thoughts or preferences toward our job descriptions, we felt like serving to the full extent of our capacity was our sacred duty.  The Bible speaks about authority, and gives examples: even Jesus submitted to His parents (Luke 2:51).  After speaking with a centurion about authority, Jesus commends his great faith at recognizing Jesus' authority (Matthew 8).  The Bible also talks about humility, namely that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34 and 1 Peter 5:5).  Finally, Colossians 3:23 and Galatians 1:10 ties it all together for us to make it clear that we do our work for the Lord, not for men.  To do our daily manual labor on the children's home was service not just to our director, but to our Lord.

This past summer was challenging in many ways.  We had some conflicts and differences of values with the organization.  However, we came to learn that conflicts and disagreements don't necessarily reflect that anyone is wrong, merely that they are different.  Therefore, it was our duty before God to work as hard as we could, as well as we could, for our directors at Inca Link as if it were for the Lord directly.  It's a good life lesson for all of us.  Our labor is not for men, or for ourselves - it's for God, and He demands it all.  When you're working for the Lord, there's no room for laziness, low-quality work, or not finishing well.  I hope that Katie's and my work ethic over the summer - whether it was painting, ministering to the teams, ministering to the interns, or just sweeping the floor and doing dishes - was a reflection of how we felt about serving the Lord directly.  Let's all pray today that our labor looks to others as if we believe we are serving the living God Himself!

Final Week

We wanted to write one more time as we come into our final week here in South America.  Amazing that time is passing so quickly - in no time we'll be on that plane back home!  We're writing this from the border of Peru and Ecuador, a town called Huaquillas.  We passed through here a couple times before on the long bus trip.  We were sad to say goodbye to so many new friends yesterday in Trujillo as we left for the bus.  Most of the other interns left the night before, as they wanted a few more adventures in Ecuador, but Katie and I were leading one final mission team so we are now making the trek on our own.  This border exchange has been eventful, including a taxi driver who seemed to lie to us twice and wandered into a situation where he (meaning we) had to pay a bribe, but we found a bus for tonight and a cheap hotel for the afternoon to sleep and shower.

Leading the team last week, from a Chinese Alliance church in Winnipeg, Canada, was really awesome for me (John).  I'd been looking forward to the opportunity to lead a team all summer, though I'd been contributing some leadership to all the teams all summer.  I felt in my element as much as ever all summer, and formed some great bonds with the team.  They were really blessed by their experiences, and certainly blessed us interns and the albergue.  We've left the albergue a lot closer to being done than it was when we arrived, especially with all the painting.  It's exciting to see all the work that was done, but we still know there is plenty left to do to reach the point when it can open to children.  As of when we left, there's still another team coming before the season of mission teams ends, then it's just up to the various missionaries and hired workers.

Before we left, we got to say our final goodbyes to people and do an exit interview with our director.  It was good to reflect over the summer.  It's certainly been challenging, but we do feel like we rose to the situation and overcame successfully.  While our time didn't look like what we had hoped, I think we found fulfillment in serving God through serving our earthly bosses.  We both feel strongly about Colossians 3:23, which speaks about serving the Lord rather than men, and we both threw ourselves fully into the tasks that were asked of us.  With constancy and dedication, we did what we were called to do and accomplished a lot.  The mission field is often a changing world, with different demands and little steady job descriptions.  Whether this is due to God's design or man's shortcomings is irrelevant, but it is an opportunity to practice obedience and submission to authority.  One of our goals this summer was to serve the long-term interests of Inca Link, and we hope that we have done that through the tasks we accomplished!