after a week-ish of sessions, rooftop phone calls, worship nights, minecrafting (thank you Jesus), recharging, and an anticlimactic sunrise on the beach (it rose behind us, oops), we packed up all our stuff and relocated five minutes down the road to our new home: Oceans Edge.
we were told soon after what our ministry for the month would be. we’d be helping out by being the guinea pigs of a new project they are working on, which is a business as missions school and secondhand store, being built on the property and launched in the coming months. for our time here, we’ve been sitting in on the classes that will be taught in the mornings, and doing other various ministry things in the afternoon, such as updating the jaco business database after its shutdown in covid, doing service projects, helping out with surf club, and other random things.
i will admit that when i heard about the main part of what our ministry was going to be, my heart sank a bit. i don’t think of myself as a very business-minded person, or someone who is in any way interested in starting a business. my instinct when hearing about classes and activities like these if they were offered at school as clubs or classes would be to ignore them and take something completely and totally different for the sheer sake of dramatically avoiding them. my brain just automatically scratches them off the list of options. i sort of just sat there on the couch, wedged between two of my teammates, with my previously hyper excitement dying down fast and turning into discouragement. i knew that people who happened to look at me could tell that my face was falling. i’m not great at hiding my emotions on the spot.
‘i like to learn,’ i thought, ‘i’ll just pretend it’s something i’m passionate about and it’ll be fine. pretend it’s whales or space or something.’
when it comes to things like this, i’m not great at pretending either.
pretty fast i learned that pretending that updating a business database is actually going on a secret mission and saving the world from evil aliens and a lethal meteor shower just doesn’t really work. they’re not the same thing. even whales were hard to work in. i didn’t want to complain or discourage the people who were enjoying themselves, so i’d kept my mouth mostly shut and done it with a cheerful attitude, but i was getting tired of it really fast. i was bored out of my mind, and for the first time in a while, my imagination couldn’t save me.
we’d barely started and i was already defeated.
and then! a little light in the darkness appeared. *angel chorus*
after one of the first days of class, we gathered around the table to talk about what our afternoon ministry would look like. after explaining how we would walk all over the city taking pictures and writing the names of the businesses down, someone said, “do we have two people here who wouldn’t mind painting instead of doing the business project today?”
i tried not to look too excited but my hand shot up fast enough for them to notice.
that day instead of walking around town, taking down names for the business database, i spent the afternoon drawing macaws on lightposts and making a color palette for them to be painted the next day.
i was so grateful that i cried like ten minutes before. i know, i’m a lot, but i was happy, okay? i was happy and relieved and grateful.
after that, i started trying to be more intentional about being present in the ministry we did. yes, i eventually had to go out and do business things, but i tried my hardest to do it with a cheerful heart and make it fun for myself. we usually went in groups of two, so i tried being intentional about talking to my teammates. when we had service projects, i got to know the people on the street or the people working with us. i settled on a routine where when i came back from these things feeling like i hadn’t done anything, or bored to pieces, i went and did something creative for a few hours and filled myself up again.
it has been a giant learning process.
and i have found myself complaining to Jesus sometimes too. “this isn’t what the description said ministry would be. i keep seeing confirmation and hearing you say i’m where i’m supposed to be but this is not me so why am i here?”
he has continued to remind me of my assignment to pray while i’m in jaco. whether or not i feel like i’m making any impact on the city by doing these things, or feeling like i’m worthy of sitting in business class when i barely understand what’s going on, he’s reminded me of how i’m here to pray. not build a house or teach or save the world.
and!
in the midst of this more business-minded ministry, ive picked out things that Jesus has given me to “make up for it.” painting lightposts, helping choreograph a dance for surf club, getting to do childcare now and then, getting the opportunity to lead my own team time about love languages, learning to surf, being a lifeguard, having random time that we usually wouldn’t have to do creative things, getting basically the entirety of the early morning before class, and probably more. he saw that i was struggling to be passionate so he threw in some things that i’m passionate about. creative freedom, kids, brains, swimming, recharge time, and other random things i probably haven’t even noticed yet. even more than space or whales.
pretty neato mosquito if you ask me:)
🙂
