Telling you about how we continued to paint and cut and sand and varnish the desks on Friday seems boring so let me tell you a funny story...
It had been a long day. Most of the team was still cutting, and sanding the remaining tops, seats, and backs of the chairs. 450 pieces total. Galynn and I had been painting the frames, kabitzing all morning (kabitzing is like shooting the breeze, chatting if you will.) I'm not even sure what we even talked about, but when the two of us are together, that's just what happens, we talk and talk and talk...
Once the frames were done we washed the gasoline paint off of us. Renee said we should have brought potato peelers instead of brushes. Funny story within a funny story: each December we would come before and help host this big New Years Eve party, feeding 900 or so people. This involved peeling some 80 pounds of potatoes with these massive chef's knives, at least the first year. It really is my best Haiti story, because I'm pretty sure I got several blisters and ended up bleeding by the time we were done. Ha! The next time we came prepared with potato peelers. And I would tell the potato story over and over because peeling potatoes is one of my least favorite cooking jobs at home. Anyways, I've made a big deal about peeling these potatoes and now there's this task of of painting with gasoline paint and then washing with it off with the gasoline and it's kind of yucky. And I'm slightly WISHING I was peeling potatoes.
Continue funny story number one. So now the two of us are VARNISHING the 450 pieces and talking away, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling. Do you see where I'm going with this? Galynn and I give up talking and she breaks out into song:
"painting the chairs, painting the chairs, nothing's more fun or much easier done, than painting the chairs, painting the chairs, in HAITI out in the sun!! bum bum bum..."(You need to ask one of us to sing it for the tune. Chad and Tiffany came home singing 'bless the Lord oh my soul!' We were singing about chairs!)
It was either delirium from the heat or we had been huffing too much paint, but it continued into lunch. We were loud and cracking jokes, and then...
I totally crashed. I slid my bowl out in front of me, laid my head down and fell asleep right on the table. Mind you, I'm not taking any of this seriously right now, just laughing my socks off about it! I tried to get back to varnishing after my cat nap, and sang a few choruses of "painting the chairs" with Galynn before she sent me away to sit in front of a fan and drink water. I napped then too. Should have brought potato peelers...
Our cake!
The job did not get completely finished, but our team had poured themselves into the task until it was quittin' time. We gave the staff at MOHI a little thank you gift (they really are an amazing group of individuals!) and headed back to the base. We like to go out with a little excitement so we managed to bake a cake, don some colorful leis, break out the nose flutes and airboards (should've pulled out the billows too!) and celebrate with the missionaries a bit before a storm rolled in and the generator went off. Party over! We packed up all our things the next morning and headed home with promises not to forget Haiti and MOHI. How could we, right?
But it's so easy to forget when something isn't before you all the time.
Fast forward a bit to when we have been home a week. It's our team's day to present our trip and the question comes up, 'what if nobody cares?' It's a valid question. Although I think people do care, they just may be too distracted let it matter. It wasn't their experience, so why would it? The cares, routines and outlook of their lives were not halted for a week to experience a complete overhaul. Even those that go, upon returning find it easy themselves to be distracted by life as we know it here in the States. It seems far away, even to me you know? And I am swept up with the dailies of life and the desires of my flesh. But, God gently calls us back.
He calls us to remember what we saw and felt, the relationships we made, the names we learned. He calls us not to forget that we lead much different lives than much of the world, that going on a mission trip is a privilege of few, though it may not seem that way because of its commonness in America. He calls us to be like Him because He does not forget the poor, the orphan, the voiceless. He calls us to pray in our absence so that we remember. And He calls us to go back, for a refresher course in loving others sacrificially, so we can also remember that we have a similar calling right here at home.
Mission trips change your perspective, they change you. But you cannot come back only to simply be grateful for what you have that others don't. There are some lyrics I listened to that struck me recently. Summarized they say that if I give to the needy, but don't love them I find that all that poverty is actually found in me. Giving a package of clothes without love leads you to only be grateful that you have a closet full of clothes at home. But with love, every time you see your closet you think of that person without clothes and become compelled to move to action on their behalf (and if you recognize that there are those without in the United States, even in your very city, you will move on their behalf as well.) Poverty is found in us when we don't truly change. We are the sad, the broken, if we have seen and touched the truly poor and turn away, grateful, but forgetful.
Have you ever seen one of those fancy horses pulling carriages in the city? I kind of feel bad for them cause they look so rigid and uptight, pulling that cart slooowly along (horses are meant to run wild or something ya know?) But one thing they've got going for them is that they are steady in the right direction, cause they've got those blinders on them. They're not enticed or hyped up by all the stimulation of the street people and shops, they're focused and guided by their master. I've been praying for blinders lately, so I too can no longer be distracted by everything that makes me forget about what's important. To throw off everything that hinders and run the race marked out for us, as the author of Hebrews 12 talks about. It's hard intentional work to care, to not forget, and honestly? It makes peeling potatoes and painting chairs look easy.
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