Really that’s honestly how this entire year of traveling and living life missionaly has been. There’s been instances of having to quarantine because of most of the squad getting covid and really there’s been tons of instances with being flexible with traveling. At any moment anything could have happened or did happen. From a few staying back because a squadmate suffered a concussion from falling down the stairs to it taking a few days to get to our ministry site because of a snowstorm in Istanbul and places getting feet of snow. Up to people’s waists in some cases.
With needing to be flexible there also comes a lot of let down, hurt, anguish, sadness, frustration and so many emotions. For instance, expecting a specific outcome or turnout when it comes to ministry events and it not turning out that way. Another example is expecting all of your free time to be used to adventure but at times it doesn’t work out or you’re really on call to help out with ministry in which case you sacrifice your day off to help others or you sacrifice it being moved elsewhere in which you’re not with everyone else doing ministry. I learned how to be flexible with ministry when it came to getting together as a team for some team time.
There was actually two months back to back where I learned how to be flexible the most the best that I could. Turkey and Georgia. Turkey I thrived while it seemed like the rest of my team was going through a lot. Georgia was my worst month and it seemed liked the rest of my team was thriving. With these two months we had to be the most flexible for ministry because we could end up traveling to another city/town at any moment. Or we had other ministry opportunities pop up at any moment because the places we partnered with needed help in specific areas.
Even now with the needs of our friends fleeing Ukraine we have to be flexible for them to help in any way possible. To help them get from one country to the next, to provide food and clothing for them, to pick them up from the train station and take them to housing. Living life on mission is both edifying and hard. It builds up others, transforms your life and at the same time you can get hurt in the process. It’s a beautiful display of what it means to be human with a Kingdom mindset.
It’s so true that when you are in relationship with people (and isn’t that what ministry is all about?), there is usually some hurt involved. Forgiveness and sacrifice are such admirable traits!