TOM & one piece of the story

...I tend to prefer my food altogether flavorful and not at all fat-free. Life is too short and too challenging for drab, flavorless food; as long as I live, there will be no excuse for it. There, I said it. Polite demands for the recipe led me to believe my labor was not in vain; this brought me tremendous pleasure.

It was an experience—an involvement!...

- from "The Fragrance of Soup and Song," by Eric Peters on The Rabbit Room blog

I spent the good part of the first four days of this week in a kitchen in a clubhouse of an RV park, serving those participating in TOM- Taller Orientacion Ministerial. In English, we call it a Church Planters Assessment Center. The event brings together church planting pastors and their wives with a team of assessors, examining their call to ministry and offering resources for future training. It was four intense days of exercises and evaluation for the participants.

My role was small really, simply to feed and care for these folks' physical needs. But isn't it an expression of love, to care for people by meeting their genuine needs well? In an interview with Art House America on her book Real Love for Real Life, The Lost Art of Caring, Andi Ashworth said, 

"It must be said that a lot of caregiving work is tedious, repetitive, and wearying. Washing endless loads of laundry, a thousand trips to the grocery store, cleaning up after children, all the bits and pieces required to care for a spouse or friend who’s battling illness. But if we can keep in mind the bigger story we’re creating, it goes a long way in bringing meaning to the details."

I confess, the day after TOM finished, I am a bit weary. But I'm also thankful. I have the opportunity to be part of "an experience, an involvement!" I have the opportunity to know and serve and walk next to and learn from my brothers and sisters from Mexico. And I have the opportunity to be just a little piece of the bigger story of God's kingdom being built in northern Mexico and at the US/Mexico border, one small church at a time. That is more than pleasure; it is blessing.