What Do I Do Here?

I am often asked by those whom I love and miss back in the States, What do you do there? Or to change the wording of the question: What is your ministry? How do you serve? That's a good question. I've asked myself this many times. And my answer is simple and honest. Its simple, but its simplicity is not to be mistaken for ease, as I'm still very much a work-in-progress.

Love.

My ministry here; the way I serve the people here is by loving them. Choosing to love them. Discovering the need and choosing to care. Sometimes its fun and easy. Sometimes it is not. But I desire to follow my Savior's example and "...walk in love..." (Ephesians 5:2).

Walking in love takes on different forms at different times. At times walking in love may require much more of us than we like - and so we ready our hearts for that. There are times when an aptly-spoken word is the most loving and beneficial way to serve. And then sometimes the simple act of showing a scared and exhausted mother how to administer over-the-counter medicine to their feverish child breathes upon them the soothing, caring, and healing love of Christ. 

Yep...that's it...love. That is what I do here. I choose to love.

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:1-3