Finding the Dirt

Today was my last day of work.  When did that happen? Seriously?  I have been here for two months, and it simultaneously feels like a blip and like a long time.  Monday, my boss, Carmen, and I walked into town to grab lunch and bring it back to the office.  Talk about working for your dinner! Those hills are still a challenge to climb—and are for anyone, really.

As Carmen and I sat eating our lunches on the back patio of the office, I remembered the first time we had done that—my first night out here in Nyamagabe.  I had been in Rwanda for a total of three days, and had just attended my first day of work—a quarterly all-staff meeting in Kigali.  Getting in the jeep to head out to this small town in the mountains was both exciting and nerve-wracking.  Squeezed in the back seat with a couple of my coworkers, who were all conversing and laughing in Kinyarwanda, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the mountains around me.  They say it wears off when you have to climb up and down them for water every day.  Maybe, but I doubt I’ll never get over their all-encompassing beauty.

That first night, Carmen stayed here in the office with me to help me get settled, so I didn’t feel quite so alone.  I stood, helpless, as she deftly took food out of the fridge and cooked it up for us to eat.  It was probably 8 or 9pm by this point, I wasn’t super hungry.  But we sat outside and ate, and she told me about her family, about the office…as exhausted as I was, I tried to engage her instead of sitting in silence. 

Talking about that night, it felt like a lifetime ago.  By no means am I an expert on Rwanda, I can’t even speak more than a few words in Kinya…but the barriers did break down.  Now I sit and talk to her freely, as you do with a good friend.  It gives me so much joy to know that they have appreciated my time here—not that I am looking for their praise (haha, if you have seen previous posts), but hearing their encouragement makes me feel like I have actually been useful.  Sometimes I wonder.  But after two months, I have been able to contribute—but also to learn so much more about another piece of the Body of Christ in a different part of the world.  And another place that desperately needs the Church to do what they have been called to—the integral mission of service and love for neighbors with sharing the transforming power of relationship with Christ.

This is something that I see in World Relief’s strategy of engaging the local church and empowering them to serve their whole communities.  While they aren’t doing it the same way here, because of our USAID grant, I have heard incredible stories of this new strategy for church engagement and empowerment.  It’s built to be a sustainable model that doesn’t create dependency on an outside agency.  Along with training various leaders in the church—pastors, youth, women, in how to do effective Sunday School programs, how to reach out to kids in their communities, how to teach health messages—the strategy asks the question: ‘What do you have?’ And you move forward from there.

I love the story of a pastor up in the Northern Province. After going through the curriculum on changing mindsets—really, the principle that pastors are not the only people who can truly meet God and interact with Him, he looked around at what he had.  You know what he said?  “Well, I have dirt.”

Here, dirt is used to make bricks because of its high clay content.  In the US, we would say ‘dirt? There is absolutely nothing you can do with that.’  Here, the church has begun to make bricks, sell them, and provide for the poor in their village with the profits. 

What is the dirt in our lives?

What are the things that we look down at and don’t think are useful?  I feel like those are the places that God often wants to come in and make something extraordinary happen.  Where can we make bricks, what are those little things about you and me that can be used in creative, innovative ways to improve the lives of those around us, to love other people well, to see the Kingdom of God furthered?  

So today I leave (because it’s after midnight, although packing has not yet commenced).  And that is the question I will continue to ask myself…where is the dirt in my life?  That dirt that seemed like it had no purpose until now?  I feel a surge of creativity and newness coming from this idea, one I am excited about.  And so I move forward.  I ask God to reveal his heart for the community I am in now, and the community I am returning to very soon.  Lord, let the seemingly purposeless places of my life, of who I am, be used in incredibly creative ways to bless every person I come in contact with.

Amen.