"AVAILABILITY IS THE GREATEST ABILITY" I once heard. Which meant--those fellas that came out to help Daddy and Uncle Russ and said, "What can we do?" were offering greater service than they could ever know. They THOUGHT they were merely hammering nails or splattering paint or laying cement...but were doing much more.
There were days when they came over to help fold introductory tracts for canvassing new neighborhoods; yes, they learned about mundane activities of the church-planting missionary. But they got to snack while recording singing and encouragement to MKs away at college, so I hope it wasn't all work and no fun.
And the finished church at Tairagawa--I was just looking at the photograph of the believers that gathered there at the very beginning. The man who did the electrical work ended up inviting his sisters, and one of her children, not only found Christ, but went onto Bible School and it looks like she is going to be a pastor's wife. A son of one of the women in the photograph came out of severe depression and began to carry a bookbag gifted to him by a Stateside church.
"People may SEE the preacher behind the pulpit going to foreign lands and coming home, moving around, so to speak. But you need people who are still and AVAILABLE to support you in whatever way you need in order to get God's work done. You have to have both."
Whoever heard of trying to eat with just one chopstick? I guess it can be done, but...
